Gnosis | 19.1 (2021) by journalgnosis

Editorial Committee | Comité de rédaction

Editor-in-Chief / Rédacteur en chef Kristen Lewis

Managing Editors / Rédacteur·e·s ajoint·e·s Aaron Hone Anna Gorham Emmanuel Cuisinier Matthew Raymond Sara Fortin

French Editor / Rédacteurs en français Guillaume Boucher

Reviewers / Réviseur·e·s Aditya Guntoori Donncha Coyle Emma Sigsworth Leah Edmonds Rosalind Jay Shawn Huberdeau

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Table des matières | Table of Contents

Editor’s Foreword ………………………………………………………………. iii Kristen Lewis

Reach Beyond Reach: Literature’s Uncanny Tickling of the Real ……..…….…. 1 Alexander Sallas

Interroger la philosophie politique grecque, de Protagoras à Platon, en passant par les poètes ……………………………….……………………….….. 17 Mario Ionuț Maroşan

Poetry as Ethical Evasion? Dickinson, Levinas, and Beyond the Dip of Bell…... 29 Mitchell Gauvin

Take a Chill Pill: Investigating Psychiatry’s Philosophy of Mood ……………... 47 Holly Tengelis

The Unintended Harms of the Covid-19 Visitor Restrictions in End-of-Life Care ………………………………………………………………… 64 Camille Irvine

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Editor’s Foreword Kristen Lewis, Masters Candidate (Concordia University) “Literature thus appears as an undertaking of health: not that the writer necessarily has a strong constitution […], but he enjoys a fragile irresistible health, which comes from the fact of having seen and heard things that are too big for him, too strong, unbreathable, whose passing exhausts him, but nevertheless permits him becomings that fat, dominating health would make impossible. […] What kind of health would be enough to free life wherever it is imprisoned by man and in man?”1 —— Gilles Deleuze When one writes and finds not only pleasure, but necessity in the act, one understands such a statement as the one proclaimed here by Deleuze. In this case, writing is far from an optional pastime or mere feature of employment. The need to write is a pulsating drive yearning for a stasis that is only satisfied in the bursting forth of expression. Indeed, writing under such circumstances of existential necessity bear down upon the human being to such an extent that writing is, in some ways, robbed of the certain pleasures of pastime, the simplicity of execution for sustenance—under the circumstances as articulated by Deleuze, writing becomes a burden barred by those who grapple with the unbearable lightness of being and the need to give that reality its doubling in the word, for oneself and for others. How to write of that which is “too strong, unbreathable”? It is enough to whisper its lingering presence. It is my hope as editor for this edition of Gnosis that you the reader understand the significance writing holds for those who choose to write, and that such significance be gleaned from what is here gathered. A collection of essays, diverse in projects as well as voice, but all unified in the determination necessary for the task of writing.

Gilles Deleuze, Critique et Clinique. Paris: Minuit, 1993; p.14.

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iii

Reach Beyond Reach: Literature’s Uncanny Tickling of the Real Alexander Sallas, PhD candidate (Western University) As a witty poet so rightly remarks, the mirror would do well to reflect a little more before sending us back our image. —Jacques Lacan, Écrits The uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar. —Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” Introduction In the Poetics, Aristotle suggests writers should imitate portrait-painters: "In rendering the individual form… paint people as they are, but make them better-looking" (1996). The mirror stage, posited by Jacques Lacan, suggests a similar, innate process in psychoanalysis. It theorizes that a lifelong quest to materialize a stable, whole, autonomous self begins the moment an infant recognizes their reflection. But the endeavour is fruitless; it situates the subject “in a fictional direction, which will always remain irreducible for the individual alone” (Lacan 2018).i Indeed, it marks the subject’s passage into an unyielding stade (stadium) of subjectivity in which they are “permanently caught and captivated” by their own imago (2018). Moreover, it includes several concomitant effects. The mirror stage triggers the subject’s irreducible removal from the Real, the first dimension in the Lacanian triad, into which they are born; it crystallizes the Imaginary and the Symbolic, the triad’s second and third dimensions; it transfixes the ego by contrasting the imago’s fictional totality with the infant’s fragmented body, manifesting their “Ideal-I,” which is composed of an “ideal ego” and “ego-ideal”;ii and it produces artificial jubilation in the subject who perceives they have assumed the imago as their own image.iii It even moulds conscious and unconscious thought; Lacan articulates this with a play on Descartes’s cogito ergo sum: “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think.” To that end, he calls the mirror stage an “identification.” When you consider “yourself,” he suggests, you are really considering a construct as such. There is no alignment between the self and objective reality; rather, the mirror stage establishes “a relation between the organism and its reality” (2018; emphasis added).

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It facilitates this “denaturing” by binding thoughts—and expressions thereof—to occurrence in and through language. Language is a dual artifact of the Imaginary, the dimension of idealization, and the Symbolic, the dimension of articulation: “There is something in the Symbolic function of human discourse that cannot be eliminated, and that is the role played in it by the Imaginary” (Evans 2003). But the Real remains inexpressible; it is “the rock against which all our… linguistic structures ultimately fail” (Felluga 2011). By Lacan’s estimation, language is a combination of idealization and articulation—not a reflection of “objective” truth. With this in mind, I argue the mirror stage may be resignified in a literary sense. As it marks the transition out of the Real and into language, one’s entrance into literature as such reverses the process, facilitating movement from language toward the Real. Yet literature cannot materialize that dimension. The inverted formulation remains forever incomplete. Literature may only “tickle” the Real; it may extend a hand through the bars of language, but it cannot uproot the bars themselves. For literature is language and language has limits. The reader, through a knowledge of these limits and the construction of their identity within them, may be made aware of the materiality of their own existence and concomitant “lack” of access to the Real.iv Viz., they may come into a certain awareness of “lack” as such. This awareness denatures “natural and familiar” language (Žižek 2018), separating the Real, or “pure signified”, from the Imaginary signified and Symbolic signifier, and tickles the Real itself. Which is to say, the reader does not “grasp” the totality of the Real. Rather, they graze it with the tips of their flailing fingers. Furthermore, I argue this inversion of the psychoanalytic orders and attendant tickling of the Real renders literature an “uncanny” force, as defined by Sigmund Freud. In literature, the author unfurls the private, the concealed. The reader is liable to take this revelation at its word— literally. Yet such disclosures are expressed in and through language, which renders original concepts illusory, “merely an effect of the play of signifiers” (Evans 2003). This “play” produces an Imaginary signified—a divergence nongermane to the signified’s “pure” form. Thus, literature embodies a substantial limit: readers cannot receive the Real through it, because writers cannot express their own truth within it. Neither the writer’s unveiling of their own “truth” nor the reader’s absorption of it can occur in earnest through a barred apparatus, language, which prohibits its very conception. In this sense, literature is a function of a system of subjectivity masquerading as a totality—not unlike the Ideal-I. We uncover this horror, this threatening lack of possibility, through an analysis of literature as an inverted mirror stage, unable to grasp—only tickle—the Real. Hence,

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I go on to argue, literature merges the Heimlich (familiar) and Unheimlich (unfamiliar). Uncanny, indeed. §1 First, let us articulate the Lacanian triad: the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic. These psychoanalytic orders, or dimensions, work together to “situate subjectivity within a system of perception and a dialogue with the external world” (Loos 2002). Their relationship is not hierarchal. Rather, it resembles a “Borromean knot”: the dimensions are “intertwined in such a way that no two… are directly connected but are held together only through the third one, so that if we cut out the third dimension, the other two are also disconnected” (Žižek 2018). Specifically, it is through the Imaginary that the Real is linked to the Symbolic; through the Symbolic that the Imaginary is linked to the Real; and through the Real that the Symbolic is linked to the Imaginary. Correspondingly, we will relate each dimension’s application to literature as such. The Real cannot be discussed. The moment it is exposed to the world, it becomes an object of discourse and ceases to exist. It becomes partial truth—the Real as materialized in the perceptions of others—and may only be studied through its effect on the other two dimensions. To that end, Lacan describes the Real as “the domain of that which subsists outside of symbolisation” (2006). This rationale links it with the concept of “impossibility”; indeed, Lacan suggests the subject will forever encounter “nothing Real except the impossible” (2006). In that sense, we may relate it to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, in quantum mechanics, which applies when a subject’s interaction with an object inherently alters the object's trajectory.v Attempts to access the Real transpose it into an altered, “expressible” form: language. This is not to suggest the dimension doesn’t actually exist. On the contrary, it is part of everything we do. As Lacan writes, we carry the Real “glued to [our] heel, ignorant of what might exile it from there” (2006).vi It drives jouissance, “the more radical enjoyment at the cusp between pleasure and pain” (Rabaté 2014). It underscores the body’s “brute physicality”—for example, the Real phallus is the physical penis raised to the status of the Thing, as opposed to the organ’s Imaginary and Symbolic functions (Evans 2003). And it may erupt when we are confronted with our innate materiality; its pure reality exceeds the meaning structures of the Symbolic and, as such, reminds us of our inability to access it (Felluga 2011). But pleasure, physicality, and existentialism, along with everything else, are barricaded behind language—a “linguistic structure” which, by

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Lacan’s estimation, is a product of one’s divorce from the Real. Hence, language is absent from that erstwhile dimension. Rather, it is a dual artifact of the Imaginary, the home to our unsatisfiable demands, and the Symbolic, the dimension into which we must translate ourselves. This leads Lacan to suggest “it is the world of words that creates the world of things” (2006). We can neither conceive of nor express the pure reality beyond language—the Real—because our conceptions and expressions are irreducibly shaped by interactions in and through the system of language itself. The mirror stage marks the advent of the Imaginary, the second dimension in the triad. When the infant recognizes their imago, or “specular image,” they recognize it is a “gestalt”: a form whose meaning exceeds the totality of its components and which may carry transformative significance. This metamorphic identification forms a dual relationship in which the infant’s ego and ego ideal become interchangeable. The relationship is fundamentally narcissistic, however, because “the Imaginary exerts a captivating power [over the ego]… founded in the almost hypnotic effect of the specular image” (Evans 2003). This narcissism is accompanied—as narcissism always is—by aggressivity. As the ego’s veneration of the imago and corresponding quest to materialize the ego ideal work against the subject’s “nature,” deviations from the journey which redirect attention toward the antithetical Real, the home to that nature, cause the ego to revolt. As Lacan writes, it is the moment of passage into the Imaginary that “tips the whole of human knowledge into mediatization through the desire of the other… and turns the I into that apparatus for which every instinctual thrust constitutes a danger” (2018). Hence, the Imaginary “imprisons the subject in a series of static fixations” (Evans 2003)—fixations which are impossible to materialize, irreducibly bar the subject from their nature, and result in the narcissistic adulation of an impossible self (and result in more substantial social interaction). Thereby, the Imaginary dimension is classified as a site of radical subjectivity. For it is within it that the infant first experiences the notion of “themself,” through identification with their artificially whole, autonomous imago. This enlaces their “particularity” with an excluding “universality” (2006). Lacan compares the process to an estrangement of sorts, writing “the first effect of the imago that appears is the subject’s alienation… in the movement that leads man to an ever more adequate consciousness of himself, his freedom becomes bound up with the development of his servitude” (2006; emphasis added). The word “adequate” is laced with bitter sarcasm. “Consciousness of the self” may be “adequate” in the Imaginary sense, but elsewhere Lacan suggests the “self” is actually impossible to access.vii For it exists in the Real; as such, it

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may only be conceived of—and expressed through—language, which resculpts its “pure” meaning, like light through a prism. The “self”, as we know it, is really an idealized, fictional gestalt: the ego ideal. As such, the Imaginary binds the subject to “servitude,” an unwitting, irreducible propulsion to manifesting that futile form. If the Real is the dimension of impossibility, the Imaginary is the dimension of demand, value, and the body, and their discontents. Lacan illustrates this in “Schema L,” the first of his many topographical charts. While Schema L, so named because it resembles the Greek letter lambda (Λ), shows that “the Symbolic relation… between the Other and the subject… is always blocked to a certain extent by the Imaginary axis” (2006), it also serves to represent the fundamental decentering of the subject. In passing from the Real into language, the subject is not placed on solid ground. Rather, they are stretched over the whole schema, perpetually “drawn to [its]… corners” (2006). Hence, Lacan sketches language as a process of continuous mediation. As the subject is attracted to the schema’s corners, skating along its surface, meaning slips and slides underneath them. This represents a “decentering” proposition: language may not express a fixed reality. That totality, the Real, remains “absolutely without fissure” because the “barred” subject, who has been “stretched” beyond its recognition as a function of the mirror stage, cannot access it.viii Ultimately, then, in language, the Imaginary dimension houses the Imaginary signified, along with the very process of signification, which is to say, it houses the production of meaning, delimiting the signifiers imported from the Symbolic. Lacan compares the Symbolic, the third and final dimension in the triad, to algebra, calling it the “structure of relations, not things” (2018). By this, he means it is immaterial, home to “restrictions that control both… desire and the rules of communication” (Felluga 2011). It is completely autonomous, undetermined by considerations such as “biology” or “genetics” (Evans 2003). And it is completely contingent with the Real; while it may appear to spring from that dimension, the relationship is illusory. As Lacan writes, “one shouldn’t think that symbols actually have come from the Real” (2006). Rather, the Symbolic is all-encompassing, congealing referents of the other two dimensions into a nebulous mass which serves to produce “reality.” In reference to this totalizing faculty, Lacan calls it a “universe.” As he writes, the dimension “from the first takes on its universal character. It isn’t constituted bit by bit. As soon as the symbol arrives, there is a universe of symbols” (2006; emphasis added). Indeed, the Symbolic’s totality even extends to perception itself. Upon the subject’s entrance, it creates the illusion that it was always there! This

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practical infinity discloses its essentially linguistic capacity, in that no relations—nor the laws and structures which coordinate them, nor our conceptions of those relations, laws, and structures— are conceivable without language. Hence, Lacan’s aforementioned contention that the “world of words”—the Symbolic—creates “the world of things” (2006). The relations between the triad disclose an “ontological structure of the human world which accords with [Lacan’s] reflections on paranoiac knowledge” (2018; emphasis added). That is to say, “knowledge”, like paranoia, projects a coherence on to its surroundings that may be fictitious. Just as we construct our self-image on a fictitious totality, we export a fictitious coherence to our surroundings. In the mirror stage, the infant recognizes that their imago has transformative significance in the “inverted symmetry” between the whole image and “the turbulent movements… [they] feel is animating [them]” (2018). This identification of the imago as a gestalt orients the “I” toward the ego-ideal. This, in turn, leads to the ideal ego, a propensity to treat movement away from that totality and toward the Real—the unbarred self—as capitulation, a failure to move closer to manifesting the idealized gestalt. In orienting their desire toward an impossible totality, one is left perpetually yearning for more. But this fictitious coherence, while responsible for this lack, enables a shared “reality as such”, the Symbolic, from which all subjects may find common ground. To that end, Lacan defines “psychosis” as the return to the Real of what cannot be symbolized (Rabaté 2014). We are united in our impossible desire. Indeed, our expressions in language are identifiable to ourselves and others because they are sublimated with a “bar” of repression. Hence, Lacan suggests, we are “barred subjects of desire.” By this, he means that language “alienate[s] us from [our] natural needs and derail[s] us onto the tracks of non-natural desires ix doomed never to reach enjoyable destinations” (Johnston 2018).x Our infantile passage out of the Real forever condemns us not just to desire in vain, but it prohibits us from communication unrepressed by that dimension. Literature, a fundamentally linguistic, “symbolized” exercise, embodies this lack. One’s entrance into it cannot constitute revelation in the Real, for one’s entrance into the mirror stage closed off access to it—for readers and writers alike. Literature is, then, a representation of “nonnatural desire,” appealing to the subject’s barred nature. It is a similar fictionalized totality to the ego ideal, seeming to embody hidden meaning and promising revelation of the sort that may lead to the mastery that can, in turn, materialize the imago. Yet the secrets that would enable this emergence cannot be revealed through its innately barred expression in language.

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To that end, Lacan suggests the signified and signifier are not isolated categories.xi Schema L is once more applicable: while the point de capiton, or quilting point, temporarily knots the Imaginary signified and its signifier together, the signified slips and slides, perpetually threatening to detach from its so-called brethren. As such, signifiers merely present an illusion of stable meaning. Thereby, Lacan suggests, the signifier actually precedes the signified. Meaning is derived from the differences between signifiers, rather than conceptions of individual signs. This squares with his postulate that, under language, the “pure signified”—the Real—remains barred from perception as a function of the mirror stage. As he writes, “it is in the chain of the signifier that the meaning insists, but none of its elements consists in the signification of which it is at the moment capable” (2018). Hence, the signified and signifier correspond to Lacanian dimensions. The pure signified, off-limits to detection, belongs to the inaccessible Real. Our perception of the signified, what we falsely idealize as “truth,” belongs to the Imaginary. Signifiers, harbingers of fictional coherence, are the constitutive unit of the Symbolic. Thereby, literature—as the play of signifiers, itself a dual artifact of the Imaginary and the Symbolic—produces an illusory truth which belies its Real emptiness; indeed, “absence is made present in [its] signification” (Hendrix 2019). Lacan says as much, remarking that literature “bears the meaning that the cosmos can, at its outermost bounds, become a locus of deception” (2006). By this, he means that literature is a distillation of the already innately distilled system of language. It is an ornate, chiselled artifact, further from “nature”—the cosmos, the Real, the pure signified—than most anything else. And through its heightened play of signifiers, the Imaginary signified is itself continually recontextualized. This presents an illusory progress, an Imaginary sense of revelation. Thus, while literature purports to reveal hidden truth in the Real, its “play” with signifiers, a factor of its innate expression in language, deceives the reader—and the writer—as to the purity of its expression. Hence, literature’s deception is twofold. It may purport to reveal Real truth beneath the fictionality of its signification, but it cannot. It may only reveal the fictionality of signification in general. Moreover, it continually recontextualizes our ideas of “truth” itself. For its play with signifiers sculpts the Imaginary signified, producing an illusory meaning which congeals into a fictional totality: literature as such. This produces an artificial jubilation in both reader and writer as they assume that, by entering into the body of “literature,” they are moving closer to the manifestation of their imago. But they are actually entering into a by-product of the same illusory

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truth, the Imaginary in concert with the Symbolic, that sculpted their impossible desire in the first place (one may say that literature gives false answers to Real questions). Hence, the reader embarks on an “inverted” mirror stage in entering into literature. Whereas the mirror stage sees the irreducible removal of the “I” from the Real, one’s entrance into literature as such sees an attempt to return. But the journey is undertaken within the barred apparatus that was itself a production of the initial separation. The quest is doomed to failure. Yet, I suggest literature may “tickle” the Real. With an awareness of literature’s inability to express that dimension, engendered by a hermeneutically-trained consciousness that resists subscribing a false fore-meaning of the written works’ potential for Real revelation, the reader becomes privy to the impossibility of articulating pure truth through its language—which is merely the play of signifiers and the attendant Imaginary signified. This denaturing of so-called “natural” or “familiar” language discloses the reader’s position as a barred subject of desire, separating the Real, or “pure signified”, from the Imaginary signified and Symbolic signifier—and it unveils the materiality of their existence as it is itself composed through the material force of language. It unveils the “self” as an Imaginary entity, unaware of “it-self” in the Real. This confrontation leads to a volcanic eruption. Its molten light illuminates the Borromean knot; specifically, the relation of the Imaginary as the conduit to the Symbolic, and the reader’s placement therein. Hence, the reader may reach through the corresponding gaps in the knot—the bars of their four-dimensional prison cell—and “tickle” the Real. They may stimulate impossibility with the tips of their fingers. But irreducible language, the material from which the bars are sculpted prevents them from reaching through with their whole fist to grasp it. The Real remains impossible. This tickling, I will proceed to argue, is decidedly uncanny. §2 The uncanny is notoriously difficult to define. Indeed, Natacha Diels calls it “impossibly complicated and wholly lost in the translation to language” (2014). But attempts abound. José Luis Valls suggests it arises from “imperfectly defined assemblage” (2019). Jean-Michel Rabaté argues it “leaves us stranded between competing explanations or between conceptual universes” (2014). For Heidi Schlipphacke, it is “both a world and a fragment” which “drive[s] and shape[s] so much of our fascination with literature’s strangeness” (2015). In literary fiction, the work of Franz Kafka is commonly called “uncanny” for its deployment of contradictions that baffle the reader (Rabaté

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2014).xii Ultimately, the best definition comes from Freud himself. He suggests the uncanny “undoubtedly belongs to all that is terrible—to all that arouses dread and creeping horror; it is equally certain, too, that the word is not always used in a clearly definable sense” (2018). Moreover, he asserts that it arises “when infantile complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by some impression” (2018). The mirror stage, occurring between the ages of sixto-eighteen months, certainly qualifies—and one’s entrance into literature serves as its revival (2018).xiii Freud goes on to say that such reminders of our psychic past reveal what is hidden and intimate, not only from others, but from ourselves (2018). They touch aspects of our unconscious life, or of our primitive infancy, and they merge the familiar and unfamiliar. A robust critical background characterizes literature, broadly, as uncanny. Hélène Cixous, Patrick Mahoney, and Joan Copjec, among others, argue “the most essential quality of narrative is uncanniness, a notion that in turn illuminates the more general uncanniness of language and of the speaking subject” (Lydenberg 1997). Freud recognized this elusive quality. In his essay “The Uncanny”, published in 1919, he analyzes the titular feeling vis-à-vis a broad swath of literary works, including a fairy tale, “The Severed Hand”, by Wilhelm Hauff; a novel, Josef Montfort, by Albrecht Schaeffer; and a short story, “The Sandman”, by E. T. A. Hoffmann. By the essay’s conclusion, he remains agitated by “something” that resists psychoanalysis. Ultimately, he suggests this unknown “probably calls for an aesthetic enquiry” (2018). I suggest the unknown, this fundamental uncanniness, is an innate product of one’s entering into literature as such. The process constitutes an inversion, and concomitant reminder, of the psychoanalytic orders experienced in infancy during the mirror stage—and the mirror stage, along the same lines of Freud’s assertion, posits that the human comes into being through a fundamentally aesthetic recognition (2006). Freud was correct, then, in calling for an aesthetic enquiry to reveal the uncanny “something.” Let us begin this enquiry with a brief articulation of the term “phallus” and its relation to literature and the uncanny. As Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis write, there has been a tendency in psychoanalysis since Freud to use “penis” and “phallus” in distinct senses, “the former denot[ing] the male organ in its bodily reality… the latter lay[ing] the stress on [its] symbolic value” (1973). One might overlay Lacanian terminology on this distinction to posit an equivalent “Real” phallus—the physical penis—versus the organ’s Imaginary and Symbolic functions. These functions cannot be reduced to a highly specific interpretation, nor equated to the Real phallus and

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its anatomical properties. Rather, the phallus is the meaning—what is symbolized—behind diverse ideas more often than it serves as a symbol in its own right (1973). Thus, Freud suggests, the phallus is the “dominant… problematic outcome of an intra- and intersubjective process” (1973). It is a “cultural construct” that becomes an essential component of the subject’s self-image through the ego’s identification of and subsequent dependence upon it (Rabaté 2014). As early as The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1899, Freud suggests the phallus is “detachable” and “transformable.” By this, he means that it is immaterial in-and-of-itself, existing only in “figurative embodiments” (2018). Because of its transfixing power, the subject becomes “assimilated to [these embodiments] that can be seen and exhibited, or that can circulate, be given and received” (2018). In this sense, the phallus may be considered a symbol of the orientation of idealization; or, the transformation of the image into the gestalt. It is a harbinger of metamorphic significance and the coefficient enlacing of the subject’s desire; the “power behind the throne” of the materiality of its embodiments. Furthermore, its imposition prevents “real or imagined threats of castration” (Rabaté 2014). The term “castration” is, like “phallus”, not to be taken literally. Rather, it represents “radical danger” to the self-image, the orientation of desire, and the symbolic phallus itself (Laplanche 1973). For our purposes, we may suggest that, as a consequence of the mirror stage, the subject’s ego ideal serves as the phallus while the Real serves as the lingering threat of castration—the move away from the ego ideal, a return to the dimension antithetical to the manifestation of the imago. As a consequence, movement toward the Real causes a revolt of the ego and an eruption of the aggressivity fundamental in the narcissistic relationship thereof. By this process, such motion is recast as an instinctual threat. But as the “instincts” are oriented by the phallus, irreducibly bound in veneration of the imago, they are rendered servile to the Imaginary and Symbolic dimensions. And the Real instincts are barred from perception as a consequence of the subject’s entrance into language. Indeed, because of that concomitant effect of the mirror stage, the subject cannot conceive of the Real “instincts” at all. This leads Lacan to reinterpret Freud and cast the phallus as the “signifier of desire.” It is, he suggests, the single, indivisible signifier that anchors signification (Hook 69). It is the Real presence of desire itself; the phallus, he claims, is “the signifier which does not have a signified” (Evans 145). As he elucidates:

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The phallus is not a fantasy, if we are to view fantasy as an imaginary effect. Nor is it as such an object (part-, internal, good, bad, etc.) inasmuch as "object" tends to gauge the reality involved in a relationship. Still less is it the organ—penis or clitoris—that it symbolizes… For it is the signifier that is destined to designate meaning effects as a whole, insofar as the signifier conditions them by its presence as signifier. (Écrits 579)

To that end, Lacan suggests “all signification is… phallic” (2006). For signification, by his estimation, is no less than the production of meaning itself. But this “meaning” is illusory and merely contingent with the Real. Thereby, we uncover another effect of the mirror stage: its irreducible barring of the Real necessarily places the phallus in signification’s artificial production of meaning. Hence, the phallus, the signifier of desire, is actually located in the bar between the signified and signifier. This discloses that the bar, representing a point of rupture between the two concepts, ensuring an inherent resistance in signification and the corresponding instability of all meaning, is actually itself unbarred (2006). In mediating the relationship between signified and signifier, the bar is absent from the barring that it itself applies. It is the single signifier that does not carry an Imaginary signified; rather, it is the instrument which distributes the classifications. Viz., the “limit” itself is the only unbarred signifier. Literature, as the play of signifiers and the corresponding recontextualization of the pure signified into the Imaginary signified, is a product of signification. As such, its allegiance lies with the bar—not with the Real. It reflects the phallic predisposition of signification—reflected even in prefigured ideological alternatives, such as avantgarde repudiations—empowering the repression inherent in the mirror stage’s transition out of the Real and into language. As one enters a “phallic stage” in the mirror stage, through the phallus’s transformation of the imago into a gestalt, the Ideal-I, one enters the “figurative embodiment” of the phallus in literature. This leads to literature as an uncanny force. Freud suggests the arousal of the uncanny, its frightening effects, its spawning of dread and horror, occurs as a combination of the Heimlich (familiar) and Unheimlich (unfamiliar) (2018). While these terms seemingly oppose one another, he argues they actually belong to “two sets of ideas, which, without being contradictory, are yet very different” (2018). Literature is similarly paradoxical (no wonder Freud calls it a “waking dream”). The uncanny “horror” of castration lurks beneath literature’s fictional totality. Whereas one’s entrance into the mirror stage situates the phallus in the process of signification, one’s entrance into literature as such threatens to destabilize this adulation. For signification’s threatening lack of possibility may be unveiled at any moment; the reader may extemporaneously

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realize its hopeless attempts to render the Real. Indeed, Freud suggests that the uncanny “which proceeds from repressed complexes,” such as the mirror stage, is “more resistant and remains as powerful in fiction as in real experience” (2018). This is due to the innate threat that literature poses. For the Real lurks beneath its surface, threatening to castrate the phallus, to expose the materiality of the reader’s very existence—it waits to be tickled. Hence, literature is an uncanny paradox; it is “both a world and a fragment” (Schlipphacke 2015). It is a world of Imaginary adulation containing a fragment of the Real. Upon the reader’s tickling of the Real, literature creates a facsimile of the infantile complex, the mirror stage, which led to the Real’s barring. But its inability to manifest the Real renders the inversion incomplete. To tickle is not to grasp. Rather, it is like searching through fog; the totality of the complex remains blurry, out of focus, beyond the subject’s grip. For the subject cannot uproot the irreducible bars of language. The “shards” of the Real which the subject senses, which they see through the fog—those the tips of their flailing fingers touch—produce the uncanny emotion. For the shards blend the Heimlich—the distortions, the fog, the delusions under which the subject labours, which is to say the false pretense of “reality” that governs their perception— with the Unheimlich—the Real, the pure signified, the reality behind “reality”: nature itself as unbarred from language. In this combination, the experience of entering into literature is rendered uncanny. In summary, literature is the play of signifiers, a distillation of innately barred language. By this, I mean it is the result of signification, an artifact of linguistic mediation, and a “refinement” thereof. It cannot uncover hidden truth in the Real—though it may purport to do so. Rather, it can only “tickle” the Real by denaturing so-called “natural” and “familiar” language, exposing shards of the Real, or the “pure signified,” outside of the Imaginary signified and the Symbolic signifier. This tickling is concomitant with the revival of the mirror stage’s “infantile complex,” as one’s entrance into literature upends the psychoanalytic orders established therein. This threatens to castrate the phallus placed in signification and, in so doing, remind the reader of the materiality of their own existence. Hence, the Real “erupts,” allowing the reader to “tickle” the erstwhile dimension. But no more than that. The reader cannot uproot the bars of language itself; they cannot grasp the Real’s “pure” form. Thereby, the tickling of the Real, facilitated through one’s entrance into literature as such, combines the Heimlich, the false pretense of reality, and the Unheimlich, nature as unbarred from language. This renders literature an uncanny force.

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For readers and writers, Socrates’s wisdom would seem applicable: “I know that I know nothing” (Bowden 2005). The domain of knowledge extends as far as the horizon of language allows. Yet the conclusions derived therein are equally suspect. What “are” we, then? The Real answers lie buried in an impossible past. Aristotle’s advice was wrong-headed. Writers may never resemble portrait-painters, for they cannot paint the portraits of the subjects they cannot see.

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Notes i

To that end, Lacan, in a characteristic turn of phrase, calls the Ideal-I “more constituent than constituted” (“The Mirror Stage” 1112). ii

The “ego-ideal”, associated with the Symbolic dimension, is when the subject looks at themselves from the point of the “ideal ego”, associated with the Imaginary dimension. It “inverts” one's “normal” life, dragging “the subject into the field where he hypostasizes himself in the ego-ideal” (Écrits 680). iii

Lacan himself suggests that “the word ‘phase’ is no doubt better adapted here than [mirror] ‘stage’ in that it suggests a turning-point rather than a period in the process of psycho-biological maturation.” See Laplanche and Pontalis 252. iv

While Lacan uses the term “lack” in many ways, it is always in relation to desire. Most saliently for this essay, “lack” applies to the “signifying chain” which produces meaning: “No matter how many signifiers one adds to the signifying chain, the chain is always incomplete; it always lacks the signifier that could complete it” (Evans 98; emphasis added.) I suggest that literature, as a play of signifiers, embodies this lack. For more, see Evans 99; 190. v

For more on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, see Krauss 62-65; 71; 156; 164-165.

To that end, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in The Anti-Oedipus, from 1972, argue the Real is a sort of “machine” that continues influencing our behaviour—which is to say, “producing” (1977). See 26-27. vii

Lacan’s formula for fantasy is salient: S̷ ◇a. One’s capacity as a thinking subject—their Cogito—extends only as far as one is accessible to themselves as a Thing which thinks. See Žižek 14. viii

As Jean-Michel Rabaté notes, this suggests the Real is reached as a “thing.” The “thing”, introduced in this context by Sigmund Freud, defines “a degree of exteriority of objects that cannot be processed by consciousness” (234). ix

Cf., ecocritical theory has criticized this assumed passage from nature to non-naturality. Language can also reawaken connections to the environment and the animal self. x

Lacan also refers to this division of the subject by language as “splitting” or “the split.” See Evans 195.

The terms “signified” and “signifier” originated, in this context, in Ferdinand de Saussure’s A Course in General Linguistics, from 1916. Saussure suggests “linguistic signs” are composed of a “concept” and a “sound-image”, or a “signified” and “signifier”, respectively (2018). Contrary to Lacan, he argues they function like the two sides of a sheet of paper: “One cannot cut the front without cutting the back at the same time; likewise, in language” (2018). xii The American writer Don DeLillo provides a more contemporary example of uncanny fiction. His 2016 novel Zero K uses the uncanny to “bridge the tension between the transcendental and the everyday.” See Barrett 106–123. xiii

In another play-on-words, Lacan calls the relationship between infant and reflection, the advent of the mirror stage, a “virtual complex” which duplicates reality (Écrits 93; emphasis added).

References Aristotle. 1996. Poetics. Penguin Classics. Bowden, Hugo. 2005. Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle: Divination and Democracy. Cambridge University Press.

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Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. 1977. The Anti-Oedipus. University of Minnesota Press. Diels, Natacha. 2014. “Art and the Uncanny: Tapping the Potential.” Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 24, 75–77. Evans, Dylan. 2003. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. BrunnerRoutledge. Felluga, Dino. 2011. “Modules on Lacan: On the Structure of the Psyche.” Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Purdue University. Freud, Sigmund. 2018 “The Uncanny.” Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism, edited by Vincent B. Leitch, 3rd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 799–816. Gallop, Jane. 1982. “Lacan's ‘Mirror Stage’: Where to Begin.” SubStance, 11/12, 118–128. Hendrix, John Shannon. 2019. “Jacques Lacan and Language.” Roger Williams University. Hook, Derek. 2006. “Lacan, the Meaning of the Phallus and the ‘Sexed’ Subject.” The Gender of Psychology, edited by Tamara Shefer, et al., Juta Academic Publishing, 60-84. Johnson, Luke M. 2015. “Reading through the Mirror Stage.” University of Wollongong’s 20th Conference of the Australasian Writing Programs, vol. 1, no. 9. Johnston, Adrian. 2018. “Jacques Lacan.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University. Krauss, Lawrence M. 2013. A Universe from Nothing. Atria. Lacan, Jacques. 2006. Écrits. Translated by Bruce Fink, W.W. Norton & Company. Lacan, Jacques. 2018. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.” Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism, edited by Vincent B. Leitch, 3rd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1111–1117. Laplanche, Jean, and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis. 1973. The Language of Psycho-Analysis. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, W.W. Norton & Company. Laura Barrett. 2018. “‘[R]Adiance in Dailiness’: The Uncanny Ordinary in Don DeLillo's Zero K.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 42, no. 1, 106–123. Loos, Amanda. 2002. “Symbolic, Real, Imaginary.” Theories of Media, University of Chicago. Lydenberg, Robin. 1997. “Freud's Uncanny Narratives.” PMLA, vol. 112, no. 5, 1072–1086.

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Rabaté, Jean-Michel. 2014. The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis. Cambridge University Press. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 2018. “Course in General Linguistics.” Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism, edited by Vincent B. Leitch, 3rd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 820-840. Schlipphacke, Heidi. 2015. “The Place and Time of the Uncanny.” Pacific Coast Philology, vol. 50, no. 2, 163–172. Steig, Michael. 1977. “The Intentional Phallus: Determining Verbal Meaning in Literature.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 36, no. 1, 51–61. Tallis, Raymond. 1987. “The Mirror Stage: A Critical Reflection.” Not Saussure: A Critique of Post Saussurean Literary Theory (Language, Discourse, Society). Palgrave, 131-163. Žižek, Slavoj. 2018. “Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture.” Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism, edited by Vincent B. Leitch, 3rd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 225-2242. Žižek, Slavoj. 1993. Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology. Duke University Press.

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Interroger la philosophie politique grecque, de Protagoras à Platon, en passant par les poètes Mario Ionuț Maroşan, Doctorant en philosophie politique (Université Laval)

Introduction : Platon, héritier de Protagoras Platon est un philosophe, « Protagoras est un sophiste, les sophistes sont les ennemis [des philosophes], donc Protagoras est un ennemi de Platon » (Gavray 2017). Or, une lecture attentive des dialogues platoniciens – surtout du Protagoras et du Théétète – met précisément en lumière le fait que la relation entre Platon et Protagoras, entre philosophie et sophistique, est bien plus complexe que l’antagonisme habituellement pointé du doigt : force est de constater que Platon prend très au sérieux Protagoras, et qu’il prend considérablement appui sur ses idées pour mettre sa propre pensée en mouvement. C’est par là que Platon s’interroge sur l’enseignement de la vertu et la connaissance du réel. Dès lors, il devient pertinent d’attirer l’attention sur un certain héritage protagoréen chez Platon, c’est-à-dire d’un « Platon, héritier de Protagoras »i. Cela dit, une telle filiation entre Platon et Protagoras ne semble en apparence pas vraiment aller de soi, elle paraît plutôt délicate : les commentateurs des dialogues platoniciens s’entendent généralement sur une lecture qui oppose les deux penseurs, et non qui les lie, ou qui seulement tenterait de les rapprocher ii

. Dans ces conditions, on est en droit de se poser la question suivante : quel est l’intérêt de

faire appel au concept d’héritage ? Suivant l’approche de M.-A. Gavray, il apparaît que le concept d’héritage porte en lui une signification et un sens beaucoup plus larges et intéressants que l’usage étroit qui en est fait habituellement : lorsqu’on hérite de quelque chose, on ne le fait pas volontairement (par exemple, on découvre à notre plus grande surprise qu’on hérite du patrimoine d’un membre de la famille décédé) et c’est pourquoi un héritage est souvent une instance par rapport à laquelle on est obligé de se prononcer, de prendre position et de réagir. En ce sens, Platon – même s’il ne se présente pas comme le digne héritier de Protagoras mais plutôt comme son rival – apparaît comme un héritier dans la mesure où il doit faire avec l’héritage protagoréen de son époque et qu’il doit se positionner par rapport aux idées protagoréennes, ce qui va alors lui

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permettre de mettre sa pensée en mouvement et ultimement de faire progresser sa propre démarche philosophique (Gavray 2017a, 7-10 ; 2017b). Dès lors, faire appel au concept d’héritage présente un véritable intérêt car, dans un premier temps, cela permet de dépasser – d’aller par-delà – la conception réductrice de la relation qui serait exclusivement antagoniste entre la démarche platonicienne et celle protagoréenne, et dans un second temps, d’ouvrir la voie vers une compréhension plus approfondie et nuancée de la pensée même de Platon, qui, « dans [le Protagoras], atteint, pour la première fois, le stade de la synthèse ». À partir de là, elle permettra de prendre à contre-pied « l’opinion qui prévaut, selon laquelle [le mythe de Protagoras] n’est qu’une histoire qui constitue un intermède plaisant à l’intérieur d’un dialogue admirablement composé certes, mais qui, se terminant sur une conclusion paradoxale, ne présente pas beaucoup d’importance », et de réfléchir sur cet héritage (Brisson 1975, 7-10). Or, afin d’accompagner cette analyse d’un véritable effort de clarté et de synthèse, trois sections importantes structureront notre argumentation. Cette division argumentative repose sur l’idée selon laquelle le Protagoras permet de dégager trois conceptions de ce qu’est la vertu, conceptions qui impliquent à leur tour trois conceptions politiques (Brisson 1975, 32) : (i) celle, traditionnelle, des poètes ; (ii) celle, démocratique, des sophistes, où le savoir équivaut à l’art ; (iii) celle, aristocratique, des philosophes, où le savoir équivaut à la science et où il y a science politique. Dans ces conditions, le présent article défend la thèse selon laquelle la philosophie politique platonicienne et la philosophie politique protagoréenne entretiennent un rapport plus complexe que l’opposition radicale généralement soulignée, étant donné l’héritage protagoréen de Platon. Ainsi, c’est précisément au moyen d’une analyse du Protagoras – dialogue fondamental, selon nous, pour circonscrire la réflexion politique de Platon – qu’il devient possible de dégager trois conceptions politiques qui constituent le contexte de Platon, permettant dès lors de mieux situer sa propre politique. Car dans un certain sens, afin d’inscrire dans la nouveauté et saisir toute l’ampleur des particularités platoniciennes, si la réflexion de Platon (et notre compréhension de celle-ci) repose sur une compréhension et une connaissance solide de la tradition dans laquelle elle s’insère, cela exige une circonscription de l’ancien en ses limites afin de comprendre comment Platon s’est justement risqué à les franchir.

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§1 – Sur le contexte : la place du mythe dans la réflexion politique platonicienne Cependant, entreprendre une telle analyse implique à ce stade de notre réflexion – notamment dans l’optique de construire une réflexion philosophique enracinée dans des bases solides – de nous pencher brièvement sur le contexte du Protagoras et du mythe autour duquel précisément la philosophie politique protagoréenne, et par extension, la philosophie politique de Platon se percutent : la place du mythe dans la réflexion politique platonicienne est fondamentaleiii. À cet effet, force est de constater que « chez Platon, le recours habituel au mythe, quand la cité est concernée, s’inscrit dans une vaste entreprise de sacralisation du politique », et c’est précisément pourquoi cette démarche platonicienne « ne vise pas prioritairement, à sauver le vieil héritage d’une religion civique atteinte de sclérose et menacée par plusieurs courants de pensée ; elle est essentiellement liée à la conviction que le politique ne peut être à lui-même son propre fondement et que seule une réalité transcendante, dont l’expression du sacré est propre à suggérer la présence, doit être au principe de toute communauté humaine véritable » (Motte 1990, 219-220). En ce sens, le contexte du recours au mythe dans le Protagoras prend une dimension tout à fait politique dans le mouvement de la pensée de Platon. Dans ces conditions, le mythe de Protagoras (319c – 322d), véritable mythe fondateur de la démocratie, s’inscrit dans l’argumentation de Protagoras en tant que première partie « d’un très long discours suivi par lequel le sophiste répond à une objection de Socrate mettant en cause sa prétention à enseigner l’art politique, la πολιτική τέχνη (politiké techne) » (en ce qui concerne le mythe de Protagoras comme mythe fondateur de la démocratie, voir aussi : Motte 1990, 221). Aux yeux de Socrate, la preuve que l’art politique n’est pas enseignable se déploie sur deux niveaux : (i) au niveau de la vie privée, force est de constater que « les plus savants et les meilleurs [des Athéniens] se révèlent incapables de transmettre aux autres la vertu qu’ils possèdent » (Protagoras, 319e), comme, par exemple, Périclès en tant qu’homme politique des plus habiles, ne peut transmettre à ses fils l’art politique ; (ii) au niveau de la vie publique, les Athéniens font appel à des experts pour les enjeux techniques – par exemple, à des constructeurs de navires – car les conseils des non-experts sont intolérables, et pour ce qui est « des intérêts généraux de la cité, on voit se lever indifféremment, pour prendre la parole, architectes, forgerons, corroyeurs, négociants, marins, riches et pauvres, nobles et gens du commun, sans que nul citoyen n’y trouve à redire [: voilà la preuve que les Athéniens] ne considèrent pas [l’art politique] comme enseignable » (Motte 1990).

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C’est alors que Protagoras, pour précisément répondre aux objections de Socrate qui « sont particulièrement habiles en ce qu’elles entreprennent Protagoras sur son propre terrain : il est l’ami de Périclès et partisan, comme lui, du régime démocratique », prend par les cornes le fardeau de la preuve et s’engage dans un discours avec comme point de départ un mythe qui rend compte des origines de l’hommeiv. Pour faire court, on y apprend qu’avant de « produire au jour les espèces mortelles qu’ils ont façonnées avec les éléments, les dieux chargent Prométhée [littéralement celui qui comprend d’avance, le prévoyant – « pro »] et Epiméthée [celui qui comprend qu’après-coup, trop tard – « épi »] de repartir entre elles, d’une manière convenable, les capacités (δυνάμεις; dunámeis) indispensables à leur subsistance et à leur survie », sauf qu’Epiméthée, « qui obtient de pouvoir accomplir seul cette distribution, mais à qui l’esprit de prévoyance fait manifestement défaut, – ainsi que le laisse pressentir son nom, – pourvoit généreusement les espèces animales de capacités dont elles ont besoin », mais lorsque le tour de l’espèce humaine vient, il ne reste plus de quoi les pourvoir : Prométhée constate alors « l’état de nudité, sans chaussures, sans vêtements, sans armes » (Protagoras, 321c) des hommes (Motte 1990, 221). Pour rectifier la situation, ces hommes reçoivent en don le feu et l’habilité technique (ἔντεχνος σοφία; entekhnos sofiā) : Ainsi pourvus, à leur naissance, des ressources nécessaires à la vie, les hommes se mettent à fabriquer des autels et des statues de dieux, à instituer la parole et les noms, à inventer les arts offrant de quoi s’abriter, se vêtir et se nourrir. Toutefois, vivant dispersés, ils sont la proie facile des animaux. Ils cherchent donc à se grouper dans des cités, mais comme la πολιτική τέχνη (politiké techne) leur fait défaut, ils ne peuvent de se léser entre eux ; ils recommencent donc à se disperser et à périr. C’est alors qu’intervient Zeus, inquiet pour la survie de l’espèce. Il charge Hermès [lequel nom sert de racine à la notion d’herméneutique] de porter aux hommes Respect (αἰδώς; aidṓs) et Sentence divine (διχη; dikē) ‘‘afin qu’existent ces ensembles harmonieux (χόσμοι; kosmoi) que sont les cités’’ et que se forment des liens d’amitié (φιλία; philíā). Mais pour qu’un tel résultat soit atteint, il importe qu’Hermès repartisse ces dons autrement que l’ont été les autres arts. Si un seul médecin, par exemple, suffit pour beaucoup de profanes, il importe, au contraire, que chaque homme ait sa part d’αἰδώς (aidṓs) et de διχη (dikē), ‘‘car il ne pourrait y avoir de cité, précise Zeus lui-même, si seul un petit nombre en était pourvu comme dans les autres arts ; et tu institueras en mon nom cette loi : celui qui est incapable de participer à l’αἰδώς (aidṓs) et à la διχη (dikē) doit être mis à mort comme un fléau de la cité (322d)’’ (Motte 1990, 222).

Ce mythe permet alors concrètement à Protagoras d’effectuer un double mouvement : dans un premier temps, il réussit à retourner la première des objections socratique – celle au niveau de la vie publique – et à justifier le comportement politique des Athéniens ; dans un second temps, et ce en s’appuyant sur le mythe dans la suite de son discours, de démontrer que la vertu politique

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s’enseigne et ainsi renverser la deuxième objection socratique – celle au niveau de la vie privée ; ce qui, au final, va permettre à Protagoras de légitimer le salaire qu’il réclame à ses disciples sur la base de son aptitude – modeste – à les accompagner vers l’excellence (328b)v. Le principal intérêt de ce bref survol contextuel du mythe de Protagoras autour duquel la philosophie politique protagoréenne, et par extension, la philosophie politique de Platon se percutent, repose sur l’idée selon laquelle ce mythe s’intègre précisément dans « le Protagoras, comme la contre-partie, au plan de l’éthique et de la politique, de la doctrine platonicienne, dont ce dialogue présente une première expression systématique », du moment que le Protagoras « récapitule et organise les résultats des recherches amorcées dans les dialogues antérieurs, annonçant, par-là, la République » : c’est pourquoi, selon L. Brisson (1970), « c’est dire à quel point une analyse du mythe de Protagoras s’avère importante, non seulement parce qu’elle nous révèle l’essentiel de la doctrine éthique et politique de Protagoras et, par choc en retour, l’essentiel de celle de Platon qui, dans ce dialogue, atteint, pour la première fois, le stade de la synthèse, mais aussi parce qu’elle nous force à relier l’affrontement de ces deux doctrines à la pratique sociale de l’Athènes des Ve et IVe siècles » (9-10). Dans ces conditions, en nous appuyant sur les briques posées jusqu’à présent – en ce qui concerne l’idée d’héritage protagoréen chez Platon, et la compréhension de la philosophie politique de Platon comme une contre-entreprise se solidifiant et se renforçant à la fois en opposition et en réponse à la position politico-éthique de Protagoras – il en résulte précisément la possibilité de dégager trois conceptions de la vertu dans le Protagoras, qui impliquent à leur tour trois postures politiques. §2 – Sur la conception traditionnelle des poètes : analyse des œuvres littéraires Première conception : les poètes enseignent la vertu par le biais des œuvres littéraires. Concrètement, dans le Protagoras, cette conception traditionnelle correspond à la partie de l’analyse du poème de Simonide (338e – 346a). Cette analyse se décline en trois mouvements. D’abord, une interrogation vis-à-vis de la signification du poème se déploie : ainsi, selon M.-A. Gavray (2017a), cette analyse « ne se limite pas plus à s’approprier le discours moral et les vers de l’auteur, mais elle s’interroge sur la composition globale de l’œuvre et sur son degré de rectitude » (221-222). Pourquoi ? Parce qu’il importe ici précisément de procéder à une vérification de « la justesse des propos, à en évaluer la pertinence par une analyse détaillée de l’expression du vocabulaire et de la métrique » en étudiant, par exemple, l’emploi d’un terme et la cohérence – ou

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bien le manque de celle-ci – dans le contexte général (222). Ensuite, c’est un effort de division des parties du poème qui succède : en isolant les parties, il devient possible de les confronter afin de faire ressortir à la surface toute cohérence ou incohérence dans les propos, et c’est pourquoi il convient ici d’examiner avant tout « la concordance de la chronologie ou les oppositions entre les strophes » (222). Enfin, l’analyse aboutît à l’élaboration d’un commentaire critique visant à arracher au poème ses vérités, c’est-à-dire sa raison d’être et surtout les leçons sur la vertu, l’éthique et la politique : force est de souligner que ce dernier des trois mouvements « dépasse le stade de l’assimilation de la langue et du message moral pour entreprendre une forme de production [car,] rendre raison, c’est produire un [discours] argumenté qui repose sur une compréhension du message, tant du point de vue du fond que de la forme » (222). Or, la posture politique qui est ici sous-entendue par l’enseignement de la vertu par le biais de la poésie s’inscrit dans la tradition du moment que « la conception traditionnelle [des poètes comme professeurs de vertu – et par extension d’éthique et de politique], ne [remet] pas en cause la cité telle qu’elle est » : force est alors de constater que « cette conception traditionnelle ne cadre plus avec l’Athènes des Ve et IVe siècle, qui se transforme rapidement aux plans de l’économie, de la société et de la politique » (Brisson 1975, 32). Dans ces conditions de changements dans la cité, sophistes et philosophes vont remplacer les poètes en fondant la vertu sur le savoir. §3 – Sur la conception démocratique des sophistes : savoir et art Deuxième conception : les sophistes – avec Protagoras en tête car il est le plus réputé d’entre eux – font correspondre le savoir à l’art. Toutefois, il ne s’agit pas ici d’une conception moniste – unifiée – de l’art, mais plutôt de l’art compris sous sa forme pluraliste et plurielle : l’art est appréhendé sous ses sens multiples. Concrètement, cela signifie qu’aux yeux des sophistes, cette conception de l’art « commande une tripartition fonctionnelle de la cité, aboutissant à une bipartition plus élémentaire » : l’art politique – qui comprend en un sens aussi l’art militaire en tant qu’une des parties qui le constituent – est garant de la cohésion sociale et de la protection de la cité, tandis que l’art démiurgique « procure [à la cité] l’équipement et la nourriture dont elle a besoin » (33). Une telle conception renferme les germes de la démocratie. Pourquoi ? Parce que, pour Protagoras, la cité qu’il esquisse à la fois entre les lignes du dialogue qui porte son nom mais aussi de manière plus explicite (320d – 322d) a comme point de départ le principe selon lequel tous les citoyens prennent part à l’art politique, c’est-à-dire qu’ils

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ont la possibilité de prendre la parole en assemblée ou lors de toute discussion autour des enjeux politiques de la cité, et ce précisément du moment qu’ils sont dotés de l’αἰδώς (aidṓs) et de la διχη (dikē) (33). Par conséquent, Protagoras justifie son propre rôle d’enseignant de l’art politique dans cette société démocratique où tous sont pourtant d’emblée investis des vertus nécessaires pour prendre part à la chose politique par l’idée que « ceux qui veulent diriger les autres doivent développer cet art auquel, comme tous, ils ont part en se soumettant à un apprentissage qui s’apparente à celui propre à toutes les espèces d’art démiurgique, et dont les sophistes se prétendent les dispensateurs » : de ce fait, Protagoras et les autres sophistes – aussi, pourrait-on souligner, Protagoras, mieux que les autres sophistes – fondent l’enseignement de la vertu en tant qu’apprentissage d’un savoir qui équivaut à un art sur une posture politique d’ordre démocratique (33). Or, si la philosophie politique protagoréenne tire manifestement dans le sens de la démocratie, la philosophie politique de Platon se met en mouvement en répondant par opposition à cet héritage : c’est le passage de l’art politique à la science politique. §4 – Sur la conception aristocratique des philosophes : savoir et science Troisième conception : les philosophes – tel Platon – associent le savoir à la science. Avec précisément ce point de départ, force est de constater qu’il en découle une conception de ce qu’est la vertu inscrite dans le cadre de la cité idéale platonicienne. À cet effet, L. Brisson insiste sur le fait qu’il « n’est pas nécessaire d’attendre la République pour en prendre conscience » puisque « sur beaucoup de points, le Protagoras préfigure la République » et par conséquent, une lecture attentive met en lumière une véritable correspondance entre les deux dialogues du moment que « la discussion sur les quatre couples de vertus, qui constitue la seconde partie du Protagoras, se présente comme l’arrière-plan du livre IV de la République » (33). Cela se présente de la sorte : dans la République, la première classe, celle des philosophes au pouvoir, correspond à la σοφῐ́ᾱ (sophíā) qu’on retrouve dans le Protagoras (République, 428b – 429a) ; la deuxième classe, celle des gardiens, équivaut à l’ᾰ̓νδρείᾱ (andreíā) (République, 429a – 430c) ; « la troisième classe est soumise à la σωφροσύνη (sōphrosúnē), commune aux deux autres classes » (République, 430d – 432b) et c’est ce qui conduit au fait que seule « une tripartition de ce genre rendra possible l’ὁσιότης (hosiótês) et fera naître la διχη (dikē) » (République, 432b – 434c) (33-34). Bien qu’une explication plus en détails de ces correspondances nous éloignerait trop de notre analyse, il convient de nous rapprocher de cette dernière en constatant que notre hypothèse sur la place

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fondamentale du mythe dans la réflexion politique platonicienne se voit justifiée et renforcée par cette organisation de la cité, qui semble correspondre à l’organisation qu’on retrouve dans le mythe de Protagoras : c’est pourquoi, selon L. Brisson, force est constater que la « trifonctionnalité y joue un rôle essentiel, et, d’une certaine façon, engendre une bipartition, où les deux premières classes, fortement apparentées, se distinguent de la troisième » (34). Or, il convient de ne pas traiter ce passage tel un fragment, mais de le comprendre dans son contexte. Une lecture attentive au contexte permet de dégager le fait que dans la mouvement de la pensée platonicienne, il n’y a pas seulement une distinction superficielle entre la classe des producteurs et celle des gardiens et des philosophes, mais une séparation fondamentale : la conséquence la plus importante tient au fait qu’au final, les « seuls vrais détenteurs de la vertu sont les gardiens et les philosophes-gouvernants, c’est-à-dire, très précisément, ceux-là qui, grâce à l’éducation, ont accès, à des degrés divers, à la science » (34). En partant de là, il est possible de voir émerger dans notre analyse de la philosophie politique de Platon une ouverture vers le rapprochement entre la posture quasi-mystique du philosophe, qui « au terme d’une ascèse qui a délié [son] âme de tout ce qui est sensible, [peut] contempler l’intelligible manifestant la vertu qu’il [lui] reviendra de réaliser en pratique », et la cité, non pas démocratique mais aristocratique, qui représente la condition et l’arrière-fond politique rendant possible le projet de Platon (34). Il n’est donc pas anodin que pour ce dernier, d’une part, les pratiquants de l’art démiurgique ne devraient pas avoir leur mot à dire dans les enjeux politiques de la cité (République, 428b – 429a), et que d’autre part, le fait d’acquérir la science – qui équivaut à la vertu – n’est pas le fruit d’un apprentissage, mais l’effet « d’un long entraînement qui consiste à se dépouiller du sensible, pour se tourner vers l’intelligible ». C’est pourquoi, selon Platon, « l’éducation […] est l’art de tourner cet organe même (l’œil de l’âme) et de trouver pour cela la méthode la plus facile et la plus efficace ; elle ne consiste pas à mettre la vue dans l’organe, puisqu’il la possède déjà ; mais, comme il est mal tourné et regarde ailleurs qu’il ne faudrait, elle en ménage la conversion » (République, 518d ; Brisson 1975, 34). Faire appel à ce passage de la République permet de résoudre la difficulté qu’on retrouve dans le dialogue qui nous intéresse pour mieux comprendre Platon, soit à la fin du Protagoras. Ainsi, si Socrate soutient que la vertu est une science non-enseignable et Protagoras, que la vertu n’est pas une science, mais qu’elle est enseignable (Protagoras, 361a ; Brisson 1975, 34), c’est parce que l’approche de Platon est en rupture avec celle de Protagoras : la vertu, pour

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Platon, est une science – et non un art – qui ne peut pas procéder d’un réel apprentissage, mais plutôt d’une « conversion intellectuelle » (35). Tout compte fait, l’approche philosophique de Platon nous semble désormais plus accessible si on la considère à la lumière de la théorie des formes intelligibles, théorie qui permet en plus de résoudre les difficultés émergeant de la lecture du Protagoras. Pourquoi ? Parce que, dans un premier temps, ces formes intelligibles « participent entre elles selon des règles données [et] le problème des rapports entre la vertu en général et les diverses vertus particulières devient un cas particulier de ce type de participation », et dans un second temps, la connaissance de ces formes intelligibles – et donc de la science même – passe par la réminiscence qui transcende – dépasse – la forme d’apprentissage conventionnelle sous-entendue par l’approche protagoréenne (35). Le Protagoras permet alors de dégager cette troisième conception de ce qu’est la vertu qui implique à son tour une orientation politique, soit celle aristocratique des philosophes où savoir équivaut à science. Le Protagoras permet aussi : [de faire correspondre] les dialogues de la première période et la République. En effet, il fait une première synthèse des résultats partiels obtenus grâce aux diverses discussions mises en œuvre dans l’Euthyphron, qui porte sur l’ὁσιότης (hosiótês), dans le Charmide, qui porte sur la σωφροσύνη (sōphrosúnē), dans le Lachès, qui porte sur l’ᾰ̓νδρείᾱ (andreíā), et dans le Ménon, qui étudie les rapports entre la σοφῐ́ᾱ (sophíā), l’ἐπιστήμη (epistḗmē) et la vertu en général. Or, cette synthèse […] correspond, dans le détail, à l’organisation générale que développe la République, qui a pour thème la διχη (dikē). Par ailleurs, […], le Protagoras présente l’affrontement de cette première synthèse avec la doctrine éthique et politique de Protagoras, dont le mythe constitue l’expression la plus élaborée[:] le mythe de Protagoras nous apparaît comme l’une des faces de ce diptyque, dont l’autre face est, dans sa forme définitive, la République (Brisson 1975, 35-36).

En permettant cet affrontement, le Protagoras contribue à une meilleure compréhension du mouvement de la pensée platonicienne – par la négative dans un premier temps, et par la positive dans un second temps. Ainsi, on se retrouve directement plongé au cœur de ce qui intéresse aussi Platon, c’est-à-dire le projet de réforme politique. Il n’est pas anodin que Platon insère la question de l’efficacité en matière politique dans l’arrière-fond de l’échange entre Socrate et Protagoras : Platon inscrit l’enseignement protagoréen, d’où la comparaison avec la pratique du médecin en matière de santé, dans la réflexion politique et la question d’efficacité (Demont 2003, 114). Le Protagoras se présente dès lors comme un dialogue platonicien déterminant – dans le développement du platonisme politique –, voire décisif dans la mise en place de la dialectique philosophie-sophistique : ces deux faces étant unies dans la mesure où elles sont séparées. Gnosis | 19.1 (2021)

Conclusion : la philosophie politique de Platon Si Platon doit faire avec l’héritage protagoréen de son époque et qu’il doit positionner sa philosophie politique par rapport à la posture démocratique de Protagoras, c’est aussi ce qui va lui permettre de mettre sa pensée en mouvement et ultimement de faire progresser son propre projet de réforme politique. C’est pourquoi nous pensons que la philosophie politique platonicienne et la philosophie politique protagoréenne entretiennent un rapport ambigu, par-delà l’opposition radicale qui est habituellement soulignée : c’est-à-dire suivant la construction d’un chemin de pensée autant dans la continuité que dans la rupture ; continuité dans la rupture et rupture de la continuité. Il convient donc, afin de pénétrer l’esprit du platonisme politique, de situer et contextualiser Platon par rapport aux autres conceptions politiques se déployant à son époque. Or, c’est précisément ce que notre étude du Protagoras a cherché à faire, du moment que ce dialogue permet de dégager trois conceptions de ce qu’est la vertu : situant le platonisme entre les poètes et les sophistes, avec Protagoras en tête. Autrement dit, alors que Protagoras s’efforce de fournir une justification naturelle par le biais du mythe à la démocratie en place, Platon s’oppose au système démocratique qu’il va chercher à remplacer par une forme « d’aristocratie fondée non plus, comme l’ancienne dont il tire son origine, sur la naissance et la richesse, mais sur la connaissance comprise comme science de l’intelligible » du moment qu’aux yeux de Platon, la politique n’équivaut pas à un art, « c’est-à-dire un savoir se fondant sur l’opinion, dont l’objet est le sensible, qui est persuadée et à laquelle peuvent effectivement participer tous les hommes » (Brisson 1975, 36). Le platonisme fait de la chose politique une science « se fondant sur l’intellection, dont l’objet est l’intelligible, qui peut être véritablement enseignée et à laquelle ne peuvent participer que les dieux et un tout petit nombre d’homme » (36). C’est pourquoi ce refus de faire équivaloir politique et art conduit la philosophie politique de Platon vers l’affirmation que seuls les philosophes peuvent diriger la cité car ils détiennent la science politique, et que l’enseignement sophistique est faux. Ces deux idées fortes platoniciennes ont traversé l’histoire des idées et persistent toujours avec vigueur aujourd’hui, pour le meilleur ou pour le pire. Si nous avons démontré le fait qu’on peut parler d’un Platon héritier de Protagoras, force est de constater que nous pouvons aussi ouvrir sur un « nous », héritiers de Platon. Néanmoins, nous pouvons prendre position et réagir vis-à-vis de cet héritage : pour ne pas le subir, ce qui supposerait d’en véhiculer les idées (et les conceptions) de manière passive. Cela implique alors une prise de position à son égard : en ce sens, une posture critique vis-à-vis de l’héritage platonicien.

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Notes i

C’est pourquoi, selon M.-A. Gavray (2017) pp. 8-9 : « Platon accorde une place de choix et un traitement particulier à Protagoras. Seul d’entre les sophistes, il le fait traverser l’ensemble du corpus, le nomme dans le plus grand des textes, lui consacre deux Dialogues à des périodes différentes, qui se présentent comme des œuvres construites autour de thèses protagoréennes. Dans le Sophiste, Protagoras est le seul sophiste nommé, comme s’il devait être considéré comme un modèle du genre (232d). [...] Dans le Théétète encore, il interroge Protagoras sur le fond de sa doctrine, y reconnaissant une conception du monde et une définition possible de la connaissance. Les efforts prêtés par Socrate pour en donner une défense adéquate mériteraient d’être perçus comme autant de gages de l’importance qu’il attribue à ce sophiste ». ii

À ce sujet : M.-A. Gavray (2017) pointe vers l’héritage protagoréen chez Platon tout en inscrivant cet héritage dans la thématique classique de l’opposition entre sophistique et philosophie (voir pp. 345-354) ; L. Bodin, Lire le Protagoras. Introduction à la méthode dialectique de Protagoras, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1975 attire notre attention, par le biais d’une étude purement philologique, sur l’opposition entre la structure d’argumentation de Protagoras et celle socratique (voir pp. 68-75) ; P. Levine, Living Without Philosophy. On Narrative, Rhetoric, and Morality, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1998, pp. 120-121 accentue la rivalité en opposant l’approche humaniste de Protagoras et l’approche théorique de Socrate (voir pp. 83-121) ; R. C. Bartlett, Sophistry and Political Philosophy. Protagoras’ Challenge to Socrates, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2016, pp. 7-106 appuie son argumentation sur la thèse de Nietzsche selon laquelle « notre mode actuel de pensée est, à un haut degré, héraclitéen, démocritéen et protagorien… il suffirait de dire qu’il est protagorien, parce que Protagoras réunit en lui Héraclite et Démocrite » (voir F. Nietzsche, « Fragments posthumes », dans Œuvres philosophiques complètes, Paris, Gallimard, 1977, pp. 83-84) en explorant le caractère politique de l’affrontement entre la philosophie politique platonicienne et celle protagoréenne ; C. Blattberg, Patriotic Elaborations. Essays in Practical Philosophy, Montréal & Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009, pp. 229-255 démontre la supériorité de l’approche protagoréenne sur celle théorique de Socrate (voir p. 248). iii

Voir surtout L. Brisson, Platon, les mots et les mythes, Paris, Maspero, 1982 pour une lecture de la valeur du mythe qui, chez Platon, est en lien avec le discours philosophique dans lequel il doit s’intégrer : c’est pour cela qu’il n’y a pas un rejet absolu du mythe chez Platon, mais un effort d’adéquation entre μῦθος (mûthos) et λόγος (lógos) philosophique du moment que le mythe a le pouvoir concret de convaincre. iv

Cela est à mettre en lien avec un ouvrage qui est attribué à Protagoras – A. Motte, op. cit., 220n3 renvoie vers Diogène Laërce, IX, 55 (= Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, II, p. 255) – et que seul le titre nous est connu : Sur la condition humaine à l’origine. v

Selon A. Motte, op. cit., p. 222n5, l’attitude de Protagoras se déploie en termes plus modestes : « Par rapport aux déclarations liminaires, assez tonitruantes, où il affiche ses prétentions (316c – 317c ; 318a et d-e), on peut dire que le sophiste adopte ici un profil bas : ‘‘si peu qu’un homme l’emporte sur les autres pour nous acheminer vers la vertu, il faut s’en contenter. Je pense donc être l’un de ceux-là…’’ (328a-b) ». L’italique est de l’auteur.

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Bibliographie Bartlett, R. C. 2016. Sophistry and Political Philosophy. Protagoras’ Challenge to Socrates, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. Blattberg, C. 2009. Patriotic Elaborations. Essays in Practical Philosophy. Montreal & Kingston. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Bodin, L. 1975. Lire le Protagoras. Introduction à la méthode dialectique de Protagoras. Paris. Les Belles Lettres. Brisson, L. 1975. « Le mythe de Protagoras. Essai d’analyse structurale », Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 20, 7-37. ——. 1982. Platon, les mots et le mythes. Paris, Maspero. Desmont, P. 2003. « L’efficacité en politique selon le Protagoras de Platon », dans J. M. van Ophuijsen, M. van Raalte & P. Stork (ed.). Protagoras of Adera; The Man, His Measure. Leiden-Boston. Brill, 113-138. Gavray, M. A. 2017a. Platon, héritier de Protagoras. Un dialogue sur les fondements de la démocratie. Paris, Vrin. ——. 2017b. Platon, héritier de Protagoras, conférence dans le cadre des midis du laboratoire de philosophie ancienne et médiévale – avec les questions de Bernard Collette, Université Laval, URL : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYLFujcG74A Levine, P. 1998. Living Without Philosophy. On Narrative, Rhetoric, and Morality. Albany State, University of New York Press. Motte, A. 1990. « Un mythe fondateur de la démocratie (Platon, Protagoras, 319c-322d) », dans F. Jouan et A. Motte (éds), Mythe et politique, Liège. Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège, 219-229. Nietzsche, F. 1977. « Fragments posthumes », dans Œuvres philosophiques complètes. Paris, Gallimard. Platon. 2011. Œuvres complètes, sous la direction de L. Brisson, Paris, Flammarion. ——. 1997. Protagoras, traduction, introduction et notes par F. Ildefonse, Paris, GF Flammarion.

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Poetry as Ethical Evasion? Dickinson, Levinas, and Beyond the Dip of Bell Mitchell Gauvin, PhD Candidate (York University)

Introduction Shortly before she died, Emily Dickinson wrote her last letter, a short message addressed to her two cousins Frances and Louisa Norcross (Letter 1046) (1971, 300): Little Cousins, Called back. Emily. Initial readings might infer inflections of a religious transcendence (being “called back” to a higher region). That Dickinson might have sensed her impending death would not have been unusual given her poor health well before 1886, the year she did finally succumb to her sickness. The accruing losses of family and friends between 1882 and her passing would attach some weight to the speculation that Dickinson had death on the mind and was aware her own was imminent, hence this final cryptic message to her cousins speaking of an ascension she anticipated. Yet Thomas Johnson also notes Dickinson’s admiration for Frederick John Fargus’s 1883 novella Called Back (1971, 330), which she had discussed previously in letters to her cousins, such as the following from January 1885 (Letter 962): Loo [i.e.: Louise Norcross] asked “what books” we were wooing now – watching like a vulture for Walter Cross’s life of his wife. A friend sent me Called Back. It is a haunting story, and as loved Mr. Bowles used to say, “greatly impressive to me.” Do you remember the little picture with his deep face in the centre, and Governor Bross on one side and Colfax on the other? The third of the group died yesterday, so somewhere they are again together (1971, 314).

Speculation on the meaning of the phrase “called back” can thus waver between her readerly appetite and her religious observance. The intended meaning matters less in the context of what these interpretations signal: Dickinson as reader and Dickinson as philosopher, her final letter an act of philosophy or that of readerly community with Fanny and Loo (a last communiqué with cousins curious about books). Gnosis | 19.1 (2021)

We can easily read Dickinson’s poetry as an attempt to transcend the reach of rationality— “Beyond the Dip of Bell,” as Dickinson wrote—to some other region where a vision of an afterlife seemed to be placed. Her January 1885 letter does mention that Colfax, having died, is “somewhere together” with Bross and Bowles. Her poetry on death similarly speaks of another place beyond our everyday lived experience that invites religious or spiritual connotations, a notion that there is an “after” we may orient ourselves to. The transcendent nature of her poetic practice I intend neither to deny nor subvert, but instead wish to explore as one and the same with an ethics that is entwined with writing and readerly community. Reading Dickinson in a philosophical way is by no means a novel approach (see Kimpel 1981) but I suggest that through reading Emmanuel Levinas we can recognize the features of a radical ethical project in Dickinson’s poetry—a project irreducible to concise, proscriptive commands and instead places ethics in traces of the divine or the infinite. Levinas might strike some as an odd source for reading Dickinson. Levinasian ethics is esoteric and couched in distinct jargon difficult to translate into English and to extricate from its philosophical context. Moreover, Levinas explicitly condemns the artwork (mostly modern art but also poetry) for obscuring our ethical relations, which he grounds in the immediate, surprising, spontaneous, face-to-face encounter with the “Other.” Though Levinas did later somewhat relax his condemnation of the artwork, which opened up the possibility of a vocabulary that is both poetical and ethical, most art remains a form of ethical evasion. My suggestion that Dickinson is not only an exception to Levinas’s condemnation of the artwork but a precursor to his ethical project rests on reading Dickinson as engaged simultaneously with the Puritanical culture of her era and the capacity of language to speak traces of transcendence or the infinite. Dickinson employs unique compositional techniques to forge a poetic language that avoids the religious dogmatism of traditional hymn culture while simultaneously attempting to provide witness to her relationship with the divine. A dissatisfaction with an inherited theological discourse girds a worthy portion of her poetry, along with a concerted effort to use writing as a way of enduring a sense of sorrow wrought by the event of mortality, as well as the seeming injustice of God’s cosmic direction. Saddled with the unhelpful and seemingly adverse features of words, Dickinson’s poetry exhibits a dynamic attempt to resist language’s inclination towards stagnant, propositional expression. At the heart of Dickinson’s poetic practice we thus find a struggle against the scope of language’s signification. Within this struggle, I argue, are the traces of an ethical project.

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In arguing parallels between Dickinson’s poetry and Levinas’s philosophy, I narrow my focus on poetic language, namely the kinship between their individual struggle for expression that resists what they viewed as the muddling discourse of Western ontology and theology and instead calls forth the imperative of response to the presence of the “Other” that grounds ethics as first philosophy. Dickinson’s attempt to endure a seemingly unjust God and to persevere in the face of inevitable suffering can be intertwined with a poetic practice that demands we appreciate the proximity between ourselves and our neighbors, our own inevitable deaths, and God. However, while language for Levinas might offer a route for speaking traces of what lies “beyond ontology” (Levinas posits ethics as “otherwise than being” or transverse to being), art and poetic language likewise involve the threat of movement in the opposite direction, towards an impersonal, anonymous, and horrible “hither side of time.” Dickinson’s dissatisfaction with her contemporary hymn culture mirrors in crucial respects Levinas’s “ambivalence toward poetic language,” as Gabriel Reira frames it, which is “visible not only at the level of evaluation or judgement (critique), but also at the level of the most basic determination of the ethical relation” (Reira, 15). To unravel my suggestion that Dickinson’s poetry is an exception to Levinas’s view of the artwork as a form of ethical evasion, I’ll begin by offering a brief introduction on Dickinson’s poetic practice followed by an elaboration of Levinasian ethics and his opposition to the artwork. I’ll conclude with a few close readings of Dickinson’s poetry, examples of which I argue are emblematic of her radical ethical project. §1 – A Brief Overview of Dickinson’s Poetry Scattered across the catalogue of her work, Dickinson displays a struggle with language as she attempts to bend and slant the very mechanics of signification. The issue of mortality motivated her curiosity with how people attuned themselves to the presence of suffering and the inevitability of death. In regard to a dying friend, Dickinson asked about his “composure” and wondered “if he was willing to die” (Lundin, 78). A Puritanical obsession with a proper orientation towards heaven is informative of her thought, but not the end of the story. In attempting to hone her poetic proficiency, Dickinson engaged an already well-established practice that failed to capture what she viewed as her unique relationship with God. Dickinson aimed to traverse the suffocating schema for expression imposed by an omnipresent religious order. Victoria Morgan suggests, for example, that Dickinson’s poetry is rooted in an attempt to open a new hymnic space from which

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she could shape her religious values, which at times contrasted with established doctrine. The larger apparatus of church orthodoxy was pervasive enough that Dickinson sought a type of writing that dispensed with the implicit “patriarchal discourse on the divine” (Morgan 4) and instead expressed her personal speaker-God relation, as well as her belief and obsession with the close proximity between everyday life and higher spiritual realms. In poem #378 (1960, 180), for example, we see this rather explicitly: I saw no Way – The Heavens were stitched – I felt the Columns close – The Earth reversed her Hemispheres – I touched the Universe – And back it slid – and I alone – A speck opon a Ball – Went out opon Circumference – Beyond the Dip of Bell The word “circumference” being a favourite word of Dickinson’s is perhaps no surprise given her near obsession with the boundary that separated herself from the divine (Lundin, 84). The sense of enclosure is acute and the movement towards transcendence clear yet still ambiguous. Dispensing with the usual place description found in many romantic poems, Dickinson instead resorts to indistinct references to borders or geographies, unsettling any sort of physical subject position with which we can get a sense of orientation. The poem has the effect of being discombobulating, perhaps even inviting a crisis in subjectivity. In poem #670 (1960, 333), we see this crisis reaffirmed: One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted – One need not be a House – The Brain has Corridors – surpassing Material Place – […]

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Ourself behind ourself, concealed – Should startle most – Assassin hid in our Apartment Be Horror’s least. The Body – borrows a Revolver – He bolts the Door – O’erlooking a superior spectre – Or More – Several recurrent themes of Dickinson’s poetic practice converge in these few lines, including a distinction between an interior or “concealed” self and an exterior self, an attentiveness to enclosure or embodiment (particularly as a form of imprisonment), the notion of a haunting or spectral presence, the spectre of mortality (“Revolver,” “Assassin”), and a disruption of anticipated poetic rhyming. Dickinson, moreover, ends the poem on a shortened line that concludes with a dash and a mystifying suggestion of “Or More”—but what “More” could there be, and is “The Body” that same “He” that “bolts the Door”? This quality of being disorienting is precisely why I suggest we look to Dickinson’s poetry as an exception to Levinas’s largely distrusting view of the artwork. From these few selections, we can read Dickinson’s attempt to employ poetry as its own unique practice for bridging the divide between our world and a seemingly unavailable higher region, traces of which can be found in everyday life. In turning to Levinas, we find a cogent way of reframing Dickinson’s concern for transcendence that retains the essence of what she was resisting: the larger theological apparatus that inflicted both a stifling morality and a constraining style of religious writing. The result is a poetry not as revelation but as the very means for existential movement, as a means for witnessing the traces of the infinite, as Levinas terms it, which are located in the face of the “Other.” Levinas is appropriate precisely because he expresses a similar dissatisfaction with a larger tradition that stifles attempts to respond to the call of the infinite that arrives “prior" to ontology and is implicated in our ethical performance before the face or vision of the Other.

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Levinas’s views on aesthetics seem to disqualify his thought from providing a worthy avenue for unravelling Dickinson’s work. However, Levinas leaves open a narrow space for poetic practice to avoid the cumbersome features of art that make art the paradigmatic gesture of ethical evasion. Dickinson’s poetry is one example of a poetic practice that occupies this narrow space. §2 – Levinasian Ethics Levinas’s subordination of aesthetics is part of his broader establishment of the “primacy of the ethical […] primacy of an irreducible structure upon which all the other structures rest (and in particular all those which seem to put us primordially in contact with an impersonal sublimity, aesthetic or ontological)” (1969, 79). Here we find two key points: aesthetics as a transcendentallike access to the il y a (the impersonal and anonymous “being-in-general” which forces a crisis in subjectivity) and aesthetics (along with ontology) as subordinate to ethics. This relegation of aesthetics seems somewhat harmless, but elsewhere Levinas is far more disdainful. In “Reality and its Shadow,” for example—and in marked opposition to aesthetic criticism which venerates art— Levinas frames the artwork as a “descent into the night” and an “invasion of shadow,” as a movement away from what is most fundamental: an ethics responsive to the presence of the Other (1987, 3). The images that constitute artworks do not represent things or objects or concepts as intelligible, graspable entities, but instead offers up substitutions for the things themselves, resulting in a doubling or a shadow of the object. In other words, art does not point to an object in reality but instead to its mere resemblance, resulting in a double removal from the reality that is supposedly meant to be depicted. Art thus belongs to an “ontological dimension that does not extend between us and a reality to be captured” but instead to an object’s “reflection, its shadow” (1987, 5). It’s no surprise then why George L. Bruns characterizes Levinas’s view on art as an “aesthetics of darkness” (214), a phrasing which is meant to reflect the “dark light” (Levinas 1987, 4) that we find ourselves shrouded in when encountering the art object. In turn, Levinas “derives no positive determination from poetic language” (Reira, 24) and indeed positions the work of art entirely at odds with his philosophical project. Why is poetry lumped together with the work of art? The rhythm and rhetoric of poetry are mere simulacra which efface the visage or face of the Other, and as such only by rejecting these damaging aspects of artistry can we accomplish a host of fundamental objectives related to the establishment of justice and the ethical recognition of other people. Additionally problematic, the

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face of the Other is also where Levinas locates the trace of the infinite. As Levinas states in Totality and Infinity, our perception of the Other is not only the disembodied demand of ethical responsibility but a “gleam of exteriority or of transcendence in the face of the Other” (23). The face is, in other words, the canvas upon which the trace of transcendence is written, which art bathes in dark light and blocks from view. In summary then, art involves arresting attention away from the potential presence of the Other, blocking out the face of the Other, and does not have, as Aaron Rosen puts it, the “quality of a living instant which is open to the salvation of becoming” (367). This encounter with the enduring “meanwhile” of an artwork, much like with the il y a, depersonalizes or de-subjectifies the subject through an encounter with the brute material condition of things which, stripped of their real-world content and dressed in an aesthetic façade, lack expression and utility; in other words, art obscures the original purposes of the objects or materials that compose it. As such, there is a dangerous sense of inevitability rooted in art’s temporal fixity. Yet the artwork itself still exists in a world qualified by human relations, dynamism, initiative, and moral obligation, and as such the artwork and the enduring “meanwhile” it depicts stand as a form of ethical evasion. Art depicts for us a docile, uncritical approach for how to live our lives. “Being pronounced complete,” Rosen writes, and subsequently displayed in specifically purposed institutions and museums, “art encourages us to think of ourselves in the same way, as finished products” (367). Levinas’s disdain for the artwork exhibits his concern for the movement of transcendence, namely a movement in the opposite direction of where ethics resides (in recognition of the Other). As Michael Purcell elaborates, “transcendence is a transcendence towards the other person (a movement which does not take its origin in the self)” (95). Here, Purcell captures the primacy of the ethical relation and, while his definition may seem banal, if responding to the disruptive presence of the Other entails recognition of the trace of the infinite in the face of the Other, then every ethical gesture is simultaneously a form of transcendence, specifically an “excendence” (as Purcell terms it) from being, from oneself. Hence the rather mystifying phrase “otherwise than being” that Levinas attaches to the ethical relation—the phrasing subtly gestures to the form of transcendence that underwrites our ethical relations. Importantly, the Levinasian form of transcendence can only be initiated through the disruptive presence of the Other, rather than emerging from a concerted, contemplated or introspective effort on the part of the individual. In other words, a rational, self-legislating will can still proscribe a set of moral maxims, but it cannot

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alone initiate the essence of the ethical relation. One must in a sense be interpolated by the Other in order for the transcendence of the ethical relation to be incited. As Bettina Bergo summarizes, transcendence “must be understood as one’s being pulled out of oneself by a radical exteriority, rather than as transcendence by the self out of itself” (41), and this radical exteriority cannot be reduced or appropriated into sameness, cannot be wholly internalized by an individual. A concern for transcendence to the “otherwise than being” is thus indiscernible from a concern for the ethical that resides prior to ontology or, put another way, from a concern for the call of ethical responsibility that originates from beyond being (beyond ontology)—although this language of “prior-ness” only ignites further confusion because relations of the infinite aren’t so much temporally ahead of ontology as they are on a different temporal plain from the synchronicity that is our consciousness (Bergo, 43). The artwork, by effacing the approach of the Other, is a movement towards a “hither side of time,” away from responsibility and towards the horror and derangement of the il y a. §3 – Levinas’s Evolving Views on Art and Ethics Levinas’s views on art do not stagnate after “Reality and its Shadow” or Totality and Infinity. In “Truth of Disclosure and Truth of Testimony,” Levinas appears to begin relaxing his condemnation, suggesting that art can “testify to the truth”—the caveat, however, is that it’s a truth circumscribed by the “schematization of the abstract concept of being in the concreteness of the subject” (1996, 100). In other words, art can only communicate what being already discloses in ontology—it can only testify to knowledge available from our limited scope, which doesn’t make art that much different from many other kinds of testimony. This highlights a central hurdle for poetic practice. Note that, in Levinas’s view, Western philosophy “tends to maintain an aversion to alterity” (Purcell, 104) through its self-contained emphasis on ontological issues. This latent refusal to engage with otherness is exaggerated with the artwork, which, through its premium on opaqueness and materiality, grounds the subject in the dense materiality of existence. Purcell elaborates the opposition Levinas is implicitly articulating here as one between “the ontological tendency towards being, and the imprisonment it offers from which there is no escape,” and “the ethical tendency towards the good which is beyond and otherwise than being,” which can be summed up as a movement towards “totality” on the one hand and towards “infinity” on the other (99). Levinas’s originally stricter view of the artwork positioned it as entirely in the direction of

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totality, which is fundamentally contrary to the movement towards infinity that qualifies ethical responsibility. One strategy for trying to reconcile this seemingly irreconcilable opposition between art and ethics is not simply to abandon Levinas all together but to acknowledge an observable shift in his later thought regarding the role of language. This shift is best articulated in the question of whether poetry is a kind of Saying (le Dire), where the call of the ethical may be heard, or a form of the Said (le Dit), where everyday language becomes saddled with cumbersome ontological and propositional content—what Reira calls “being’s verbality” (26). The distinction Levinas makes between Saying and Said reinvigorates the possibility that poetry can work as a modality for writing the traces of the ethical, rather than a form of evasion from the ethical like most other artworks, by opening up a space for an encounter with the Other. Even more radically, as Levinas himself alludes to in Proper Names, poetry may potentially operate as an “unheard-of modality of the otherwise than being” (46), operating, as Bruns frames it, “alongside the ethical, if not in advance of it” (207). Rather than the artwork remaining in the muddling discourse of Western ontology, stuck in the impasse of the Said, there are suggestions by Levinas that poetic language can be a form of Saying, and thus provide a degree of access (even if it remains just a trace) to a hither side of being that is not the same horrific, strange, exotic realm that the artwork, as an image qua idol, delivers us to. This is poetry as a form of Saying that can “unsay” the muddling discourse of the Said (where a great deal of moral propositionality resides) and speak of the trace of the infinite that is reflected in being. Simon Critchley elaborates Levinas’s distinction between Saying and Said as between the “possibility of an ethical form of language” on the one hand and the familiar ontological language “in which all entities are disclosed and comprehended in the light of Being” on the other (7). In essence, the Saying is a form of sensible “exposure” before the Other, an exposure that is likewise involuntary and as such cannot be refused or denied (Critchley, 7). This exposure is where every day ethical performance is found, whether verbal or non-verbal, and importantly is not reducible to the sort of constative descriptions that compose normative statements or imperatives. The construction of a systemized ethical project by which we may stress and assess our maxims and formulate moral commands is no less essential, but it should not be confused with a “primordial ethical experience” (Critchley, 3) from which that system is derived. At the risk of oversimplifying the distinction, Levinas does not take “morality” and “ethics” to be synonymous,

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but instead implies an important distinction between the two: ethics refers to the irreducible encounter with the Other whose approach I cannot deny nor escape, while morality refers to the constative, propositional system of normative command and duty. In “Essence and Disinterestedness,” Levinas hints at language’s capacity to breach ontological discourse by suggesting that language “permits us to utter, be it by betrayal, this outside of being, this ex-ception to being,” (1996, 113). This “betrayal” is the result of the Saying’s reduction to the propositional content of the Said, a sort of act of translation inherent to ontological discourse. This “subordination of the Saying to the Said, to the linguistic system and to ontology,” Levinas suggests, “is the price that manifestation demands” (1996, 112). If reduction to the Said is the price required by manifestation, which is also simultaneously a betrayal, then speaking the otherwise than being requires “unsaying” the Said. This “enigmatic way of speaking,” as Levinas calls it, is helped along by the fact that “signification signifies beyond synchrony, beyond essence” (1996, 114). Could this “enigmatic way of speaking” actually be a writing as well? Could poetry be a way of preserving the unsaying of the Said? Problematically, the pervasiveness of the Said extends to the categorical ideals that gird Western ontology. As such, art may at times have the appearance of otherness or seem close to providing witness to beyond being, but such appearances are merely façades easily reducible to the simple propositional utterances of the art critic or museum goer. These utterances remain constitutive elements of the Said, only speaking of being and never of the true alterity that contours our ethical relations. Reaching the possibility of a “poetic Saying” thus begins by finding an avenue for how language itself can avoid the ontological entrapments of the worst parts of aesthetics, and instead constitute the proximity and contact that is fundamental to an ethical relation. In “Language and Proximity,” Levinas lays out the parameters of language’s role within a larger apparatus of signification. In everyday lived experience, the temporal ordering of events to consciousness is seamless and imperceptible as they unfold synchronically, acquiring meaning and sense that ground them in linguistics signs. This broad phenomenon of receiving and signifying events is disclosed to us as an “undephasable simultaneity” (1987, 109) unified in a continuously unfolding narrative or story. Importantly, however, there remains an undertone of invention to the way events manifest to us in consciousness—an undertone of intentionality in the way meanings, acts, affairs, even being itself, are temporally ordered in synchronicity and then thematized in language. As such, language can be “interpreted as the manifestation of truth, as the

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way being takes to show itself,” such that communication “is simply derivative of the logos which animates or bears thought” (1987, 109). The true disruptive force of alterity is clear in this context when we consider that the Other signifies outside the “theme of speech” (1987, 115)—or, in other words, outside the established discourse. If otherness is simply reducible to a form of thematized speech act, then it would merely be a feature of sameness. As such, true otherness is disruptive even at the level of the temporal plain of consciousness, escaping both the subject’s inclination towards reducing all meanings and events to thematized speech as well as the very synchronicity of narration. Still, Reira argues, the Other “must nevertheless be written” if alterity is to be preserved, suggesting that “writing has to abandon a series of guarantees and pass tangentially through the scene of knowledge and the order of representation” (16). The result will be a writing that’s a form of prophecy or witnessing of the Other’s trace, which already haunts language and signification—a writing that will undoubtedly be unfamiliar and strange to the world of ontology. This is writing that “resist[s] being fully reabsorbed by discourse” (Reira, 26). How can this be so? Returning again to “Language and Proximity,” Levinas positions poetic language as prophecy or witnessing through the ethically integral notion of proximity. Proximity is “by itself signification” (1987, 116), but not a signification that operates through a standardized knowledge practice or epistemology. Proximity does not come to us as a simple spatial arrangement or the distance between two co-existent people—i.e.: it’s not simply face-to-face contact—but by the restless and immediate call of responsibility prior to any intentional ascription of a meaning or theme to the Other (1987, 119). It’s through this call of the ethical that disrupts the self from itself and exposes the self to the otherness that surrounds, to the otherness that cannot be internalized and reduced to sameness. Proximity has all the elements of signification’s diachronic temporality, and consequently, so does Saying. Indeed, as Reira points out, “[b]eing without origin, Saying constitutes the immemorial spacing of the intrigue of the-other-in-the-same and, as such, it is a type of writing whose response is not the reciprocal exchange of the Socratic dialogue” (26). As promising as Reira’s suggestion is—that Saying can be a type of writing—it is still only exceptionally the case that a written Saying, in the form of a poetic language, can speak of the proximity that lies beneath all manifestation and ontology. The poetic Saying must somehow avoid assembly into the synchronic unfolding of the Said, the logical arrangement of philosophical argumentation, and the propositional makeup of ontological discourse. In other words, the poetic Saying must avoid telling stories. It must be

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“prophetic” of the ethical Saying, extending along language’s reach from the hither side of manifestation and ontology (away from reduction to the Said) towards a writing that bears witness to proximity’s diachronic signification. §4 – Reading the Ethical and the Infinite in Dickinson’s Poetry In practice then, what might a poetic Saying look like? Or, in other words, if I’m suggesting that Dickinson’s poetry is an example of a poetic Saying, what precisely makes it so? Compositionally, Dickinson’s poetry defies the poetic convention of her era, openly resisting established methods of poetic practice found in romanticism or the traditional religious hymn. In poem #1129 (1960, 506), for example, we see Dickinson explicitly offer a methodology for writing or speaking of the beyond being, Tell all the truth but tell it slant – Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind – The speaker’s exhortation to “tell all the truth but tell it slant” suggests that the contents of this truth cannot be directly communicated (it must “dazzle gradually”), otherwise its reception will have the opposite effect of enlightenment—it will simply be blinding. Even though this truth is readily available, our “infirm Delight” makes us incapable of entirely appreciating it. The poem is at once a reflection on the corporeal existence that renders us unfit subjects for truths that originate beyond manifestation. At the same time, Dickinson offers an implicit attack on traditional religious and theological discourse that rely on direct sermon and standardized orthodoxy in order to communicate divine truth. If this is so, we may wonder what precisely counts as telling the truth at a “slant.” This could allude to a style of writing or speaking that lacks the propositional or logical arrangement of theological discourse, or the narrative arc of a sermon, or the simplistic musicality and lyric of a hymn. In other words, Dickinson would be appealing to the metaphorical and artistic

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extent of language in order to manoeuvre the truth in a way that’s not blinding—to shed language of its cumbersome, propositional inclination. This reading aligns with that of Anthony Hecht, who suggests that Dickinson’s suggestion to tell the truth at a slant is not a reference to a personal truth, but instead contains a “good deal of religious significance” (18). The truth that must be told circuitously thus concerns our relationship with God, and Hecht as such reads the poem in light of parables and riddles that dot the Old and New Testament—other forms of circuitous writing that seeks to ease the “blinding effect of direct access to the Godhead, which is to say the Truth” (19). B. J. Rogers similarly notes that Dickinson’s “Puritan background offered her equally discouraging conclusions about direct human knowledge of God” (335). These “discouraging conclusions” underwrote the circuitous nature of her poetry, characterized by movement “around a mysterious center,” as Rogers puts it, a wholeness or nucleus that she “refuses to identify or define” (329). Instead of any definitional quality, Dickinson offers an erratic vision or wandering eye that darts between parts of the whole without ever revealing the full image. In a crucial respect, this “slanted” truth telling mirrors the performative element of Levinas’s work, wherein the traditional essay format is often breached by metaphor, allusion, and imagistic writing, hence why his writing is so enigmatic and difficult to parse. Reira, for example, points out that in Otherwise Than Being, Levinas’s allusions to a poetic language align with a series of motifs related to threads, knots, and weavings (33). Use of textual motif is meant to highlight the multiple functions of language and the way in which language can bear multiple meanings simultaneously. Language is “haunted” by signification that is not confined or reducible to the Said—or, in other words, language bears the call of the Other that originates prior to the Saying of the Said. Thread and stitching also signal enclosure, as we’ve seen already in Dickinson’s poem #378 (“I saw no Way - The Heavens were stitched”), which is imagery that aligns with both Dickinson’s and Levinas’s emphasis on the circumference of being and the attempt to recognize traces of what lies beyond it. The disharmony or disruption that “slanted” testimony or truth telling entails is mirrored in the very syntax that Dickinson employs, including the use of slant rhymes, also known as imperfect rhymes. By comparison to her romantic contemporaries, her poetry can seem chaotic and random. Take for example poem #1236 (1960, 543): Like Time’s insidious wrinkle On a beloved Face –

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We clutch the Grace tighter Though we resent the Crease The Frost himself so comely Dishevels every prime Asserting from his Prism That none can punish him This seemingly typical even-lined poem appears ripe for an alternating rhyming scheme, and indeed the first two lines seem to suggest such an arrangement. However, on the third-line Dickinson rhymes on the second-to-last word, ending on “tighter” instead of the expected “Grace.” This disrupted rhyming pattern is galvanized even further by “Crease” on the fourth line, which the reader anticipates will rhyme with “wrinkle” from the first line, which it doesn’t. Thrown into syntactical confusion, we perhaps expect the poem to reorient us in the right direction, but Dickinson offers no salvation. Indeed, the final lines invite a rhyme with “prime,” “Prism,” and “him,” but the rhyme is slanted or imperfect. Not only is the vowel sound not identical across all three, but the syllable count isn’t identical either. Typical of her poetry, Dickinson has deployed words that seem to rhyme, or very nearly have the same audible harmony, but which lack some crucial aspect of syntax to make it perfect. The reader is enticed to bend or slant words in order to make them sound in harmony, which in turn reveals our motivation to eliminate the disruptive presence of Dickinson’s poetry—or, as Levinas might put it, render it into sameness. Instead of soothing the reader’s ego, her poetry unseats subjectivity. The slanted or imperfect rhyming scheme is paired with a poem that addresses our exposure to the face of a beloved which bears the mark of aging and reveals our exposure before an unceasing cosmic procedure. The clutching of “the Grace” is one such performance Dickinson recognizes in our exposure to time, a sign of worry that our proximity to death (and potentially God) continues to grow. When paralleled with the act of witnessing that pervades a great deal of her poetry, we begin to see how Dickinson’s poetics aligns with a continual attempt to interrupt the Saying of the Said (using Levinasian terms), to try and “unsay” the propositional content of language and expose the reader to the discomforting disharmony which girds it. This act of witnessing is, for example, present in poem #547 (1960, 266), wherein the speaker mentions “a Dying Eye” which searches “round and round a Room” until obscured and took a sight of something “blessed”—exposure

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before the vision of another’s gaze is a key ingredient in the Levinasian ethical relation. The poem is a stark reminder of the sense of sorrow that underlies a great deal of Dickinson’s poetic practice. A dying friend is a moment of both optimism at the sight of something “blessed” and sorrowful due to the spectre of death. An underlying tone of sorrow or suffering we see again in #1551 (1960, 646): Those – dying then, Knew where they went – They went to God’s Right Hand – That Hand is amputated now And God cannot be found – The abdication of Belief Makes the Behaviour small – Better an ignis fatuus Than no illume at all – The image of God’s “amputated” right hand reflects a combined sense of injustice and desertion, with the metaphorical conduit for God’s touch and caress gone. Dickinson appears challenged in her faith by the event of mortality and must find solace in the notion that belief remains the better option, and yet death also spells the purest way in which to traverse the boundary of being that she attempts to speak of. Part of the answer to this quandary seems to arrive in the second stanza with the suggestion that “Better an ignis fatuus / Than no illume at all –.” Dickinson plays on the double meaning of “ignis fatuus,” which refers both to the natural phenomenon of a floating light above marshy ground and a deceptive goal or hope. Lundin argues that the prospect of grief and suffering shaped by the death of family and friends, as well as the inevitability of her own death, led Dickinson to fashion “a manner of living that would enable her to endure the pain of dying,” which she did “largely by sharpening, and deepening, her use of language” (Lundin, 80). Caught between the sorrowful and divine qualities of death, Dickinson looked to poetry as a means of enduring the persecutory element of God’s divine grace and the loss of others. Conclusion

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An obsessive, disruptive voice colours Dickinson’s poetry, a voice which breaches the traditional narrative arc of religious hymn and discourse—not unlike how Levinas refers to the work of Maurice Blanchot as a voice that “comes from the other shore” (Reira, 26). There’s something arresting about being hailed from across an unnegotiable expanse, a quality often found in Dickinson’s poetry as she seemingly bears witness from astride the circumference of being— bears witness to the non-spatial proximity that qualifies the ethical relation with the Other. Eschewing conventional allegory, a sorrowful and persecuted tone girds her work, which finds resonance with the persecutory element of the ethical in Levinas’s philosophy. Dickinson perhaps had no intention of providing a poetry that caused readers to confront the precariousness of their own subject positions, yet her odd rhyming and syntax echoes in the ear of a reader in active search of poetic harmony. Through her compositional technique, Dickinson interrupts expected avenues of coherence and refuses to offer normative platitudes. In suggesting that this poetic practice is a prime candidate for the elusive poetic Saying, we likewise reveal the performative elements of Levinas’s own style. His active use of metaphor and textual motifs, which regularly breach the essayist prose of his writing, align with a commitment to language which has stronger kinship with the poetic practice of Dickinson then it does other prose writers or the philosophic treatise. Perhaps then in re-reading Levinas, we're more obliged to consider the role a sense of sorrowful persecution plays in motivating these moments of artistic flare in a thinker who seemed always suspicious of the poet and artist. Perhaps in turn, in re-reading Dickinson, we’re more obliged to consider the ethical traces latent within her poetry.

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References Bergo, Bettina. 1999. Levinas Between Ethics and Politics: For the Beauty That Adorns the Earth. Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwar Academic Publishers. Bruns, Gerald L. 2002. “The Concepts of Art and Poetry in Emmanuel Levinas’s Writings.” In The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, edited by Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi, 206–33. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Critchley, Simon. 2014. The Ethics of Deconstruction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dickinson, Emily. 1960. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Boston, U.S.; Toronto, Canada: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Dickinson, Emily. 1971. Emily Dickson: Selected Letters, edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Hecht, Anthony. 1978. “The Riddles of Emily Dickinson.” New England Review 1, no. 1: 1-24. Kimpel, Ben. 1981. Emily Dickinson as Philosopher. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1987. Collected Philosophical Papers. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht; Boston; Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1996. Basic Philosophical Writings, edited by Simon Critchley, Robert Bernasconi, and Adriaan T. Peperzak. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1996. Proper Names, edited by Michael B. Smith. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lundin, Roger. 2004. Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Williams B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Morgan, Victoria N. 2010. Emily Dickinson and Hymn Culture: Tradition and Experience. Farnham, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. Purcell, Michael. 2006. Levinas and Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reira, Gabriel. 2004. “‘The Possibility of the Poetic Said’ in Otherwise than Being (Allusion, or Blanchot in Levinas).” Diacrities 34, no. 2: 13–36. Rogers, B. J. 1972. “The Truth Told Slant: Emily Dickinson’s Poetic Mode.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 14, no. 2: 329-336. Gnosis | 19.1 (2021)

Rosen, Aaron. 2011. “Emmanuel Levinas and the Hospitality of Images.” Literature and Theology 25, no. 4: 364–78.

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Take a Chill Pill: Investigating Psychiatry’s Philosophy of Mood Holly Tengelis, Masters Student (Ryerson University) Introduction Over the last 50 years, significant advancements in psychology and neuroscience have encouraged and allowed many individuals to receive unprecedented treatments for mood disorders. Various treatment options were developed, including cognitive based therapy, neurotherapy, general psychotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy, and most notably, medication (Crumby, Harper and Reavey 2013, 160). While medication was initially developed as a mental health treatment for serious cases of psychosis, it has become an increasingly common form of treatment, in and of itself (O’Donnell 2017). The medicalization of mental-health treatment has recently come under scrutiny as some question whether it prioritizes the needs of those experiencing a mental disorder or the legitimacy of the psychiatric organization (Horwitz 2003, 66; 69; Pick 2015, 14). Critically evaluating contemporary psychiatric treatments, this paper analyzes the philosophy of mood underlying medication-based treatment courses for mood disorders, including major depressive and bi-polar disorder. This paper first interprets the philosophy of mood implicit in psychiatry’s usage of medication as a sole form of treatment for mood disorders. Psychiatry’s philosophy of mood is understood as the theoretical understanding of moods underlying their practices. This paper argues psychiatry implies an inadequate philosophy of mood by prescribing medication alone because it incorrectly reduces the experience of a mood to a neurotransmitter imbalance, unjustifiably treating only one cause of the disorder. This paper proceeds by first positioning the psychiatric diagnostic and treatment process within philosophical discussions of mood and representationalism in §1. In §2, these psychiatric practices are shown to employ an understanding of moods that is incomplete and inconsistent with the experience of a mood. An alternative understanding of moods is suggested in replacement. Lastly, §3 introduces and argues against psychiatry’s treatment of neurotransmitter imbalances alone. §1.1 – Psychiatry’s Directedness of Moods There is disagreement in the philosophy of mood about whether moods are directed at or about something and are thereby representational. It is frequently believed the main difference

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between moods and emotions is their directedness; while emotions have intentional objects and are clearly directed at things, moods are a more generalized case. Moods seem to arise without stimulus, generally colouring all experience as opposed to being obviously attached to a specific object. In determining whether moods are indeed directed, there is the further question of which direction moods face. Moods may be directed inwardly at the self, outwardly at the world as an abstract whole, or at concrete objects in the world (similar to emotions) (Kind 2014, 117;120). For instance, moods might be about oneself, the general state of the world, or a specific interaction with one’s neighbour. Additionally, moods may have a hybrid-directedness, as a combination of both inward and outward directions. If moods are representational, then there is some mental representation associated with what the mood is about, which is known as its representational content (Mendelovici 2014, 135-6). This representational content can either wholly determine the phenomenological experience of a mood (pure intentionalism) or determine the phenomenological experience together with some other features or functional modes (impure intentionalism) (Mendelovici 2014, 137-8). The fundamental difference is whether the phenomenology of moods is fully or partially determined by and reducible to a mental representation. Mood disorders are the experience of irregularly fluctuating or prolonged moods, where one’s abnormal mood is significantly impacting their everyday functioning (Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 13; Alberta Mental Health Board (AMHB) 2010, 1:2). An exceptionally elated mood is referred to as mania, and significantly miserable and low moods are called depressions. Psychopathy in Canada considers a mood disordered if the abnormal mood is prevalent and significantly impeding one’s life for at least two weeks, suggesting at this point that an individual seek psychiatric help for further assessment (AMHB 2010, 3:1; American Psychiatric Association (APA) 2013, 155). The two most common types of mood disorders are bipolar and major depressive disorder, where the former involves cyclic episodes of mania and depression, and the latter is a continued experience of depression (APA 2013, 155). Contemporary thought identifies and emphasizes the role of neurotransmitters in the formation of mood disorders (Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 76-7; 129; Horwitz 2003, 3; Kirsch 2010, 82). To receive the proper treatment for a mood disorder, a diagnosis is made by a psychiatrist. During a diagnostic meeting, the psychiatrist first asks questions regarding one’s inner emotions and thoughts to determine whether they are overly negative, erratic, or wrought with guilt. The psychiatrist then determines whether an individual exhibits specific outward behaviour, such as an

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excess or lack of sleep, impulsivity, or social isolation (APA 2013, 160-1; Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 106). In these enquiries, the psychiatrist attempts to identify the mood the patient is experiencing. The psychiatrist then compares the patient’s communicated general mood, feelings, thoughts, and behaviours to the symptoms listed under various mood disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Ed. (DSM-V). If an individual exhibits enough symptoms, they are diagnosed with the relevant mood disorder (Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 103; Horwitz 2003, 2). By referencing a patient’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in order to come to know their mood, psychiatrists suggest these features of experience must somehow contain or reflect a person’s mood. For instance, knowledge of an individual’s feelings of isolation, thoughts of selfhatred, and acts of self-harm would not provide information about an individual’s depression, unless these features of experience represent and express their depression. As such, moods must be directed through one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Thoughts can be about the self, specific external objects, and the world as an abstract whole. Similarly, emotions and behaviours are directed at the self and external objects. Psychiatry’s diagnostic model therefore employs a hybrid-directedness of moods, where one’s mood is directed at inward as well as outward objects and circumstances through their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Accordingly, these same features of experience would collectively create the representational content of a mood. This means that which one’s thoughts, actions, and emotions are about while in a certain mood account for the representational content of the mood. For instance, the representational content of depression would be a mental representation of self-directed thoughts about suicide and feelings of hopelessness together with object-directed sleeping (among other features). Psychiatrists similarly think they can come to know which mood a patient is experiencing phenomenologically by referencing the individual’s communicated thoughts, feelings, and actions. This suggests these features of experience likewise account for the phenomenological experience of a mood. So, the phenomenological experience of a mood is determined by the same features which represent the mood. For instance, the same thoughts of suicide, feelings of hopelessness, and excessive sleeping both represent and phenomenologically describe the experience of depression. §1.2 – Psychiatry’s Hybrid Pure Intentionality

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When psychiatrists treat by medication alone, they subscribe to pure intentionalism by claiming the phenomenological experience of a mood is wholly determined by a neurotransmitter imbalance. As discussed above, psychiatry considers the patient’s shared thoughts, feelings, and behaviours as both the representational and phenomenological features of their mood. However, when psychiatrists treat with just medication, they only treat a neurotransmitter imbalance (aan het Rot, Mathew, and Charney 2009, 305-313; Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 129; 160; Kirsch 2010, 82). As such, the mental representation of a mood disorder is simply a neurotransmitter imbalance, and the representational content of an individual’s mood is completely reducible to their neurological levels. Psychiatrists thus think that which one’s thought’s, feelings, and behaviours are about while in a certain mood is ultimately reducible to and determined by neurotransmitter-levels. For instance, a patient’s thoughts of suicide, feelings of guilt, and diminished eating are wholly determined by their depleted levels of serotonin. Furthermore, one’s phenomenological experience of a mood disorder is likewise entirely determined by a neurotransmitter imbalance. Since there is nothing more than a neurological imbalance causing a patient’s mood disorder, their neurological levels must be completely determining their experience of the mood disorder. As such, what it feels like to be in a mood is entirely reducible to one’s neurotransmitter-levels. Both the phenomenological and representational features of a mood are therefore wholly reducible to and determined by a neurotransmitter-level. If psychiatrists thought there was some additional, non-representational content of the mood, they would also prescribe some form of therapy to acknowledge an attitudinal or functional aspect of the mood. Furthermore, an impure intentionalist would likely proceed by considering the individual in a less formal setting to notice their bodily conduct, in addition to personally conversing with them. In so doing, some further features of the mood would be recognized, instead of just one’s communicated thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. The DSM-V provides an additional detail of psychiatry’s employed philosophy of mood. For diagnostic reference, psychiatrists have grouped similar experiences and created a “set of descriptions of the disorders frequently observed by clinicians” for each mood disorder (among other mental illnesses) (Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 5). The DSM-V is thus an accumulated list of commonly communicated features of experience for each mood disorder (Ibid; Horwitz 2003, 20-1). As such, the DSM-V provides the “official” representational and phenomenological

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features of each mood disorder. It follows that these features of experience are relatively universal while in a certain mood; what one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are directed at (or about), and the feeling of being in a mood can be widely compared and normalized. §2.1 – Questioning pure intentionalism While psychiatry reduces the phenomenological and representational features of an individual’s mood disorder to a neurotransmitter imbalance, this is incompatible with the current diagnostic process. There are several reasons to think that the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours shared in a diagnostic meeting do not exhaustively characterize all features of their experience. As such, psychiatrists would be amiss to reduce a patient’s mood solely to a neurotransmitter imbalance, since they have not even come to know the patient’s entire mood. Furthermore, employing the DSM-V while maintaining pure intentionalism has unjustified implications. First, psychiatry does not account for the countless barriers and tensions present during a diagnostic meeting. Without having established a prior connection to a psychiatrist, individuals are expected to be vulnerable and truthful with them. Thus, while a patient may share certain thoughts, feelings, and behaviours with the psychiatrist for a diagnosis, they are assuredly not transparently sharing all these features; levels of extroversion, critical self-evaluation, honesty, and clarity affect a person’s ability to comfortably communicate with the psychiatrist. But similarly, a psychiatrist’s levels of observation, openness, and patience (among other skills) alter whether they accurately and completely recognize as well as record the features of a patient’s experience. Relatedly, mood disorders such as depression often also cause issues with an individual’s short and long-term memory. There is thus the further potential that the patient misremembers or simply forgets their actual behaviours, thoughts, or emotions. If Freudian psychology is correct, many of an individual’s most primal and motivating desires occur in the unconscious mind and cannot be easily conceptualized (Pick 2015, 4-5; 9-10). While extensive amounts of psychoanalysis allow a person to eventually articulate the underlying root of their thoughts, emotions, and actions, these remain in the unconscious during a diagnostic meeting. Therefore, even if a patient is honestly communicating their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours to a psychiatrist, they are not communicating the underlying features of their experience. As such, both the communicated representational and phenomenological features are not fully capturing one’s true experience. Furthermore, pure intentionalism seems altogether

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unable to account for the unconscious mind; the aspects of the unconscious contributing to the experience of the mood disorder would be reducible to a neurotransmitter imbalance. But if this is the case, pure intentionalism cannot maintain a distinction between the conscious and unconscious mind since fundamentally they both are determined by the same neurotransmitter-levels. It was previously noted that psychiatry’s employment of the DSM-V implies moods are comparable. Following from psychiatry’s hybrid intentionalism, this means there are relatively universal phenomenological and representational features of mood disorders. But psychiatry’s endorsement of pure intentionalism additionally suggests the list of symptoms in the DSM-V is wholly reducible to a neurotransmitter imbalance. Following from this, there must be a neurotransmitter imbalance that is likewise comparable and relatively universal. However, contemporary studies show this is not the case; neurotransmitter imbalances are not necessarily present, and neither is one specific imbalance consistently associated with a certain mood disorder (Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 78). Studies report some people with depression have depleted levels of serotonin, others have heightened levels, and others have no change in serotonin levels (Ibid). Consequently, individuals can express the same representational and phenomenological features as those for a specific disorder in the DSM-V and yet not have the neurotransmitter imbalance associated with these features. There is thus a tension between psychiatry’s pure intentionalism and their usage of the DSM-V for diagnostic purposes. §2.2 – Consulting Phenomenology Psychiatry omits some underlying features of experience in its diagnostic and treatment process. Phenomenology suggests these features cannot be reduced to mental representations. Matthew Ratcliffe explains moods as pre-supposed conditions of experience (Ratcliffe 2012, 361; 368). According to Ratcliffe, moods provide one’s fundamental connection to the world, constituting a sense of belonging and the potential for connection (Ibid, 350; 367). Moods colour the lens through which everything is experienced. Tuning the body to the world in a specific way, moods project a person’s space of possibilities and felt sense of “I can” (Ibid). When in an elated mood, the world may be alive with potential, as one’s body is primed to act and connect, while a depressed mood fundamentally closes the body off from participating or engaging with the world in a meaningful way. One individual experiencing depression writes: “I feel disconnected from the rest of the world, like a spectator. I only see I was depressed when it stops. It’s like dust, you don’t

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notice it until you wipe it off and see the difference” (Ratcliffe 2015, 32). But this means moods are not reducible to a mental state or representation because they are pre-supposed by all thought and awareness; moods are “comprised wholly of pre-intentional, non-conceptual feeling” (Ratcliffe 2012, 368). As more than just an emotion, there is a phenomenological aspect of one’s mood which determines how the world seems to the individual, and how their body is fundamentally rooting them in the world, making all experience possible. This phenomenological experience is a bodily tuning and sense of being in the world; it is not reducible to a specific level of neurotransmitters. In these instances, separate from cognition or the mind, the body is taking a stance toward the world. This phenomenological aspect of a mood provides one’s fundamental connection to the world, and since it is presumed by cognition, it must have distinct roots. Following Ratcliffe’s account, there is thus significant amounts of a mood which are not easily explained or articulated because they underly the very formation of thought. For the purpose of this paper, it is sufficient to acknowledge that at least some of the features of a mood are not captured by pure intentionalism; this is enough to show that psychiatry cannot maintain pure intentionalism. So, it is not necessary to completely accept Ratcliffe’s position and wholly explain moods through a phenomenological lens. Ratcliffe’s key contribution is to support the position that a mood cannot be completely reduced to a neurotransmitter level, as psychiatry attempts. As such, there is reason to think the features of experience which psychiatry omits during the diagnostic process are nonrepresentational, thereby implying impure intentionalism. §2.3 – Introducing Impure Intentionalism Impure intentionalism holds that the phenomenological experience of a mood is reducible to the representational content of a mood together with further non-representational features (Kind 2014, 117; 120). A mood is determined by the combination of a mental representation of the mood and some attitudinal or other functional modes (Mendelovici 2014, 137-8). While there are different accounts of what this additional feature may be, the distinguishing characteristic is that the phenomenological experience of a mood can only be fully accounted for by combing the mental representation of a mood with a bodily mode or attitude. Impure intentionalism thus reduces the experience of a mood to a neurotransmitter imbalance together with some other bodily or nonmental representation. In “The Intentional Structure of Moods”, Uriah Kriegel provides an account

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of impure intentionalism which may suit psychiatry. Kriegel suggests that in a mood, the representational content is ascertained through a representational attitude (2019, 12). Certain attitudes or guises are associated with specific moods and represent the intentional content of the mood in a certain way (Ibid, 17). Depression, for instance, would be associated with meaningless or hopeless representational guises, under which the world, its aspects, and the self are represented while in the mood. While Kriegel’s account may ultimately be too basic, it could account for both the mental and non-mental representational content of moods, including a neurotransmitter imbalance and a basic bodily connection. The most noticeable drawback of employing Kriegel’s thought with Ratcliffe’s is that Kriegel does not think these attitudes are as basic as Ratcliffe. Kriegel easily conceptualizes and names the attitudinal guises under which things appear, while Ratcliffe suggests a more foundational bodily connection that is difficult to articulate. While both thus acknowledge a bodily aspect of moods that is ultimately irreducible to a mental representation, whether Kriegel and Ratcliffe are referring to the same bodily element of moods is for further investigation. However, this is not directly relevant to this paper; Kriegel’s interpretation merely serves as a suggested potential understanding of impure intentionalism to model its strengths for psychiatry. This paper will not take a position on whether Ratcliffe or Kriegel’s interpretation is more correct; it will simply combine both of their thoughts to consider the non-representational aspects of moods as a foundational bodily attitude that is in some sense difficult to articulate. Furthermore, to fully integrate impure intentionalism with psychiatry, more investigation is necessary to determine how to recognize and modify our bodily attitudes and connections. This would perhaps proceed by prescribing activities which re-establish a more positive bodily connection to the world, including certain physical or creative activities. Talk-therapy may also initiate the recognition of one’s representational guises or bodily attitudes needed to ultimately conceptualize and alter them. §2.4 – For Impure Intentionalism Accounts of impure intentionalism may provide an explanation as to why long-term recovery from mood disorders is so difficult, as there are multiple representations of the mood which must be treated. While the mental representation may be acknowledged through the treatment of a neurotransmitter imbalance, one’s attitudinal features persist. The opposite may be

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true as well; while one’s bodily attitude has been treated, their neurological factors remain. As such, individuals may be struggling to ameliorate their bodily attitudes despite having treated their neurological representation. In these cases, although one’s mental representation may be less prominent after receiving medication, their representational guises are still causing the world to be represented as hopeless or meaningless. While a person’s mood may ameliorate slightly, they still need more treatment to establish a more positive bodily connection to the world. To fully recover, both representations require acknowledgement and treatment. Another strength of impure intentionalism is its apparent accommodation of the Freudian unconscious. When certain thoughts and feelings are unconscious, they do not seem reducible to a mental representation; they have not yet been actualized as a mental state. As such, the unconscious mind could serve as non-representational content in some way. For instance, the unconscious mind could create the attitudinal modes through which one experiences. Psychoanalytic therapy would thus allow individuals to recognize and work through these preconceptual bodily attitudes produced by the unconscious. Alternatively, the unconscious could serve as completely different non-representational content. Nonetheless, impure intentionalism seems better suited to accommodate for the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind as it would not reduce both to a neurotransmitter imbalance. This section has shown that when psychiatry treats mood disorders by medication alone, they endorse a form of pure intentionalism. However, evidence was cited to show that psychiatry cannot consistently maintain pure intentionalism because their current diagnostic process does not account for the full phenomenological experience of a mood. Furthermore, their employment of the DSM-V is questionably consistent with pure intentionalism. Ratcliffe’s phenomenology of mood was considered to explain the non-representational aspect of moods, and Kriegel’s thought was used to exemplify some strengths of impure intentionalism in psychiatric processes. This section concludes that the treatment of mood disorders by medication alone implies an inconsistent understanding of mood’s phenomenological and representational features. The current understanding ought to be replaced by an account of impure intentionalism, such as Kriegel’s. §3.1 – Psychiatry’s Use of Medication After an individual is diagnosed with a mood disorder, a psychiatrist creates a treatment plan to stabilize the patient’s mood by treating the cause or causes of the disorder (aan het Rot,

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Mathew, and Charney 2009; Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 160-1). Contemporary thought emphasizes the role of neurotransmitters in the manifestation of mood disorders. Neurons are the nerve cells that compose the brain and use chemicals called neurotransmitters to communicate with one another. Each chemical is responsible for a different type of communication, and those which are involved in mood-feeling are serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine (aan het Rot, Mathew, and Charney 2009; Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 77; Kirsch 2010, 82; 85). Psychiatry maintains that mood disorders are caused by an imbalance in these neurotransmitters. For instance, depression is typically associated with depleted levels of serotonin. Following the modern stress on neurobiological Mechanisms in mood disorder causation, medication has become an increasingly common form of mood disorder treatment. Medication functions as a mood disorder treatment by regulating one’s levels of neurotransmitters, where balanced levels are thought to produce proper mood variations and control (aan het Rot, Mathew, and Charney 2009). While different types of medication affect the brain differently in an attempt to establish balanced levels, medication only alters a person’s neurotransmitter levels (aan het Rot, Mathew, and Charney 2009). The experience of a mood disorder is supposed to be alleviated by regulating neurotransmitter-levels through the proper medication. Sometimes medication is prescribed in conjunction with other forms of mood disorder treatment, such as psychotherapy, cognitive based therapy or neurotherapy. But in contemporary psychiatry, medication is commonly prescribed as an effective treatment without any additional treatments. According to a 2014 survey, 75% of Canadians experiencing a mood disorder were taking medication for the disorder (O’Donnell et al. 2017). The same 2014 survey showed that of the individuals taking medication for a mood disorder, 47.6% were taking medication as their sole form of treatment while 27.3% were additionally pursuing some form of talk or interactive therapy (Ibid). But when psychiatrists treat by medication alone, they are only treating an individual’s neurotransmitters. As such, some psychiatrists are only recognizing one’s neurology as a causal factor of the mood disorder. While there may by other constitutive or more basic causes of the disorder, treating by medication alone only treats one’s neurotransmitter-levels. §3.2 – Questioning Psychiatry’s Medication Usage Although some psychiatrists are only treating neurological causes with medication, studies show mood disorders may have several other potential non-neurological causes. Additionally,

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studies show neurotransmitter imbalances are caused by something external and more fundamental. Furthermore, some causes manifest mood disorders without the presence of a neurotransmitter imbalance altogether. It is therefore unclear why some psychiatrists only treat the neurobiological cause of a person’s mood disorder; this cause is not always present and typically accompanies constitutive or more basic causes when it is. Studies show neurotransmitter imbalances are neither necessary nor sufficient in accounting for the experience of a mood disorder (Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 78; 84-5; 129; 134; Pick 2015, 16).34 In one study, medication was distributed to induce depletions in serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine in individuals who were not depressed, and very few developed an experience of depression (aan het Rot, Mathew, and Charney 2009; Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 134). Triggering the neuro-chemical imbalance was thus not sufficient for experiencing the associated mood disorder. In addition, although depression is associated with depleted levels of serotonin, some people with depression conversely have heightened levels of serotonin or even normal levels (Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 78; 160; 166; Kirsch 2010, 91). As such, the neuro-transmitter levels associated with depression are also not necessary for the experience of the mood disorder. Some causes of mood disorders thus manifest the disorder independent of neurotransmitter imbalances. For instance, studies show childhood trauma causes the repression of memories which often surface by way of mood irregularities (Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 129; Pick 2015, 4; 22; 24-5; 27). Similarly, learned behaviours by social pressures or family values cause disordered moods and serious impediments to one’s ability to function (Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 84; 134). Studies have also shown certain individuals possess genetic pre-dispositions to developing mood disorders, activated by a combination of external and internal triggers; the most common among these triggers are stress and environmental trauma (aan het Rot, Mathew, and Charney 2009; Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 127). Studies are also currently exploring the link between blood folate levels and the formation of depression (Sathyanarayana Rao et al. 2008, 77). When neurotransmitter imbalances are present, they are typically accompanied by other causal factors. For instance, lifestyle choices including stress-levels, drug usage, and lack of sleep have been shown to contribute to the formation of depression, alongside a neurotransmitter imbalance (Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 76-7; 84). Low levels of physical activity have also been shown as contributory factors in the formation of mood disorders (Ströhle 2009, 778-9).

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Critics may claim these studies mistake contributory causes with the effects of a neurotransmitter imbalance. While a lack of sleep or physical activity may appear to be constitutive causes, they are really the effect of deficient serotonin. As such, psychiatry may be treating a neurological imbalance because it is the most basic or primary cause. However, studies show neurotransmitter imbalances have an external cause, as they are not likely caused by genetics; for instance, very low rates of identical twins have the same mental illness and thus the same neurological imbalance (Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 79-80). According to contemporary research, neurotransmitter imbalances may be caused by diet, physical fitness, or physical trauma (aan het Rot, Mathew, and Charney 2009; Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 84-5; Lopresti, Hood, and Drummond 2013, 16-7; Ströhle 2009, 779). Recent developments in nutritive studies stress the importance of a balanced diet to produce the proper levels of neurotransmitters (Lopresti, Hood, and Drummond 2013, 16-7; Sathyanarayana Rao et al. 2008). Consuming excessive amounts of sugar has been connected to the formation of depression as the foods people consume affect the sensitivity of their neuro-receptors (Lopresti, Hood, and Drummond 2013, 19). Furthermore, studies show diets low in fatty acids may impair the brain’s ability to effectively use neurotransmitters (Sathyanarayana Rao et al. 2008). Likewise, physical activity has been shown to influence production of dopamine in the body (Lopresti, Hood, and Drummond 2013, 19). However, even if genetics do cause neurotransmitter imbalances, new scientific developments relating to the role of epigenetics show that elements of one’s environment and behaviour effect the way genes are expressed (aan het Rot, Mathew, and Charney 2009; Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 92). Accordingly, a neurotransmitter imbalance is initiated by one’s external environment. Therefore, even if a neurotransmitter imbalance is present and caused by genes, it is still not the most basic cause. In this case, treating the neurotransmitter imbalance alone would not rectify the environmental factors which initially and continuously contribute to the disorder. If the environmental factors remain unacknowledged and untreated, the neurotransmitter imbalance will persist despite being medicated. Psychiatry’s sole treatment of neurotransmitters thus appears confused, prioritizing the neurological component of mood disorders as opposed to other contributory or more basic causes. §3.3 – Considering Justifications

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To justify their treatment choice, some psychiatrists may claim medication is the easiest treatment course. Alternatively, medication may be the only possible treatment, or the most urgently effective. Furthermore, psychiatrists may claim a neurotransmitter imbalance is the only treatable cause or medication is the most generally effective treatment. However, the ease of medication’s usage is irrelevant if treating by medication alone is an unjustified position. Ease will thus not be seriously considered as a justification for a method of treatment since it is not a viable reason if the underlying philosophy is untenable. Similarly, in uncommon circumstances, people may be unable to pursue other treatments for some reason. However, these circumstances do not justify treating with medication alone; they simply exemplify instances in which psychiatrists may have fewer treatment options to prescribe. Even by offering medication as a treatment alone, some psychiatrists are endorsing its efficacy and underlying understanding of mood. Psychiatrists may then claim medication is the most urgently effective. This justification seems true in comparison to alternative treatment methods; however, many individuals are prescribed medication alone for their mood disorder for long periods of time. While medication may be initially justified, long-term usage is still in question. This inquiry will thus be considering non-urgent intervention. Psychiatry cannot maintain that a neurotransmitter imbalance is the only treatable cause of a mood disorder because the different causes distinguished above are treatable by various means. For instance, there are different types of therapy which allow an individual to heal. In talk therapy, one discusses destructive thought-patterns, repressed memories, diet, and level of physical activity, among other potential causes of mood disorders (Pick 2015, 3-4; 18). Personal trainers can also suggest feedback and lifestyle changes which will treat several of the potential physical causes of mood disorders. Additionally, dietary psychology has emerged as a field of psychology which treats mood disorders primarily through adjustments in diet. Furthermore, cognitive based therapy targets and ameliorates false beliefs and thought patterns which perpetuate mood disorders (Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 174). Art and music therapy allow patients to explore and confront identity and communication issues, re-learning how to express their emotions. The other causes of mood disorders thus appear treatable. While psychiatry may cite the supreme efficacy of medication to justify its usage, this is not representative of current data. Medication as a sole treatment is not consistently effective; studies show responses to mood disorder medication are unpredictable and generally negative (aan

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het Rot, Mathew, and Charney 2009; Crumby, Harper, and Reavey 2013, 166; Hollon and Ponniah 2010, 910). The performance of anti-depressants versus placebos is clinically insignificant. In long-term studies spanning from six months to a year, placebos were found to be 95% as effective as medication (Kirsch 2010, 30; 67).53 While it may be claimed that perhaps the in-effectivity of medication is the result of poor medication choices, further studies show this to be unlikely. In one study of individuals monitored with depression, 37% had positive results after initially taking their first type of medication, 19% then had success with their second, 6% after their third, and 5% their fourth; however, within a year, all but three of the monitored people had relapsed (Ibid, 59). Studies show antidepressants are more effective when combined with psychotherapy (Hollon and Ponniah 2010; Kirsch 2010, 162-3). Furthermore, cognitive therapy has been shown to be at least equally as efficacious as medication, often outperforming medication long-term (Hollon and Ponniah 2010; Kirsch 2010, 166; 171; 177). Evidence thus suggests medication is not more effective than alternative treatments, so its efficacy cannot justify its usage as a sole form of treatment. Having considered and rejected several potential justifications psychiatry may provide for prescribing medication alone, psychiatry’s practice seems unjustified. By prescribing medication as a mood disorder treatment alone, some psychiatrists only treat an individual’s neurotransmitter imbalance. But it was shown there are many other causes of mood disorders which may be an independent or constitutive causal factor. Furthermore, even when neurotransmitter imbalances are present, they may be caused by an external factor. Therefore, psychiatry’s usage of medication alone is neither consistent with nor justified by contemporary studies. Conclusion This paper revealed the theoretical understanding of mood underlying the prescription of medication alone and showed it to be incomplete and unreflective of relevant evidence. When psychiatrists prescribe medication as the only form of treatment, they endorse a form of hybrid pure intentionalism and unjustifiably solely treat the neurological cause of mood disorders. However, evidence was presented to support the argument that mood disorders have multiple causes. Furthermore, it was shown psychiatry omits some aspects of a mood and therefore cannot maintain pure intentionalism. Reasons were then given to think that there are aspects of a mood which cannot be reduced to a neurotransmitter imbalance. Following this, impure intentionalism was considered as a replacement. While this paper only considered the case of medication as the

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sole treatment of a mood disorder, since the consequent philosophy is inaccurate, further investigation is due. If this paper is correct, we have reason to question the motivations of the medicalization of mood disorder treatment. With high stakes, it is thus strongly suggested that there be further inquest into the philosophies surrounding psychiatry and the medicalization of mental-health treatments.

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References Aan het Rot, Marije, Sanjay J. Mathew, and Dennis S. Charney. 2009. “Neurobiological Mechanisms in Major Depressive Disorder.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 180, 3:305-313. Alberta Mental Health Board (AMHB) et al. 2010. Mental Health First Aid Canada. American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-V. 5th Edition. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association. Crumby, John, Dave Harper, and Paula Reavey. 2013. Psychology of Mental Health and Distress. Palgrave Macmillan: Red Globe Press. Hollon, Steven D., and Kathryn Ponniah. 2010. “A Review of Empirically Supported Psychological Therapies for Mood Disorders in Adults.” Depression and Anxiety 27, no. 10: 891-932. Horwitz, Allan V. 2003. Creating Mental Illness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kind, Amy. 2014. “The Case against Representationalism About Moods.” In Current Controversies in Philosophy of Mind. Edited by Uriah Kriegel, 113-134. New York: Routledge. Kirsch, Irving. 2010. The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressants Myth. New York: Basic Books. Kriegel, Uriah. 2019. “The Intentional Structure of Moods.” Philosophers’ Imprint 19, no. 49: 119. Lopresti, Adrian, Sean Hood, and Peter Drummond. 2013. “A Review of Lifestyle Factors that Contribute to Important Pathways Associated with Major Depression: Diet, Sleep and Exercise.” Journal of Affective Disorders, 148, 1: 12-27. Mendelovici, Angela. 2014. “Pure Intentionalism About Moods and Emotions.” In Current Controversies in Philosophy of Mind. Edited by Uriah Kriegel, 135-157. New York: Routledge. O’Donnell, Siobhan, Maria Syoufi, Wayne Jones, Kathryn Bennett, and Louise Pelletier. 2017. “Use of Medication and Psychological Counselling Among Canadians with Mood and/or Anxiety Disorders.” Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention 37, 5 (Public Health Agency of Canada). Pick, Daniel. 2015. Psychoanalysis: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Ratcliffe, Matthew. 2015. Experiences of Depression: A Study in Phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2010. “The Phenomenology of Mood and the Meaning of Life.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion. Edited by Peter Goldie, 349-371. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sathyanarayana Rao, T. S., M.R. Asha, B.N. Ramesh, and K.S. Jagannantha Rao. 2008. “Understanding Nutrition, Depression and Mental Illnesses.” Indian Journal of Psychiatry 50, no. 2: 77-82. Ströhle, Andreas. 2009. “Physical Activity, Exercise, Depression and Anxiety Disorders.” Journal of Neural Transmission, 116: 777–784.

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The Unintended Harms of the Covid-19 Visitors Restrictions in End-of-Life Care Camille Irvine, Masters Student (University of Guelph) The COVID-19 visitor restrictions, as the public health response to the pandemic, have revealed that a clinical bioethical framework (with its philosophical roots stemming from the individualistic biomedical model) does not provide proper care for dying persons, family members, and care staff. The COVID-19 visitor restrictions are necessary precautions in preventing the COVID-19 virus from rapidly spreading among spaces of vulnerable persons (characteristic of end of life health care spaces). I want to be overt in expressing that this paper is not meant to dismiss nor question the crucial role that empirical work in disease control entails. Instead, this paper will explore how the visitor restrictions, in themselves, prohibit end of life care for family members, patients and why they cause significant moral distress for caretakers. To show that this is the case, I distinguish between individualistic care approaches and relational care approaches, noting the underlying principles that govern each approach. Where the biomedical model's philosophical nature is individualistic, the philosophical roots of end-oflife care models are relational. By looking at the core values, principles, and philosophical underpinnings of end-of-life care in Canada, I aim to show how the COVID-19 visitor restrictions prohibit the ability to provide quality care for the dying and why these restrictions so adversely affect these spaces of care. I will reject the philosophical principles that underpin individualistic care models in the context of long-term care and palliative care units, arguing that biomedical clinical space is that which promises these individualistic principles in practice. A contradictory care space is a practice of care that faces barriers to being in such a space. In conjunction with a clinical bioethics’ pandemic response, biomedical clinical space is incompatible with the practices of medicine founded on relational values and principles (namely, end of life care). As seen through the lens of feminist bioethics, I will be arguing on behalf of relational theories of care and introducing a relational understanding of autonomy in the context of end-oflife care (Sherwin and Stockdale 2017). I aim to invoke recognition over the inherently contradictory space created when a relational model of care falls under the ethical jurisdiction of an individualistic ethical framework. Ultimately, this paper strives to advocate that the appropriate ethical framework for approaching end of life care ethics is a feminist relational approach. Gnosis | 19.1 (2021)

§1 – Individualistic vs Relational Approaches Before proceeding to the bulk of this paper's argument, a distinction between individualistic approaches to care and relational approaches to care is necessary. To achieve this, one must obtain a rudimentary understanding of the relationships between ethical theories and how they translate into practical application. 1.1 From Vision to Practice It is vital to recognize the ethical necessities of palliative and end of life care. To do this, we need to remind ourselves of how these approaches operationalize into practice. From an approach comes a methodology, which determines how to ground principles. Once an approach and methodology have been established, they begin to encapsulate an ethical theory. An ethical theory creates the parameters and justification guidelines for what is deemed right or wrong in action. A theory then establishes the principles that will eventually guide and underpin an ethical framework. Ethical frameworks use the principles established by the theory to guide systemic analysis of ethical issues in order to support decision-making (Government of Canada Public Health 2021). A particular ethical framework is constructed by these founded principles, which are then contextualized into particular practical space in the form of policy. Policy is heavily influenced by the ethical framework that holds jurisdiction. Policy acts as a referee to ensure that the values from the ethical framework operationalize into practical application. The principles of that theory justify the practical applications of an ethical framework. Consequentially, the practical application of an ethical framework is what these values ought to look like within a particular social space. This notion of space is both literal and abstract. It is a literal term in the sense that it must occupy a physical area for a theory to come to practice; it is abstract in the sense that by virtue of occupying a physical space, it is under ethical jurisdiction of that given space. To expand on this concept, note that the relationship between moving from an ethical theory to practical application assumes that the practice itself is aligned with the fundamental principles of that theory. The practical application of a particular theory is responsible for the creation of these physical spaces. At the same time, an ethical theory is closely connected to the conceptual understanding of space,

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where what is constituted as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ action is governed by the underlying philosophical principles of that theory. An example of these two notions of space and their place in this hierarchical ethical arrangement can be seen in the process of establishing practical models of care. Models of care are the practically defined way in which health services are delivered in a clinical setting. Models of care are characterized by an ethical theory and approach, which then creates the principles to ground and contextualizes an ethical framework. Therefore, what constitutes care in a particular space, or quality of care for that matter, depends not just on the practical clinical application but also that the core principles and values of a particular faculty of health care align with the ethical jurisdiction it resides. Thus, how we initially determine what approach to take has lingering ethical influences that translate down to the practical application from a top-down relation. Likewise, the differing values of care within all faculties of medicine can also influence the ethical requirements via a bottom-up approach. The branches of ethics which concern the next portion of this paper are bioethics and clinical bioethics. The succeeding parts of this paper will address end of life care ethics and pandemic ethics. To begin, bioethics is a subgroup of ethics that, loosely speaking, studies and charts ethical parameters in the biological fields. Clinical bioethics is a practical branch that implements structured approaches to ethical issues or uncertainties that emerge in a clinical healthcare space. Clinical bioethics quarries include but are not limited to policy formation, ethical consultation to healthcare practitioners, patients, and family members. 1.2 Individualistic Approaches to Care Individualistic approaches to care are premised on an ideology that aims to comprehend and justify moral principles on an individual level, namely, individualism (Fee and Krieger 1993, 1481). Individualism as an approach adopts the idea of persons as aims based upon the liberal conception of peoples as free and autonomous decision-makers. Individual approaches to care adopt this concept of the person as an individual who is able to live their life freely in accordance with her self-chosen plan and ideally independent from controlling influences (Dove et al. 2017, 150). Individualistic approaches to care are accompanied by the fundamental principle of individualistic autonomy, which purports that persons are self-contained and self-determining creatures (Mill 1878). This emphasis on independence translates into understandings of autonomy in bioethics, where negative freedom plays a central role in its conceptualization (Dove et al. 2017,

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152). Negative freedom is freedom from interference by others, where a negative understanding of autonomy serves as a device to protect individuals from the intrusions of others. Negative freedom is a way to operationalize respect for individual autonomy. This approach to ethics takes the individual as the starting point for ethical analysis, building a theory of ethics latent with individual-centred principles (Kenny, Sherwin, and Baylis 2010, 9). In this sense, an individualistic approach does not prioritize acknowledging the influence that the nexus of intentions and beliefs of others may have on an individual. Instead, it relies on the concept of persons as independent from any social, societal, or environmental influences (Wynne, Petrova, and Coghlan 2020, 516). The individualistic idea of the person serves as a philosophical underpinning of individual approaches to care, manifesting a default ethical framework that prioritizes the good of the individuals as confined from the interferences of others (see section 1.4 for more). However, individual autonomy in practice has shown appealing results: Respect for individual autonomy has served to protect patients against paternalism; it puts patient’s values, interests, and beliefs at the centre of healthcare decisions which empowers individuals (GómezVirseda, de Maeseneer, and Gastmans 2019, 6). Furthermore, the practical application of individualistic autonomy in real-life situations has contributed to the development of patient’s rights, including privacy, confidentiality, self-determination, and the primacy of truth-telling in end of life scenarios (Gómez-Virseda, de Maeseneer, and Gastmans 2019, 6). 1.3 Relational Approaches To Care A relational approach is one that approaches ethical questions explicitly attentive to the relational nature of selves, as opposed to a person as isolated from others’ influence (Sherwin and Stockdale 2017, 7-29). A relational approach grounds its values in principles which take into account persons as essentially relation creatures. At its core, relational approaches appreciate the subjective and uniquely qualitative aspects of experience; feelings, emotions, beliefs, a totality of what is to be considered the “what it’s likeness” or the lived experience. These subjective aspects of an individual’s lived experience are the existential extensions that fundamentally connect people, making persons essentially relational beings intrinsically tied to others. Feminist bioethics favours this methodological approach to respecting the qualitative experiences that capture important empirical information about the situated encounter with healthcare (Donchin and Jackie

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Scully 2015, Feminist Bioethics, para. 2-3). This feminist relational approach to ethics creates a notion of relational autonomy, whereby it “embraces (rather than ignores) the fact that persons are inherently socially, politically, and economically situated being” (Kenny, Sherwin, and Baylis 2010, 10). Relational autonomy will be critically addressed later in this paper (see section 1.6). 1.4 The Dominant Individualistic Ethical Framework: The Biomedical Model Individualistic models of care dominate the health care field (Kenny, Sherwin, and Baylis 2010, 9-11). The majority of health care is ethically powered by the biomedical model, by which I mean the ethical framework that dominates health care with its theory based on the ideology of individualism and a focus on the biological and individual level-factors of care (Fee and Krieger 1993, 1481). This biomedical approach assumes disease to be fully accounted for by deviations from the norm of measurable biological variables (Fee and Krieger 1993, 1481). The biomedical model extends into clinical bioethics, public health ethics, and, most recently, pandemic ethics (Kenny, Sherwin, and Baylis 2010, 9-11). Proponents of the biomedical model adopt the notion of individualistic autonomy discussed previously (see section 1.2), and accordingly so, relays an individualistic model of care in practice. As previously mentioned, individualistic models of care are philosophically supported by the assumption of persons as independent and self-determinate beings without the connection to or influence of others. These core principles then structure an ethical framework that contextualizes into different branches of health care in the form of policy. This policy acts as the ethical guideline that operationalizes the biomedical model into practice. The space in which these practices occur is what I will refer to as biomedical space, within which the biomedical model holds ethical dominion over a given care space. I will take biomedical space to be implied in both a literal and abstract sense: 1) Literal as referring to the physical area where the practicing of individualistic care models occurs, such as emergency rooms, family doctor’s office, or oncologist office; and 2) Abstract as referring to a conceptual understanding of space, which speaks to the core principles and values of a particular faculty of health care and whether or not they are compatible with the ethical jurisdiction in which space resides. Biomedical spaces are necessarily individualistic since they stipulate that a just outcome is obtained if an individual's needs are met independently of social and societal influence. The biomedical model is reductionist in the sense that they put primacy on explanations of disease etiology which fall within the purview of narrowly construed medical intervention and disease

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mechanisms (Fee and Krieger 1993, 1481). In practice, these spaces operationalize medical procedures orientate around the individual’s biological state, meaning that the treatment outcome is isolated to biomedical interventions operating on biological mechanisms. Under the ethical jurisdiction of an individualistic care space, persons' beliefs and subjective experiences are seen as misinformation and are deemed irrelevant to the truth since scientific knowledge under this conception is held outside of the bounds of social context (Fee and Krieger 1993, 1477-1486). This solely isolated conception of a person is characteristic of biomedical care practices. Biomedical spaces represent most practices taking place in health care institutions, from the emergency room to a family physician’s office. These clinical biomedical practices share an underlying individualistic assumption of persons as a solely isolated conception, whereby the ethical course of treatment creates its measurement of care in terms of medical causes solely within the biological, chemical, and physical phenomena of an individual (Fee and Krieger 1993, 14771486). Whether that be attending to a compound fracture in the ER or changing prescriptions at the family doctor’s office, this biomedical space is necessarily individualistic since it defines and appraises treatment by the success of ‘fixing’ either a physiological or biological medical problem. 1.5 Relational Care in End of Life Care End of life ethics discusses issues surrounding end of life decision making, autonomous decision making, and the importance of advance directives (Karnik and Kanekar 2016, 1-6). A relational theory of ethics echoes the core values of end-of-life care. End of life care ethics requires an approach that is relational rather than individualistic. An approach that understands the relational nature of end-of-life care goals clarifies the intrinsic ways in which proper care for dying individuals is inseparable from communities, families, volunteers, and loved ones. Proper care, in this case, attends to both the patient and their surrounding loved ones, whereby both parties have access to physical, psychological, psychosocial, and spiritual support from health care practitioners. These core values operationalize in the form of shared decision-making and advancecare planning (Gomez-Virseda, Maeseneer, and Gastmans 2020, 10). Palliative care is a branch of end of life care that aims to alleviate the suffering of those who cannot be cured and are dying; aiming to prevent and relieve physical, emotional, social, or spiritual suffering associated with any chronic or life-threatening illness and to promote dignity in

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suffering, death and dying, for both the patient and family members involved. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines palliative care as: An approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual (Palliative Care 2020).

An important relational aspect of the WHO’s definition is that care extends to the patient's family members and loved ones. This entails that end of life care aims to relieve suffering and improve the quality of living and dying for patients and their loved ones (Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association (CHPCA) 2021). In this vein, providing quality care is not confined to an individual, but instead to a network of people, including both the patient and their surrounding loved ones. With these relational aspects of care in mind, I propose that end of life care is fundamentally relational in two ways: 1) Attending to care includes family members. 2) Family members provide care for the patient. I will extend these two relational aspects of palliative care to long-term care, for long-term care adopts a similar relational approach to end of life care. These two spaces of end of life care practices (palliative and long-term care) are similar in their fundamental and intrinsic involvement of others. Long-term care differs from palliative because patients are not necessarily on a temporally sensitive agenda with respect to death, as they tend to be in palliative care. However, this distinction is merely clinical and does not change the underlying principles of relational care of which these two spaces share. The paramount point is that what really matters to an individual and their loved one’s approaching death is essential, making end of life care fundamentally a relational practice. This should be considered when constructing an ethical framework for clinical practice. Albeit not all individuals approaching death have family or loved ones surrounding them, say in the case of relatives being geographically separated. In this circumstance, the individual may find a relational approach to dying is not conducive to their needs and prefer a biomedical approach since they do not have this relational network associated with relational care. However, the biomedical model will still not suffice during end of life care for a methodological reason: Biomedical practices embed the assumption that proper care and an individual’s paramount concern is ‘fixing’ either a physiological or biological medical problem. But dying is a process,

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not a problem, in which there is no finite solution for solving. When a person approaching end of life adheres to the concerns imposed by the biomedical model, they will experience the symptomatic occurrences of dying as a cascade of problems, as opposed to a relational process. 1.6 Relational Autonomy Based on end-of-life care values previously identified, I argue that a relational approach of autonomy is fundamentally necessary for providing quality care for patients approaching end of life in either palliative care or long-term care settings. Specific to end of life care spaces, empirical studies show that decision-making exclusively focused on the individual exercise of autonomy fails to align well with patients’ preferences at the end of life (Gomez-Virseda et al. 2020, 7-8). Individualistic autonomy is commonly compromised in end of life care settings, as many patients become non-verbal and rely on their family for advanced medical planning and end of life decisions in order to provide proper care during the dying process (Karnik and Kanekar 2016, 23). The reality that many patients in end of life care are non-verbal extends an essential relational aspect of autonomy to family members, as being pain reporters is an essential practice of care and an integral aspect to quality care at the end of life (Section 2.1 will expand on this further). Moreover, family members provide insightful perceptions of pain behaviour and pain management in adult patients unable to self-report, whereby family members take on the role of qualitative pain reporters (Kenny, Sherwin and Baylis 2010. 9-11; Richard-Lalonde et al. 2018, 316). This lends itself to an understanding of relational autonomy that discredits how individual autonomy, whereby an autonomous agent’s definition is exclusive to an individual, can be compromised during end of life. I argue that this account supports an understanding of relational autonomy that is procedural rather than substantive and causal as opposed to constitutive. Procedural conceptions say that autonomous preferences should be arrived at by certain processes instead of having certain contents (Khader 2020, 508). Whereas substantive approaches to autonomy are value-laden, meaning that “the contents of the preferences or values that agents can form or act on autonomously are subject to direct normative constraints” (Benson 2005, 133). There is debate within feminist theorists' relational approach to autonomy on whether autonomy is best understood procedurally or substantively (Sherwin and Stockdale 2017, 10). In the context and space of end-of-life care, I argue that relational autonomy ought to be considered procedurally and causally, with care in the dying process to be seen as a community process and

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not a finite event. In this account of procedural relational autonomy, the patient is not a confined individual; but a network of family members, loved ones, and caregivers. Substantive approaches to autonomy in end of life care will fail to provide adequate care since substantive conceptions place normative constraints on the contents of the preference of autonomous agents. McLeod’s substantive approach to autonomy claims that certain moral attitudes towards oneself are necessary to acting autonomously and that “acting autonomously, we strive to meet moral responsibilities to the self,” whereby being autonomous requires treating oneself well in a moral sense” (McLeod 2002, 121-126). These normative constraints to defining autonomy create restrictive moral parameters in end-of-life situations, for instance, during advanced care planning. Advanced care planning in Canada (APC) is defined as: A lifelong process of thinking and talking about the kind of health and/or persona care you would want if – at some point in your life- you cannot speak for yourself. During the conversations that are a part of (ACP), you share your values, beliefs, and wishes, and make sure the people you’ve chosen to speak for you understand what matters most to you (CHPCA 2021).

It is paramount to note that ACP recognizes that people's values and preferences can change over time and provides them with the opportunity to revisit their planning continually (CHPCA 2021). Substantive approaches to autonomy stipulate that agents’ psychologies (by practical extension, one’s values, beliefs, and care goals) fascine onto the world in the right ways, such that their preferences are only deemed autonomous if and only if their contents correspond to morally permissible features of the world. What is paramount at the end of life is unique to each individual and their family; by defining autonomy substantively, the end-of-life process is subject to particular moral parameters that may not match the care goals defined in ACP. The relational networks that inform patient decision-making at end of life cannot be subject to the normative constraints that a substantive approach to autonomy entails; this would imply that there is a right way to withgo the dying process. In the context of end of life care, relational autonomy must be considered procedurally since administering care is to give weight to the lived experiences and resources of all the family members, communities, and caretakers involved in the patient's dying process. The dying process is different for everyone and cannot be confined by substantive normative constraints; whereby the dying process is to be seen through the lens of many, as a community process, in which death is not a finite event but a procedural process consisting of collective decision making, shared bereavement and continued care for the surrounding loved ones.

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Furthermore, the account I am arguing on behalf is a causal account of autonomy, as opposed to constitutive, which stipulates that interpersonal or social conditions are a part of the defining features of autonomy (Christman 2004, 147). Causal conceptions of autonomy acknowledge the impact of social relationships and socio-historical circumstances on agents' capacities, which is importantly relevant at the end of life with the decline in patient’s autonomous capacities. Proponents of causal accounts of autonomy indicate that autonomous agents are essentially successors, heirs to other persons who formed and cared for them, where an agent's social relationships influence autonomy (Baier 1985, 85; Nedelsky 1989, 12). On this view, a person’s social relationships influence the development of autonomy, “if we ask ourselves what

actually enables people to be autonomous, the answer is not isolation, but relationships—with parents, teachers, friends, loved ones” (Nedelsky 1989, 12). This causal and procedural account of autonomy lends itself well to end of life care ethics. In the last three decades, end of life care ethics has been working to promote this kind of relational autonomy through a community-based dying model, whereby dying ought to be seen as a community event. This model follows a concept in end-of-life care that has emerged in the last few decades, namely, health-promoting palliative care (Kellehear 1999). COVID-19 has opened our eyes to the social isolation of our elderly and dying. We ought to harness this increased awareness as a vector for moving towards relational ethical models that have been percolating in the periphery of the palliative care and end of life care field. Individual Care model: Relational Care Model: - Where patients present a problem, and - Where a patient is not confined to a medical professional provides a single individual but extends to the solution network of family, loved ones, care - Power is distributed between patient givers. and medical professional (share - The solution is not contained to a finite decision making). event or specific psychological result. - The solution is situated in terms of The treatment is a relational process, disease and its causes solely within the where solutions are qualitatively biological, chemical, and physical interpreted. phenomena of an individual (Fee and Krieger, 1993, p. 1481). Figure 1. Individual Versus Relational Care Process

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Recently, Serene Khader argued in her paper "The Feminist Case Against Relational Autonomy" that constitutive conceptions of relational autonomy (also referred to as socially constitutive conceptions of autonomy) that make idealized social conditions a requirement of autonomy reinforce oppression. Khader does this by arguing that in requiring the presence of idealized social conditions, a constitutive relational conception of autonomy fails to meet two theoretical roles that feminist autonomy ought to convey; the roles of anti-oppressive character ideal and paternalism-limiting concept (2020, 499-526). At this time, one should note that feminist philosophy aims to develop moral and political concepts that guide action in ways that reduce oppression (Khader 2020, 500). Khader’s argument against relational autonomy is limited to constitutive accounts, where autonomy plays a role in justifying normative claims (2020, 501). Although Khader provides a rigorous argument against these constitutive conceptions of autonomy as not meeting the requirements of feminist philosophy, she fails to provide a satisfactory reply to causal-procedural accounts of relational autonomy. Where constitutive relational autonomy fails to meet the antioppressive character ideals that Khader assumes that feminist theory ought to entail, causalprocedural accounts of relational autonomy succeed. §2 – COVID-19 Visitor Restrictions It is essential to unpack the consequences of relational models of care during a pandemic when placed under a biomedical institution. These care spaces namely being long-term care, palliative care, and assisted living care. Doing so will help reveal how the COVID-19 visitor restrictions adversely affected end-of-life care significantly more so than other spaces of care. Biomedical ethics is based on an individualist ethical framework, whereas end of life care is centralized through a community-based relational framework. People have already begun to note that ethics centred around the individual does not sufficiently address the care needs of those in long term and palliative care (Wynne, Petrova, and Coghlan 2020). As noted above, palliative care has its values rooted in a collective-community model of care, yet is subject to the same kind of COVID-19 guidelines and restrictions put in place for hospitals, which are typically biomedical endowed spaces, following an individualistic ethical framework and model of care. As part of the public health pandemic response, these necessary institutional disease prevention measures result from a bioethical framework of care. That is to say that the Canadian

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health authority, as a biomedical institution, is applying, during a pandemic, an individualistic ethical framework to palliative care and long-term care, which at their cores value relational practices of care. The biomedical model of care is the predominant paradigm upon which the Canadian Health Care system is built and end-of-life care makes up a sub-category of that system. However, end of life care relies on an entirely different approach because its core values are relational instead of individualistic. The next section will argue that when these two worlds collide, it creates ethical tension between competing values resulting in a contradictory space. This ethical tension is cultivated when the delivery of palliative care (as relational) is happening in a biomedical space (as individualistic), which creates contradictory spaces for relational care practices. To demonstrate this, I will discuss how the COVID-19 visitor restrictions have revealed that a biomedical framework does not provide adequate care for dying persons and their family members, nor does it provide adequate support for care staff. 2.1 Pain Management End of life care is fundamentally relational; as cited above, it extends care to the patient and their family. Therefore, what it means to provide quality care at the end of life is not to care for a single individual but the network of qualitative causal relations that intrinsically tie others to the dying process of an individual. This is a crucial difference from an individualistic approach to care; where, for instance, a biomedical model defines care as confined to a single patient and solutions are offered in the form of substantial physiological outcomes (Figure 1). The ethical theory that guides these biomedical spaces are, therefore, contradictory to the values of end of life care. The COVID-19 visitor restrictions have created undisputable barriers for professional caregivers to provide proper care for family members throughout the dying process. The most apparent and heart-wrenching have prohibited family from seeing their dying loved one. Additional barriers raised by the COVID-19 visitor restrictions in providing care for family take a form such as lack of opportunity for vigil and goodbyes, failure to provide psychosocial support to family members, inability to provide spiritual care support, and limited opportunities for medical information sharing (Bolt et al. 2020; Wallace et al. 2020). In the practical application of relational care, the responsibility of administrating care also extends to family members, loved ones, and volunteers. In this sense, a relational model of care distributes the caretaking power to the family, the patient, and medical professionals (e.g., long-

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term care worker or palliative care nurse). Consequently, long-end of life care relies on pain management as a collective responsibility since family members, caretakers, and even volunteers are active participants in caregiving (Albrecht et al. 2011, 11). Pain management is an essential aspect of quality of care; it is a part of the very essence of both individual and relation care models (Carvalho et al. 2018). In fact, there is a growing movement toward viewing the concept of pain management as a fundamental human right (Brennan, Carr, and Cousins 2016). There are research limitations in making evident that the lack of family visitation has adversely affected patient pain and symptom management in end-of-life care since the family members unique ability to qualitatively infer patient's pain levels is hard to capture in quantifiable pain management metrics (Strang et al. 2020). The additional information about a patient's pain expression is an inherently relational aspect of care. Family members, loved ones and volunteers provide insight into the specific qualitative behaviours indicating pain. An antidotal example of this relational phenomenon is as follows: A husband of a non-verbal wife in long-term care was informed by a caretaker that she had suffered a fall but that her vitals were stable. When the husband was finally able to visit her, he immediately knew something was wrong and it turned out that her hip was broken. With the patient unable to verbally communicate this to her caregiver, her husband provided qualitative insight into proper pain management. Nurses and long-term care workers cannot qualitatively judge the small minute differences in behaviour, body language and facial expressions (among other indicators) that patients exhibit to demonstrate pain; and they ought not to be expected to do so since to understand the minute qualitative signs of a patient requires an experiential history of knowing that patient, of which no health care provider is expected to acquire. Therefore, the patient is limited to medical treatment (proper pain management) because the COVID-19 restrictions prevent family visitation. The patient loses access to proper medical care without family visitors to pay close attention to pain and symptom control as well as pain management. Consequently, the absence of family visitors also diminishes the ability to focus on the quality of life and comfort since comfort and pain are closely tied (two central values of end of life care). Here the necessity for a relational account of autonomy becomes prudent. Many patients in end of life care are non-verbal, making the relational aspect of family members being pain reporters an essential practice of care and an integral aspect to quality care at the end of life.

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This relational aspect of family and volunteer involvement speaks to a feminist aspect of relational care, which is not adequately addressed in the current biomedical space. Feminist bioethics aims at going beyond the diagnosis and analysis of a problem, and points towards a future of social and political change (Donchin and Scully 2015, Feminist Methodologies, para. 2-3). Since the locus of expertise does not fall strictly within the medical expert's realm nor strictly within the realm of the patient and physician, the power is distributed to the nexus of people connected to the dying persons. In a classical biomedical model, the locus of expertise is the physician or medical professional. In contrast, an end of life relational approach distributes the power of expertise to family members, loved ones and even volunteers. If it is true that the power to report and address pain and symptoms management lies with the family, then it is the caretaker's job to facilitate that management and make it happen in order for the patients to receive adequate care. If a health institution fails to facilitate relational caregiving, then the collective responsibility of pain management is exclusively given to the medical caretaker in a given biomedical space. Nevertheless, biomedical spaces are built from individualistic principles, which do not accommodate end of life care values. Not only do the COVID-19 visitor restrictions directly and actively prevent quality care during the dying process by imposing barriers to proper care for family members and by prohibiting collective relational pain management, but I will now argue that the COVID-19 visitor restrictions implicitly do so by increasing the distress of healthcare providers. 2.2 Caregivers Distress I argue that medical professionals and end of life caregivers have acquired a disproportional amount of distress from the COVID-19 visitor restrictions compared to other care spaces because they have to make up for the substantial relational aspect crucial to end of life care. This is not to discredit the distress that COVID-19 has invoked in all fringes of health care workers, but instead highlight the relational necessity in end of life care. Subsequently, end of life caregivers (whether it be palliative care nurses or long-term caregivers) have to navigate how to provide relational care in a biomedical space. Nurses have to field video calls, learn how to use technology, organize advanced planning with family, and fend off distressed family members angry at not being able to visit their loved ones. Additionally, they must keep up with the frequently changing restrictions and find new ways to create medical information sharing given the imposed restrictions.

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An example of this can be seen in the ability of other medical branches, such as emergency medicine, to adapt to the COVID-19 restrictions smoothly, whereas relational models of care have not been able to so easily adapt. Emergency room facilities have created and designed outdoor tents for patients with COVID-19 related symptoms, while not compromising the ability to provide adequate emergency services to those with unrelated COVID-19 symptoms. For instance, if I broke my leg, I would be able to access emergency services with little worry of COVID-19 exposure. However, if I was a non-verbal resident or patient in either long term care or palliative care, I would not have the care of my loved ones to provide necessary qualitative insight, to address impeccable pain management, and for them to tell the medical professionals that I am in pain. Relational medical settings struggle to adapt to the new challenges posed by the COVID-19 visitor restrictions because biomedical institutions are spaces that operationalize policy and models of care which are rooted in individualism. The reasons for increased distress in care workers indicate the tension created when a relational model of care inhabits a biomedical space. These biomedical institutions do not have the systemic resources to provide relational care because they are in a biomedical space under individualistic care ethics. That is to say, the health care's institutional infrastructure, because they are in a biomedical space, does not provide these caretakers with the skills, tools, or resources necessary to provide quality care. 3.0 Pandemic Response in Health Care: Two Guiding Principles There are two grounding ethical assumptions which I will take to be normative building blocks for the remainder of my argument regarding the public health care authority and their pandemic response to implement the COVID-19 visitor restrictions. The implemented pandemic response should rigorously adhere to the following two assumptions: 1) The pandemic response cannot compromise the ability to provide quality care to unrelated COVID-19 patients in institutionalized biomedical practice spaces. (This includes but is not limited to: acute care, emergency services, surgery services, end of life care, and long-term care). 2) The health care system should have a pandemic response plan that provides the resources, tools and skills necessary to provide adequate care for patients without compromising or exposing vulnerable groups to potential viral exposure.

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As necessary disease prevention operations, the pandemic responses echo an individualistic model of care that dominates the values of relational care. Wynne, Petrova and Coghlan suggest that amid the COVID-19 pandemic the predominate ethical approach being employed is “an ethical lens shaped by clinical bioethics, with its concern for the rights and well-being of individual patients and their interactions with healthcare providers” (2020, 515). This kind of lens is fundamentally individualistic (as previously discussed). Kenny, Sherwin and Baylis argue that pandemics ethics has a narrow vision whereby the analysis of ethical concerns amid a pandemic is steeping in an individual rights discourse inherited from clinical bioethics (2010, 5). In 2018, the WHO released a guide on "integrating palliative care and symptom relief into the response to humanitarian emergencies and crises," which was the first guidance of its kind on the topic (Wynne, Petrova, and Coghlan 2020, 514). According to Wynne, Petrova and Coghlan, the WHO guide took a narrowly clinical bioethics perspective and missed crucial moral dilemmas concerning limitations of the material and human resources, patient prioritization, euthanasia, and legacy inequalities, discrimination and power imbalances (2020, 514). Moreover, in applying a clinical bioethical lens, this WHO guideline failed to account for the fundamental relational model of care that palliative care and long-term care requirements for quality care. Every practice of care in a biomedical space ought to be equipped with the supplies and resources necessary to provide adequate care in the case of a pandemic emergency. The guidelines and pandemic preparedness should have been in place in long-term care and palliative care; the increased workload that caretakers have experienced should have been accounted for to provide proper facilitation for alternative relational modes of care. The public health authority’s decision to implement the COVID-19 restrictions did not adversely affect clinical biomedical spaces as critically as they did in end of life care spaces because clinical biomedical spaces are fundamentally governed by an individualistic ethical framework. On the other hand, long-term care and palliative care, which are practices founded by relational theory (but habit biomedical space), were adversely affected by these restrictions. I have argued that this is due to the nature of individualism that guides the biomedical model's ethical theory. Moreover, the ethical theory that guides biomedical space is not compatible with end-of-life care values. The most significant difference between these two models of care can best be explained through their contradicting accounts of autonomy; where the biomedical space understands autonomy confined to the

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individual, while end of life care adopts a relational understanding of autonomy, which fundamentally includes others. Accommodating to care needs looks different depending on the ethical theory and principles of a particular care model. By not acknowledging the relational nature of an end of life care model in determining a theoretical approach to care, the dominant biomedical individualistic model overpowers relational values. End-of-life care gives weight to communities and family members' lived experiences and resources, whereby dying is a process and not a finite event. As it currently stands, long-term care planning and delivery do not emphasize the relationships between residents, their families, and staff as much as it does the biomedical aspects of care (physical clinical). §4 – Concluding Remarks It is paramount to recognize the moral and ethical necessities of palliative and end of life care. A failure to fully realize patients, families, and care workers' qualitative experience during end-of-life care may contribute to further distress, complicated grief, moral distress, and burnout (Wallace et al. 2020). The COVID-19 visitor restrictions have revealed that end-of-life care relies on a relational understanding of autonomy that is distinct from other healthcare branches occupying biomedical spaces. Whereby the account of relational autonomy is to be understood as a process involving the lived experience of patients, family members, and communities. The what it’s like for all parties involved in the dying process is a distinctively qualitative phenomena that is easily overlooked by a biomedical system that grounds its ethics in quantitative principles. Capturing and operationalizing the qualitative aspects within end of life care is prudent if these models of care are to adapt to biomedical spaces in a way that does not jeopardize quality of care. My hope is that care for the elderly and those approaching the end of life journey begins to take a more central position in everyday post-pandemic public health policy decisions and starts to play a more prominent role in our individual thinking and decision making. 4.1 Some Limitations to This Paper This paper aimed to answer why our populations approaching end of life were so adversely affected by the COVID-19 visitor restrictions.

However, this paper did not address the

psychological vulnerability of dying populations in relation to COVID-19 visitor restrictions. Moreover, I would like to note that the COVID-19 visitor restrictions are necessary precautions.

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This paper is not meant to dismiss the crucial role that empirical work in disease control entails. Instead, this paper worked to explain how the visitor restrictions, in themselves, prohibited end of life care for family members, patients and caused moral distress for caretakers. Ultimately, this paper aims to start a discussion around the ways in which health care systems institutionalize ethical theories and show that we need to recognize the values that underpin specific forms of care. Only then can we begin to build ethical systems and frameworks according to those values. A failure to recognize the underpinning values in formulating models of care and policies will create inherently contradictory spaces with systemic barriers imposed on the care practices that are incompatible with the governing space. Long-term care and palliative care are examples of a relational practice of care that face these systemic barriers in virtue of occupying a biomedical space. The relational approach to autonomy, which speaks to palliative care's qualitative and caring aspects, is faced with the challenge of adapting to how quickly they were moved into this biomedical space and clinical bioethical pandemic response. 4.2 Where to Go From Here The biomedical model is an unfit ethical theory for providing care at the end of life. End of life care does not aim to ‘solve’ or ‘fix’ physical or biological ailments but instead focuses on the uniquely qualitative aspects of living. If we are to alleviate the contradictory care space that present-day end of life care spaces face in virtue of occupying biomedical institutions, then we must accept dying as a distinct process that is fundamentally relational. There is no physiological remedy or finite solution in caring for the dying, which makes applying a biomedical model contraindicated. Embracing dying as a community-based process will celebrate the relational aspects of end of life care that are currently stifled by their residence in biomedical institutions. A model emerging in Canada’s palliative care developments is the Compassionate Communities model (CC model) ) (Tompkins 2018). The CC model is a community-based ethical approach that promotes the idea that caregiving, dying, death, and grieving are everybody’s responsibility. Rather than focusing only on patients whose death is imminent, this palliative care approach includes compassionate and effective palliative care for all to better support their quality of life. The CC model for palliative care requires medical professionals, caregivers, and community members to be included

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in the continuum of care, creating a wrap-around effect to better support the patient and family approaching end of life. The COVID-19 restrictions pointed to the philosophical biomedical roots that most end of life care spaces have ended up occupying over the development of end of life care in Canada. End of life care needs an ethical framework that recognizes the quality of life of not just patients but caregivers, families, and community members. Moving forward, the CC model serves as a promising framework for promoting quality care during end of life. However, adopting the CC model comes with its challenges. To adopt this framework means we as a society must drastically change the culture of reluctance surrounding death, dying, and grieving in Canada. Igniting enduring social change around our perceptions of death and dying is essential if we are to create a culture of compassion and shared responsibility; one that, at its philosophical core, represents a feminist relational approach to end of life care ethics.

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Wallace, Cara L., et al. 2020. “Grief During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Considerations for Palliative Care Providers.” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 60, no. 1: e70– e76. Wikler, Daniel, and Dan W. Brock. 2008. “Population-Level Bioethics: Mapping A New Agenda.” In Global Bioethics: Issues of Conscience for the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Ronald Michael Green, Aine Donovan and Steven A. Jauss. London: Oxford University Press. World Health Organization. August 5, 2020. Palliative Care. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/palliative-care. Williams, Allison M, et al. 2010. “Tracking the Evolution of Hospice Palliative Care in Canada: A Comparative Case Study Analysis of Seven Provinces.” BMC Health Services Research 10, no. 1. Wynne, Keona Jeane, Mila Petrova, and Rachel Coghlan. 2020. “Dying Individuals and Suffering Populations: Applying a Population-Level Bioethics Lens to Palliative Care in Humanitarian Contexts: Before, During and After the Covid-19 Pandemic.” Journal of Medical Ethics 46, no. 8: 514–25.

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