Why this Book:  I had not heard of this book when Doug Watterson sent it to me as a gift, with the note that it was one of the best books he’d ever read.  Doug is an infantry officer in the Army, who used to be in the Navy.  Respecting Doug, I said, OK – I’ll read it.  Glad I did

Summary in 5 Sentences: The author discusses in three separate chapters, three fundamental human archetypes (he doesn’t use that word) that he has identified as representing ideals in Western Civilization: the Hero, the Saint, and the Thinker.  These archetypes he associates with the Soul – concern about and willing to sacrifice oneself and one’s worldly well-being for something bigger than oneself. He also identifies another archetype which he believes has some Ideal qualities –  romantic love as portrayed by the Romantic Poets of the 19th century.  In contrast to these, he discusses the cult of the Self  which entices us away from such ideals – the pragmatic striving for what’s good for me- comfort, security, health, pleasure, longevity. And he offers two separate chapters on individuals who he identifies as legitimizing this very pragmatic (and human)  approach to life, arguing that selfless ideals are unrealistic, often misguided, and not natural to us:  Shakespeare and Freud. 

My Impressions:  Engrossing and powerful. Thought provoking and challenging. The author is thoughtful and very well versed in the humanities and makes a convincing case based on empirical evidence, and his thorough study of the examples he cites. At the bottom of this post, I argue a bit with his premise. 

I have recommended this book to my most thoughtful friends who I believe are introspective enough to be willing to challenge  and reexamine their own values and decisions in life – because indeed this book challenges the life style and values most of us have chosen.  Most people are unwilling to look too closely at such issues – though church leaders, and secular moral leaders regularly challenge us to do so.  

Two sentences of his that I believe sum up much of this book: 

• “Often throughout this study, Self has been understood as the state that stifles Soul.  The pursuit of power and pleasure and social ascendancy block the hope of achieving unity-of- being through contemplation, compassion, bravery, or the use of imagination.” (p217)
• “Self often yearns for Soul. Those who live in the State of Self – the state that takes the fulfillment of desire as it’s ultimate horizon – understand, on a level often too deep for words, that their lives lack an essential quality.”  (p217)

I chose to read Self and Soul  first thing in the morning, when I was fresh, after a cup of coffee (or two,) and  could only read 10 or so pages at a time.  I highlighted a lot of it as particularly cogent, insightful and useful for me to consider.  There is a lot in this book.  Below is a brief summary:

The Heroic Ideal – also often represented by the value of “courage” is exemplified by Homer’s Achilles, who chose to live up to his ideal of the courageous warrior, though he knew it would cost him his life.  He sacrificed the opportunity for family, secuity comfort and life to live up this ideal. He contrasted Achilles with Odysseus, the ultimate practical man.

The Saintly ideal – also represented by the value of “compassion” is exemplified by Jesus, Buddha, and Confucius. Each of these in different times and cultures, explicitly renounced Self as defined in this book (what I’ve previously called WIIFM – What’s In It For Me?)  in order to show compassion for and take care of others, and to pursue a higher purpose.  Each chose to live a life consistent with their ideal values that subordinate personal comfort and well-being to the well-being of others and the greater good. 

The Thinker Ideal – also represented by the search for Truth, is exemplified by Plato, Socrates, and Nietzsche.  He discusses at some length also Emerson and Thoreau as well.   This is the contemplative ideal – the person who will not abide any deception – to self or others.  The thinker’s pursuit of a clear eyed view of reality and Truth – as best we can know it – are paramount.    If we think of the loner philosopher we are confronted with Socrates who was very social – to the point that it cost him his life.  He would not compromise his freedom to explore and search for Truth in return for any comfort, including to save his life.  The author notes that the thinker is often a wanderer, who is afraid that marriage and family would be a poison that would force him to compromise his  search for Truth with the demands of Self – and family. 

The Romantic Poets:  represented selfless romantic love as a source of energy and motivation for subordinating Self to the other.  Edmundson is equivocal on this point but points to how certain of the Romantic Poets – Blake and Yeats in particular – sublimated their erotic passions toward their beloved to humanity and the greater good.  The willingness to put the other – and then the others – above oneself, was worth noting as selfless ideal.

But he is ambivalent. He concludes this chapter noting that the Romantic quest has possibilities which have not been “completely explored, it’s validity far from decided. Is the Romantic quest ultimately an affair of Self or of Soul? We do not entirely know. But we still live within its dangers and possibilities. ” (p216)

Advocates for the primacy of Self:

Shakespeare. Edmundson makes a case for Shakespeare as the people’s voice for middle class practical values.  He explores many of Shakespeare’s best known and some lesser known plays and  points out how the idealists seem never to prosper and are always victims to the schemes and cunning of the more pragmatic actors in his plays.  He was playing to his audience and amplifying their prejudices – his audience consisted mostly of poor and lower middle class attendees who had little love for, and good reason not to trust the supposed elites who claimed to espouse high ideals.  “For though it may be difficult to see what Shakespeare valued …it is palpable what he condemns:  chivalry, honor, nobility, the heroic code.  Titus, Hotspur, Othello, Macbeth, Timon, Coriolanus, Caesar, Lear, Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, and the entire sorry cast of Troilus and Cressida leave this beyond doubt'” (p 172)  But there is an exception.  “To this rule there is a salient exception. In Hamlet – the poet’s greatest creation -one often encounters the free play of intellect. At times he thinks pragmatically…..But he can also think in quest of the Truth…to explore what might be true for others, true perhaps for all men, at all times.”  (p174)

The chapter is entitled “Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self” and Edmundson makes the case that Shakespeare is the best known early voice of the movement toward the modern, practical man, setting the stage for Dickens, Freud and others later.  “Few can be as enchanted with honor as the man who has had to thrust it aside in order to get where he is going in the world….Hal (Prince Henry, Henry V) is Shakespeare’s primary man – and he is, perhaps , the future.” (p183)

Freud.  Edmundson states that “Freud took the Soul State seriously. He feared it and in some measure, was drawn to it.”  But after close examination, Freud decided that its allure was a pie-in-the-sky deception and could only lead to disillusionment and unhappiness.  So he put forth a version of the integrated Self as his Ideal.   Edmundson calls Freuds authentic man “the antiheroic hero.”  

This chapter goes into Freud’s  triumvirate of the Id, Ego and Super Ego. Through psychoanalysis, Freud seeks to bring those three into harmony – the Id being reality and the external world that each of us must confront and live in;  the Ego being how one lives in the world, striving to fulfill one’s desires and goals, and to find compromise and balance between the demands of the world and other people;  and the the Ego must contend with the often tyrannical demands of the Super Ego – the parental overseer, always judging and harassing.  The Ego he argues must be “the great negotiator” between these three forces.  Freud believed that we are not born, nor designed to be “happy” and psychoanalysis helps us accept and learn to live with dissatisfaction, unhappiness, not getting our way – and to be “less unhappy” than most of us actually are.  Freud has dismissed the joys of State of Soul as a fantasy and a mirage. He advocated investing in self, in such a way that helps us live in this challenging world of practical limitations. 

My thoughts: This book challenged me. That’s why I liked it so much.

I think the author makes an excellent case for how Western – especially American – culture has evolved.  We prize and honor those who are winners – no matter how they win.   Except in the most egregious cases, character doesn’t seem to matter as much as one’s ability to win and succeed.  Aristotle had a great phrase:  Clever men know how to get what they want. Wise men know the right things to want.  It seems we honor cleverness more than character and honor. This book is about the tension between the two.  

The book implicitly begs each of us to ask when, and how often we fudge our values, fudge the truth, or don’t do what we know or believe to be the really “right” thing. We avoid the hard right decision, for convenience, in order to get something we want or to avoid accountability.  Hard question to ask ourselves,  and for those of us who are honest, the answer is often uncomfortable. 

And while I honor and respect Edmundson describing this Soul – Self duality,  he doesn’t until the very end point to where these are not necessarily two absolutes.  I was waiting for this, and it was not until the end that he recognizes that the realities of daily life require practical skills and compromises, and notes in reference to a woman struggling with the practicalities of Self required to take care of her family, that “in every act of courage or compassion or true thought, she will feel something within her begin to swell, and she’ll feel a joy that passes beyond mere happiness…intimations of a finer and higher life…and she’ll feel then the resurrection of her Soul.” (p 259) 

I believe he is saying we need to have and hold on to Ideals, that we must feed our Souls by listening to and honoring them, rather than discarding them as most people expect us to do, in  order to follow the practical path to meet social expectations and do well for our Selves.  We should hold on to the ideal of the State of the Soul in order to at least sometimes to get beyond What’s In It For Me. To have a family and live in society, compromises are often necessary.  But the tendency is to “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” and give up ideals entirely or compromise them to such a degree that they are never an inconvenience..

A couple of other quibbles> 

• I could argue that some of those who seem to follow the ideal are actually largely driven by ego – and I’d claim that about Achilles.  His “Self” was all about his reputation and his legacy – about him becoming immortal as an icon.  I know of people who went to Vietnam with the explicit intention of earning a Medal of Honor – out of Self motivations – while many/most MoH recipients indeed abandoned all hopes for Self in the inerest of duty and their fellow soldiers/sailors.  
• He doesn’t mention artists or musicians – or those people so dedicated to creating beauty that they forgo most pleasures of civilized life. Great musicians who refuse to make popular music that would earn them a living; great artists who paint what inspires them and fits their own visions of beauty. So many such artists and musician have lived their ideal and created in obscurity and gone unappreciated in their own lives. 

Of course we need practical men and women  in the real world.  We need those who are willing to make some compromises to achieve a greater good for the greater number.   Idealists who are unwilling to compromise to fulfill pragmatic objectives do not get elected to public office, nor succeed if they do. Politics is the art of compromise, and while those idealists who Edmundson praises serve as noteworthy examples for our character, leadership that hopes to make a difference in the real world, has to have a very pragmatic component. 

I see the Self – Soul tension as being not bipolar but on a spectrum. There are some things even the most vile of us won’t do out of principle, and there are some compromises that the most principled of leaders will choose, out of respect for the greater good, or those who may not share their spotless idealism. The salient question for me is not whether I am a self-centered pragmatist, or a self-sacrificing idealist, but where on the spectrum between the two I most try to live my life.  I am sure I’m not alone is admitting that there have been times when I was more one than the other. Where am I now? Where do I want to live in the future?

In ethical philosophy this tension is described as being between the philosophy of Deontology as professed by Immanuel Kant (principle is everything), and Utilitarianism, as professed by John Stuart Mill (consequences are everything.). The debate between the principled act and what’s best for the greater good for the greatest number has been going on for centuries.  Even the most principled leaders must sometimes sacrifice principle for the greater long term good. 

I would have liked this book more if he’d looked at some more modern well-known characters – like Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt, or Bertrand Russell, or Elon Musk, or Greta Thunberg, or Conrad Adenauer or even Woodrow Wilson – and how their pragmatism served their idealism.  I’d like Edmundson to discuss where they were pragmatic on some issues in order to fulfill more important or significant ideals.  Or when they had to violate one principle in order to serve another more important one. 

I recently saw Kevin Costner’s special on Yosemite which included a short piece on how John Muir influenced Teddy Roosevelt. John Muir was an idealist in the mold that Edmundson describes – something of an ascetic, very much self sacrificing for his ideals. Teddy Roosevelt had a huge ego and his ideals were tied to his ego.  Teddy Roosevelt was inspired by John Muir and then had the practical political skills to fudge the rules, bypass bureaucratic restrictions with some half truths, in the interest in the greater good of protecting our natural spaces, and which eventually resulted in creating our national park system.

Paul Petzold coined a term which has become the foundation of the National Outdoor Leadership School which he called “Expedition Behavior” or EB.  EB requires that the good of the group be paramount, BUT each of us must take care of ourselves, often first, in order to be a productive and contributing member of the group. If you are part of a group or team, if you don’t take care of yourself, you become a liability to the group. The good of Self and Soul merge.  Edmundson’s book was clearly not concerned with people not taking care of themselves, but lamented the loss of ideals of the Soul as a counterbalance to what he sees as primarily Self serving, pragmatic behavior and values in today’s culture. 

Back to Aristotle.  Ideally we want the Wise AND Clever man or woman to lead us.  They are hard to find…..How to live in the world, with friends, family and community AND ALSO have the joys of communion with higher values, ideals, and the ineffable.