THYMOS BE DE PLACE PT. 4

The last installment of THYMOS BE DE PLACE appeared in 2009, while the last time I wrote about Frank Fukuyama's magisterial application of Plato's "thymos" concept in a theoretical manner was 2015's MEETINGS WITH RECOGNIZABLE PRESENCES, which focused upon Fukuyama's extrapolation of "recognition" as the process by which human beings experience the abstract faculty of *thymos.*  

In contrast, the concept of literary sadism has continued to crop up fairly consistently over the years, but only in THYMOS Part 3 did I draw explicit parallels between the operations of thymos as described by Fukuyama (who does not address sadism in any way in END OF HISTORY) and George Bataille's formulation that the world of Sadean thrills belonged in the category of non-productive, esteem-related human activities.

Bataille's primary insight for literary criticism is the image he uses to present eroticism and violence as equivalent phenomena: "sensuous frenzy" (p. 192). Whether this adequately describes real-life sex and violence does not matter for the purposes of literary criticism, but I suggest that Bataillean "frenzy" does describe how fictional sex and violence impact upon the majority of readers. Bataille doesn't substantially address literature in EROTISM, except for the sensualized violence-scenarios presented by the Marquis de Sade, but elsewhere he makes the trope of "transgression against the norm" his hallmark, so I feel secure in adapting his terms for the purpose of literary criticism.

What EROTISM makes clear is that even though one may be experiencing fantasies of sex and/or violence through an intellectualized medium (Plato's "copy of a copy"), this is still the essence of a human (as opposed to animal) activity. He does not, as noted before, directly relate this to the subject of thymos, but because fiction is not the "real thing," it is not eros in the raw. Rather, it's closer to the nature of thymos in the same way that the sexual conqueror's boast, his tall tale of sexual conquest, represents thymotic rather than erotic stimulation.        

 

Most of my descriptions of sensual violence in literature have also taken the Bataillean POV. However, I have in various essays specified that there is a distinction between COMMON AND UNCOMMON EVIL. In short, the common form of evil is people doing bad things to another for the purpose of either gaining or protecting some concrete possession, even one's own bodily integrity, while the uncommon form is motivated primarily by the desire of esteem-based recognition. 

Thymos, as mentioned in previous essays, is one of the constituent parts of Plato's tripartite soul, which one Wiki essay sums up thusly:

• nous ("intellect", "reason"), which is or should be the controlling part which subjugates the appetites with the help of thumos.
• thumos ("passion"), the emotional element in virtue of which we feel joy, amusement, etc. (the Republic IV, 439e);
• epithumia ("appetite", "affection"), to which are ascribed bodily desires;

It now occurs to me that if the "uncommon form of evil" aligns with what Plato calls "spiritedness," then the "common form of evil" would align with the concept of "appetite." Further, though I'm in no way an expert on Greek language, I note that the word "epithumia" uses the same word-element found in "thumos," but qualified by the prefix "epi-." There are several contexts for the prefix "epi-" but here it seems to agree with this one:

1. Secondary: a consequence, by-product, additional, or lesser version.

   epilanguage is a second language used regularly for some purpose or purposes, epiphenomenon is an activity, process, or state that is the result of another, epitoxoid is a toxoid that generates less of an immune response than an original one

This would seem to accord with many if not all Greek oppositions between "appetite' and "passion," where the former is of lesser philosophical consequence than the latter.   

And now, with all these considerations in mind, I want to specify that only the "uncommon" operations of sadism are thymotic in nature, while the "common" ones are epithymotic.

This formulation may have a number of applications but I'll wrap up with just two, both from the manga URUSEI YATSURA, one of my "Domme Coms."   

Now, in URUSEI the male lead Ataru is the one who most often suffers comical outpourings of violence. However, some of these violent attacks are *epithymotic,* in that the attacker is retaliating in order to protect himself or herself. For instance, when Ataru is in full horndog mode, and seeks to grope a woman like Sakura, he gets slapped, punched, kicked or otherwise battered. Throughout the series Sakura has absolutely no romantic interest in Ataru, so whenever she hits him, it's for the "common" purpose of maintaining her bodily integrity by repelling unwanted attentions. This may not be exactly what Plato had in mind with respect to "appetite," but the correlation makes sense when seen through the lenses of Bataille and Fukuyama.

In contrast, the reigning champion for torturing Ataru is Lum, the alien wench who falls in love with him and demands that he reciprocate. As extreme as her actions are, they flow from a desire for thymotic recognition; that Ataru should recognize Lum as his one true love. Of course, if Ataru wasn't capable of feeling love for Lum, his continued tortures would just become dull, but author Takahashi is careful to keep hinting that on some level Ataru does reciprocate. However, he refuses to capitulate to Lum's attacks, and so continues to flirt with numerous other women, even though he has almost no chance with any of them and usually gets served just as Sakura serves him. So all of Lum's attacks, or her stratagems to otherwise manipulate her reluctant lover, flow from *thymotic* passion, which, while still comic, embodies the uncommon nature of love rather than common motivations like gain or self-protection.  

If and when I write further about these concepts, I'll probably cease to use any of Bataille's terms for these opposed operations and invoke "thymotic and epithymotic" instead. And as for what if any function Plato's concept of "reason" might play in these literary domains, that's a subject for some other essay.