Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals

by Mark Edmundson

An ARTery Best Book of the Year
An Art of Manliness Best Book of the Year

In a culture that has become progressively more skeptical and materialistic, the desires of the individual self stand supreme, Mark Edmundson says. We spare little thought for the great ideals that once gave life meaning and worth. Self and Soul is an impassioned effort to defend the values of the Soul.

“An impassioned critique of Western society, a relentless assault on contemporary complacency, shallowness, competitiveness and self-regard…Throughout Self and Soul , Edmundson writes with a Thoreau-like incisiveness and fervor…[A] powerful, heartfelt book.”
―Michael Dirda, Washington Post

“[Edmundson’s] bold and ambitious new book is partly a demonstration of what a ‘real education’ in the humanities, inspired by the goal of ‘human transformation’ and devoted to taking writers seriously, might look like…[It] quietly sets out to challenge many educational pieties, most of the assumptions of recent literary studies―and his own chosen lifestyle.”
―Mathew Reisz, Times Higher Education

“Edmundson delivers a welcome championing of humanistic ways of thinking and living.”
― Kirkus Reviews

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Spirituality, Self Help, History

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2015

Reviews

[Antigone · Rating 3 out of 5]

University professor Mark Edmundson presented a course to his students entitled, "Literary Ideals." In it, he posited that the younger generation was no longer being offered the alternative of living a life of the soul. The life of the self had become paramount, with its drive toward the creation of wealth, success, safety and personal gratification. A life of the soul, in contrast, involved an existence fueled by ideals. He introduced three examples of such a life: The Hero, The Saint, and The Thinker. His course became quite popular and produced enough reasoned discourse to promote its replication in this book.

Edmundson is an impressively well-educated individual. Each of his Ideal options are explored through ancient texts and evidence. His hero is grounded in Homer; the focus honed on Achilles and Hector. His saint cites the teachings of Buddha and Christ, with a brief nod to Confucius. Plato predominates the discussion of his thinker, supported by a healthy number of philosophers who've built upon his work. Once these ideal-roles are fully fleshed out, he moves on to discuss the man he believes is primarily responsible for casting them into shadow. This would be William Shakespeare (and yes, as it turns out, he has a bit of a bone to pick with Harold Bloom). A distant second on his list of perpetrators is Sigmund Freud, who is also given his due:

One of the main functions of Shakespeare's great inheritor, Freud, is to redescribe the ideals of compassion and courage and the exercise of imagination as pathologies and forms of delusion. (He will also help redefine thought as that which demystifies, rather than that which inspires and exalts.) Freud makes the middle-class people who live by half measures feel much better, allowing them to understand that the virtues that intimidated them are forms of sickness and that normality - clear-eyed and stable - is the true achievement. What a reversal! What a transvaluation of values. What victory for those who wish to live as long and securely as possible.

I imagine this material was all very juicy in that college classroom. You can picture the discussions. Dramatic. Evocative. Minds engaging right and left. Ideas evolving in that delectable crucible of spirited communal debate. Would that some such fire had made it to the page. But we're far, too far, from the precipice of revelation here. Where there should be a continuance of lusty wrangling with concepts, principles, beliefs, there is now merely reporting. This is what I have determined...this is the position as it stands... Our author has finished thinking - which, in my opinion, you can't afford to do in books like this.

It's a lot like looking at slides of someone's extraordinary European vacation.

Must have been fun. Guess you had to be there.

[Jeffrey (Akiva) Savett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most devastating books I've read.

Edmundson is an English Professor at UVA. The book doubles as a polemic against the self absorption of our society and a literary analysis in which Edmundson shines. But don't be put off by the latter. You need not be an academic to enjoy this book. You don't even have to have read the texts he discusses.

In a nutshell, Edmundson's thesis is that our present culture only presents one way of living, one set of values (or maybe anti-values) to pursue. This "way" is the way of the middle-class Self…the way of living for security, safety, satisfaction, and success---success as defined by materialism. He suggests that things weren't always this way. As evidence, he presents four Soul Ideals which have almost completely gone out of favor in the academy and in our society at large: the Warrior, the Thinker, the Saint, and the Poet. What links these ideal types is their dedication to the Soul as opposed to the Self. But Edmundson isn't going supernatural here…by "soul" he just means the NOT SELF…a unity of consciousness with the larger world, nature, and humanity. The representative studies he provides for each type are, respectively, Achilles and Hector, Socrates, Buddha and Jesus, and William Blake.

INCREDIBLY interesting for me was his chapter on Shakespeare. Edmundson claims that Shakespeare is the non-idealist par excellence. Shakespeare doesn't TAKE ANY positions or advocate any lifestyle possibilities AT ALL. For Edmundson, the destructive thing he does is completely tear down all previous models of heroism, compassion, and faith. I loved that chapter. I've long felt, despite being an English teacher myself, that Shakespeare's (with the noted exception of Hamlet, which Edmundson ALSO notes) plays seem to be missing SOMETHING. I usually attribute this distaste to a lack of depth or motivation in the characters. There is absolutely no denying Shakespeare lyrical brilliance; but as Edmundson quotes Goethe as saying "It is easy to be brilliant when you don't believe in anything." His discussion of Othello and Iago is particularly salient on this point.

The book ends with Edmundson's brilliant polemic against the SELF culture we live in. Importantly, Edmundson doesn't argue that we all need to become Achilles. Or that there aren't disturbing things Achilles does and says. In one part of the Shakespeare chapter, Edmundson suggests that Othello's chief STRENGTH is his INABILITY to see multiple perspectives…that Othello's nobility comes from his univocal way of looking at the world. Othello, unlike Shakespeare or Iago totally LACKS Keats's famous "negative capability"--the ability to hold heterogeneous conflicting thoughts in one's mind without searching/reaching for an answer. I have always considered Negative Capability a GOOD thing…a sign of wisdom and perspective. Edmundson turns all that on its head, suggesting that such thinking gives way to the cult of the Self, expedience, and middle-class pragmatism which seeks to stay alive but live for no real reason. As I began saying in this paragraph, one needn't swallow all of this whole. In fact, I don't believe Edmundson does (for one thing, he has a family…he spends much of the book discussing how family has been extension of Selfhood and middle-class drudgery which distracts us from ideals). His point is that the conversation about HOW AND WHY to live needs to have a side which has been all but eliminated, and worse, has been eliminated by those in academia and religious life who should be raising these issues, not hiding them.

I recommend this without reservation. It is revelatory and challenging.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure if Mark Edmundson actually makes compelling arguments in his books, or if I just naturally agree with him and delight in having someone build up an academic case around my existing beliefs.

Either way, Edmundson rails against how our society has taken the great ideals and virtues of our time, and has reduced them to a safe commercial simulacrum (instead of doing heroic deeds, we watch movies and are vicariously heroic). He writes about exemplars of ideals, like Jesus, Achilles, Plato, and Blake, people who live for the soul, and contrasts them with today's disenchanted people, who all live for the Self. In the place of living lives charged with meaning, Edmundson argues, we live by the mediocre middle class values of living as long, as pleasurably, and as (financially) prosperously as we can. And that is why life feels so empty. In this, Edmundson tries to make a case for living a life dedicated to an ideal.

Interestingly, he accuses Shakespeare and his heir, Sigmund Freud, of slaying and reducing all ideals and noble virtues, down to a matter of folly and delusions. They are visionaries of negative capability and reductionism. Edmundson very deliberately set out to write a polemic, if you haven't noticed. You will also notice, if you read a few of Edmundson's books, that he can't seem to write anything without at least disagreeing with Harold Bloom a hundred times.

If nothing else, you will be entertained by Edmundson quixotic tilts at today's society. But if you are anything like me, you will be inspired to cast off what Blake calls your "mind-forg'd manacles" and try to live more beautifully.

[Jordyn Williams]

I don’t feel like I can give this book a rating because I don’t think I’m well-read enough in classic literature to have truly appreciated it. The thesis can be found in the last 10 pages, which was a concept that resonated with me. However, the preceding 250 pages took me back to the semester I spent in college as an English major. If you are well-versed in classic literature and enjoy reading literary analysis / critiques of our modern culture, I would recommend it.

[Peter Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals by Mark Edmundson


This review would have taken a completely different direction if I hadn’t delved into Marxism and Hegelian philosophy between reading this book and writing it. But I did, and I can’t ignore the Hegelian subtext. This is particularly strange since Hegel gets a single mention in this book.[1]

Mark Edmundson’s thesis in Self and Soul is that the turn to modernity evacuated idealism from society and replaced it with pragmatic bourgeoisie virtues of moderation, skepticism, and material comfort. The “Soul” was replaced by the “Self,” where “soul” means an integrated existence in which the person is identified with something that transcends personal existence, and “self” means a personal existence without such transcendent meaning.

In making his case, Edmundson surveys religion, literature, and philosophy through different stages. First, he looks at the heroic age and the Ideal of the Warrior, specifically, Achilles in Homer. He then moves to the Ideal of the Saint, using Christ, Confucius, and Buddha as his exemplars. Finally, he introduces the Ideal of the Thinker, featuring Socrates. These three sections are wonderfully insightful. Edmundson offers fruitful observations that deepen understanding of the texts and characters. Let me offer this perspicacious examination of Homer:

The final match is in spear throwing, and Agamemnon is to be one of the contestants. Against him will be matched at least one other expert in the art. Stop, says Achilles. It is unnecessary to go further. We all understand that no one can throw a spear like Agamemnon. “Atrides—well we know how far you excel us all; / no one can match your strength at throwing spears” (XXIII, 986–987). Agamemnon is the winner by my decree, Achilles declares. He will have the prize, the prize I have set aside. The act is one of aggressive deference. Agamemnon wins, but he wins only at the pleasure of Achilles. He does not get to demonstrate his excellence to the army. He doesn’t have the chance to regain some of the prestige he has sacrificed to the slayer of Hector. As it is now, Agamemnon could have lost the contest. No one really knows. The king is honored, yes, but the honor is received at the hands of Achilles, the monarch of the moment. It is a brilliant stroke. By exalting Agamemnon, Achilles humiliates him. But this is what a man can do who has restored himself to the full glory of his fighter’s pride.

Edmundson, Mark. Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals (pp. 44-45). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

That’s impressive, and something you probably missed when you read the Iliad. Edmundson is a careful, experienced reader who has thought about the texts. He inspires the reader to take a fresh look at the texts.[2]

The ideals of the Warrior, Saint, and Thinker exemplify what Edmundson calls “Soul States,” specifically, courage, compassion, and serious thought. In contrast, the “State of Self” is mere selfishness. In discussing the ideal of the Saint, Edmundson writes:

The man who pursues wealth pursues many ends. He wants this suit of clothes, that conveyance, such and such a dwelling. But the saint seeks one thing. The saint seeks a life full of meaningful compassion. The acquisition of goods, the piling up of wealth, only serves to draw force from his proper pursuit. The saint lives—or tries to live—beyond desire. The saint lives for hope.

For the individual who lives in the Self, desire is all determining. He wants certain precise and particular objects. His life is determined by wants. He could almost write his autobiography based on his desire for this or that object and his success (or failure) in attaining it. He wanted a better house, he wanted a swimming pool, a second car was needful—and lo, the event came, and he had what he wished. But the having was as nothing.

Edmundson, Mark. Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals (pp. 96-97). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

Edmundson's point here seems to be that “absolute freedom,” as Hegel called it—the freedom from restraints on choice, also known as “negative freedom”— is empty and vacuous. This vacancy is potentially destructive since a philosophy of absolute freedom provides no guidance on what might fill the vacancy. According to Hegel, it was this emptiness of absolute freedom that gave the Terror of the French Revolution its destructive turn.[3]

Edmundson is distinguishing between bourgeoisie virtues and heroic virtues, and, like a long line of critics before him, finding the former insufficient. At the end of his discussion of the Warrior ideal, Edmundson explains:

When the goals of the Self are the only goals a culture makes available, spirited men and women will address them with the energy that they would have applied to the aspirations of the Soul. The result is lives that are massively frustrating and not a little ridiculous. People become heroically dedicated to middle-class ends—getting a promotion, getting a raise, taking immeasurably interesting vacations, getting their children into the right colleges, finding the best retirement spot, fattening their portfolios. Lives without courage, contemplation, compassion, and imagination are lives sapped of significant meaning. In such lives, the Self cannot transcend itself.

But the Self seems to hunger for such transcendence. There is an allure to the states of the Soul. How do we now deal with it? Culture throws up an array of what we might call substitute satisfactions. Culture, we might even speculate, may be dominated by the fabrication of Soul. We will not go to war, no not us. But we will play war in our video games; we will watch it on the screens—large, small, and microscopic. We’ll become oafishly obsessed with sports, a safe simulacrum of war. We will read about heroism, imagine it, pine for it. We will dream of Hector and Achilles but fear the dream.

Edmundson, Mark. Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals (p. 50). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

Similarly, with the Thinker, the “average citizen is reflexively pragmatic” and “the philosopher has been replaced by the disseminator of information.”

Edmundson blames modernity for the transition from idealism to pragmatism. Hegel and the Romantics blamed the Enlightenment for the sundering of human existence into Reason and Nature, with the privileging of Reason over intuition, feelings, and desires. Hegel blamed Kant for the sundering; Edmundson offers up Shakespeare.

Edmundson doesn’t blame Shakespeare for vitiating idealism, but he recognizes that Shakespeare plays a pre-eminent role in showing how the Western Mind turned from models of the Warrior, Saint, and Thinker to that of the pragmatic skeptic. Edmundson writes:

Shakespeare helps create the grounds for the presiding form of modern subjectivity through his acts of demolition as well as through his acts of representation. He clears the way for the triumph of the Self. His work helps open a space in which it can unfold and triumph. In Shakespeare’s world only Self lives on and thrives—though this fact is no cause for celebration to him and surely it shouldn’t be to us. Shakespeare is the first great secularist; the first authentic renderer of the marketplace philosophy, pragmatism, and the primary artist of life lived exclusively in the sublunary sphere. Seen from Shakespeare’s vantage, the pragmatic life is not especially enticing or glorious, but it is all we genuinely have. Shakespeare is the ultimate poet of worldliness.

Edmundson, Mark. Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals (p. 138). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

Note that Edmundson describes Shakespeare as the “first authentic renderer of the marketplace philosophy.” The marketplace is where Ideals die and the bourgeoisie live. Edmundson reveals class war in Othello, where the noble Moor is caused to self-implode and thereby shows that his aristocratic virtues were meaningless. Edmundson notes:

How could an upwardly aspiring merchant’s son from the provinces not sustain a measure of resentment for aristocrats and their pretensions? Or, more to the point, how could the middle class of London—rising, prospering—not take delight in watching one or another of their antagonists being undone?

Edmundson, Mark. Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals (p. 153). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

Edmundson goes on to explain:

But the culture’s collective feeling about nobility and honor will inevitably be ambivalent. Merchants have their own measure of spiritedness. They too have felt—or imagined feeling—a jolt of courage pass through them. They cannot help but be fascinated by a character who embodies the heroic ideal to self-destructive perfection. They love what they loathe, and wish to see destroyed that which they might also worship. This is the ambivalence of Shakespeare’s tragedy, its richness and its soul. Aristotle says that tragedy must be about the undoing of someone who is greater than we are. For us to live in good conscience, Othello and his ilk must be brought to what appears to be self-made ruin.

Edmundson, Mark. Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals (p. 154). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

It is almost as if there is a contradiction in the culture of Elizabethan England that is creating its own opposition, somehow leading to a higher synthesis. [Apologies to Hegel.]

Edmundson goes on to explain that MacBeth is about childishness and MacBeth’s self-doubts about his virility[4], Shakespeare’s Caesar “is confused, vulnerable, vain, and easy to eliminate,” and Coriolanus is dominated by his mother. The gist of Shakespeare’s plays, and a lot of his best lines, such Falstaff’s calling honor a trifle or MacBeth urging nihilism, are condemnations of chivalry. Further, according to Edmundson, the central question of most of Shakespeare’s characters is, “What’s in it for me?”, the quintessential mantra of the bourgeoisie. Edmundson also concludes that Shakespeare finds some use in the question for truth “but not much,” and that he has no care for religion at all. Tolstoy wrote an essay on the point that Shakespeare had no religious vision. Shakespeare is thus the Bard of the Bourgeoisie:

What Tolstoy sees is not only that Shakespeare’s characters are devoid of authentic religion. Tolstoy also understands that Shakespeare himself, at least as an artist, has no interest in faith. He is a poet of worldliness, who contributes to the comprehensive disenchantment of experience that Marx and many others have seen as central to the rise of the bourgeois world order. Though—to repeat—Shakespeare does not endorse that world order. He does not celebrate the life in which Self is triumphant. When he depicts the life in, say, Merchant of Venice, it seems to repulse him. What he does do is to contribute to a massive demolition, assisting in the process whereby all the ideals that have been perceived as solid begin to melt into air.

Edmundson, Mark. Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals (p. 178). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

After Shakespeare, Edmundson turns to the Poet. This is significant because, for Edmundson, the Poet is the Romantic Poet. Edmundson’s chief prototype here is William Blake (1757-1827). William Blake was writing at the high point of Romanticism. He championed imagination over reason. Edmundson describes Blake as the “most passionate” and the first of the High Romantics.

Romanticism was a reaction to the Enlightenment's emphasis on reason, which came to be seen as an artificial straightjacket, cutting the individual off from others and from his own true nature, which included qualities beyond reason, such as compassion, courage, intuition, and imagination. Edmundson explains this as follows:

The people Blake sees are miserable because their minds are radically restricted. They are victims of “mind-forg’d manacles” (27). They are imprisoned by their own mental limits and by the limits imposed on them by the culture. To Blake, many of the most esteemed among his contemporaries and near-contemporaries have created shackles for the mind: Pope and Dryden, Locke and Hobbes, Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds are all enemies of imagination and allies of smothering conformity.

What does it mean, from Blake’s perspective, to be mentally imprisoned? It means first that you see the world from your private perspective. You look out for your own advantage. You pursue your own success. You hog and you hoard. You’ve entered the State of Selfhood: individualistic, reductive, and isolating. You think that affirming Selfhood will get you what you want in the world—the Self is a radical pragmatist. But affirming the State of Selfhood simply cuts you off from the possibility of better life. The ascendancy of Selfhood separates you from other humans. Selfhood destroys the drive for community and solidarity. It makes you lonely, frustrated, and angry—onto your face come “marks of weakness, marks of woe” (26).

Edmundson, Mark. Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals (pp. 188-189). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.


And it is at this point that Hegel enters – at least according to my reading of Charles Taylor’s Hegel and Modern Society. Taylor explains that although Hegel was not a Romantic, he was friends with Romantics, such as Schiller, and his goal was to find a way to unify autonomy – being guided exclusively by Reason- with what Taylor calls “expressivism.” Taylor explains the objection – which I think is the Romantic objection – as follows:

From this point of view the Enlightenment analytic science of man was not only a travesty of human self-understanding, but one of the most grievous modes of self-distortion. To see a human being as in some way compounded of different elements: faculties of reason and sensibility, or soul and body, or reason and feeling, was to lose sight of the living, expressive unity; and in so far as men tried to live according to these dichotomies, they must suppress, mutilate or severely distort that unified expression which they have it in them to realize.

But this science not only cut into the unity of human life, it also isolated the individual from society, and cut men off from nature. For the image of expression was central to this view not just in that it provided the model for the unity of human life, but also in that men reached their highest fulfilment in expressive activity. It is in this period that art came to be considered for the first time the highest human activity and fulfilment, a conception which has had a large part in the making of contemporary civilization. These two references to the expressive model were linked: it is just because men were seen as reaching their highest realization in expressive activity that their lives could themselves be seen as expressive unities.

But men are expressive beings in virtue of belonging to a culture; and a culture is sustained, nourished and handed down in a community. The community has itself on its own level an expressive unity. It is once more a travesty and a distortion to see it as simply an instrument which individuals set up (or ought ideally to set up) to fulfil their individual goals, as it was for the atomist and utilitarian strand of the Enlightenment.

Taylor, Charles. Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge Philosophy Classics) (p. 2). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

Let’s put it this way: men are not pure reason; they are also feelings, commitments, idiosyncrasies, and values. They are not abstract entities without feelings. They are not “generic man.” They are people who live in a particular community with particular friends and traditions, and not respecting those particulars is offensive and will trigger harsh reactions, no matter how much we might explain that they should adopt a more universal approach to their lives.

In other words, Edmundson has been setting up the dilemma that motivated Hegel’s philosophy.

This observation is not in Edmundson’s book. The book contains a lot of good explications of Blake’s poetry. I hadn’t been interested in Blake prior to reading Self and Soul. Now, I am very interested. Blake’s poem “The Chimney Sweeps” describes the wretched life of the young children sold into the slavery of sweeping chimneys in London. Blake was motivated by Christian faith to believe in redemption for these oppressed children.

Romantic poetry and religious faith transcend reason. They show truth without discursive analysis. Edmundson writes:

The Romantic quest is akin to the philosophic quest, in that it seeks knowledge. But it seeks knowledge not purchased by the loss of erotic power. In The Symposium, Socrates’ teacher Diotima, expressing the Platonic view, insists that sexual love must in time by sublimated into love for the Beautiful and for the Good. Erotic love is where the philosophic quest begins, but it should not end there. Rather, the energies that once infused sexual desire have to be redirected (and subdued) in the quest for Truth. The Romantic will not accept sublimation. He demands the intensities of deep erotic attraction at all times, and when those intensities wane, it is time to move on. The idea of passing beyond desire into tranquil wisdom—what Wordsworth calls “the philosophic mind”—is anathema to the High Romantic.

Edmundson, Mark. Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals (pp. 200-201). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

He also notes:

An improvement of sensual enjoyment, the lineaments of gratified desire—one touches here on what makes Blake one among the High Romantics. Sensual enjoyment is for Blake a part of the centrally redeeming human experience, which is love. A High Romantic is someone who seeks through love and the imagination to burst through the bounds of Self. As Blake’s poetry becomes more expansive and more complex, he ramifies his sense of love. He affirms it as a spiritual pursuit, not simply one that relies on sensual enjoyment—though such enjoyment must never be sacrificed. He comes to the conclusion that love can save us; through love, we can be reborn into joy.

This belief is at the core of the Romantic faith. One encounters it not only in Blake, but also in Shelley and Keats, Coleridge, and (very indirectly) in Wordsworth. It is there in Walt Whitman (though not in Thoreau or Emerson). It’s readily found in Yeats and in D. H. Lawrence and strongly present in Hart Crane and Allen Ginsberg, where the love desired is homosexual love. Closer to the present, the Romantic faith in rebirth through interfusion of love and imagination is vital for Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and every rocker who sings about the way love can open the door to the expansion of consciousness and make us wiser and kinder an

[Christopher Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Professor Edmundson has written a polemical work: a fact he announces in his “Polemical Introduction” and confirms in his “Polemical Conclusion”. Not surprisingly, the book is polemical throughout. Edmundson's arguments, images, adjectives and characterizations are tilted so strongly that they repeatedly risk falling into vacuity: grand statements with little content and even less weight.

Edmundson claims to be arguing in favour of ideals and against the banal, bourgeois (his word) satisfactions of contemporary consumer society. Everything was grander in the past. Before Shakespeare and Freud came on the scene. The soul-killers have drained the spirit from humanity leaving us with greedy, lusty, prosaic, programmatic selves. With a few exceptions. The author presumably included.

This would be an interesting argument if Edmundson took it seriously. Unfortunately, he does not. He is so wrapped up in his polemic, and his arguments are so one-sided, that reading the book is like watching an old-time cartoon. Everything is two dimensional and hollow in the middle.

For example, Edmundson puts forward Achilles as the ideal hero. The fact that Achilles was content to let his comrades die and, if necessary, to permit his side to lose the war because of his wounded pride counts for nothing with Edmundson. It is Achilles' single-minded pursuit of personal glory that we should admire and take as an ideal to emulate. Really?

Edmundson's treatment of Shakespeare is equally stunning. The concept of negative capability appears to have slipped past Edmundson as he drones on about Shakespeare's alleged vendetta against heroes. Edmundson also puts forward the bizarre claim that Shakespeare's apt sayings are worthless because the characters who say them aren't up to the level of what they say. They are flawed humans and therefore whatever they may say – no matter how eloquent, apt or profound – is to be given the weight of their flawed character. Extraordinary. On this basis, no one ever said anything worth hearing (or reading).

These are only a few examples of the many incongruities and excesses advanced by Edmundson in his high flown pursuit of ideals. Overall, the book is a wild romp that some may find entertaining. At the end of it all, though, it would be wise to ask yourself what exactly Edmundson is arguing for? What does he hope people will do? Other than groan about the passing of the Golden Age, bemoan the loss of ideals and wave their hands in the air dramatically.

Sigh.

[Paul Manytravels · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was engrossed in this book, intrigued by the theory it expressed, impressed with the reasoning that supported the theory, and in full agreement with its conclusions.
The book is a serious indictment of current "middle class values," anode the fulness of life that we have sacrificed in order to preserve them. it is a call to awareness, reminder that there is something more to life than mere comfortable existence.
To me, however, its best moments were in the concluding chapter, especially with regards to its portrayal of "Christianity" in its betrayal of the IDEALS Jesues himself proclaimed.
It is a treat to read material that is intellectually stimulating, full of fresh and sometimes challenging concepts, and rich in creative and innovative perceptions and explanations. Equally refreshing when these points are so fully and richly supported through reasoning and examples that leave little doubt as to their power and as to their relationship to the conclusions they uncover.
I learned a great deal from this book, will see life and living in a somewhat different way, and hunger for another book that so fully meets my hopes for finding new and exciting ideas.

[Tom Mangano · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard Mark Edmundson discuss this book on the radio and was impressed by his message and the way he articulated it. His defense of Soul in a world dominated by Self was inspiring and resonated with the way I aspire live. My reaction to the chapters in the book varied. The chapters on courage (achilles, Hector), compassion (Bhudda, Jesus, Confucious) moved me. The chapters on Shakespeare and The Romantic poets did not. The chapter on Freud provided great insight. This is a deep and important book and I am glad to have read it.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. The final chapter of this book blew me away. It shined a bright white light on my life in America today. Fascinating and thought provoking.

[Liz Bahati · Rating 3 out of 5]

but where are the women?!?!

[Rachel Bay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is possibly one of the best books I’ve ever read, exquisitely written and inspiringly rich with ancient references.

The journey from Homer’s Achilles to the teachings of Jesus and the works of Nietzsche, with references to the works of Shakespeare, William Blake and Freud was intoxicatingly interesting- so wonderfully written that I feel I must read all of their works :0

The 3 main ancient ideals; Courage, Compassion and the quest for Truth (with another ideal- maybe hopefully encouraging more exploration “The True Romantic”) represent the Soul state, which forms a rigid dichotomy with the state of Self. The book, especially the final chapter, explores why our “culture of counterfeit” inflicts deep unhappiness and why we should return to the ideals of the soul.

When I started reading, I thought it was stupid and why shouldn’t we aspire to live for as long as we possibly can- who wants to die, even heroically, in battle at an untimely age? But as the book continued I felt myself agreeing more and more until I was completely hooked.

Although I don’t agree with the paragraph about art in the final chapter, it was an amazing book and you should definitely read this.

“In every act of courage or compassion or true thought, she’ll feel something within her begin to swell………What she’ll feel will be the resurrection of her Soul.”

👩‍🍳💋

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, an enjoyable book. Edmundson made some provocative criticisms of our own pragmatic age, especially the ways in which false versions of the ideals of compassion, courage, and contemplation are on offer in our consumer society.

A different subtitle might have been "What if Nietzsche is right?" Has modernity produced people who aspire to nothing more than a comfortable existence rather than to spend themselves in the pursuit of great ideals? Edmundson wants to make the case for the ancient ideals of heroic courage, saintly compassion, and philosophical contemplation, as well as the Romantic ideal of imagination, while also interpreting Shakespeare and Freud as powerful critics of these ideals.

His analysis of the different proponents and critics of the ideals was often interesting and enlightening, but his picture of Jesus relied too much on a rather stale Old Testament God vs. New Testament Jesus contrast.

[Mason Frierson · Rating 5 out of 5]

In our pragmatic age, where success is all and he who dies with most toys wins, do ideals matter? What are ideals? Do we still have any? Are ideals good or bad? These questions form the heart of Mark Edmundson’s challenging, remarkably even-handed and erudite study of the world in which we live and the worlds which came before it, as exemplified by differing sets of ideals. Achilles, the warrior, Jesus, the compassionate, Plato the contemplative as well as Shakespeare and Freud, the anti-idealists. I normally don’t read books without stories, but this is a story alright and one which I think everyone should read. The book is Self and Soul - a defense of ideals, published by the Harvard press. Read it and think again.

[Justin Cloyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid argument favoring the ideals of courage, compassion and contemplation over the pursuit of safety, security and entertainment. It uses Homer, Jesus and Socrates as ancient exemplars and compares them to "modern" thinkers Shakespeare and Freud, effectively dismantling the self-protecting mantra of the present day for the sake of pursuing deeper meaning. The author's academic approach occasionally undercuts the depth of meaning for which he argues, but still stands as a strong defense against the rampant materialism of today's typical "suburbanite."

[Ethan Burgess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just the right read if you have an academic background, but are tired of using cynicism as a defense mechanism in the modern world. Nothing about the book’s approach recommends or commands a spiritual or religious path. The author simply brings to light a few points of view from the antiquity that normally may be taken for granted. Come in with an open mind, and you can leave with something substantial. Can’t wait to read again.

[Nathan Kitchen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is ambitious. What else can you call a work that aims to link together Homer, the Buddha, Jesus, Plato, Shakespeare, and Freud around one pair of central concepts? There were plenty of times that I felt like the author was overstating his case (for rhetorical impact?).

Nevertheless, it was worth reading. I don't agree with all of his interpretations of the great works, but I do think they were ideas worth engaging with.

[Anthony Marquette · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are interesting and even poetic ideas to be found here however very little substance in terms of actually justifying the views proposed. Also some of the chapters seem like a rip off of Emerson such as Emerson's "The Poet" and "The Philosopher" and "Heroism." Of course I would say to read the listed essays by Emerson and decide for yourself, if nothing else the idea was taken from Emerson.

[Daniel Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book, he really challenged me to think about our modern life and to see what is missing. I loved the premise of the book and agree with it. Although it was a tough read for me, I enjoyed the challenge. The only thing I didn’t enjoy was the chapter on Shakespeare, very difficult to comprehend being that I don’t have much experience or knowledge of Shakespeare.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

To which need we attend...to the Self (superficial concerns of practical life), or to the Soul (search for meaning beyond our mere existence)? This book addresses both, using narrative and literature as well as philosophy and religion, to teach the lessons. This provides balance and I like that.

[Raul Leon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edmunson does a great job of illustrating his argument by conveying how ideals are beyond the material world. I interpret this book as one that helps show how holding one's own actions and ideas to something outside of the material world will help in finding a more fulfilled path in life.

[Ali Tarraf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never surrender soul.

[Jovana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Detailed and thorough with moving commentary about the constant split amongst humans between the desires of Self and the virtues of Soul

[David Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Headline: Lust of Self rules the day and Ideals are fading to irrelevance

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

more of a 'lament for' rather than a 'defense of' - but still thoughtful and worthwhile

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

My rating for this book is really a 2.5 (somewhere in between "I liked it" and "It was ok").
Conclusion: The book presents fascinating, easy-to-read literary analyses but suffers from a few problems (some of which are listed below).

I went back and forth with my opinions throughout the book. The first thing to note is that it did not exactly fulfill what the title set out for. It was less of "A Defense of Ideals," and more of an analysis of them.

To start with the positives: the book is wonderfully written. It is clear, concise, and fascinating throughout most of the narration. It presents several analyses from Homer to Freud focused on a distinction between Ideals (the Soul) and Pragmatism (the Self).

Despite this, there are several moments where I had to pause and strongly question what the author is saying. For instance, In his first chapter on the Heroic Ideal, he states that:
"The warriors do not have to think about what kind of life is best, for they know that theirs is: Nature corroborates them constantly. The Greeks take obvious pride in their conviction that they have created a culture that is as close to Nature as any human beings have ever done or (presumably) will do" (page 26).

He then goes on to state that:
"Most currently existing individuals cannot claim to value what Nature values... At their most humane, people today endorse fairness, equality, decency, democracy, and one for all law. However admirable these standards may be, no one thinks of them as natural" (page 26).

From what I understand, these conjoined claims are almost certainly untrue (see the work of Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis as well as the work of anthropologists Douglas Fry & Brian Ferguson). Humans (as well as several other animals), value traits such as fairness and equality BECAUSE of their natural state of being, not because of cultural tendencies, as Edmundson suggests.

Another strange claim was made on page 34 when he suggests that the reason why some war vets come home with PTSD is actually due to them missing their natural state; war: "But is it also possible that they are dispirited precisely because they miss their proper element, war?". I understand that this question is raised in intellectual curiosity with regards to the Heroic Ideal, and can appreciate this sort of question, but I feel as though a claim like that was out of place. This is just a nitpick, however.

One last issue I will mention is that he seems to contradict himself on the issue of the Heroic Ideal. He presents Achilles as the archetype of Heroism: he is man-made for war and does so only for the glory of war and his image (leaving his family and rejecting wealth in the process). Edmundson compares this to Hector which, although also a mighty warrior, cares mostly for his family and the protection of the citizens, thus eliminating him from the pure Heroic Ideal. Throughout the book, Edmundson also ensures that those who value the Self over the Soul value pragmatism over ideals. One example he gives is the characters of Shakespeare:
"In Shakespeare, characters generally speak because they are trying to get something. They want to enhance their images, improve their lots, speed their designs. Most are pragmatists to the tips of their fingers" (page 174).
This is an oddity, because previously, the enhancement of one's image (as in the case of Achilles), is seen as a characteristic of the Heroic Ideal, but now we are being told that it is actually a symptom of pragmatism, used by the Self.

There are other oddities such as this that leave confusion as to what Edmundson is saying. One example that exemplifies the confusion in this book can be found in a blurb for the book. Megan Marshall writes "Self and Soul is a series of secular hymns to the soul-saving idealists who shaped Western literature and spiritual philosophy- from Homer to Shakespeare and Blake, Jesus to Emerson and Freud." From this quote, I can only assume that she is implying that the book categorizes Shakespeare and Freud among the Idealists. Shakespeare and Freud are constantly referred to as anti-Idealists throughout the book, with their own chapters explaining why they belong in the tradition of the Self, rather than the Soul. I can only chalk this mistake up to the confusing nature of some of the book's claims.

[Graychin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mark Edmundson wrote an essay on the pleasure of cursing (‘On Shit: Profanity as Weltanschauung’) which I loved. Though I’m not personally given to cursing, I appreciate the skillful use of profanity by others (my wife can swear like a sailor). Having enjoyed that piece, and having read some reviews of the present title, I decided to pick up a copy of Self and Soul.

It’s hard to disagree with Edmundson’s basic complaint that Western society is awash in bourgeois acquisitiveness, mindless spectacle, and the unapologetic pursuit of self-interest. Anyone can see that this is so. Ought something be done about it? Edmundson prescribes the rehabilitation of our old sympathies for the ideals of the hero, the saint, and the philosopher.

This is where things begin to get muddled. What, after all, does Achilles have in common with Jesus? - because Edmundson needs us to bracket these together (along with several others whose examples he champions) to support his argument. Achilles desires only fame in bloody battle; Jesus, on the other hand, wants us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to turn the other cheek, and to exercise compassion rather than judgment.

Edmundson anticipates the critique. He answers, in effect, that Jesus and Achilles share (in their own ways) a commitment to something larger than themselves. But when such disparities can be made to inhabit that same categorical “something,” I think we’re free to conclude that our author has pressed his generalization too far.

In other words, Edmundson fails the Sneaky Hitler Test. The Fuhrer too was committed (in his own way) to something larger than himself – specifically, Aryan supremacy and the annihilation of the Jews. But when you find yourself tempted to generalize favorably about a trait broad enough that it allows Hitler to sneak in the back door, well, you’ve made a bad move.

The most interesting part of Edmundson’s book is his chapter on Shakespeare. Surprisingly, perhaps, he blames the Bard of Avon for the collapse of Western Civ.’s old guard. According to Edmundson, it was Shakespeare who dismantled the ideal of the hero. Edmundson makes an engaging argument in this direction, plowing through Julius Caesar, Othello, Macbeth, and even Henry V with some insight.

The trouble is not that Edmundson sees things in Shakespeare which aren’t there, but that his argument is too simple. Shakespeare takes pleasure in knocking down the high and mighty, in laughing at the idealist as he stumbles under the weight of his own hubris and folly. But then again, so do many others, all the way back to Greece and Rome: Aristophanes, for example, or maybe Lucian. Then of course there’s Chaucer (arguably Shakespeare’s direct ancestor in English lit), not to mention Boccaccio, Erasmus, Rabelais, Ben Jonson, Montaigne, and Cervantes.

The last several of these had watched as the social structures upholding the old ideals collapsed around them. The monolithic Church was toppled by corruption and hypocrisy as much as by Luther. The self-interest and thirst for wealth and power among the princes of northern Europe dismantled any notion of rule by divine right. And the wars of religion made a bloody chaos of the continent in the service of ideals.

Contra Edmundson, what Shakespeare gives us is not so much the rise of the bourgeois class and the working out of its complex resentments toward the old nobility, but a hard-earned and perfectly justifiable distrust of the ideal. He gives us human nature rather than human aspiration. Shakespeare depicts the human person as he or she is inwardly, a creature compacted of irreconcilabilities, yearning perhaps for the old ideals, but failing more often than not in their achievement.

[Seth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edmundson's book provides an historical and literary reading of the ideals by which men and women have lived their lives for hundreds of years. These ideals, he argues, are at the center of the purpose-driven life. Moreover, these ideals could not be further from the center of our current lives. Undoubtedly, this book gives the member of a capitalist society lots to think about. As a polemic, Edmundson's ideas and, perhaps more so, his tone challenge the reader to live a life in stricter accordance with the traditional ideals of compassion, courage, wisdom, and imagination. For these reasons, I enjoyed the book. Edmundson walks the walk so to speak. He seeks a version of the truth (like Plato) and creates for society a work that challenges the status quo (like Blake). Still, there is a cynicism about Edmundson's work, especially in its final chapter, I find disagreeable. As an idealist myself (is an idealist the same person as one who lives by an ideal?), I believe in hope. More specifically, it is my hope that if I live a life that is driven by compassion others will too. However, it is this type of hope that remains virtually absent from this book. Edmundson seems to have little faith that anyone living in America today can live a life of Soul. Instead, he seems to be the only one fully capable of doing so.

[John Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unexpected gem. Ideals, in the sense used by the author, are those few heroic virtues (Soul) to which humans aspire. The heroic/Soul ideals include courage and honor (the Homeric warrior virtues); compassion/love (exemplified by Buddha, Jesus, Confucius); truth and thought (exemplified by Socrates and Plato).

These Soul ideals have always been in conflict with the self-centered, materialistic Self. With the advent of more material prosperity and the coming of the bourgeoisie. Men and women aspired to live longer, safer (less risky), more materialistic lives. Shakespeare's project was to chronicle (hasten?) the demise of these ideals (witness the tragic downfall of heroes like Othello, Macbeth, Hotspur, Lear, Coriolanus, etc.), but he didn't offer any alternative heroic value(s). The Romantics, led by Blake, tried to fill the void with the ideal of Eros/creation. Freud's mission was the deconstruction of that ideal. Freud was anti-Romantic; he offered a vision of humanity as defined by desire, and posited talk as a means of partial liberation from inner as well as external conflicts.

A stimulating, challenging read - and one that I found hard to put down. There was not an obvious (or happy) conclusion, so be prepared.

[Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reviewing this in another venue, so keeping my remarks short here. Readers on the left and the right will find red meat here. Another way to say this is there is something here to irritate virtually everyone. Edmundson's central claim that moderns have sacrificed ideals for comforts rings true; his supporting arguments often involve less than convincing arguments about particular writers and texts.

[Eric Dowdle · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an interesting survey of different ideal selves throughout history, but I had a hard time as the author insisted a very static concept of identity, as well as having a unflagging love for ancient modes of being. He seems to have almost no use for the contemporary mode of existence, discarding it as "fallen" in some way. Red flag.