Jung on Paradox
Jung on Paradox
Jung on Paradox
“… the paradox is one
of our most valued spiritual possessions,…”
Jung (1944)[1]
“… paradox is the natural medium for expressing transconscious
facts.”
Jung (1955)[2]
“… The paradox… reflects a higher level of intellect and, by not
forcibly representing the unknowable as known, gives a more faithful picture of
the real state of affairs….”
Jung (1954)[3]
“Things have gone rapidly downhill since the Age of
Enlightenment, for, once this petty reasoning mind, which cannot endure any
paradoxes, is awakened, no sermon on earth can keep it down. A new task then
arises: to lift this still undeveloped mind step by step to a higher level and
to increase the number of persons who have at least some inkling of the scope
of paradoxical truth…. We simply do not understand any more what is meant by the
paradoxes contained in dogma;… “
Jung (1944)[4]
“And what you do not know is the only think you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.”
T.S. Eliot[5]
A student was recently quite put out when I read a portion of Eliot’s “East
Coker,” which contained the three lines quoted above. She said, in an aggrieved
tone of voice, “But that doesn’t make any sense!” She was experiencing a “mind
cramp,” an affront to the logic and rationality that are so prized in our
culture. Our “petty reasoning minds” really don’t like paradoxes, as Jung
recognized.[6] But he also recognized the value of
paradox. This essay considers Jung’s attitudes toward this core feature of
spirituality and why paradox is so important. We’ll begin with some
definitions, offer examples and then consider the nature of paradox and its
importance.
“Paradox” Defined
Years ago, when I asked students what “paradox” meant, one witty student (a
devotée of the television series of the time) said “That’s when Casey meets
Kildare.”[7] Nice try, but no: “paradox” has nothing
to do with doctors. It comes from two Greek words para and dokein,
meaning “to seem contrary to.”[8] A paradox is “a statement that may be
true but seems to say two opposite things… a person or thing that seems to be
full of contradictions…any inconsistent or contradictory fact, action or
condition.”[9]
Jung recognized paradox is a “characteristic of the Gnostic writings”[10] that “did more justice to the unknowable than
clarity can do,…”[11] because paradox refuses to rob spiritual
“mystery of its darkness,”[12] and it serves to retain the
unknowableness that is an inherent part of mystery. As I noted in an earlier
blog essay,[13] modern Americans do not like mysteries,
but the Gnostics did, in their understanding that the nature of Divinity is
the mysterium tremendum, a tremendous mystery.
Jung also felt paradox could be a “better witness to truth than a one-sided,
so-called ‘positive’ statement.”[14] As such, in its ability to embrace
contradiction and both sides of an issue, paradox “… is the natural medium for
expressing transconscious facts,”[15] and thus is “… one of our most valued
spiritual possessions.”[16]
Besides its value in spiritual and religious contexts, Jung saw its utility in
his researches in alchemy: “paradox and ambivalence are the keynotes of the
whole work…”[17] of alchemy, and one whole section of
Jung’s magnum opus, Mysterium coniunctionis, is on the
“paradoxa.”[18]
Some Examples of Paradoxes
Volume 14 of Jung’s Collected Works is full of examples of
paradoxes, e.g.: the physical and intellectual (mind and matter); virtues and
vices; corporeal and incorporeal; corruptible and incorruptible; visible and
invisible; spirit and body; life and death; good and evil; truth and falsehood;
unity and multiplicity; poverty and riches; war and peace; conqueror and
conquered; toil and repose; sleep and waking; childhood and old age; male and
female; strong and weak; hell and paradise; those things that are and those
that are not; those things that may be spoken of and those which may not be
spoken of;[19] black and white; cold and hot; dry and
moist; a “running without running, moving without motion…”;[20] a “good poison…”.[21] All of these are what Jung called “the
conjunction of opposites…”.[22]
Some paradoxes Jung drew from religion (an area of life that Jung felt to be
full of paradoxes given its focus on the unknowable). For example, the Virgin
Mary’s virginity is a paradox (how could a woman who became a mother still be a
virgin?).[23] The Self (Jung’s term for the divinity
within every person), “…is a union of opposites par excellence…
absolutely paradoxical in that it represents in every respect thesis and
antithesis, and at the same time synthesis.”[24] In cabala (mystical Judaism), the
relation of Malchuth to Kether is paradoxical—the lowest (Earth) to the highest
(the Divine).[25] The Gnostics’ statement “learn to
suffer, and you shall understand how not to suffer…”[26] is another example of paradox.
Jung’s alchemical studies, in volumes 12, 13, 14 and 16 of his Collected
Works, also contain examples of paradox. The Philosopher’s stone,[27] the massa confusa of
the collective unconscious,[28] the arcane substance,[29] the “Spirit Mercurius”[30]—all these are paradoxical in nature,
containing contradictions or embodying opposites.
More modern examples come from cutting-edge science. Quantum physics, for
example, is full of paradoxes: What is the nature of light? Is it a wave or a
particle? Both.[31] In the same way, we live in a reality
that is both determined and indeterminate.
The Nature of Paradox
As I noted above, my student found paradox hard to handle. She wanted to hear
what made sense, and paradoxes generally don’t. They affront our bias toward
rationality. By their very nature, paradoxes are challenging to the logical
mind. They induce the “mental cramp”[32] that Jung recognized as a feature of our
confronting the unconscious. He also recognized that paradoxes are
“indescribable,”[33] and “difficult,”[34] requiring “extraordinary intellectual
and moral effort”[35] if we are to take them seriously and not
dismiss them as nonsense. “… Jung warned that “the difficult operation of thinking
in paradoxes… [is] a feat possible only to the superior intellect–…”[36]
Jung also understood that paradox can be dangerous.[37] For “spiritual weaklings” paradoxes can
be more than they can handle. It takes spiritual strength to “sustain
paradoxes,”[38] and for those with such strength,
paradox can provide “the highest degree of religious certainty.”[39] Jung regarded the early Church Father
Tertullian as one example of a spiritually strong person, in his statement “I
believe because it is absurd.”[40] Jung felt that, when confronted with
paradox, “spiritual weaklings” are likely to “break out into iconoclastic and
scornful laughter,…” treating the great mysteries of faith as “… obsolete,
curious relics of the past…”[41]
While dangerous to those with “petty reasoning minds”[42] and spiritual weakness, paradoxes are
immensely valuable in their ability to express psychological truth and to hold
the tension of opposites.[43] Jung understood that life is polarity:
the constant ebb-and-flow of the enantiodromia—a concept Jung
borrowed from Heraclitus[44]—is how life manifests. Paradoxes are a way,
perhaps the only way, to express “the polarity of all life.”[45]
Our Attitude toward Paradox
Jung had great appreciation for paradox, but he recognized that, in this (as in
so much else), he was very much “odd man out” in modern Western culture. Ours
is a culture that has lost itself “… in a one-sided over-development and
over-valuation of a single psychic function….”,[46] i.e. thinking. We prize rationality and
our ability to figure things out, via logic and reason. In this we fail “… to
acknowledge the paradoxicality and polarity of all life…”.[47] The result is a “one-sidedness” that
Jung felt was a “mark of barbarism.”[48]
Jung dated our one-sided bias toward rationality to the Age of Enlightenment.
From that time (the 18th century)
“Things have gone rapidly downhill…”[49] as more and more people became focused
on thinking, logic and reason, to the exclusion or denigration of feeling,
intuition and sensation. Over time, this has resulted in most modern Westerners
no longer understanding “… any more what is meant by the paradoxes contained in
dogma; and the more external our understanding of them becomes the more we are
affronted by their irrational form, until finally they become completely
obsolete, curious relics of the past…”[50] By “dogma” Jung was referring to
religious creeds and belief systems. When these systems become obsolete, people
fall away from organized religions, and we see this today, especially in
Western Europe and certain areas of the United States, particularly in New
England.[51]
The decline of organized religions is only one manifestation of our current
inability to appreciate paradox. Another is our intellectual hybris[52]—our belief that we can figure out all the
problems of life. In an earlier blog essay[53] I noted Jung’s belief that the major
problems of life can never be solved with the logical, rational mind, because
such problems transcend the limits of human reason.[54] We cannot grasp with the intellect the
transcendent mystery that we live within. Many of my students don’t like
hearing this: they keep trying to “figure it out.” Like most contemporary
Americans, they need to appreciate paradox and they ask me “Why bother with
this? Why is this important?”
Why Paradox is Important
In multiple works Jung gave reasons why paradox is important. In our general
dealings with life, our ability to appreciate paradox will give us “… a more
faithful picture of the real state of affairs.”[55] than we would get just from our use of
logic or reason. In interpreting reality, paradox can be “… a better witness to
truth than a one-sided ‘positive’ statement” can be.”[56] Having an appreciation of paradox is
also an excellent antidote to our human tendency to hybris, intellectual
arrogance: when we come upon a paradox and experience a mind cramp, we are
reminded of the limits of human reason. In this way, Jung felt, paradox can
help us “heal the irreconcilable conflict …”[57] in our modern attitude.
Jung recognized how valuable paradox is in psychology. In holding the tension
of opposites, paradox is a valid, effective way to foster growth. It supports
the “widening of consciousness beyond the narrow confines of a tyrannical
intellect,…”[58] and it enriches life, because only
paradox “… comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.”[59] Jung understood that we are more than
disembodied minds, more than just thinkers, more than just the “Rational
Economic Man” so beloved in economic theory.[60] We feel; we sense; we intuit; we live in
the interstices of opposites, and by recognizing this and appreciating it, we
can experience the wholeness that Jung saw as one goal of the individuation
process.
Paradox is also central to spirituality and religion—two realms that were very
important in Jung’s philosophy. Jung believed that every human being has an
innate spiritual or religious impulse,[61] a deep desire to know or sense a
connection to the Whole, to contact the Divine, to awake to the Self, the inner
divine core in one’s being. Given this innate impulse, we quest for meaning in
life. But the nature of the Divine is transcendent, i.e. more than we can
comprehend with the intellect alone. We must approach the Divine and the quest
for personal meaning with more than logic. For this quest we need paradox—the
irrational non-logic that allows for the expression of transcendental truth. We
must admit paradox into our lives, for only it allows us to approach the
“sacred figures”[62] that live within, and only paradox does
justice to the unknowable.[63] By its very nature the unknowable cannot
be expressed with logic and clarity; only ambiguity, contradiction and
ambivalence can “give adequate expression to the indescribable nature”[64] of
transcendental situations.
Conclusion
We don’t like mind cramps. We recoil from confronting contradictions. We avoid
situations that affront our reason. In this our cultural bias serves us poorly,
because much of the richness of life is found in the transcendental realms of
life. Paradox helps us navigate through these realms, and Jung would urge us to
develop our spiritual muscles and hone our psychological insight so as to
appreciate the value of paradox.
Bibliography
Hollis, Martin & Edward Nell (1975), Rational
Economic Man. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1959), “Aion,” Collected Works, 9ii.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1969), “Psychology and Religion: West and East,” CW 11.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1953), “Psychology and Alchemy,” CW 12.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1967), “Alchemical Studies,” CW 13.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1963), “Mysterium Coniunctionis,” CW 14.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1954), “The Practice of Psychotherapy,” CW 16,
2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Liddell & Scott (1978), Greek-English Lexicon.
New York: Oxford University Press.
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