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To avow or not to avow
We have yet to say why anyone would refrain from spelling out and so remain less than
explicitly conscious – of their engagements in the world. This question together with the
claim that we generally do not spell out our engagements raises the fundamental
question: “why in particular instances do we spell out anything at all?”
What is troubling about this question is that it raises the whole problem of the nature of
consciousness before we can tackle the phenomenon of self-deception as a peculiar case
of consciousness and this is a near impossible task. Hence, I will turn instead to the
question as to “why we do not spell out, or refuse to, become conscious?”
The policy of refusing to spell out things (accurately?) is the most visible feature of selfdeception. Yet underlying this most visible feature is the fundamental maneuver of
disavowing one’s engagements in the world even to oneself. The self-deceiver is
someone who is in some way engaged in the world but who disavows (by not spelling
out) this engagement even to himself. What is at issue here is that self-deception turns on
personal identity one formulates/articulates and accepts rather than say upon one’s beliefs
or knowledge (about the self).
Thus, we have a third description of self-deception.
The self deceiver is engaged in the world in some way and yet refuses to identify
himself as the one who is so engaged; he refuses to avow his engagement as his
own. Having disavowed his engagement he is forced into protective defensive
tactics to account for the inconsistencies in his engagement in the world.
Here we distinguish between being a certain individual and avowing one’s identity. We
may use the expressions “avowal” or “acknowledgement” interchangeably to refer to
personal identity constituted in avowal. We can speak here of personal identity or just of
the “person” as distinguished from the “individual”, in that the person is someone who
avows him/herself in his/her identity. To avow is then to define one’s personal identity
for oneself in respect to one’s engagements in the world.
Such identity avowal can occur in one climactic public act or else is may emerge slowly
over time. Whichever, avowals are always purposeful self-expressions and never merely
happenings. That is, avowal and disavowal are accomplishments of an individual in
becoming or failing to become a person, respectively.
We can draw a distinction between “identifying oneself with” (a community, ideal,
desire, etc.) and “identifying oneself as”, or “avowing” some action, feeling, aspiration,
ideal, interest, attitude, reason, etc. as one’s personal identity. Now avowal may be some
public act requiring some overt expression, however we should be reluctant to equate
avowal with any one particular expression. Rather avowal is an inner act which is merely
to say that one cannot say of any particular overt expression/action that it is an act of
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avowal. Overt conduct may express avowal but it does not constitute avowal. I like to
think of avowal as an act of the total psychic nexus – such avowal will manifest itself in
expressions but no expression can fully constitute avowal (just as the (sad) properties of
an art work do not fully constitute the work of art, say as a “sad work”). Understanding
self-deception as disavowal present us with a fundamental answer to the question, above,
“why is it so important not to spell out certain (aspects) of our engagement in the
world?”
Consider:
1. One mark that differentiates what is intrinsic to our personal identity from what is
not is the capacity of the person to spell out that personal identity. For the spell
out one’s identity is to exercise a peculiar kind of authority, an authority that is
intimately connected with one’s existence as a particular person (in Cartesian
fashion one speaks with authority of one’s desires and ideals). For example, when
someone says in angry tone of voice “I am angry with you” we may assume that
the anger expressed here is acknowledged as one’s own. But of course a person
may also say in an angry tone of voice “I am not angry” in which case one can
disavow one’s anger even as one is clearly angry.
2. Another mark of disavowal is the high degree to which the disavowed
engagement is isolated from the influence of everything that is avowed. In this
way what is disavowed remains “static”, “primitive”, and “rigid” (Kohut:
“archaic”). This rigidity of the disavowed engagement (not withstanding some
ingenuity of execution) is a manifestation of isolation from the remainder of the
personality (in a sense one is double-minded, or in Kohut’s terms vertically split
in the poles of desires and ideals).
3. A third mark of disavowal is the denial of responsibility. Typically, a person
denies responsibility for what is disavowed, whereas one is prepared to bear
responsibility for what is avowed. We can distinguish between avowal of
personal identity and the responsibility of moral identity. But these are really very
similar, or better, personal identity avowal is prospectively constitutive of moral
identity avowal (bearing responsibility for what is avowed).
Thus there are 3 marks of disavowal:
1. incapacity to spell out (silence)
2. isolation of what is disavowed (archaic conduct/desire/ideals)
3. non-responsibility (for that which about which one is silent or what is archaic
Note that all three marks are profoundly significant defect of personal/moral integrity.
On the other hand, if we ask what is meant by personal integrity, we can reply:
1. the capacity to speak on one’s own behalf about how one is engaged in the world,
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2. the capacity for harmonious self-understanding of conduct, feelings, desires,
aspirations, interests, etc.,
3. and to assume full responsibility for both the above.
Note here that the notion of avowal and its role in understanding self-deception raises
some fundamental questions concerning the ambiguities in such terms as “self”,
“herself”, “person” and “I”. Thus, is the “I” who disavows anger the same “I” who is
angrily engaged in the world? The answer, initially at least, is both “yes” and “no”. We
will turn to this below.
First, we should note that unless the issue of personal/moral identity is raised, we cannot
understand the phenomenon of self-deception. That is, one reason why I have not turned
to the experimental psychology of the self because it never raises the question of personal
identity (or “what is a person?”). It is also why we can turn to writers like Freud, Sartre,
and Kierkegaard because all three have argued that self-deception is an illness peculiar to
our “subjectivity”, i.e., the self, or the person. Thus, in different ways they speak of selfdeception as alienation from the self, or an evasion of being one-self. One is so to speak
“willfully ignorant”, “double-minded”, “spiritually defiant”, “divided against oneself”,
“insincere with oneself”, or “morally blinded”. In this regard, I will also drawn on
Kohut/Lacan since it is important not to oppose desire/will and reason, to merely speak of
“one’s lower nature and higher nature”, or of “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”
all of which makes self-deception into a kind of irrationality or a lack of self-control
(which of course may well be motives for self-deception). Because experimental
psychological approaches tend to focus on reason, these also focus on knowledge and
ignorance in case of self-deception.
Second, we should note that avowal as identity avowal suggests that one’s identity is not
given (biologically or socially) but rather that one’s personal identity merges over/in time
as an achievement of using “materials” (engagements in the world) that are recalcitrant to
any ordering or synthesis (i.e., causal explanation). Identity avowal is an ordering
(Taylor’s “strong evaluation”) of meanings/significances of engagements over the lifespan that lead us to become a person – a unified self (or one-self). We can include here,
in this idea of the self as a synthesis, Freud’s notion of “defense” Sartre’s notion of “bad
faith”. We essentially must take a developmental view of the synthesis of the self wherein
the self is a “community” (rather than an association or a collection) of various
complexes of reason-desire-feeling-purpose-value as “lived projects” that can be
transformed into a unity but which nevertheless never lose their distinctive character. Just
as the child becomes civilized or domesticated as a member of a community even as s/he
retains his/her individuality, just so primitive and independent forms of engagement are
ideally integrated with each other in a self even as these remain the medium of selfexpression. I will give some examples in class.
Third, we should note that these criteria of self-deception are sufficiently general to apply
to all disordered conduct (what is called “mental illness”). In a sense all mental illness is
a distortion of selfhood (for whatever causes or reasons) and so underlies or, better,
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constitutes “mental” disturbances or what I would now call disturbances of the self, or
disturbances of selfhood/personhood/person.
Generally speaking, with the emergence of the person in the individual there is an
increasing correlation between what is avowed by the person and the manner in which the
person is actually engaged in the world (whether as ideals or desires, a la Kohut). There
is here an ideal of perfect harmony (what we might call “character” with its unified and
moral nature implied) and this is also what we mean by “maturity” (in contrast to
“growing up” or just older). Maturing is here an honorific term, much as all
psychological predicates are honorary terms (or achievement terms), that reflects
different norms both social-cultural and individually. I will pursue this in my lectures.
Now the self-deceiver is somehow provoked (in living) to engage in projects that s/he
cannot avow as being his/her identity for such avowal would be disruptive, distressing,
and unmanageably destructive to the person. The crux here resides in the fact that the
engagement is unacceptable to the self-deceiver even though s/he may be powerfully
inclined (desiring) towards the engagement which is, however, in some sense
incompatible with the individual’s past engagements which constitute her/his identity.
Unlike children who might be able to pursue individual projects/engagements as
autonomous projects/engagement, in time such isolate pursuits wreak havoc with the very
possibility of becoming a person.
The question remains of course whether such unity of self, such harmony among one’s
projects/engagements is ever fully possible. But we cannot leave our
projects/engagements as isolated from each other on risk that otherwise we would not
attain personal/moral identity.
LPM/2010