To understand the modern relationship between an individual's rational
consciousness and his emotional drives and affects, we turn to the
existentialist movement. Fathered by Soren Kierkegaard, nurtured by
Frederich Nietzsche, the existentialist doctrine placed its emphasis on
the passions and anxieties of the individual man, and rejected the
objective and mechanistic systems of thought that had become prevalent
by the nineteenth century. Existentialism was a philosophy of
subjectivity, a psychology of the spirit. It was a backlash against the
predominant philosophers of the Enlightenment who gave little
consideration to the subject of the individual, aside from the matter of
his reason and the role that passion and imagination might play in
emancipating reason's powers.
Kierkegaard was the first to articulate that objectified knowledge was
no answer to the real questions of an individual's life. "Their
resolutions emerge through conflicts and tumults in the soul, anxieties,
agonies, perilous adventures of faith into unknown territories." (Sartre
1966 Mairet p 6) Truth is subjectivity, argued Kierkegaard. And, in the
hands of the existentialists, individual man was given supreme
responsibility for his own existence, taken in past eras by gods, kings
and science.
The primary concern of the existentialist school was to explain how an
individual consciousness makes sense of existence, in other words, how
to explain what it is like to be a human being. It was an aim shared by
the phenomenologists, a contemporaneous discipline whose most famous son
was Martin Heidegger, who explored the effective and emotive aspects of
the mind by looking at its perceptual faculties. Both philosophies
started from the same principles: that the world is not a separate
physical entity to a man, rather that the man's reality ('dasein') is
his interaction with the world and the creation of individual
perspectives that make use of what he has found in his situation. The
true reality is interdependence. The world does not exist outside the
man
a denial of much Enlightenment philosophy
and man does not exist
outside of his relationship with the world
reflecting the inherent
atheism of key authors such as Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre.
The existential atheist
Jean-Paul Sartre
pronounced that man's existence
precedes and commands his essence, distinguishing between the fact of
being, and the nature of being, or way of life; "man first of all
exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world
and defines himself
afterwards." (Sartre 1966 p28) Because man is a free agent, and his will
is exercised without reference to universal standards, he can choose his
essence, whether he will be a submissive or a dominant self, a generous
or a miserly self. Because essence follows existence, it is clear that
each and every man will be what he wishes himself to be. In other words,
there can no universal definition of a man. Or, as Sartre puts it,
"there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception
o0f it. Man simply is....Man is nothing else but that which he makes of
himself." (Sartre 1966 p28)
This emphatically anti-determinist philosophy places the burden of
responsibility squarely on each individual's shoulders. "He cannot find
anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers
forthwith, that he is without excuse." (Sartre 1966 p34). There is no
predetermined human nature to blame for events, rather each man must
choose his own course of action and, in so doing, he chooses an image of
what he believes all men should be. Not only is man responsible for his
own image, he is indirectly responsible for fashioning the image of all
other men. This is a frightening responsibility, and Sartre admits that
many will suffer anxiety as a result of having to bear it. But no one
can hide from the responsibility, for making no choice and taking no
action is in itself a choice and an action.
As an alternative to anxiety, or angst, some men will try to convince
themselves that they had no choice, that they were not responsible for
their actions. By blaming the environment, their culture, their
situation or their fellow men, they refuse to acknowledge the terrible
dilemma of existence. This Sartre calls an act of bad faith, these men
he calls cowards. Acting in good faith is acting in the name of freedom.
Nietszche and Sartre agreed, man must create his own values and
meanings, but that will be done by action rather than justified by
reason; as a result, truth and morality will be determined more by
personal experience and action than by an objective rationality. Action
must, of course, have a goal and to find one, man will invent purposes
or 'projects', "which will themselves confer meaning upon himself and
the world of objects
all meaningless otherwise and in themselves.
There is indeed no reason why a man should do this, and he gets nothing
by it except the authentic knowledge that he exists; but that precisely
is his great, his transcendent need and desire." (Sartre 1966 Mairet
p14)
"The individual, then, may experience his own being as real, alive,
whole; as differentiated from the rest of the world in ordinary
circumstances so clearly that his identity and autonomy are never in
question", writes the celebrated psychologist R.D.Laing in his
existential analysis of mental illness. Those who do not have such
ontological security may find the ordinary circumstances of everyday
life "constitute a continual and deadly threat." (Laing 1960 p43-44) In
the most threatened, psychoses may develop. Other risks include a
perceived loss of one's own subjectivity, and feeling oneself to be "no
more than a thing in the world of the other... without any being for
oneself." (Laing 1960 p49) Laing argues that any individual who cannot
take the identity of himself and others for granted, "has to become
absorbed in contriving ways of trying to be real." In such a way, the
development and maintenance of self-esteem can itself be represented as
an existential project.
Existential Reading of Crime
If self-affirmation is the project, how far can acts of crime fulfil the
brief? If crime is a social construct, strictly speaking, it has no
value in the existentialist perspective. If crime is a social construct,
surely it is an act of bad faith to claim that one's behaviour was
constrained by it? Self-affirmation is achieved by acting authentically,
and, outside of the social construct, there is equal value in choosing
to have children or become an MP as in choosing to join a gang or pose
as a 'badass'.
Conventional criminological theories with their emphasis on objective
causal forces have generally failed to find a consistent explanation for
crime. The positivist approach in all its guises has proposed that
criminals are formed by genetic and hereditary conditions, environmental
and cultural influences, psychological aberrations. It has not explained
why some criminogenic individuals exhibit none of these factors in their
background, nor why many who fit the criminogenic profile do not in fact
commit crime. Nor can it provide a convincing argument for areas of
criminal behaviour such as non-materialistic and white-collar crimes, or
war crimes.
Where objectivity has failed, maybe subjectivity has something to offer.
Jack Katz directs us to look at "sensual dynamics", "the ontological
validity of passion" and the "genuine experiential creativity of crime"
(Katz, J. 1988, pp 6-8)
He writes of the "sneaky thrills" experienced by the casual shoplifter.
The objective is not the acquisition of an item, but the taking of it.
The knowledge of society's response to the project invests it with
significance. Each stage of the enterprise poses a challenge: the
anticipation of the deviant act, the art of not drawing attention to
oneself, the mastery of the technical wherewithal to acquire the object,
the skill involved in getting through the checkout undetected. The many
ordinary interactions are made extraordinary by the omission of the one;
payment. In some cases, the object itself comes to life, acquiring an
almost magical and magnetic power, pulling the shoplifter towards it; "
a conventional object...becomes fascinating, seductively drawing the
would-be shoplifter to it, only and just because she is playing with
imposing a deviant project on the world."
(Katz, J. 1988, p.58)
Katz makes a number of interpretations. Firstly, that committing a
criminal act like shoplifting or vandalism
"tests one's ability to bound
the authentic morality of the self from other's perceptions"
(Katz, J. 1988, p.66)
The criminal learns that he can cross the boundaries into someone
else's world, take what he wants and get away with it. In some ways, it
can be seen as a game; there are two sides, there is always a winner and
a loser. The ludic metaphor, as Katz terms it, is familiar from accounts
of white-collar financial fraud, where offenders refer to their monetary
gains as being unimportant except as a means of keeping score. There's a
strong sexual theme to the commission of the crime:
"an element of
seduction turning into irrational compulsion"
(Katz, J. 1988, p.71)
heightened by the rush of excitement at the moment of the act and the
climax of getting away with it. Finally there is the powerful and
liberating knowledge that one has successfully violated and transcended
moral constraint.
Katz's phenomenological analysis is portable across a wide range of
deviant behaviours, across gender, social class and race.
"The excitement, you know, that's the part I like: I'm not the sort goes
round shooting at random anyone I see. All of my killings they've all
had a purpose... Firstly, I don't have to justify myself, there's no
need. I guess the way I'd put it would be to say it's like we are at
war, me and society I mean. I see myself as a law enforcement officer:
only my laws, not yours...I've chosen [a way] which I thoroughly enjoy;
it's plotting and scheming and working out a strategy, then putting it
into action and seeing if it works...I've been successful a hundred times
more often than I've ever been caught for, thas certainly a fact.
We're cleverer than we're given credit for, people like me, we certainly
are." (Parker 1999 p 90)
Another of Tony Parker's interview subjects describes the search for
artistic creativity in a more sedate and conventional setting, which
hints at the likely script in high-stakes white-collar crime.
"It must be a job with a certain amount of standing and prestige... in
addition it must provide me with the opportunity to exercise my brains
and ingenuity so that I can consistently fiddle for myself another two
or three pounds a week on top of my salary...I want to be able to give
expression to this little bent I have, this little quirk or twist that
gives me the satisfaction of knowing that just in a minor and
unimportant way I'm being cleverer than the accountants or the auditors.
This is what gives spice to life as far as I'm concerned." (Parker 1999
p109)
Man's project of self-affirmation determines how he will behave and
appear to himself and others. He may face choices that prove
uncontroversial in the eyes of society. Or he may choose to show open
hostility to, and disavowal of, the societal norms.
"Rebellion may be a
clue, then, to the source of meaning for contemporary social man. Given
the conscious realization of the inevitability of contradictions in his
life, he can transcend what would, under these conditions, be a
meaningless existence by rebelling against these very conditions."
(Goodwin, A. 1976
, p.838)
Although not all rebellion involves criminal
behaviour, and not all crime is rebellious, the existential criminal can
still be seen to be exerting what Nietzsche called the 'will to power',
rejecting conventions and taking actions that may not be grounded in
reason, but are personally authentic, given his situation.
"From very young, my sexual orientation and desires have been only for
young boys, and because I am what I am and who I am, it seems natural
and normal when I express that in a physical way. But no one accepts
that: yet I can't feel any different, even if I wanted to, which I
don't. It's part of my whole personality and nature, and a very
important and solid part...society doesn't agree with me...And, although
I know it, I don't see how I'm ever going to be able to do anything
about it, because it would be like betraying myself."
(Parker 1999 p172-3)
The Moral Power of Emotions
Katz moves the debate on from the material and physical to discuss how
an individual can rise to a challenge to his moral existence. "The
criminal action itself is fundamentally an attempt to transcend a moral
challenge faced by the criminal in the immediate situation." (Vold 1998
p225) Although this is about as watertight as the positivist approach
(not everybody faces down a moral challenge by resorting to criminal
activity), some existential and phenomenological writers argue that
nearly all crime can be seen as a response to a grave threat to the
emotions.
"The emotions of modernism
anxiety, alienation, self-destruction,
radical isolation, anomie, private revolt, madness, hysteria, and
neurosis
are not able to be subsumed into self-control." (Morrison
1997 p380). Matza talks of the moral nature of the interaction,
"infraction", and Morrison of the moral emotions that are at the centre
of the crime experience. Katz theorises about humiliation, as a sort of
electrical current that runs through all deviant behaviour.
In his chapter on 'Righteous Slaughter'
(Katz, J. 1988, p.22), he links the
opposing emotions of humiliation and rage using the essential stepping
stone of righteousness. "The would-be assailant needs only the most
fleeting encounter with the principle of moral reflection to move from
humiliation to rage." (p24) Being ridiculed, demeaned, demoted,
degraded: the state of humiliation makes one painfully aware of the
exigencies of one's existence. Righteousness and rage make one
selectively blind, indifferent to the historical and the future moments
while completely focussed on the here-and-now and the response required
for moral self-defence, even to the extent of deadly assault.
Transcending humiliation with righteous rage creates a moral framework
that is completely coherent within its situational context: sometimes
this is understood in wider society, as has become the case with women
who attack their partners after years of domestic violence, more often
it is not, as seen in Katz's opening example of a father who beat his
child to death for crying which he saw as "purposive and offensive"
(Katz, J. 1988, p.12)
Humiliation is also highlighted by Keir Sothcott in an article on war
atrocity (2002). Lt. Calley led the American platoon that infamously
laid waste to the Vietnamese village of My Lai in 1968. Clean-cut GIs
were subsequently accused of uncontrollable mayhem and violence, rape
and murder of civilians, and Lt. Calley was put on trial for murder.
Sothcott describes Calley's response to his situation in Vietnam:
"From imaginary fear and actual experience Calley concluded that the
Vietnamese were mocking him, deriding his supposed omnipotence and
refusing to comply with his romantic image of heroic war. ...For Calley,
this realisation that Vietnam was insidiously dangerous, became a deeply
humiliating experience and a direct attack upon his self." (Sothcott
2002 p 30)
Far from responding to him and his men as saviours of the situation,
heroes of the hour, the Vietnamese showed no gratitude to the Americans.
This, in addition to the very real hostility and actual threat,
contrived a context for Calley that, combined with the moral imperative
of his orders from above to 'go in and kill them all', unleashed the
sense of righteousness that transformed his humiliation into a righteous
slaughter.
The robber who adds a sawn-off shotgun to his bag, the United States
government led by George W.Bush which lobbies for war against Iraq: both
are engaged in
"a transcendent project to exploit the ultimate symbolic
value of force to show that one 'means it'."
(Katz, J. 1988, p.321)
It becomes
the primary goal, rather than robbing the bank or maintaining manageable
relationships in the global supply of oil. As with the shoplifter, who
more often than not pays for goods at the check-out while stealing
others, the project is not characterised by material gain. For the
United States administration, as with Katz's "badass" and "hardman",
transcendence can be achieved purely by having a presence, by being
completely intimidating.
"The hardman triumphs, after all, by inducing
others to calculate the costs and benefits."
(Katz, J. 1988, p.235)
Criminological Theories
The impact of emotions is referenced in other dimensions of the criminal
justice cycle. In victimology, the dominant affect is acknowledged in
the discourse; we talk of the Fear Of Crime, even if the study of this
fear is largely actuarial statistics. And perhaps the greatest of all
the emotional drives...revenge...is the principal player in the theatre of
punishment. Anger and vengeance have a high degree of social acceptance
when they are channelled into procedures such as the criminal justice
system.
"Emotions are the most toxic substance known to man" said Dennis Nilsen.
(Masters 1995 p184). Emotions are certainly the most toxic substance
known to criminologists, who have studiously avoided incorporating the
seductions and repulsions of deviant behaviour into their work, although
David Matza's theory of techniques of neutralization can be compared to
the existentialist vision of bad faith, in the criminal's desire to hide
his belief in conventional morality behind excuses rather than challenge
it and take responsibility for his actions. Symbolic interactionism
looks at the self-image of the criminal, and how he perceives the
relationship between himself and other members and institutions of
society. Labelling theorists also concern themselves with image, but in
the context of how society will apply it within the formal and informal
processes of social control.
The solutions proposed by many criminologists seem to apply to man's
reason and/or self-control. To me, it is clear that most people have
both, that there is a symbiotic relationship between the two, and that
it is this very symbiosis that dictates when either reason or
self-control, or both, should be used. As we read Katz's accounts of
righteous slaughter, offending behaviour can be seen contextually as not
only moral but rational. To cut the mustard as a 'badass' clearly
requires as much personal self-control as being a stockbroker.
So the question is why the seductive appeal of illegitimate behaviours
can be resisted by some people but not by others. Given an emotional
cocktail of humiliation, moral righteousness and anger, some men turn
into killers but others do not. The existentialist perspective of
self-affirmation provides an understanding of, but maybe not an
explanation for, criminal behaviour. Taking a phenomenological
perspective, one can look behind the arbitrary legal definitions of
'crime' to see positive qualities of imaginativeness, sensuality,
self-esteem, and creativity being exercised in certain behaviours. We
would accept the desire for a rush of excitement, the thrill of courting
danger, as valid motivations for bungee-jumping... ...but not public
affray. We do not approve of the fact that someone injects heroin
because he wants to feel good...yet it is highly fashionable to inject
botulinum toxin for cosmetic benefit. The matrix of licit and illicit
behaviour becomes even more complex as one moves the context across time
or space: activities which once were criminal are now legitimate,
behaviour that is proscribed in one society is accepted in another.
Clearly the conditions in which people live will determine what
possibilities they have, and this is perhaps the point when, like the
orchestra coming in behind the soloist, the body of mainstream
criminology can further the existential explanation...for example, by
examining the ways in which cultural, environmental and social factors
might shape choices.
In conclusion, a close reading of the work of Katz and other
existentialist and phenomenologist writers suggests to me that crime is
at its most seductive for individuals who generate their self-esteem
from quick fixes, short-term projects with a rapid turnaround where
stimulation and instant gratification are the priorities; the clue is
present in the language we use - 'taking control of the moment'.
Projects of self-affirmation that can be sustained over a longer term
can sidestep the technical transgression that is crime.
"The most fundamental characteristic of man and consciousness is his
ability to go beyond his situation. He is never identical with it, but
rather exists as a relation to it. Thus he determines how he will live
it and what its meaning is to be; he is not determined by it." (Sartre
1963 Barnes pxix) Could this equally well be read as an existential
commentary on how futile it is to try and contain the self within the
artificial boundaries of a social construct like crime?
Bibliography
Elias, N. 1982 The Civilising Process Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Goodwin, A. 1976 'On Transcending the Absurd' American Journal of
Sociology March 1976 pp 831-846
Katz, J. 1988 Seductions of Crime New York: Basic Books
Katz, J. 2002 Social Ontology and Research
(Accessed 27.11.02)
Laing, R.D. 1960 The Divided Self London: Tavistock
Masters, B. 1995 Killing for Company London: Arrow Books
Morrison, W. 1997 Theoretical Criminology London: Cavendish
Parker, T. 1999 Criminal Conversations London: Routledge
Sartre, J-P. 1963 The Problem of Method (Introduction by Hazel Barnes)
London: Methuen
Sartre, J-P. 1966 Existentialism and Humanism (Introduction by Philip
Mairet)
London: Methuen
Sothcott, K. 2002 The Seductions of War and the Existential Origins of
Military Atrocity
(Accessed 27.11.02)
Vold, G. and Bernard, T. 1998 Theoretical Criminology Oxford: OUP
Essay copyright Ginny Goudy 2003
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