The Unconscious Cannot be Known

“The power of thought is the magic of the mind,” claims Lord Byron and what takes place in the mind cannot be know. At the same time, such unknown powers in mind inspire us, drive us into action and provide the core of our actions. In this course we will examine the tradition that views creativity and art to be inspired by unknown sources. For example, Socrates says that his thinking is inspired by the muses, and Goethe’s Faust says that the powers of nature can never be understood. The romantics argued that nature cannot be known. Freud based his psychoanalysis on the idea that the unconscious determines one’s life (despite the fact that he thought he could explain such mechanism). Jung claims that unconscious archetypes (12 in kind) determine human psyche. And Lacan maintains that we cannot know what lies beyond a system of signifiers. Katherine Hayles investigates how science attempts to explain how animals understand the world, in a book entitled The Unthought (2017). Ecofeminists argue that we perceive nature (like women) operates without thinking or being aware of things. In an era of powerful AI systems, we must ask what remains unconscious and what is essential to our understanding.

We will consider a few approaches to what can be termed the unconscious. We will read a few literary stories, explore several works of art, and study a few theoretical texts, all in order to understand that we cannot understand. We will ask how can we begin to examine that which we cannot know.