Camille Paglia also mentions the reptilian brain in passing (page 18). Paul D. MacLean is rightly famous for calling our attention to the reptilian brain, which is the part of the human brain that is involved in what both Ong and Bloom refer to as agonistic tendencies. It is the part of the human brain in charge of our fight/flight/freeze reaction.
But in Plato's and Aristotle's thought, the Greek word thumos (or thymos) designates the part of the human psyche that animates the agonistic dynamism. For both Plato and Aristotle, the cardinal virtue of courage needs to be cultivated to help transform the agonistic dynamism toward a pro-social orientation. For Plato and Aristotle, the powerful potential of the agonistic dynamism can tend toward brashness, on the one hand, and, on the other, cowardliness.
But Camille Paglia is not cowardly. She has a super-abundance of warrior energy. Both she and second-wave feminist zealots tend toward brashness.
Now, the second-wave feminist zealots who engage in misandry might defend their practice by saying that turnabout is fair play -- after centuries of male misogyny, feminist misandry is fair play and, in effect, reparation for the past. But the Democratic Party still needs to attract a certain number of men to support and vote for its political candidates in order to win elections.
In any event, Plato's and Aristotle's thumos is also the part of the human psyche involved in what Friedrich Nietzsche and Alfred Adler refer to as the will-to-power. Camille Paglia says, "Rape is the sexual expression of the will-to-power, which nature plants in all of us and which civilization rose to contain" in pro-social ways (page 35). In effect, rape represents the sexual expression of brashness.
In her new book, Camille Paglia reprints what she herself says "remains the most controversial thing I have ever written" (page xx), her 1991 op-ed piece titled "Rape and Modern Sex War" (pages 52-57).
In my estimate, "Rape and Modern Sex War" is by far the most important piece in the book. For an informed and detailed discussion of the problems caused by feminist zealotry, see KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor's new book The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities (Encounter Books, 2017).
Now, I want to return to Camille Paglia's discussion of "surface," mentioned in the above-quoted passage. She says, "The Westerner knowns by seeing. Perceptual relations are at the heart of our [Western] culture . . . Walking in nature, we see, identify, name, recognize. This recognition is our apotropaion, that is, our warding off of fear" (page 9; her italics). In her discussion of perceptual relations and especially seeing, she does not happen to advert explicitly to Marshall McLuhan's widely known books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press, 1962) and Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (McGraw-Hill, 1964), or to Ong's massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Harvard University Press, 1958). Nevertheless, it is likely that she may have been familiar with McLuhan and may have heard of Ong.
In any event, Camille Paglia says, "Name and person are part of the West's quest for form. The West insists on the discrete identity of objects. To name is to know; to know is to control" (pages 8-9). However, she sees this sense of control as "delusional certitude" (page 9). She also says, "Far Eastern culture has never striven against nature in this way. Compliance, not confrontation is its rule" (page 9). Ironically, confrontation is her rule -- not against chthonian nature, but against a broad spectrum of human adversaries.
In conclusion, Camille Paglia's new book should be widely read.
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