war one whose body is blown to bits.’ The music video features (2007:174) ‘a
limbless, senseless, veteran begging for his life to end.’ The powerful lyrics of the
song include:
‘I can't remember anything
can’t tell if this is true or dream
…I'm waking up, I cannot see
That there's not much left of me
Nothing is real but pain now
Hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please god, wake me…
…Darkness imprisoning me
All that I see
Absolute horror
I cannot live
I cannot die
Trapped in myself
Body my holding cell’
The song is highly believed by Corwin to be about the mind-body interaction which
was first presented by Descartes who famous philosophical phrase is ‘I think,
therefore I am.’. According to Descartes, (1996:18) ‘all that I am a thing which is real
and which truly exists. But what kind of a thing? As I have just said – a thinking
thing.’ His understanding of body is,1996:17 ‘whatever has a determinable shape
and a definable location and can occupy a space...it can be perceived by touch,
sight, hearing, taste…and can be moved in various ways….by whatever else comes
into contact with it.’ In the song, Joe is perceived as ‘physically alive but essentially
brain dead. Yet in actuality Joes mind is fully functional.’ (Corwin, 2007:174).
Descartes explains In his ‘Treatise on Man’ book, (Cottingham 1992:242) ‘god unites
a rational soul to the bodily machine, placing its principal seat in the brain,…it is
adapted to have a while range of sensations corresponding, …different ways in
which the brain stimulates via the nerves.’ His perceptive reveals his belief that the
body is just a machine to hold the mind/soul, after the body ‘rots’ after death, the soul
and mind lives on (Descartes used different words such as mind/thinking/soul to
explain the same thing).
The song, Corwin admits perhaps doesn’t provide the explanation of how mind –
body interact but tries to get the message across through the extreme case of Joe,
‘whose body supports the existence of his mind…yet traps it.’ (2007:174). Which
many philosophers struggle to explain including Descartes; (1996:18) ‘I do not know,
and for the moment I shall not argue the point, since I can make judgements only
about things which are known to me, I know that I exist; the question is what is this ‘I’
that I know?’. We can only begin to try and understand Joe’s condition as we are
being educated about such things, but what about those who are really facing such
difficulties? What about those who are in a coma, they are presumed brain dead and
being ‘kept alive’ by a machine, but inside they might be screaming for help just the
way Joe is. Descartes points out in his Second Mediation, (1996:59) ‘although the
whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, I recognize that if a foot or arm or
any other part of the body is cut off, nothing has thereby been taken away from the
mind.’ So here he is proposing that even if you are physically disabled, your mind
won’t be affected. This is the point that Metallica are trying to get across through this
song.
Joe struggles to come to terms with his situation, especially with the confusion of
whether he is dreaming or awake, ‘I can't remember anything, can’t tell if this is true
or dream’ (lyrics online). Descartes had the same difficulty in recognising whether
everything he saw was real, (1996:16) ‘I will suppose then, that everything I see is
spurious. I will believe that my memories tell me lies, and that none of the things that
it reports ever happened…So what remains true? Perhaps the fact that nothing is
certain.’ But eventually he admits to recognizing the difference, (1996:61) ‘For now I
notice there is a vast difference between the two (being asleep and awake), in that
dreams are never linked by memory with all the other actions of life as waking
experiences are.’ Descartes seems to be making assumptions but when going
deeper into understanding proves that perhaps his thinking can’t always be correct,
but while he is searching for knowledge, Joe, is as Corwin says ‘is fighting for his
very being.’
Progressing from dreaming to thinking, Corwin does emphasize that if thinking is all
that we need, why is it that Joe feels like it’s the end, why does he feel incomplete
without his senses, his body? Surely if Descartes is right we should be able to cope
with just our mind/thinking. His understanding was that (Cottingham 1992:236) ‘the
soul, although ‘joined’ or ‘united’ to the ‘whole assemblage of bodily organs’’ during
life, is ‘’of such nature that it has no relation to extension, or to the dimensions of
other properties…of which body is composed.’ Through this song, (2007:177)
‘Metallica suggest that mind alone isn’t enough – we need our bodies to truly be
human beings.’ However later on in his books, Descartes admits to needed both
(1996:52) ‘my belief that this body, more that any other, belonged to me had some
justification. For I could never be separated from it, as I could from other bodies; and
felt my appetites and emotions in, and on account of, this body’. We can’t do
anything with our bodies without the instructions of our brain/minds and our minds
can’t think without our bodies contributing to the development of the mind for
example, reading/writing, colours, images etc.
Even with the presumption that Joe is brain dead, Joe is fighting for his freedom
inside (Irwin 2007:180) ‘he sends the signal ‘S-O-S’ repeatedly, his silent screams
finally find a way out.’ Even though Descartes at first claims, (Descartes, 1996:54)
‘accordingly, it is certain that I am really distant from my body, and can exist without
out.’ he later on struggles through his Mediations to come with a final complete
answer and to prove that mind can work without the body and vice versa, (1996:56)
‘there is nothing that my own nature teaches me for vividly that that I have a body,
and that when I feel pain there is something wrong with my body…so I should not
doubt there is some truth in this.’ Here he admits to knowing that there is a link and
interaction between mind-body, and it would be difficult without one or the other.
In conclusion to the essay, Descartes overall objective in the Meditations is to
question knowledge. To explore such metaphysical issues as the existence of God
and the separation of mind and body, it was important for him to distinguish what we
can know as truth. Corwin is correct in linking the song to Descartes, even if the
song doesn’t aim to solve the mind-body interaction. The song evokes the topic and
explores the ‘aftermath’ of one going though the very process of ‘living’ with the mind
only. Through the song Metallica reveal the anguish that Joe is going through. It
does prove that is it very difficult if not impossible to socialise or communicate
without both. Its clear Descartes did come across various difficulties when trying to
come up with evidence and conclusion to his mind-body dualism theory. Through
this essay we see that even the greatest of Philosophical thinkers can’t always prove
their beliefs and thinking.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cottingham,John. (ed). (1996) DESCARTES: Mediations and First Philosophy. Cambridge university press.
Cotttingham, John. (ed). (1992) The Cambridge companion to DESCARTES. Cambridge university press.
Irwin, William. (2007) Metallica and Philosophy: A Crash Course in Brain Surgery. Blackwell.
Robinson, Dave & Garrat, Chris. (1999). Introducing Descartes. Cambridge: Icon Books.
Sorell, Tom. (2000) DESCARTES a very short introduction. Oxford university press.
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/m/metallica/one_20092051.html (ACCESSED 31st March 2009)
