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Aristotle, Berkeley, and Proteus: Joyce's Use of Philosophy

No one familiar with Joyce's biography is unaware that he knew a good deal of philosophy. And given that Joyce put so much of his life into his writings, we should expect to find a good deal of philosophy in at least A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. Surprisingly little work, however, has been done on this topic, to my knowledge: we seem to have a field wide open for systematic investigation. I offer the following as a contribution to such investigation. I argue that in the "Proteus" section of Ulysses, Joyce interweaves images, motifs, and themes he introduced as early as "The Dead" to fashion a picture of the development of Stephen Dedalus's consciousness. I further argue that these elements center around the philosophical theme of subjectivity vs. objectivity, which determines the choice of motif (for example, Joyce's use of mathematical imagery). Finally, I argue—roughly—that Stephen is a solipsist trying to come to terms with the objective world. He fails to do so in Portrait, despite the central place he assigns to claritas in his aesthetic. His change in consciousness, from solipsism to a first tentative acceptance of the objectivity of the world, takes place on Sandymount; and I propose that we can most profitably view it as a struggle in Stephen's mind between a godless Berkeley and Aristotle. Aristotle wins at the end of "Proteus," so that Stephen is ready to confront the reality of experience in "Ithaca," not for the millionth time, but for the first. I believe that if my interpretation is sound, Joyce will emerge as doing something original; as using the doctrines advanced by historical philosophers as devices of characterization. The idea is that Stephen may be said to personify the doctrines in question, in the sense that he thinks and acts as one would think and act who really believed them—believed them, that is, so strongly as to try to live them. And this may have repercussions for philosophy; might it