What a Piece of Work Is a Man
Aldous Huxley Massachusetts Institute of Technology
October 5, 1960
by Beezone
“What a piece of work is a man!
Introduction to Beezone’s Series on Aldous Huxley’s What a Piece of Work is Man.’
In the fall of 1960, Aldous Huxley—novelist, essayist, and visionary thinker—delivered a series of lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the title What a Piece of Work is Man. These talks came at a pivotal moment, both in Huxley’s own intellectual journey and in the cultural climate of mid-20th-century America.
Beezone’s presentation of this series brings forward Huxley’s insights in their original context, while also situating them within the broader arc of his thought. These lectures mark one of his last major public engagements before his death in 1963, and they capture the tone of a man deeply concerned with humanity’s future yet unwilling to surrender his faith in human potential.
It is worth noting that during his stay in the Cambridge area during these lectures, Timothy Leary along with Richard Alpert contacted Huxley with the help of Houston Smith, and became a pivotal figure in forming their work at Harvard University, Harvard psilocybin project.
What follows is not only a record of a lecture series but a reminder of the enduring questions Huxley pressed upon his audience: What does it mean to be human? How can we reconcile our extraordinary capacities with our persistent ignorance? And what paths remain open to us as a species standing between wisdom and disaster?
Aldous Huxley delivered his first of his seven scheduled lectures on “What a Piece of Work Is a Man,” the novelist discussed “Ancient Views of Human Nature” before an estimated 1,500 people at M.I.T.’s Kresge Auditorium.
Copyright Notice:
This transcript of Aldous Huxley’s What a Piece of Work is Man lecture (MIT, 1960; WGBH/NAEB broadcast) is provided by Beezone for nonprofit educational and scholarly purposes. Use here is consistent with fair use under U.S. copyright law (17 U.S.C. §107) and MIT Libraries’ guidance that no permission is required for fair use or public domain materials.
This is a portion of his talk:
The Self
The idea being that there was a “self” which was invaded from the outside by these alien supernatural forces and was made to do things, either evil things or exceptionally good things of which the normal self would be quite incapable. And now let us briefly consider how did Homer envision the self that was invaded from the outside? He did not envision it as a unitary soul (unitary self) or personality. There is no word in Homer for the soul (unitary self), the psyche (ψυχή). He speaks of the psyche (ψυχή), but the psyche (ψυχή) is something which exists only at the moment of death. It’s the thing that leaves the body and that will become the future shadow, which people can contact if they go down to Hades. But during life, the psyche (ψυχή) is not there at all during life. The self is a kind of symbiosis of a number of psychophysiological factors working together and living in a rather uneasy consensus and organization, rather unstable and rather uncomfortable all the time.
And the factors which Homer describes as being components of the self are first of all, they’re these half physiological factors as something which he calls the thymós, which is the seat of feeling, which lives in the chest. And then there is the phrén, which quite literally is the midriff, which is the organ of passion and of life. Then there is the noûs, which is the reasonable sensible ego, more or less we would call it, I suppose, the ego. But anyhow, it is the reasonable side of man. Then there is the heart (kardía), which fulfills more or less the same kind of functions as the heart (kardía) does in colloquial language today. And also the belly (gastḗr), which is quite important. So that we see there is this kind of committee which works.
And the “I” the noûs merely one member of this committee, not necessarily the chairman. He just is there. And he may be at the mercy of the other members of the committee, or he may control them, but it’s never quite certain which position he will occupy. And one of the things which is striking in the Homeric psychology is that there is no word for will, no conception of will in this. The Homeric psychology closely resembles the Hindu and Buddhist psychology where will plays a completely negligible part.
It seems to us very strange to get on without the idea of a will, and yet one can do it. For example, I mean, take the marriage service, will thou have this woman to be thy wife? Well, instead of saying I will, we can say, well, my fumo is all for it and so is my phrén. My nose has certain misgivings, but I’m prepared to go along with what the others say. All the more sos I feel. Distinct symptoms of possession by Aphrodite.
I mean this is an answer which we could sum up in terms of the will and perhaps in some ways is more realistic, is our idea of the wheel doing something. And it’s worth quoting in this context a remark by an eminent historian of ideas, professor Nielsen, who says, A pluralistic thinking about the nature of the soul (unitary self) is founded in the nature of things and only our habits of thought make it surprising that man should have several soul (unitary self)s.
Well, Homer, as I’ve said before, was not a philosopher nor a psychologist, but a very good observer. And his view of the personality built up out of these multiple factors is a workable one. And interestingly enough, it’s remarkably close in some ways to the Buddhist conception, which was developed, I suppose about three or four centuries after Homer. And which was developed of course much more systematically by philosophical writers. But do you see the Buddhist conception specifically affirms that man is annata, that he has no unitary soul (unitary self) and that his personality is this group of loosely conjoined complexes, which in Buddhist literature called skandas. And they point out that all the phenomena of human behavior and thought can be explained in terms of these scandals, which are partly physiological and partly psychological. You can’t really separate the two.
It’s interesting to note that in the last 75 years, there has been in the West a considerable current returning towards the Homeric and Buddhist idea of man away from the idea of the unitary soul (unitary self) and towards the idea of a consensus of numerous factors coming together. This view has been discussed by Bertrand Russell in various places. And he says, I quote here, he says “that from this view of human personality, it does not follow that there is no simple self. It only follows that we cannot know whether there is or not, and that the self, except as a bundle of perceptions, cannot enter into any part of our knowledge.” Well, this is certainly for Homer had thought about the philosophy of what he was saying, I think he would’ve completely agreed with the Bertrand Russell. That man was a bundle of elements. And of course, Bertrand Russell was preceded in this by Hume.
***
Beezone Fair Use and Copyright Notice
The transcripts and related materials of Aldous Huxley’s What a Piece of Work is Man lecture series (delivered at MIT in 1960 and originally broadcast by WGBH/NAEB) are presented here by Beezone for educational and scholarly purposes only.
These materials are used under the principles of fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law (17 U.S.C. § 107). Their inclusion serves to support research, teaching, commentary, and critical discussion.
-
Source: Audio recordings and transcripts derive from publicly accessible archival collections at MIT and associated broadcasters.
-
Public Domain & Fair Use: According to the MIT Libraries, “Permission is not required if the item is in the public domain, or if your use is fair use under U.S. copyright law.” Beezone’s work with these materials falls under this guidance.
-
Transformative Use: Transcriptions have been edited and polished for clarity and readability, with added commentary, contextual notes, and analysis. These editorial and interpretive contributions represent a transformative use distinct from the original broadcasts.
-
No Commercial Use: Beezone is a nonprofit educational foundation. These materials are shared for learning, research, and historical inquiry only, not for commercial distribution.
If you are the rights holder and believe any material here exceeds fair use, please contact Beezone to discuss corrections or removal.
Go to Lecture II