Criticism of Hillman

A lot of what he says is true; we've spent the last few hundred years emptying the world of soul until there's nothing left but a sad, withered little husk left. Hillman is passionate in his crusade to reverse that, and reinvest the world with soul. He's the instrument of the universe in bringing balance back to the world, which is not only admirable, it's also desperately needed. But in the course of his struggle it seems that he's gone too far, raising Dionysian soulfulness not only to a principle, but the only principle. In this way he's committed the only "sin" in Jungianism; becoming too one-sided.

To categorically reject any and all analysis, in every situation, is one sided and quite frankly, impossible. Even if it was possible, it would lead to a post-modernist horror where there literally is no reality to hold onto. Of course, Hillman himself didn't fully live this way, just as no other post-modernist does; to do so would mean you literally didn't believe that jumping off a building would necessarily lead your death, or at least injury. Nor would any post-modernist let their child walk alone across a highway.

Over and over again, in fairy tales and other stories, the one true evil on a human level is becoming too one-sided. True, the inhuman, ultimate evil which is shadow side of the Self exists but that is as much beyond us mere humans as the bright, God side of the Self. When humans become evil, it's when we go too far to one side or the other. To me, this is the main problem with Hillman's ideas. It would have been one thing to suggest that sometimes we need to go to an extreme, reject all thought and simply experience. But to categorically reject any and all analysis EVER strikes me as one-sided in the extreme.

To be honest I can't say whether he's right or wrong; maybe this was exactly what his daimon required of him. Maybe he was living his life exactly as he was supposed to. The only person who can tell if you're doing what you should or going down the wrong path is, in the end, you, and that's as it should be. But I do feel that, while he had a lot of valuable insights to contribute to society, his philosophy was inadequate... although that's probably true of everything.