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Online Journal
- 3.7.2010
This takes up the
discussion that ended my last post on Der Tod in Venedig. I
wrote that the developments in the story cannot be explained as driven by
external events alone, without reference to their connection with
Aschenbach's inner condition and personal history; but equally, that
looking at psychological forces won't suffice either, for that wouldn't do
justice to how the text is crafted.
What follows from this is that we cannot read the story as a psychogram,
as a report on events that merely show the decay of a strong personality;
much less can we view it as a drama where external forces drive the
protagonist into disaster. None of these readings does justice to the setup.
The mistake in both of them would be to assume that the events that make up
Death in Venice happen in the real world, or at least in a world that
is sufficiently like the real world. But that's not so: the development of
the novella doesn't follow the logic of the real world. It follows the logic
of its fictional world, and that logic is different.
Just in what respects is it different? No dark magic is going on (none of
the prefiguration characters has supernatural powers, nor does anything
happen in the plot that cannot be fully rationally accounted for), and
there are no obvious artificial coincidences (such as di ex machina).
Still, the world of the novella is very different from the real world. It
has a consistently restricted focus on the main character (nothing happens,
or at least we learn about nothing which happens, without significance for
Aschenbach), nothing is accidental, it is almost as if all developments
were following a pre-determined scheme. And of course, that's not
accidentally so.
Crafting a fictional world provides the author with the opportunity to
arrange external events so that they exhibit a relationship to the inner
goings-on in their protagonists. Such relationships between the external and
the internal can be of many kinds: the external events can be specially
arranged so as to expose the psychological setup (i.e. the author
deliberately puts a protagonist in a situation in which aspects of her
psyche become clearly visible, are expressed in her views and actions, and
so on); the external might be arranged so as to express moods and
emotions (for instance, when the protagonist is sad and in generally
depressed moods, his surroundings are depicted in a corresponding way, it is
dark, cold and it's raining, tree leaves are falling down, birdsong is dying
away, etc.); or finally the external can symbolize elements of the
internal (such as a house that starts showing cracks and paint peeling off
in correspondence with the decay of the relationships in the family that
lives in it).
In short, the setup of the external (i.e. external with respect to the
people in the story, the protagonists) environment and events is far from
accidental, it has a function in the story. That accounts for the
selectiveness in literary texts: the author doesn't just describe
any elements of the surroundings of their protagonists, but only those
which matter, i.e. which fulfill one of the tasks I have listed above. It
also explains the focus on the main person, and generally the
directedness, that is, the impression that we gain that in this
fictional world everything follows a scheme, that the plot rolls into a
pre-determined direction.
So much for the relationship between the inner and the outer; this goes
some way in the direction of answering the first of the two questions I listed earlier; what
about the second, which had to do with the underlying valuation?
- 1.7.2010
And since we are on the
topic of translating titles: what is it with this morbid fascination that
death exerts on the translators of James Bond movie titles from English into
German?
It all started in 1981 with "In tödlicher Mission" (On a deadly
mission) — not an obvious translation, one might say, of "For your
eyes only". After the untranslatable "Octopussy", next was "A view to a kill"
in 1985, which was rendered "Im Angesicht des Todes" (In the face of death)
... at least a little closer to the original (and with a nice little word
play that makes use of the allusion to visual vocabulary: 'Angesicht' has a
common root with the German word for sight, so there is after all a certain
connection to the term 'view' in the original title). But have you noticed
that again 'death' (Tod) makes an appearance in the German title where there
is no direct counterpart of it in the English? That's two; three makes a
pattern, so let's see how it continues.
In 1987, Timothy Dalton's first movie was "The living daylights". Not a
chance to get death into that, wouldn't you say? Well, there's no
limits to creativity: the German translation was "Der Hauch des Todes" (The
breath of death). Damned if I see the connection, but they managed to get
death into it all right.
Shall I go on and mention that the next one was "License to kill" (1989),
with the obvious (and very precise), but consequently death-laden translation
"Lizenz zum Töten"? After that, beginning with "Goldeneye", death has
interestingly withdrawn from the German titles. That's a pity: it was good
fun to watch it sneaking in one time after the other.
- 30.6.2010
The title of Thomas Mann's famous novella is usually translated into
English as Death in Venice (compare also the Italian title of Luchino
Visconti's film adaptation: Morte a Venezia); however, this somewhat
obscures that the original German title carries a definite article:
Der Tod in Venedig. So what the tale is about isn't just
something generic about dying in Venice (of which, one might think then, the
particular death of Aschenbach, Mann's protagonist, is just one instance).
It really is about an individual death — the culmination of a
specific life characterized by unique determination, discipline and
success on the one hand and on the other an incapacity to withstand, against
all better judgment, the weakening influence of a certain constellation of
circumstances. (Perhaps it's not merely an incapacity to resist them, but
also an element of actively seeking and following them that is in play here.)
It's also, crucially, an artist's life that is portrayed, but then
again a life originating in a family tradition centered around a sense of
duty, an adherence to discipline and austerity. There are, in other words,
not so many people who could die such a death (in Venice or elsewhere) as
Aschenbach's; and it's the individual end of such a life that Mann portrays
— an aspect that is obscured by the imprecise translation.
- 29.6.2010
I think I was wrong when I wrote that Aschenbach, in Thomas Mann's
novella Der Tod in Venedig, is led into his eventual death by
'following an instance of beauty wherever it leads, and whatever the
consequences may be' (in one of my earlier
posts on the subject of prefiguration in that text). It's true of course
that Aschenbach's all-overriding infatuation with the boy Tadzio is
the dominant factor in his losing touch with reality (as I've argued in the
post quoted above). But this influence only sets in after he arrives
in Venice, and thus cannot be what sets off the development in the first
place. Furthermore, what does get Aschenbach astray is, even though
triggered externally, something in his own psychological condition: his
desire to escape the tough work regime he has imposed on himself
("Fluchtdrang war sie, daß er es sich eingestand, diese Sehnsucht ins
Ferne und Neue, diese Begierde nach Befreiung, Entbürdung und Vergessen,
— der Drang hinweg vom Werke, von der Alltagsstätte eines starren,
kalten und leidenschaftlichen Dienstes", 190); his longing for the exotic
and magical (which lets him end up in Venice, of all places; most expressly
at 200); and perhaps a certain morbid relaxation in the face of death
allusions (think of his contemplation of death mysticism at the Munich
cemetery, 187, and his willingness to give in to the coffinesque comfort of
the Venetian gondola, 206 and 208).
So the question isn't just, as I wrote, why Aschenbach's realization that
his attempted synthesis between discipline, hard work, and dedication on the
one hand and the service of beauty on the other fails — it's also why
the drives that set off the development which exposes that failure start
earlier (and why, indeed, they start at all). They're not triggered by
the lure of beauty and the force of eros. Once the development has started,
however, these aesthetic elements provide the most powerful of all imaginable
amplifiers. Is therefore the trap into which Aschenbach falls a multi-staged
one? Is it only after fertile ground has been prepared by fatigue and escape
fantasies that corrosive aestheticism can complete its destructive work?
But if that's so, then why is there an external trigger (in all those
prefiguration characters) every time to bring these psychological states
to the front and enable them to control Aschenbach's decisions? Mann's whole
carefully crafted framework of symbols and allusions, parallels and
consequences, seems to have the singular purpose of producing a strongly
coherent, compulsively unwinding plot which at closer examination leaves
not the minutest detail to chance — everything's in the scheme, so
to speak. (And that's what primarily constitutes the high literary quality
and artistic value of the novella, after all.) The function of the
prefiguration characters is to drive Aschenbach towards the fateful setup
in Venice. And thus, psychological state alone can't account for what sets
the events of the story in motion.
- 28.6.2010
Since I've been asked (actually multiple times) what the term
'perceptacle' in the title of my earlier post about Poe and perception means:
it's a word play; the more obvious components are the title of Poe's story
('The spectacles') and the notion of perception, which is an important
ingredient in my discussion. In addition, there is a metaphysical concept
originating in Plato's late work, namely, the 'receptacle' (hypodoché
in Greek). Plus, the notion of the spectacular might have played a role,
too.
The most interesting association here, of course, is with the receptacle.
I guess a fascinating road of interpretation would be to compare the role
perception plays in our daily life, and its relations to valuations, with
the metaphysical idea of a receptacle and specific qualities that impress
on it.
- 13.6.2010
(This continues my discussion of the literary prefiguration technique
in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice from the previous post; look for links to the
earlier parts there.)
As we've seen, Mann uses prefiguration to point us, prefiguratively, to
two different elements of the story: death, and decline of a sense of the
appropriate. The strange traveler in the opening scene (at the Munich
cemetery), and later the gondolier and the Venetian musician all can be seen
as personalized appearances of death, while the fake youth is an
anticipation of Aschenbach himself.
Of all the characters in the novella, these four are most clearly the
symbol-bearers, a characteristic which a careful interpretation should take
into account. If the author uses them all in a roughly similar way, then
he'll probably have intended to express something with that common use.
(It's worth a speculation whether Tadzio, the Polish boy, also belongs in
that category. Just as the death figures, he has a part in leading
Aschenbach to give in to the fatal attraction of the place and conditions
which will kill him, and as they do, he may be taken to both symbolize an
abstract concept, namely that of beauty, and to trigger an episode of
Aschenbach's late life, namely that of yielding to pleasure wherever he
goes. However, compared to the other prefiguration figures, the boy is much
more continuously and coherently present in the plot, and seems decidedly
more tangible as a character than they are. At any rate, he is more
multi-dimensional compared to them.)
Let us make a distinction between two kinds of prefiguration: the
death personalizations on the one hand and the fake youth on the other.
Both sorts represent an episode in Aschenbach's late life: the former his
death, the latter his vain attempt to appear youthful and interesting to
someone who's much younger.
Both have an association with unreality, both carry a strong sense of
giving in, of Aschenbach losing grip. Only the fake youth, however, is
connected with his obsession with the boy (by the "Liebchen" talk). The
fake youth sequence is also the passage with the most explicit references
to a drift away into unreality. The death figures exert their influence more
by attraction, or at least by attracting attention, and by refusing to comply.
(Most strongly the gondolier, in his direct disobedience, 207–208, but
it's also a characteristic of the wanderer, returning very determinedly
Aschenbach's gaze, 188, and the musician, defiantly insisting on the official
account of the sickness outbreak, 250–251.)
But the main distinguishing aspect seems to be that they operate on
somewhat different levels. Wouldn't we say that one's death is something
different from one's behavior (even more when what we're talking about is
behavior only in a particular respect). Symbolizing death is on a different
order than symbolizing a specific foolishness. Or is it?
We may take the specific instance of foolishness here as standing in for
a tendency in Aschenbach: that of yielding to the attraction of pleasure,
the dolce far niente, and generally everything that helps him escape
the strict regime of his life, the order that he himself has imposed on it
(often characterized by terms invoking reason, worth and discipline). This
tendency, it seems, is connected to (and perhaps in a way deeply entangled
with) another: that of drifting into unreality, of getting besotted,
intoxicated, infatuated, and with it more and more losing grip on reality
as the plot develops.
This, I want to suggest, is why there are two different kinds of
prefiguration in Death in Venice. They connect the various strands
in the story: the theme of Aschenbach's continuous yielding, his drift into
unreality, and the inevitable moving toward his death. By being
prefigurations, they tie together earlier and later passages, thus they are
in part what constitutes these strands in the first place. But by
being all instances of the same literary technique, they also make it clear
that the strands themselves are not there coincidentally, that they are
interconnected. And finally, all strands run together in the single, final
and defining end point of the story: the protagonist's eventual death.
To put it into a somewhat broad and sweeping thesis, then: the different
uses of prefiguration in Mann's novella all illustrate a single, common
theme that runs through it: yielding to all sorts of influences, drifting
away from reality, and dying finally come to the same thing — and so
they're all presented using the same technique.
- 8.6.2010
(Still continuing my exploration of Thomas Mann's use of the literary
prefiguration technique, from part 1, with an afterthought, part 2, and part 3.)
The strange-looking traveler at the beginning of the story, the Venetian
musician, the gondolier and the fake youth are all instances of
prefiguration: they point, by analogy and by symbolizing, to later elements
in the story.
We can see that prefiguration is at work here not just from the parallels
themselves; it's not only the similarities in words, phrases and motifs
between, for instance, the appearance of the fake youth and Aschenbach's
tampering with his own looks; it's also the extra pointers that Mann lets
follow immediately on these instances of prefiguration: the perception that
the world drifts towards unreality, the feeling of an estrangement, the
advent of an atmosphere of dreamy dizziness. Furthermore, death symbolism
abounds whenever we see one of the personalized death figures: in the
description of the cemetery building before the wanderer appears (187); in
the references to coffin-blackness and soft indolence before the gondolier
sequence (206, 208); and in the hourglass imagery after the musician episode
(253). In addition, both the wanderer and the gondolier strangely disappear,
vanish in a rationally explainable, yet slightly unsettling manner, which
gives them an air of eerie unreality (192, 209). Finally, there's the power
they exert on Aschenbach's mind, which shows itself externally in the
challenging, irreverent posture and behavior of all three death-prefiguration
figures and on the psychological level in the inability of the protagonist to
resist the harmful influences which corrode his attitude and self-respect.
(I've looked into this aspect when I discussed the gondolier passage in my
last post.)
With the fake youth and the gondolier, Mann makes their function in his
narrative plan even more plain by having Aschenbach himself reflect on these
two figures, after his arrival in his hotel room: "So beunruhigten die
Erscheinungen der Herreise, der gräßliche alte Stutzer mit seinem
Gefasel vom Liebchen, der verpönte, um seinen Lohn geprellte Gondolier,
noch jetzt das Gemüt des Reisenden." (210) Why should these episodes
make Aschenbach unduly concerned? Without sensing some momentous meaning for
himself in their appearance, his disquiet would not be explainable. We are
meant to understand Aschenbach himself as reading a sign of what's to come
into these episodes. We might ask ourselves, of course, whether this sort of
veridical premonition is something that really takes place in the
world of the novella (that is, whether in Mann's fictional world such things
as veridical premonitions happen), or whether, as in the real world, there
is no such thing as knowing the future, but a person might be under the
impression that his feelings tell him something about what's in store
for him, and perhaps even unconsciously make it happen, in a self-fulfilling
prophecy pattern. In other words, is Mann having Aschenbach know his
fate, and perceiving it in the prefiguration characters, or does he portray
a mentally tired and overly sensitive old man seeing ghosts?
Unfortunately, he doesn't tell: "Ohne der Vernunft Schwierigkeiten zu
bieten, ohne eigentlich Stoff zum Nachdenken zu geben, waren sie dennoch
grundsonderbar von Natur, wie es ihm schien, und beunruhigend wohl eben
durch diesen Widerspruch." (210) Thus although Aschenbach finds on reflection
that there is nothing about them which couldn't be rationally explained,
still they seem deeply strange to him ("grundsonderbar"); yet he cannot
account for that strangeness, and that's what makes him nervous. This
is understandable enough, but it leaves open the question (and thus, I'd say,
the author deliberately leaves open the question) whether the grounds
of the strangeness then are in Aschenbach's psychological constitution or
whether the (fictional) world itself has a structure that includes such
things as death appearing as person and a mirroring of people's later fates
in the faces and behavior of others they encounter (that is, prefiguration).
Has Mann written the story of someone who lives (and dies) in such a world,
or has he written a story of someone who lives in the real world, but more
and more sinks into a deadly imaginary unreality?
The reflection on the prefiguration character of the fake youth and the
gondolier happens relatively close to their appearance in the story; there
is another such reflection; this one, however, comes very much later:
already close to the end of the text, Aschenbach remembers the cemetery
building and the wanderer figure from the scene in the very beginning; and
most revealingly, this happens in a moment that might, just might, have been
a turning-point: he has now learned the truth about the cholera epidemic,
and he ponders for a second the idea of leaving, and above all, warning the
Polish family and giving them a chance to leave in time as well. He
dismisses the thought, and the memory of the earlier scene seems to play a
role in the dismissal (though once more it remains unclear what is cause and
what consequence — is the recollection what causes his rejection of
the idea, or merely an expression that brings it into the light, in form of
a more observable behavior?): "Er erinnerte sich eines weißen Bauwerks,
geschmückt mit abendlich gleißenden Inschriften, in deren
durchscheinender Mystik das Auge seines Geistes sich verloren hatte" (256).
(The phrases here, "in deren durchscheinender Mystik das Auge seines Geistes
sich verloren hatte" are again near-precise quotes of the earlier passage,
compare 187: "sein geistiges Auge in ihrer durchscheinenden Mystik sich
verlieren zu lassen".) Also, there is a more obliquely made connection
here to the fake youth-prefiguration: the sentence: "[Er erinnerte sich]
jener seltsamen Wanderergestalt sodann, die dem Alterndem schweifende
Jünglingssehnsucht [...] erweckt hatte" refers to the wanderer, but it
also uses the old man vs. youth contrast that is played out in the figure of
the fake youth, and later in the cosmetically 'rejuvenated' Aschenbach
himself. Again, both allusions strengthen the coherence in the text between
these episodes of recurring motifs immensely.
These two reflection passages, then, confirm and underline the
prefiguration character of the episodes I have discussed. I think we're now
well set up to launch into some deeper analysis of the borders and
connections between reality and unreality within fiction that are so
artfully drawn here.
- 6.6.2010
(This continues my exploration of Thomas Mann's use of the literary
prefiguration technique, from part 1, with an afterthought here, and part 2.)
At his arrival in Venice Aschenbach takes a gondola to the hotel; the
gondolier who steers the boat is described in detail, and again there are
notable similarities with traditional depictions of personalized death
figures: "Er war ein Mann von ungefälliger, ja brutaler Physiognomie
[...] kurz aufgeworfene[r] Nase [...] eher schmächtig von
Leibesbeschaffenheit [...]. Ein paarmal zog er vor Anstrengung die Lippen
zurück und entblößte seine weißen Zähne." (207)
Many of the details in his physiology (including, apart from the quoted
details, the red eyebrows), posture (looming from a heightened position) and
some in his clothing (namely, the straw hat, which he wears in an
audacious-looking manner) are vaguely recurrent from the earlier description
of the traveling stranger, the one who was seen by Aschenbach in the
beginning of the story (compare 187–188), and who aroused his desire
to travel, to escape from the life of his daily routines. (And as we will
see in a moment, this is again a character that has the power to easily
overcome resistance from good reason in Aschenbach and let him yield to
desire for comfort.)
In addition to these parallels, Mann makes the gondolier sequence even
more suggestive by beginning it with a meditation (told from the ironical
distance of the narrator) about the death symbolism in Venetian gondolas.
This passage is so masterfully crafted that it deserves to be quoted at
some length:
"Das seltsame Fahrzeug, aus balladesken Zeiten ganz unverändert
überkommen und so eigentümlich schwarz, wie sonst unter allen
Dingen nur Särge sind, es erinnert an lautlose und verbrecherische
Abenteuer in plätschernder Nacht, es erinnert noch mehr an den Tod
selbst, an Bahre und düsteres Begängnis und letzte, schweigsame
Fahrt. Und hat man bemerkt, daß der Sitz einer solchen Barke, dieser
sargschwarz lackierte, mattschwarz gepolsterte Armstuhl, der weichste,
üppigste, der erschlaffendste Sitz von der Welt ist? [...] auf dem
nachgiebigen Element in Kissen gelehnt, schloß der Reisende [i.e.,
Aschenbach] die Augen im Genuß einer so ungewohnten als
süßen Lässigkeit. Die Fahrt wird kurz sein, dachte er;
möchte sie immer währen!" (206)
Mann expressly connects here the themes of Aschenbach's tired yielding to
pleasurable idleness and his drifting towards his eventual death. (And has
one noticed the beauty of the imagery here? "plätschernde Nacht"...)
Ample interconnections can be found between this passage and others I have
already looked at. Not only is there a correspondence between the description
of the gondolier and that of the wanderer at the beginning of the novella.
There is also the later episode of the Venetian musician at the hotel, whose
depiction bears the same sort of similarities (esp. 249–250), and
who can be taken as well as the other two figures as a personalization of
death. Moreover, embedded into the gondola sequence itself is a short
episode in which Aschenbach's boat is accompanied by a gang of musicians,
with an explicit mention of the guitar and the mandolin (both are instruments
which recur in the later scene, in particular the guitar, which is played
by the death-prefiguring musician; 208–209). Also, Aschenbach's giving
in to pleasure, and his deliberately seeking Venice for its allure in this
respect, can be found many more times in the text (most expressly at 229:
"Nur dieser Ort verzauberte ihn, entspannte sein Wollen, machte ihn
glücklich."; I have already discussed other locations, such as at 200,
in a related post).
Further, both the wanderer and the gondolier seem to vanish immediately once
they've made their impression on Aschenbach, at the first moment he looks
elsewhere (192, 209). And finally, the death-personalization figures (i.e.
the wanderer, the gondolier and the musician) seem to have a certain power
over Aschenbach which is well worth exploring:
When Aschenbach notices that the gondolier is taking him all the way to
the hotel, and not just, as ordered, to the vaporetto station, he
makes an unsuccessful attempt at asserting his will; the gondolier easily
out-talks him, and Aschenbach yields. It's clear, however, that it's not
the powerlessness of his situation that makes him yield (he is, after all,
alone on the water with the gondolier and would certainly be on the losing
end of a physical struggle); his resistance doesn't seem full-blooded to
begin with, and what mutes it comes to shine through quickly enough: "Wie
weich er übrigens ruhen durfte, wenn er sich nicht empörte. Hatte
er nicht gewünscht, daß die Fahrt lange, daß sie immer
dauern möge? Es war das Klügste, den Dingen ihren Lauf zu lassen,
und es war hauptsächlich höchst angenehm." (208) He seems to be
under a spell ("Bann der Trägheit", 208), and once more it's not fully
clear whether that is caused by forces in the external world of the novel or
by something from within the constellation of Aschenbach's personality
traits, his personal history and physical fatigue. (I've started to sharpen
that question in one of my
previous posts.)
- 5.6.2010
In an earlier post on
Thomas Mann's use of prefiguration, I quoted a passage from the beginning
of Death in Venice, in which Aschenbach has a sudden and strange
vision that triggers his desire to travel:
"er sah wie mit leiblichem Auge eine ungeheure Landschaft, ein tropisches
Sumpfgebiet unter dickdunstigem Himmel, feucht, üppig und ungesund,
eine von Menschen gemiedene Urweltwildnis aus Inseln, Morästen und
Schlamm führenden Wasserarmen [...] — und fühlte sein Herz
pochen vor Entsetzen und rätselhaftem Verlangen." (189)
In this description, I noticed, some allusions can easily be recognized
to Aschenbach's later stay in Venice, given the damaging effect that the
climate conditions at this place have on Aschenbach (an effect that is noted
several times, see 214, 222 and 225). Even more plain, however, are the
parallels in this passage to another one, in which Aschenbach (and we, as
the readers) learn the truth about what's going on around him: namely, an
outbreak of cholera. Aschenbach is told this by an English clerk from a
Venetian travel bureau, and he is given a comprehensive account of the
spreading of the epidemic, with all its medical and political background,
and in both precise detail and colorful language. Especially interesting is
the choice of words at the beginning of this account, which relates the
Indian origins of the disease:
"Seit mehreren Jahren schon hatte die indische Cholera eine verstärkte
Neigung zur Ausbreitung und Wanderung an den Tag gelegt. Erzeugt aus den
warmen Morästen des Ganges-Deltas, aufgestiegen mit dem memphitischen
Odem jener üppig-untauglichen, von Menschen gemiedenen Urwelt- und
Inselwildnis hatte die Seuche in ganz Hindustan andauernd und
ungewöhnlich heftig gewütet", and so on (253–254).
Not only evoke these two passages the same motifs and moods, but Mann
signals his intention to suggest a connection here even at the level of
choice of single words and phrases, viz. 'üppig', 'von Menschen
gemieden' and 'Urweltwildnis aus Inseln'/'Urwelt- und Inselwildnis'. This
creates a strong cohesion which ties the two passages together.
Again, the use of this technique suggests that Mann intended to symbolize,
in Aschenbach's vision early in the story, not only his later going to
Venice, but also already the sickness he encounters there. Not only is
death prefigured here, but also its cause.
- 24.5.2010
There is this strange thing about perception: it's so weak and deceptive,
it leads us astray all the time. When we're missing something, we often
don't even notice, but instead we subconsciously fill in details; we fill
in something we expect, something we wish, hope or fear. (What exactly we
fill in seems to depend on a variety of factors.)
The paradigm story is Edgar Allan Poe's "The Spectacles". Here the
protagonist's weak sight is instrumental in getting him driven to marry an
old woman of eighty-two years, and the punch line is that this mistake of
some consequence is simply because he literally never got a good look at her
until after the wedding. Of course, that's only part of the reason: hadn't
he refused to wear glasses (a refusal born out of sheer vanity, it seems),
he wouldn't have sunk into his mistake so deeply without noticing what was
going on. (Deliberate misleading on the part of his friends plays a role,
too.)
The experience of being fooled by perception is familiar to all of us.
Haven't you at times found yourself, walking through the streets, looking at
some person from far away and seeing someone you knew? You were sure you
were recognizing their look, the color of their hair, their typical way of
dressing and moving — and yet, when you got closer, and took in more
details, you found yourself grossly mistaken: many of the small details you
saw were quite different from what your acquaintance would have looked like;
and at some point you accepted that you'd been mistaken and that the person
you were looking at was a perfect stranger.
Or, probably equally familiar, think of situations where someone seemed
from a distance an attractive-looking person that turned out, on getting
closer, really different, and thus the feeling of attraction quickly
receded. This example would be even closer to the experience Poe is using
in his story. (Of course, attraction is itself a complicated psychological
process dependent on many more factors than just visual impression; and
certainly there is an influence in the opposite direction as well: someone
can initially not look attractive at all, even after you studied all the
details of their physical appearance, and then gain attraction for you after
you get to know them closely and connect with their personality traits.)
Obviously, what goes on in the streets in episodes like the one I
described above is inconsequential, and at any rate corrected quickly and
effortlessly. Compared to this, it's different with the process of getting
to know someone well enough to decide you want to marry them. Here's a
stretch that requires poetic license, and thus we find it in stories only
(hopefully). But still, there is a common motif here as well, for do we not
in many cases ask ourselves, of someone who takes that decision, whether
they haven't failed to notice some details about their future spouse? Since
the preceding process of getting to know each other was in most instances
sufficiently extended, some more systematic failure of perception must have
been involved there. Or, in other words, it's unlike the scene in the
streets in an important respect: There the problem was that insufficient
detail had been taken in; which however had been gradually corrected when
you got closer to the person you were looking at, taking in more, and
richer, detail. In Poe's story of the spectacles, thanks to a number of
(rather far-fetched, to be sure) circumstances, there was never an occasion
for the protagonist to take in more and richer detail (which would have made
him recognize his misperception, or incomplete perception). Precisely that
is the part that is symbolically played by the refusal to use the glasses.
The protagonist, for some reason, doesn't even think of taking a certain
kind of look at things; that is what the refusal to put on the glasses
stands for. It's not just that he's not seeing, one might put it:
it's that he doesn't even bother to look at all.
But note that at this point we are already (and I think, more precisely)
talking about a refusal to take in details, no longer about a
built-in weakness of perception itself. It's not that perception as such is
imperfect that is the problem here. It's that getting to the relevant
details requires something on the part of the perceiver as well, and if the
perceiver chooses not to do that, then detail won't be taken in and
perception is misled or remains incomplete.
Poe's story, perhaps, is mostly about making fun of vanity; but the
underlying theme of a disconnect from reality goes deeper. The protagonist's
predicament arises at root neither from a weakness of perception (that is, a
biological or psychological fact about human cognition) nor from the actions
of his friends. Both wouldn't have been effective without a weakness in his
character: his vanity. Unhappiness, as arising out of losing touch with
reality, once more turns out to be based in character rather than caused by
the external.
- 23.5.2010
In previous posts (see here: part 1 and part 2) I have started to list Thomas
Mann's uses of prefiguration, a writing technique; and I noted that instances
of this technique, at the points when they occur in the story, not only
signify some later elements in the story for us (the readers), but that also
each time Aschenbach (the protagonist) notices something strange going on,
he's got a feeling that the world shifts towards the dreamy, away from the
real.
Two interesting questions arise at this point: first, since Mann makes
some effort to arrange these repeated invocations of a drift into unreality,
there must be some point to it. What is going on? As the plot develops,
Aschenbach gradually loses touch with reality, and it is at least suggested
that this is a prime factor in his eventual death. (Without his delusions,
he wouldn't have stayed on in Venice despite his knowledge of a cholera
outbreak, 256–257; he wouldn't have exhausted himself in the streets
and then bought and eaten over-ripe strawberries, 262; and so on.) Still it
isn't fully clear what the driving force behind this development is.
Possibly what we observe are the effects of a decline in health, both
physical and mental, and the description of Aschenbach's losing grip is just
to express this, to make the symptoms visible. On the other hand, most of
what happens in the plot has at least some external causes. The stranger at
the cemetery isn't merely imagined, and the fake youth and the gondolier are
real enough, though we are meant, in the overtones of what we are told about
them, to perceive a significance in their appearance which transcends the
mere physical and social goings-on. And although Aschenbach is portrayed to
actively seek the seductiveness of Venice in its otherness and magic ("Was
er suchte, war das Fremdartige und Bezuglose, welches jedoch rasch zu
erreichen wäre"; and again, "Wenn man über Nacht das
Unvergleichliche, das märchenhaft Abweichende zu erreichen suchte,
wohin ging man?", both at 200), the fact is that this quality of the place
isn't merely in his imagination, but actually inheres in it. (And one
might add that this is not only so in the world of the novella, but even in
reality, too.)
The second question (apart from whether the forces driving the
development of the plot are external or integral to Aschenbach's person) is
how we are to understand the underlying valuation.
It's not the only story by Mann in which a well-working life philosophy
based on a fundamentally sound strategy is narratively reduced ad
absurdum. Viz. "Der kleine Herr Friedemann",[1] where an Epicurean
philosophy of life finally fails the protagonist in the face of strong
passion. Similarly, Aschenbach's strict and ascetic, and determinedly kept,
attitude is demonstratively displayed as working for a while, and
deceptively successful at first, but eventually unmaintainable. One might try
and look for a pattern or even a strategy here.
So does Mann want to show us that a focused, determined and controlled,
a strict and ascetic life like Aschenbach's is in the end not sustainable?
Are we told, poetically, that admiration for it is based on an illusion,
that we might be disenchanted once we cease to look only from the outside?
Or is it the weaker point that even though it might work for a while, it
can't be fully taken to the end? Moreover, the forces that are shown, in his
opinion, to be really at the base of what we do, seem to be partly
aesthetical forces. Captivated by an instance of beauty, Aschenbach
subordinates all other concerns. Are we to welcome or to fear the power of
the aesthetic; are we to take it as good or bad for us?
In Aschenbach's life as an artist, there is also an element of career
and a will to produce; he is described to painstakingly ration his energy and
mental focus in order to enable the creation of his literary works. (Which,
it is made clear, requires patience and a long, persistent will, 194.) But at
the time at which the events of the story take place, this overriding motive
is trumped by the impact of the aesthetic. Reasoned organization of one's
life, then, is overcome in the end by the more powerful eros of beauty.[2]
Let us examine this more closely. Aschenbach has centered his life around
his being a successful writer of literary works. This focus of his life
was strong enough not just to make him diligent and thorough when crafting
his texts, but also to help him methodically overcome a weak constitution
(194) and master the huge amount of work (such as correspondence) that comes
with fame and a network of intellectual connections (193). What might be the
principal content of a life for others, like romantic and other personal
relationships, family life or simply enjoyment of lifestyle was merely a
peripheral presence for Aschenbach: his brief marriage is mentioned only
in passing (198), and at one point it is reported of him that "'Sehen Sie,
Aschenbach hat von jeher nur so gelebt' — und der Sprecher
schloß die Finger seiner Linken fest zur Faust — 'niemals so'
— und er ließ die geöffnete Hand bequem von der Lehne des
Sessels hängen." (193)
All this life-long consequence and determination, however, is no match
for what directs Aschenbach's actions as the story unfolds. It is precisely
not his work and stature as an artist that is the topmost relevant
consideration; something else replaces his grounding concern. And it is
really a change in the very foundation of his entire life philosophy. It's
not as if Aschenbach would see it as appropriate to relax and enjoy, at
his advanced age (he's over fifty when the story begins), the good things of
life; it is not as if he'd see the central occupation with literature, fame
and discipline which has dominated both his youth and his adult live
rightfully give way to a more indulgent lifestyle. Quite the contrary:
"[er] wünschte sehnlichst, alt zu werden, denn er hatte von jeher
dafür gehalten, da§ wahrhaft groß, umfassend, ja wahrhaft
ehrenwert nur das Künstlertum zu nennen sei, dem es beschieden war,
auf allen Stufen des Menschlichen charakteristisch fruchtbar zu sein."
(194)
The fulfillment of this desire, as the story will insistently and
mercilessly bring out, isn't to be granted. Something else takes over and
prescribes a new direction. Down that path there is only weakness, disease,
and destruction; yet this is where Aschenbach decides to go. So the
grounding idea of his life has been replaced by a new one, on the lines
of blindly following an instance of beauty whereever it leads, and whatever
the consequences may be.
This is aestheticism, the idea that only an aesthetic life (with its
worship of beauty and the unquestioning observance to its incarnations) is
worth living: and with it the corresponding idea that an ethical life, a
life based on character and its improvement, has to fail in the end. Or,
more precisely, what fails is the synthesis that Aschenbach attempts between
discipline, hard work and dedication on the one hand and the service of
beauty on the other. But how are we to understand the fact that in Mann's
narrative strategy, this realization corresponds to a gradual loss of sense
of reality?
So the two questions are, in short: first, what is the cause of, and
second, what's the reason for, Aschenbach's losing touch with reality?
__
[1] Thomas Mann, "Der kleine Herr Friedemann", in: Der Wille
zum Glück. Erzählungen 1893–1903. Frankfurt a.M: Fischer
1991, 66–94.
[2] Shortly before the end, an exhausted and delirious Aschenbach
states this insight in terms that allude to Plato's Phaedrus,
263–264; this invocation of the theory of beauty and its relation to
the artist's mind and spirit I'd very much like to comment on more
extensively, but not now.
- 22.5.2010
(This continues my exploration of Thomas Mann's use of the literary
prefiguration technique, from part 1.)
When he takes the boat from the location of an an intermediate stop to
Venice as his final destination, Aschenbach is in the company of a group of
young people; among them there is an old man vainly trying to look young, a
fake and foppish person, for whom Aschenbach takes an immediate dislike,
disgusted and even somewhat indignant about the indecorous spectacle.
("Wußten, bemerkten sie nicht, daß er alt war, daß er zu
Unrecht ihre stutzerhafte und bunte Kleidung trug, zu Unrecht einen der
Ihren spielte?", 202) His sharp sense of lack in appropriateness is in
contrast to the behavior of the young people, who tolerate the fake youth
in their circle — and not just tolerate him, but actually sustain his
illusion by treating them as if he really was of their own age and taste.
Now the interesting thing about Mann's presentation is that every time
this character of the false youth appears there is a shift in Aschenbach's
stance towards his surroundings. The first two times, this takes the form
of him feeling as though he were drifting into unreality.
Directly after noticing the fake youth, it seems to Aschenbach "als
lasse nicht alles sich ganz gewöhnlich an, als beginne eine
träumerische Entfremdung, eine Entstellung der Welt ins Sonderbare um
sich zu greifen" (202). He is startled out of this brooding, however, by
the movement of the boat which at that moment takes off to Venice.
Again, at a stop of the boat, directly before docking in Venice, when
the fake youth looks even more indecent after drinking too heavily:
"Aschenbach sah ihm mit finsteren Brauen zu, und wiederum kam ein Gefühl
von Benommenheit ihn an, so, als zeige die Welt eine leichte, doch nicht zu
hemmende Neigung, sich ins Sonderbare und Fratzenhafte zu entstellen" (204).
Once more, however, Aschenbach is kept from getting deeper into this mood
by the boat which restarts its machines and continues towards the town of
Venice.
There is a third episode of contact between Aschenbach and the fake youth;
and this time the pattern changes. Not only is it more than just Aschenbach
watching now — the old man talks to him, and alludes to a lover he
seems to imagine ("'unsere Komplimente dem Liebchen, dem allerliebsten, dem
schönsten Liebchen...'", 205); but also there is no direct follow-up of
a dreamy mode this time. Instead, a passage follows in which Aschenbach's
impressions during a ride in a gondola are at the center. This ride in the
gondola itself is another interesting case of prefiguration in the text, but
before we turn to discussing it, let us look more closely into the fake
youth episodes.
Once more it's rather easy to see parallels between the appearance of the
fake youth and Aschenbach's own later attempts to make himself look younger
and more attractive: "Wie irgendein Liebender wünschte er, zu gefallen
und empfand bittere Angst, daß es nicht möglich sein möchte.
[...] Angesichts der süßen Jugend, die es ihm angetan, ekelte ihn
sein alternder Leib, der Anblick seines grauen Haares, seiner scharfen
Gesichtszüge stürzte ihn in Scham und Hoffnungslosigkeit. Es trieb
ihn, sich körperlich zu erquicken und wiederherzustellen" (259–260).
Cosmetics succeeds in restoring at least the appearance of what he wishes
for, if not the thing itself. The drift away from the reality of his
true person is unmistakable. (The vocabulary that Mann uses here is
revealing, too: bitter fear, hopelessness and loathing are rather strong
terms for an attitude one would have with respect to one's physical
appearance. They express vividly how far Aschenbach's actions are now driven
by uncontrollable emotional forces — he's lost his grip on what's
appropriate at various levels.)
The similarities in Mann's descriptions of the fake youth and the
dandified Aschenbach go deep, extending to special mention of certain
details of clothing: a red necktie, a straw hat with colored ribbons
(compare 201–202, 261). And just as in the encounters with the fake
youth, after the physical change has been brought about, there is a
resolute shift in Aschenbach away from the realistic toward the dreamy,
unreality-laden: "Der Berückte ging, traumglücklich, verwirrt und
furchtsam." (261)
The fake youth motif, then, is a second example for Mann's use of
the prefiguration technique. What is symbolically invoked here is not
death, this time, but degradation: unreasonable and inappropriate demeanor
which is born out of a desire to appear as something one actually isn't, and
which, while failing to make its desired effect, results in a generally bad
impression on others. Let's now turn to a third one.
- 18.5.2010
Prefiguration is a writing technique wherein a later episode of the story
(typically one with a heavy importance for the characters) is symbolically
invoked in an earlier passage. Or, put differently, something happens to the
characters early in the text that can be interpreted as somehow symbolizing
the later episode.
Some of the most haunting uses of prefiguration I know of are made by
Thomas Mann in Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice)[1]. The
story in short: The successful but tired writer Aschenbach travels to Venice,
where he is stricken with the beauty of a young boy who stays at the same
hotel with his family; he gets obsessed with the youth, and unreasonably
staying on in unhealthy weather and in the middle of the outbreak of an
epidemy, he sees his firmness and strength drain away; he attempts to make
himself look younger and more attractive by various cosmetic means;
eventually he dies.
The first, and one of the most eminent, examples of the prefiguration
technique can be found directly at the beginning, in a scene in which
Aschenbach, in his home town of Munich, is gripped by an intense desire to
travel, accompanied by a daydream vision of a tropical landscape: "er sah
wie mit leiblichem Auge eine ungeheure Landschaft, ein tropisches Sumpfgebiet
unter dickdunstigem Himmel, feucht, üppig und ungesund, eine von
Menschen gemiedene Urweltwildnis aus Inseln, Morästen und Schlamm
führenden Wasserarmen [...] — und fŸhlte sein Herz pochen vor
Entsetzen und rätselhaftem Verlangen." (189) In view of how the
story will develop, it's not difficult to see the allusions, in this
passage, to Aschenbach's later stay in Venice, with its water channels and
illness bearing climate conditions. Moreover, his forceful state of desire
is triggered by the sight of a strange-looking man who seems to appear out
of nowhere. The description of this stranger combines a physiognomy that is
reminiscent of allegorical depictions of death (lean figure, pallid skin,
furrowed brow, a row of long, bared teeth; 187-188) with an appearance that
evokes exotic and far-away countries and a sense of wandering around ("das
Wanderhafte in seiner Erscheinung", 188).
Commentators have seen a prefiguration of death in this scene, both on
the experiential level (that is, the vision of the tropical landscape
symbolizes the realm of death that is soon to draw Aschenbach in) and in a
more tangible way as a quasi-personalization in the stranger. Both share a
quality that exerts a strong pull on Aschenbach and kick off the journey
that ends with his actual, physical death (not without a slide down a
degrading slope in mind and spirit beforehand, too).
__
[1] Thomas Mann, "Der Tod in Venedig", in: Schwere Stunde.
Erzählungen 1903–1929. Frankfurt a.M: Fischer 1991,
186–266. Quoted with page numbers in the text.
- 15.5.2010
It's almost a banality to state that living under illusions isn't good;
it is something like a basic premise of a good life that it must be
connected to reality. Losing that connection, whether we realize it or not,
is a form of unhappiness. We may not necessarily feel unhappy,
i.e. it isn't unhappiness in a psychological sense; it's not a question
only of a state of mind — when we talk about unhappiness here, it's
about a condition of our life as such. (For a little more background on that
distinction, see Dan Haybron's "The meanings of happiness", and generally
all the other excellent resources on his
happiness and well-being page. You'll particularly want to look up
his description of the 'George' case.)
Now why is this sort of life one that strikes us as unhappy, a way of
living that simply isn't good? One reason is that it makes us vulnerable
to others' attempts to use us. (And being used is in turn bad because it
means that our actions aren't for the sake of our own goals, including the
top-level goal of leading a happy life, but for the sake of others'
goals.)
In "Leaning from the steep slope", one of the beautifully composed
novel fragments in Italo Calvino's Se una notte d'inverno un
viaggiatore ("If on a winter's night a traveler"), the protagonist acts
continuously under misinterpretation of the events around him, as we can
easily recognize while the story unfolds. He is spending some time in a sea
town, recovering from an illness, and the people he meets, a pedantic
meteorologist and a young woman with some artistic preoccupation, both
pursue shady underground activities. The meteorologist seems to have a
political agenda; he submerges for a few days, asking the protagonist to
look after his weather instruments meanwhile, then there are some
dark-looking men searching for him, and finally he meets the protagonist
again in a conspirative setting. The young woman who makes drawings of sea
animals is seen to visit an inmate of the local prison, and she asks the
protagonist under a weak pretext to get tools (an anchor and a rope) that
look suspiciously useful for an escape attempt. None of this even enters the
mind of the protagonist, though. (Only at the end of the fragment, when he
is confronted by an actually escaped prisoner, there is 'a sudden crack' in
his universe, but it's not clear which of his illusions has been shattered;
or, for that matter, whether that phrase really shows that he's finally
recognized what's going on. For all we know, he might shortly come up with
another misinterpretation of what he sees.)
While the atmosphere of his surroundings is somewhat grey and clammy, his
view of things is exceedingly pathetic. The very beginning reads "I'm coming
to believe that the world wants to tell me something, through messages,
signs, warnings."[1] Yet the meaning of most observations he makes would be
plain with just a little common sense, and still they escape him. A little
further down the text: "On some days everything I look at seems laden with
meaning: full of messages which I'd have difficulty to define, to put into
words, to communicate to others, but which for that very reason seem
significant to me." Thus an incapability to perceive accurately and
realistically corresponds with a refusal to come to terms with his own
views, an indulgence in lofty self-talk, with the grander scheme of things
serving as an excuse not to look at the details of one's own life. (At some
point, he states: "I'm only reporting my first impressions; for only those
count.") Perhaps that sort of attitude is required for such a continuous
self-deception.
It is clear, however, that his naivety is used by both his
acquaintances. Ingeniously though his interpretations of the strange
goings-on may be, they are far off a much more simpler reality. He is the
tool both of a political underground group and a (very probably)
romantically motivated escape attempt from prison. Whatever justification
these may have in the broader constellation of the world of the novel,
the protagonist himself isn't really acting in that world, not
from his own motives, at least. He isn't, in a word, in the driving seat,
he's himself just moved around by others.
(A side-note for those familiar with Calvino's book and interested in the
delights of the postmodern novel: this tale of a person driven by other
people's interests is in the novel's surrounding plot read to the main
protagonist, the 'reader'; and the sentence immediately following is the
ironical: "Listening to someone else reading is entirely different from
reading yourself. When you're reading yourself, you can take your time or
quickly skim the sentences — it's you who controls the pace." It's
as if Calvino wanted to drive the point home from inside the guiding
metaphor of the framework plot.)
__
[1] All quotes are my translations from what is already a
translation into German; so I might be a little removed from the actual (or,
if you will, the 'real') text.
- 25.4.2010
The
opener of this year's organ season in Ettlingen was something
spectacular indeed (and quite some fun with it). There wasn't just one
organist — there were two of them. Otto Maria Krämer and
Matthias Mück played both organs in Ettlingen's Herz-Jesu. It was
fascinating to watch them interact in some of the pieces, one player at the
19th century organ in the central apsis, the other one from the gallery at
the grand organ. In one of the items on the program, they even changed seats
during the performance, thus both organists playing both organs in a single
piece of music. All during the concert, they explored the facilities of both
instruments thoroughly, and brought an interesting soundscape to our
ears.
All of the pieces were improvisations, that is, they were based on
well-known material, but worked out in detail only during the performance
itself. Impressive was the second item, a 'Symphony for grand organ', played
by both players together (with four hands and four feet). The breadth of
sound resulting from this is riveting: an organ is an instrument of
breathtaking musical capacities already, but can you imagine its
possibilities practically doubled? Mindblowing. I particularly liked the
third movement (entitled a 'prayer') with its impressionistic, delicate
tone.
In the middle of the concert, there was an improvisation section (again
by four hands and feet) over three tasks given by the audience, two of
which were chorales, and the third the Götterfunken motive from
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. The latter was improvised on in a Toccata &
Fugue-like format, though a little disappointingly, the fugue was merely
gestured at — it didn't go beyond just an exposition (no more
episodes), and I could only discern 3 voices; mostly the improvisation
strategy relied on various instrumentations of the main theme.
The concert closed with a fantasy called 'David vs. Goliath', which
wasn't as combative as the name might suggest, but rather provided another
opportunity for sound magic (and it was during this piece that the organists
swapped organs). All in all, this was good fun, and it was nice to see
that the audience was more numerous than I remembered from previous years,
even despite the pleasant spring weather. To make the occasion perfectly
round then, I also met some friends whom I afterwards joined to sample the
Maibock at the Vogel. (If you're not an Ettlinger, you're excused if
you don't know what that means.)
- 20.2.2010
(To continue collecting some thoughts about the notion and role of
reflection.)
In my previous post
I discussed briefly Bernard Williams' claim that reflection, as something
that is brought into our lives by ethical philosophy, is nothing special in
our modern world: because it is already part of so many institutionalized
practices, such as fiction writing, medicine, or the law. I noted that in
these practices it's not people who reflect about their lives —
it's rather that part of the codified activities within such practices are
made up by reflective activities, such as examining the history of the
field, or measuring its success against certain criteria. And although that
is a form of reflectiveness, I said that it is not what is imported into our
lives from ethical philosophy, and thus it's not by any means a replacement
for that.
I doubted, then, that the fact that reflection is built into practices
such as medicine or the law would obsolete the Socratic enterprise of making
your own life and character a better one by ethical reflection. Here's a
couple of remarks I'd like to add.
1) One of the reasons why we shouldn't assimilate reflection,
in the Socratic sense, with reflection as an activity in societal practices,
such as medicine, is that in the latter there is specialization.
There are professional historians of medicine, and actually their field
is a subfield of the general area of medicine. Of course, it's part of the
training for every professional in the field of medicine to receive at least
some general overview of the historical background; that is exactly what
warrants Williams' statement that reflection is built into the practice.
Likewise, there is a requirement for professionals in the field to keep up
with the latest relevant science (and indeed, for many professionals in
medicine in particular one stage in their career is to make a contribution
to scientific research, typically by achieving a doctorate). But while the
discipline as a whole can be said to incorporate reflection in that sense,
it is usually only a group of specialists who "step back from ordinary
practice and argument to define and criticize the attitudes involved in
them" (2), as Williams puts it.[1] It's historians and university teachers
who do that, not doctors in their daily work. Thus there is division of
labor, to a certain extent, between professionals in medicine; just to
remind you that one of Williams' other examples is the practice of fictional
writing: there the segregation is even more pronounced, for normally
literary critics, historians of literature and philologists are not the same
as those who contribute to the stream of literary works, i.e. poets,
novelists and playwrights.
If that is the sort of reflectiveness exhibited in practices like
medicine, the law or literature, then again nothing in it will encourage
personal reflectiveness in its practitioners: the sort that makes you
look at your life as a whole, decide on your goals and priorities, and
determine where you are right now with respect to them. It's not as if,
because you are a literary critic or a doctor, you automatically gain
that sort of reflectiveness — merely from being part of
practice that has reflectiveness (in the sense described above) built
into it.
True, ethical philosophy shares a structure with these practices, and in
this sense Williams is right to say that it can't lay any special claim to
reflectiveness: by virtue of that shared structure, philosophy and these
practices are alike. But they are not alike in that ethical philosophy makes
you reflect personally about your own life and character, which is not at
all guaranteed by being part of those other practices. There is a sense,
then, in which philosophy can lay a special claim. (Though perhaps
philosophy isn't unique in that respect either: you might say
that there is religion, or psychology, which both may have similar aims in
forming your view of yourself and your place in reality.)
2) On the other hand, Williams notes (correctly, in my view),
that philosophy's claim is an abstract and general one: philosophical
insight into how one should live is not simply personal, in the sense that
it applies to you (and only you), and has to make sense for you (and to you)
only. Any philosophically relevant insight on that topic, on how one should
live, must be applicable to people and lives in general. "The implication is
that something relevant and useful can be said to anyone, in general" (4),
and the question how one should live is "not immediate; it is not about what
I should do now, or next. It is about a manner of life." (4) These two
aspects together are what make the fundamental Socratic question (the
entry point to ethical philosophy) a reflective question: "it stands
at a distance from any actual and particular occasion of considering what
to do." (19)
__
[1] Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1985. Quoted with page numbers in
the text.
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