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Online Journal
- 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.
- 16.2.2010
1) At the beginning of Ethics and the Limits of
Philosophy[1], in a chapter entitled 'Socrates's Question', Bernard
Williams claims that "philosophy in the modern world cannot make any special
claim to reflectiveness" (3). The situation thus is different from that of
philosophy in ancient Greece: then "it was a special feature of philosophy
that it was reflective and stood back from ordinary practice and argument
to define and criticize the attitudes involved in them. But modern life is
so pervasively reflective, and a high degree of self-consciousness is so
basic to its institutions, that these qualities cannot be what mainly
distinguishes philosophy from other activities" (2-3).
Now I'm not much interested in distinguishing marks — I don't
see why something absolutely unique about philosophy should be required
to make it worthwhile. Perhaps there's nothing there; it would still be
worth doing. But Williams's line of thought doesn't seem right for yet
another reason: his examples of practices in modern life that have
reflection deeply built into them are strangely abstract. He mentions
medicine, fiction, and the law (3).
But who is reflective in the primary sense, the sense in which Socratic
ethics (the entry point at which Williams starts) encourages reflection,
are people. When you start looking at your life as a whole, you
start to reflect. You ask yourself about your priorities, your goals, and
character traits. Ethical philosophy, in this tradition, provides you
with concepts, arguments, and quality standards that help to improve
your reflection skills; it offers a framework to structure your
approach to questions of this kind; and the masters of the field have
built paradigms of successful thought systems to answer them. But all
this elaborate machinery is there for people, with the goal of helping
them to understand and improve, change and shape lives — it's those
people who reflect, and it's their own lives on which they reflect.
2) In contrast, for medicine to be reflective means something
different. It means that it is part of the discipline as it is taught and
practiced to incorporate insights about the workings of the discipline
itself. Practicing medicine means also to know about historical mistakes
and breakthroughs (including of course recent history, and perhaps in the
case of medicine, more of recent history than remote history; that might
be somewhat different for the law and possibly even more different for
fiction); it means to be aware of a pool of accumulated insights and
experiences, and to add to that pool continuously. In other words,
medicine as a discipline in modern societies does not only include healing
people and preventing illness, but also looking at the practice of medicine
itself, with the aim of improving it. It certainly is reflective in that
sense. Still, it's unclear in what way this replaces or obsoletes the need
for ethical development — at least as it is understood in the Socratic
enterprise.
3) Partly in order to drill more deeply into this (I think),
Williams goes on to note that cultivation of the virtues, as a goal
of ethical reflection, as "a first-personal and deliberative exercise" (11),
means to put the focus in the wrong place. It's on yourself in a way, but
it's from the outside in, as it were, rather than from the inside out as
it should be: "Thinking about your possible states in terms of the virtues
is not so much to think about your actions, and it is not distinctively
to think about the terms in which you could or should think about your
actions: it is rather about the way in which you think about the way in
which others might describe or comment on the way in which you think about
your actions" (11).
Note first that Williams doesn't ascribe, to the reflecting person, a
concern with what others might think about her actions. (He doesn't
criticize a virtue-centered reflectiveness from an act-centric perspective.)
What he ascribes is a concern with other people's views about your
reflections themselves. In other words, if you're reflecting virtue-centric,
this reveals an undue concern with others' judgment of your reflections.
That's a much more dangerous attack, for reflection has itself a dialectical
structure that could only be formed in an interchange with someone else,
thus depends indeed on the availability of a counterpart.
Still there is a difference between a conversational (or dialectical)
counterpart and someone whose judgment you simply accept. Valuable input
from an independent, skilled counterpart in philosophical discussion, which
would be the ideal constellation for reflection of the ethical kind which
we're talking about, wouldn't have to take the form of simply a rigid
verdict or criticism that you have to accept and incorporate in your
behavior, would it? On the contrary, it would be a mark of successful and
self-assured reflectiveness on your part to take a stance of careful and
cautious examination towards any input thus received. Far from merely
striving to get favorable comments or descriptions from others of your
way of thinking about your actions, you'd take a stance of valuing them, but
sovereignly deciding on their merits yourself. (Without, of course, on the
other hand falling into the "priggishness or self-deception" that Williams
rightly identifies as the inverse danger, 10.) Look at it this way, and
the lesson is no longer that "the importance of an ethical concept need not
lie in its being itself an element of first-person deliberation" (11).
__
[1] Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1985. Quoted with page numbers in
the text.
- 30.10.2009
Though I haven't really a background in jazz I've dropped by the
local jazz club here in
Ettlingen for today's concert, and I'm pleasantly surprised: there was real
atmosphere and very enjoyable music. The band was The Toughest Tenors, composed
of a rhythm group (drums, bass and piano) and two tenor saxophones. That
combination made for some interesting interplay between the two lead
saxophones (jokingly described as 'battles' in the introduction). Apart
from that, I was fascinated by some of the piano solos. Quite some fun!
- 12.10.2009
(Continued from
part 1 and part 2.)
3) Where do we stand right now? I have traced two interpretational
themes in the dialogue immediately surrounding 'Before the law': K. charges
the doorkeeper of deceptive behavior, and he also thinks that the doorkeeper
violates his duties. Both turn out to be misinterpretations: the first is
promoted by the ambiguity in "Täuschung" and its cognates and by K.'s
strong tendency to see himself as victim of malicious forces; the second
by an ambiguity in the reading of the doorkeeper's behavior (granting some
ephemeral hope, which is due to a character weakness, but interpreted by
K. as conferring a right).
Having failed to correct the first misunderstanding, the chaplain seems
to be more successful in countering the second; at least he ascertains K.'s
agreement regarding his analysis of the doorkeeper's character. He also
relativizes K.'s opinion that the man from the country is deceived and thus
in an antagonistic relationship towards the doorkeeper. That's some
improvement, but not much: all this doesn't remove the wrong-headed idea
that there is primarily a deception going on, and only shifts the antagonism
to the world surrounding both the man from the country and the
doorkeeper.
The discussion in the dome with the chaplain reveals a deeper aspect of
K.'s general attitude: he has a tendency to blame others (or at least, blame
something), and so avoid taking responsibility for his own
interactions with the world. Such interactions are generally of two kinds:
perception and action. In perception we take in what goes on around us, and
form opinions and beliefs. In action, we attempt to change our surroundings
(actions in this general sense may be physical actions as well as verbal
actions). Both actions and perceptions can fail or succeed: we can manage
to get them more or less right; we can misperceive, an action may or may not
fulfill its purpose, in some instances we may even completely miss something
we should be aware of, or fail to act where we should have tried. How
successful we are, however, depends not only on ourselves, but also at least
partly on circumstances and factors outside us. Still, we are responsible
for what we do and what we perceive — unless our actions are
constrained or our perceptions mislead by malicious others, in which cases
we may be excused.
K.'s behavior, and his overall argumentation, aims at exculpating the
actions and perceptions of the man from the country, thereby preempting
or at least mitigating any judgment that might be taken on their correctness.
Failure to perceive vital aspects of the situation (such as the fact that
nobody ever asked for entrance at this particular door) are explained by
reference to deception; failure to act (be it to grasp the nettle and enter
when the doorkeeper offers it or simply walking away from an unpromising
situation) is excused by the wrongly inflicted constraints resulting from
the doorkeeper's supposed violation of his duty. In the background, to
mention it once more, is K.'s tendency to strongly identify himself with the
man from the country, a tendency that has sometimes seduced commentators to
take the doorkeeper story as a parable standing for the whole novel; and
certainly, if we take K.'s point of view, that precisely is an expression of
the identification. In what follows, we'll have to see how thin the
interpretational ice really is here, and how questionable a move it can be
to simple assume K.'s point of view in these matters.
- 11.10.2009
(Continued from
part 1.)
2) In my reading
of the first chapter, I have focused on an analysis of K.'s personality.
Such an analysis proceeds by registering character traits, supported by
evidence from the text that shows how these traits manifest themselves in the
thoughts, actions and feelings of the protagonist.
Now, interestingly, we find a similar analysis in the passage following
the doorkeeper story. The story features two characters: the man from the
country, and the doorkeeper. It is the personality of the latter which is
under scrutiny; the chaplain discusses extensively the various utterances
of the doorkeeper, draws inferences about his character and about the
constellation between the two people in the story.
K.'s response to all this is a little surprising. He seems to accept the
interpretation set out by the chaplain, which culminates in the conclusion:
"Jedenfalls schließt sich so die Gestalt des Türhüters
anders ab, als du es glaubst" (298)[1]. Almost everywhere else in the novel
K. reacts allergically to the implication that he might be wrong about
something; in this case, he quietly acknowledges the greater competence of
the chaplain. A period of silence follows, presumably with K. reflecting on
what's been said, and that is another rare event. Somehow the chaplain has
managed to move K. out of his typical arrogant and unreflective behavior
into a more thoughtful and conceding mode.
The result of the long character analysis can be summarized thus: the
doorkeeper is a dutiful person, but allows himself in a misguided kindness
to overstep his duties; his job is to guard the door and refuse entry to
the man from the country, but indulging a weakness, he hints at the
possibility of later entry (which he cannot grant).
This is the same form of misguided kindness that a teacher shows when
letting a student pass an intermediate exam although he is clearly
underperforming. It merely delays the unpleasant task of telling the
student that he hasn't what it takes; at a later time, however, it won't be
any the less hurtful, but by then valuable time will have gone by that could
have been used much better than for the pursuit of studies which won't result
in a successfully passed final exam anyway.
So, although technically the doorkeeper has done his job (refusing entry
to the man from the country), his behavior still has complicated things
immensely, and that behavior has resulted from his personality. In
particular, the doorkeeper should not have planted false hopes of eventual
entry in the man, who spends his remaining life (and quite a few goods he's
brought with him, too) on the trail of that false hope. Acting wrongly can
cause damage, even when it is well-intended.
And it is not only the man from the country who clings to this hope. K.
himself is strongly moved by it. (Which is a strong indicator that he takes
the predicament of the man again to stand symbolically for one he sees
himself in.) Still sympathizing with the man from the country, K. claims
that the doorkeeper has acted wrongly: he has violated his duty, thereby
causing harm to the man. The chaplain disagrees, and naturally the question
is now what exactly we should think is included in the duties of the
doorkeeper.
Since the term 'duty' is so prominent in this passage, we should be clear
about one implication of that concept. If someone has a duty towards you,
this entails that you have a right, by not doing their duty, then,
they would deprive you of what it yours by right, and this would be an
injustice you'd be suffering.
When K. claims that the doorkeeper should have refused entry to perhaps
anybody else, but should have let the man from the country pass, he takes
the duties of the doorkeeper to include to ensure that nobody else but the
man gains entry. In other words, it seems that K. thinks that it is the
task of the doorkeeper to protect the right of the man from the country to
gain entry.
Imagine the following, analogous scenario: your boss calls you and tells
you that the company is currently thinking about creating a new post with
special responsibilities. It's not yet decided whether the post will be
created, but it's an option that is seriously considered. If they will do
it, however, they would ask you, and only you, to fill the post. No other
person could do it — neither from within the company (nobody has your
particular set of skills) nor from without (let's assume the new post would
require extensive internal knowledge). So, given a positive decision to
actually install that new post, would you be interested?
It is clear, in this scenario, that you have not been given any promises.
When in the event the job actually isn't created, you'll be understandably
disappointed. (And it doesn't show much sensitivity anyway by the boss to
ask you in advance when there was no certainty yet.) Bitter as that
disappointment is bound to be, it should not lead you to the conclusion that
your rights have been violated — or in other words, that the company
had a duty or commitment to create that job for you. Drawing that conclusion
would be a mistake; it is not warranted by the situation. K., however,
does draw exactly this conclusion on behalf of the man from the country
(and therefore, by his well-known self-identification with the man from
the country, K. again sees a fellow victim, a person who had his rights
violated).
But this time the chaplain is more successful in getting a grip on the
fallacious move, and he can defuse K.'s claim of violated rights by his
extensive analysis of the doorkeeper's character and the resulting proof
that he shouldn't be taken as failing in any duty that might be sensibly
assumed on his part. Unlike on the slippery ground of supposed deception,
he can convincingly (for K., at any rate) show that there is no reason
to see the man from the country as a victim of unjust behavior on the part
of the doorkeeper.
(To be continued.)
__
[1] All references to The Trial are made by page number
from the critical edition of Kafka's works: Franz Kafka,
Der Proceß, ed. Malcolm Pasley, Schriften. Tagebücher.
Kritische Ausgabe, eds. Jürgen Born et. al., Frankfurt a.M.:
Fischer 2002.
- 4.10.2009
Integrity is an often cited quality of character. (So it is for me; by
introducing it as a common view I don't mean to distance myself from it.)
To ascribe integrity to someone is an expression of acclaim: we're not
merely describing, in a neutral way, a property of someone's character, but
rather applaud them for what they do. Thereby we express an attitude
which has at least two elements. The first is an evaluation, a statement of
value: someone who acts with integrity does something that is, in an
important sense, the right thing to do. The second is an appreciation of an
excellence, an acknowledgment of a quality that is at the very least not
something we can always take for granted, a strength of character that is
rare enough to be notable (and presumably has required some work by the
person who has achieved it).
1) 'The right thing to do' can be taken in different senses: for
instance, it may mean the most reasonable way of doing something given a
particular goal, such as in 'If you want to be out of the office by five,
better don't tell the manager about this problem with the presentation
software; leave it till tomorrow.' Depending on the actual circumstances,
this may be a prudent recommendation or a suggestion to act irresponsibly:
if the manager is known from experience to bully people into working
overtime because of mere trifles it may be reasonable to evade potential
trouble; if, however, the suggestion stems from you and your co-worker
sharing a sense that some fun activity you hope to engage in is more
important than doing a good job at the office, the suggestion would betray
a questionable attitude. In both instances, however, given a certain
attitude and goal, there is a best course of action, and 'the right thing
to do' may refer to this relative optimality.
This is not the sense I had in mind when I wrote that integrity means to
do the right thing, in an important sense. There is a stronger sense
of 'the right thing to do' which implies that a behavior such as in the
second scenario above would not count as correct, as the right thing. Doing
the right thing, in that sense, comprises more than just cleverly following
your own selfish interests; it includes at the very least consideration of
others' interests, and probably further respect for more abstract values
such as truth (or beauty). Doing the right thing, in this stronger sense,
is often referred to using terms such as just, honest, kind, generous;
actions that have these qualities generally count as good in themselves
(not merely good for a specific purpose, and for a particular person); so
they are of value, and when we ascribe integrity to someone one thing we
express is our taking these things as valuable and recognizing them, along
with their value, in that person. (Of course, it's a further question why
exactly these things are valuable, what the philosophical basis is for
viewing them so, and actually, that's an entire field in philosophy; but
I won't go much deeper into these questions here.)
2) People don't always act with integrity; it's a rare quality of
character. We have to qualify this observation, however: in addition to
the many cases in which we notice a lack of integrity, and the very few
when we recognize a person as acting with it, there is a huge number of
neutral situations, in everyday life and even often in exceptional
situations, where neither the presence nor the absence of integrity is
something we are directly aware of. Especially in daily life, our actions
may simply (and unproblematically) remain consistent with what is the right
thing to do, and nobody would pay attention to the question. (Except perhaps
the person herself, if integrity is a character quality she strives to
build.) Often it is only when there is an apparent conflict, a temptation
to do something that would not be consistent with integrity, the question
would arise for an observer how the behavior of someone should be seen with
respect to the integrity of that person.
So, to go back to the examples in the previous paragraph once more, if
you resist the attempt of a co-worker to irresponsibly suppress vital
information, even if that brings you into the unpleasant position of having
to do overtime, this displays integrity; the condition for it to be noticed
on the outside is a (visible) situation of conflict: it must be apparent
that there are several courses of action, where some are tempting and
possibly sanctioned by the opinions of some. (It seems that other people's
approval or disapproval plays a strong role in what we decide to do, and
conflict is typically more severe when the right thing to do is a course of
action that goes against the grain of dominant opinion.)
But of course, integrity, and doing the right thing, remains an option
even when it is not visible, when there is no situation of conflict, when
there are no adverse circumstances to withstand. Nobody (including yourself)
may directly notice, most of the time, whether you're acting with
integrity or not. Part of what we appreciate in people with integrity is
that nevertheless, regardless of whether it is approved or even registered
by anyone, they act soundly and reasonably. This consistency in their
actions rarely shows; when it does (when they act soundly and reasonably
even in the face of temptations or pressure to do otherwise) we
ascribe integrity to them, and as I said, applaud them. But that
doesn't imply that this very integrity wasn't there all the time. (If, on
the other hand, we would learn of someone that his actions were for a long
time merely a show, a calculated display of good character qualities, while
in private it was quite a different story, that would quickly get us to
revoke any ascription of integrity to that person which we had previously
made.)
3) In my reflections on integrity so far, I have used an
intuitive notion of integrity, one that is hopefully mostly consistent
with ordinary usage. However, there is some philosophical discussion both
about what exactly it means for someone to have integrity, and what the
connections to related issues in ethics (and other areas of philosophy)
might be. I think it is now time to turn to a closer examination of the
different approaches to analyze the concept of integrity in recent research
literature.
- 12.8.2009
Here are some photos from recent activities I participated in:
At the
Entwicklertag 2009 in Karlsruhe, I moderated a half-track at the
Agile Day, and gave a
talk together with a former colleague at Nero about the Scrum-inspired
multi-project management approach we rolled out there.
Mathias and I are giving our presentation
At the
Eclipse Application Developer Day 2009 in Ettlingen (my hometown),
my colleage at andrena, Stefan Schürle, and I talked
about quality aspects in Eclipse Plug-In development.
Stefan and I in discussions with a conference guest after our talk.
- 28.6.2009
In this post, I shall look closer at what happens when we read a text and
try to understand it. My goal is to sort out some basic concepts, which
I want to apply (later) to specifically what happens when reading texts
that are constructed in a particular way. The text that I have in mind
here is Kafka's The Trial. (So I'm not interested in discussing
all sorts of accounts of understanding narratives; I just want to get
some tools that help me to get to terms with this particular novel.)
1) Let's start with an obvious and rather truistic point: when we
try to understand a work of literature, there is at least one special
dimension compared to trying to understand any narrative in everyday life.
A work of literature doesn't just tell a story — it does that, but it
does it in a special way. The way how the story is told is at least as
important for our understanding something as literature as the story
itself is.
When we read an article in a newspaper (telling us about a political
summit, for instance), or a report at work, what we are mostly interested in
is what narrative tells us, not how it is told. Not that the
latter aspect doesn't matter: there is a typical style to newspaper
articles or work reports, and if a text of that sort fails to comply to
our expectations, we're irritated. Imagine a work report uses obscure or
flowery language, or a newspaper article is written in verse. We would be
surprised, and because of the unusual format, we would have difficulty to
read it as a work report or newspaper article. So the way such a
text is written is not immaterial — it must be written in a particular
way. But if it is, then we are precisely not interested in the question in
what way it is written. The craft aspect, so to speak, is transparent to us.
Ideally, we want to be informed, and the best style for a text with that
objective is a style that isn't perceived as style, that keeps in the
background.
Consider yet another sort of narrative that also is part of daily life.
When your friend tells you the amusing (or depressing, depending on
where you stand) story how many forms she had to fill in to get her laptop
connected to the company network, you're not mostly interested in what
exactly happened. If she told you the story to amuse you, then a lot
depends on how well she succeeds in making it fun to listen to it. In
this case again, though the way the story is told is far from unimportant,
it should again be transparent — you shouldn't have to notice exactly
what makes the story funny, which stylistic elements (choice of words, body
language, exploitation of shared opinions) are used, and how well they
are employed. On the contrary: the story will probably fail to be amusing
if you are made aware of these elements too often and too directly.
In all these examples it is of course possible to reflect on narrative
style, and appreciate it. You can come to like a certain newspaper precisely
because of its sober and informative style, you can appreciate a colleague's
work reports for their matter-of-factness, and of course we can value a
friend's talent for amusing storytelling. Such additional reflection and
appreciation is not strictly necessary for the functioning of something
as a newspaper article, a work report, or an amusing conversation. But it
refines your perceptive and social interaction skills if you are capable
of doing so (and if you actually do it a lot). It is also a step into the
direction of appreciation of art, and literature in particular.
With literature, reflection on and appreciation of the way how
things are said in a text are built right into the practice, both on the
side of the producers and on the side of the consumers. In other words,
authors are aware that it's not just the stories they tell, but also
how they are telling them (their particular style, use of language
and idioms, the way they construct the story and plot etc.) which is subject
to interest and appreciation; and readers know that they must look at these
aspects in order to fully 'get' what's going on in the text.
(That's why autoreferential elements make sense in works of literature in
an almost natural way; consider Ibsen's famous "Nobody dies in right in the
middle of act five" in Peer Gynt — for a moment, it connects
author and audience in a shared understanding that there is more to the drama
than just the plot and story, more than what the characters could possibly
know. In performance art forms such as music, this can be observed even
more directly, as Hilary Hahn explains with admirable lucidity in her
thoughtful reflection on tweeting during live performances: "acoustic
performers rely on the audience's attention and focus and can tell when
the audience isn't mentally present. Your listening is part of our
interpretive process."[1])
Understanding literature, then, must include perceiving and appreciating
the 'how' it is made, in addition to the 'what' that it says. This is a
skill that requires some development, and naturally it benefits from
learning to apply the terms and concepts of technical language. If you
are able to distinguish between plot and story, or between the narrator's
and the character's perspectives, and if you can use these terms to refer
to such differences in discourse with yourself and others, then you have
reached a higher level of skill in understanding literature. Note that
having a conceptual skill does not necessarily mean that you also have to
use some given terminology; many readers have an understanding of the
difference between the narrator's perspective and a character's perspective,
although they may never have learned the technical use of 'narrator',
'character' and 'perspective' employed here. It's not the particular use
of words that matters — what matters is the conceptual capacity.
(To be continued.)
__
[1] Hilary Hahn, To Tweet, or
Not To Tweet?.
- 14.6.2009
In the concluding concert of the Ettlinger
Orgelfrühling, we heard yesterday Leo Krämer from Speyer.
The program was slightly changed: instead of the announced Bach pieces, we
heard three fugues from Die Kunst der Fuge (including the last one
with the famous b-a-c-h motive). For me, the highlights were the two
improvisations over themes from Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream
music. The first, introducing the program, was a fantasia (very delicate
and atmospherical); the second was a toccata over the scherzo —
starting off with interesting rhythmic variations (reminiscent of American
minimal music), it had a beautiful middle part with colorfully layered
sounds, and ended in a dramatic manner (perhaps a little too bombastic for my
taste). All in all, this was a worthy completion for this series of organ
concerts.
- 14.6.2009
Yesterday deep into the night, I watched the new Star Trek movie.
I liked the fresh and occasionally nonchalantly creative approach
to the old story universe, and there were some quite enjoyable action
sequences.
The ethical message of the film, however, I found questionable. The main
theme seemed to be the rehabilitation of emotional depth in the lead
character Spock (who was much more radical in his denial of overt
emotionality in his actions during the old series). This is a pity, because
the contrast with the Kirk and McCoy characters always had an interesting
dialectic (for a TV series, anyway) at its day, which is now sadly lost.
More regrettable is that the main drive of the changes is also in the
direction of incoherence. The movie confuses the idea that emotions are an
important and indispensable part of a fully lived human life (which is
correct) with the idea that it is sometimes right to switch off reason as
the governing part of your psyche, and let yourself be carried away by
the command of a feeling like anger (which is wrong).
When the young Spock, distressed by the destruction of his home planet
and the death of his mother in that event, tells his father that he feels
"an anger [he] cannot control", the reply is "Then don't". In this key
scene, then, there seems to be a paternal permission to sometimes act
out of a feeling, and out of that feeling alone. How unsound this is
becomes clear subsequently; very obviously, Spock doesn't act as if
controlled by anger in the showdown sequences: he seems strongly motivated
by it, but he is not blindly driven by rage or fury. He still is highly
disciplined and acts cleverly and responsibly. (If nothing else, this
impossibility to show its characters living the attempted new view should
have demonstrated how unsound it is.)
- 4.6.2009
The
Karlsruhe production of Hofmannsthal's and Strauss' Ariadne auf
Naxos is very enjoyable: directed with much use of movement and
classiness, each in the appropriate places; with a good orchestra and
cast (both in acting and singing); excellent: Christina Niessen (Ariadne)
and Diana Tomsche (Zerbinetta), who received minutes (!) of spontaneous
applause after her great aria. It was a delightful evening (not just for
me, it seems: there were lots of bravos after the curtain, and on my way
back to the train station I was surrounded by a bunch of returning
theatre-goes, many of whom had smiles on their faces :-)
I'm very fond of Ariadne. It's not just Strauss' beautifully
transparent and elegant neo-classicist music. There is also the ingenious
dramaturgic setup in the extensive Vorspiel, which cleverly
introduces and explains the subsequent opera, and does so in a long
quasi-recitativo, with its own dramatic developments and plenty of
occasions for comedy. And what's more: there is also considerable
depth in the way the ancient theme is treated.
In his conception, I think Hofmannsthal was on to something, a real
insight: If you have suffered a great loss, you are in a grimly
complicated situation. Since what you've lost was so important to you,
you can't quite continue to be yourself — it's a part of your
self that is gone. Neither can you just forget everything that was and
throw yourself into whatever simply keeps your thoughts occupied
(such as traveling, pleasures, or work), because then you would precisely
no longer yourself; with your memories, you'd have abandoned something that
made you into yourself, the person that you were before the loss.
Nor, obviously, can you continue your previous life in any meaningful way:
this is exactly the path that's blocked now. There is no way out of this
dilemma. As Hofmannsthal puts it: "Wer leben will, der muß über
sich selbst hinwegkommen, muß sich verwandeln: er muß vergessen.
Und dennoch ist ans Beharren, ans Nichtvergessen, an die Treue alle
menschliche Würde geknüpft. Dies ist einer von den abgrundtiefen
Widersprüchen, über denen das Dasein aufgebaut ist". The only
attitude that actually works is paradoxical: don't forget the tiniest bit,
keep being yourself, and trust that what you've lost will be restored
somehow. (It can't, of course; but paradoxically, it will.) It's an
attitude that is brilliantly expressed in Ariadne's refusal to follow
all the suggestions put forward to her. (As an aside: one might wonder
whether the character of Bacchus succeeds to equally express something
meaningful; I admit I cannot really make sense of anything he has to say
in his part.)
- 17.5.2009
Today was the second concert in the Ettlinger
Orgelfrühling series, and this time I got there without
getting wet — only to receive my shower from above on the way back. What is
it with the weather these days? We had lightning, thunder and rain on seven
out of the last eight days.
Well, the program this time was rather traditional, it was framed by
Bach's Praeludium & Fuga in E♭ BWV 552 and Max Reger's
Choralfantasie "Wie schön leucht uns der Morgenstern",
the two highlights of this evening. In between there was another interesting
piece, a rather impressionistic prelude by Marcel Dupré (no. 3 from
his op. 7, Trois Préludes et Fugues).
- 11.5.2009
I had to get out into an unpleasant thunderstorm yesterday evening to
reach the location of the opening concert in the Ettlinger
Orgelfrühling, but it was worth it. The concert was good, and we
heard some really interesting music.
The organist, Wolfgang Bretschneider from Bonn, introduced and motivated
the program he had compiled, and gave some background explanations. I liked
that the core of the evening was formed by compositions by 20th-century
French composers; besides a delicate cantilene by Poulenc (originally for
flute and piano, and arranged by Bretschneider for the organ) and a
selection from Messiaen's Les Corps Glorieux, there was a couple
of fascinating pieces by Thierry Escaich, a composer I hadn't known
before, very expressive and with sophisticated rhythmization.
The program was concluded with a brand new piece, just published a few
months ago, as Prof. Bretschneider explained: Harold Britton's variations
on Gershwin's well-known I got rhythm. It starts off lightly, but
then gets somewhat dark and ends almost grimly, leaving me with an ambivalent
feeling. (But there was a friendlier encore to lift the mood again.)
- 1.5.2009
Yesterday we had a
performance of Ludwig Tieck's story Die schöne Magelone and
Johannes Brahms's setting of the poems from that text (15 Romanzen,
op. 33) — a celebration of chivalric love (and Romantic art).
Tieck's text was read by the actress Birgit Bücker, and the
compositions were interspersed at their original locations. The largest part
had the baritone, Simon Schnorr. He was most convincing in the stronger, more
forceful passages; he also nicely supplemented the music with gestures and
facial expressions. The two pieces in the voice of female characters
(Magelone and Zulima) were performed by Sarah Alexandra Hudarew
(mezzo-soprano). The singers were competently accompanied by Xiayi Jiang at
the piano.
More adequate lighting conditions would have improved the event (the
faces of the singers were in the shadow all the time), and perhaps
the seating for the performers could have been arranged more
efficiently. Whenever the reading of a passage was finished and
the next musical piece should have started, the singer had to walk
over the entire stage from the left where his seat was to the right
of the piano from where he was performing. (And after the piece he
went back.)
With a twist typical for the Romantic's view of the universe, Tieck's
text has the name of Magelone in it's title, although is actually mostly
the story of Peter of Provence, the young knight, her lover. His adventures
make up most of the plot; the development and fate of his love is in the
center, and it's he who is initiated in the various forms of love by
encountering them one-by-one during his journey (beginning with his parents
and their caring, proceeding to the romantic secret relationship with
Magelone at her father's court, then via distress and longing after
their separation, and the exotic, more sensual and seductive elements
in the Zulima substory, ending with Peter's mature finding back to Magelone
and their reunion). Also in line with Romanticism is a tendency to have
irrational forces drive much of the plot and the decisions that
the characters make. (For instance, Peter's refusal to respond to the
advances of the Sultan' daughter is effected by a dream, not any
firmness of character or purpose he might have; his parents are
comforted by an extreme coincidence which they take, implausibly, as
a sign from heaven, etc.) Brahms counterbalances this atmosphere of
miracle and Märchen by adding dramatic depth and more plausible
temperamental sketches. Having both, Tieck's prose and Brahms's compositions,
brought together into one performance makes for an enjoyable evening,
and ultimately, I think, a more appreciable work of art than leaving them
separated.
- 4.4.2009
This was the first real spring day here, and to complete a pleasant day,
tonight's
concert was really enjoyable. The band is called The Stokes. The music is great fun;
if they come somewhere near you, go listen to them :-).
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