Reflections: Week 8
Macbeth, William Shakespeare (c. 1605)
Pilgrim's Progress (Part I), John Bunyan (1677)The Basic Political Writings, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1750, 1754).
JJ ROUSSEAU
The Reveries of the Solitary Walker
One can't help but sympathize with Rousseau (JJR) while reading his end-of-life reflections. In his Confessions he considers his "sensitive heart" both a gift from Heaven and "the source of all the misfortunes of [his] life..." The ambiguity of this character does not end here and makes him and his life intriguing. While reading his Reveries, I had no idea of his life story and wanted to know exactly why he was so down on life, relationships and this entire planet (except for, maybe, plantlife): “Finally, feeling that all my efforts were useless and that I was tormenting myself to no avail, I took the only course which remained - that of submitting to my fate without railing against necessity any longer”. From what I gathered, he'd become disillusioned with how his fellow "thinkers" (and his fellow humans) regarded him and his writing. His perception of how he was perceived was consistent with his belief that the world is preocupied with and deceived by appearances.
“Only profound indifference remains about the fate of my true writings and of the testimonies to my innocence.” It's hard for me to believe that someone could care so little, as stated above, and yet write so much. He clearly enjoyed the creative process of writing for writing's sake: “They will not take away from me the pleasure of having written them, nor the solitary meditations whose fruit they are and whose source can be extinguished only when my soul is” but he seems to have wanted people to view him as he truly was and as opposed to how he was popularly perceived. Maybe he was not so indifferent.
The most memorable lines in Reveries: “If there is any study still appropriate for an Old Man, it is solely to learn how to die; and this is precisely what we study least at my age. At this point, we think of anything but that. All old men having on to life more than children and leave it with more reluctance than youngsters.” ... “They have not dreamed of acquiring anything during their life that they might carry away at their death.” Of the readings we've covered so far this semester, we have looked at theories focusing on how one should live, but not specifically on how one should die. This seems to be an important issue given that we all meet this very end. Are these lines both in defence of religion and against desires and acquisitions? If so, it would be consistent with the theories of Budhism, Stoics, Hindus (among many others) that eliminating want will keep you from projecting your present self into the future... there will come a time when that projection is unrealistic because you'll be facing a wall of death.
“What kind of a support are illusions which delude me alone in the whole world? The whole present generation sees only errors and prejudices in the sentiments with which I alone nourish myself. It finds truth and evidence in the system opposed to mine.” ... “Shall I place more trust in my declining reason, thereby making myself unjustly unhappy, than in my full and vigorous reason, thereby getting compensation for the evils I suffer without having deserved them? … While meditating on these matters, I knew that human understanding, circumscribed by the senses, could not embrace them in their full extent.” To me these musings speak to the complexity of authenticity and its perception by others. This is not to say that Rousseau's ideas are correct and that others should buy into them but it does show how superficial his contemporaries were in judging him as they would understand "by the senses" and would misinterpret his writings, perhaps to the benefit of their own agendas.
The Basic Political Writings
I don't know much about anything, but I probably should seek the shelter and shade of trees as often as I can. Doing so benefited the Buddha, Newton and Rousseau with life-changing epiphanies. It was under a tree that JJR had the revelation that man is born good and is then corrupted by society. The profound experience was felt to his core and he spent the rest of his life trying to articulate his insight.
A good friend of mine was swept up by such inspiration once, while traveling abroad... With some alacrity, he was crossing a continent to be on time for a "date" but was seized with a creative force that he couldn't ignore, and for the next week or two wrote a screenplay that became the seedling to a movie he later produced. Even though (to say the least) his date was not pleased, my friend has no regrets and gives much credit to his divine inspiration. After reading Rousseau's reflections, I wonder whether he felt the same way about his philosophical creations, or at least the way he handled their publication. Was he happy with how he handled his public affairs? Did he have regrets as a result of his exile? I wonder if he would do it over again and have himself subjected to all the torment he endured for the sake of being authentic. What price would I be willing to pay to remain my authentic self?
From what little Rousseau I've read, to summarize his basic writings in a sentence or two, one can say that man stepped beyond the boundaries of Nature when his use of reason was set off and he was set free. Consequences of this include ideas of property, inequality and what Rousseau describes as love for self. He wrote a lot on the education of children but gave up (five times) the chance of getting first-hand experience in raising children. I question that he should be faulted for this. Who am I to judge and who can know what his life was like when he left his five newborns at an orphanage? Do not mix the artist with his art, as this might detract from the enjoyment of art (depending on one's sensibilities).
Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts:
In his discourse on the Arts and Sciences Rousseau gives historical examples contending that the study of the arts and sciences, as they are studied today, leads man to deviate from a "natural path". He gives evidence that probity is indeed the daughter of ignorance. “Ever since learned men have begun to appear in our midst, good men have vanished. Until then the Romans had been content to practice virtue; all was lost when they began to study it.”
As someone who was, for a short period of two years, employed as a scientist (see blog of "Week 10"), I can't wholly disagree with JJR. My first response to his discourse was that he was being a bit harsh and unreasonable. Was it because he was writing to win an essay contest that he had such forceful views? Surely he doesn't mean everything he wrote although there are seeds of truth in his writing. Did he think that one has to exaggerate his thoughts in order to be heard?Another reaction to his writing (this example from Part One of his Discrouse on Inequality) is that I thought some of his arguments very "black and white" blind to the complexities and intricacies of life. (p.51) “…the following difficult problem: which was the more necessary: an already formed society for the invention of languages, or an already invented language for the establishment of society?” Admittedly I am taking this line right out of context and he does not believe that either was the case, but the example exemplifies JJR's oversimplification of an issue.
On p.8 he shows foresight in anticipating new "languages" spoken by men as a result of their various specializations. “Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they view themselves as the wisest of men. To my way of thinking, this presumption has completely tarnished their knowledge.” Such presumtion comes from one's ego and is an effect of - if not the beginning of - inequality.
If the desire to practise the arts and sciences stems from one's ego, “...the sciences and the arts owe their birth to our vices; we would be less in doubt about their advantages, if they owed it to our virtues.” JJR would argue that to be authentic is “…to commune with oneself and, in the silence of the passions, to listen to the voice of one’s conscience…That is the true philosophy; let us know how to be satisfied with it.” Unfortunately, based on his Reveries of a Solitary Walker, he fleshes out his thoughts in this respect but I question whether he came to know how to be satisfied with it.
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
p. 27 - “Once people are accustomed to masters, they are no longer in a position to get along without them.”
The preface develops and describes the kind of republic that Rousseau would have liked to be born in. Even though Rousseau seems to be talking about 18th Century Geneva as an ideal state, I thought he was being ironic and sarcastic, especially with the capitalization of his fawning salutations to the city's leaders: "MAGNIFICENT, MOST HONOURED AND SOVEREIGN LORDS..." (C'mon, now.)
“Of all the branches of knowledge, the most useful and least advanced seems to me to be that of man.” Man does seem to think little about himself in the internal, reflective sense. Perhaps due to man's fixation on "appearances", as a result of society, his thoughts bend toward the external and remain there.
That's great but sometimes it is hard to reconile some of his thoughts with others...p. 42- on illness “If nature has destined for us to be healthy, I almost dare to affirm that the state of reflection is a state contrary to nature and that the man who meditates is a depraved animal.” I know my confusion stems from my ignorance of Rousseau's philosophy, but I think one must keep in mind the following in reading his works: “reason is what engenders egocentrism, and reflection strengthens it. Reason is what turns man in upon himself”. This type of "turning in" is probably not the kind that Rousseau would advocate. This kind would constitute an implosion not a liberation which is more in line with what he talks about in his Reveries.
p. 35 - “…two principles that are prior to reason, of which one makes us ardently interested in our well-being and our self-preservation, and the other inspires in us a natural repugnance to seeing any sentient being, especially our fellow man, perish or suffer.” (compassion, empathy, pity).
Part One
Rousseau uses as a "base" his idea of man in his natural state: (p.40) - “I see him satisfying his hunger under and oak tree, quenching his thirst at the first stream, finding his bed at the foot of the same tree that supplied his meal; and thus all his needs are satisfied.”
p. 40 - “Nature treats them [children] precisely the way the law of Sparta treated the children of its citizens: it renders strong and robust those who are well constituted and makes all the rest perish…”
p.44 - animal as a machine (Descartes!) “…whereas man contributes to his own operations”… “and thus dissolute men abandon themselves to excesses which cause them fever and death, because mind perverts the senses and because the will still speaks when nature is silent”.
p. 45 - THE FACULTY OF SELF-PERFECTION. … "Is it not that he thereby returns to his primitive state, and that, while the animal which has acquired nothing and which also has nothing to lose, always retains its instinct, man, in losing through old age of other accidents all that his perfectibility has enabled him to acquire, thus falls even lower than the animal itself?”
p. 46 - “an animal will never know what it is to die; and knowledge of death and its terrors is one of the first acquisitions that man has made in withdrawing from the animal condition” - the complexity of the modern man is then further complicated by his denial of death!
p. 48+ - on language… only conjecture (as he states in the preface) - so why does he go into such detail if this is just an hypothesis? I’m surprised at the presumption of how he believes civilized man came to be… he could be way, WAY off, although the point he is trying to make is clear.
p.52 - comparison of the suffering in savage and civilized life.
p. 54 - “with all their mores, men would never have been anything but monsters, if nature had not given them pity to aid their reason”… “reason is what engenders egocentrism, and reflection strengthens it. Reason is what turns man in upon himself”.
Pilgrim's Progress
"The origin of the religious temperament can be traced in clear outline to the child's feeling of helplessness." (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents)
The irony that Pilgrim's Progress (PP) was written in a children's genre was not lost on me; in order to buy into Bunyan's belief system you must shed any knowledge acquired after the age of about four. I don't want to come off as being anti-religion, but what would aliens think of humanity's penchant for playing make-believe? To believe (and to want to believe) in the extreme form of religion that Bunyan advances requires a suspension of reason that children naturally possess. Anyway, thinking of all this reminds me of the oft-repeated Atheist repartée: Instead of being born again, why not just grow up?
Nevertheless, I enjoyed PP and read it with the eyes of a child. I felt like an adventurer in a fantastic "Alice-In-Wonder" land where reason does not always apply. I noticed that at one time it was considered the most widely read English book, after the Bible. Was its popularity due to its ability to teach (indoctrinate) young children?
On that note, memorable was the brutality Christian and Hopeful are subjected to for (merely) trespassing near Doubting-Castle, on Giant Despair's land (p. 110). What terrible images to subject a child's imagination to, and what insidious treachery to instill the fear of God into a kid so as to keep him on the straight and narrow. This is reminiscent of a section of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where a priest describes eternity and hell to a congregation of young school boys:
-- Last and crowning torture of all the tortures of that awful place is the eternity of hell. Eternity! O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can understand it? And remember, it is an eternity of pain. Even though the pains of hell were not so terrible as they are, yet they would become infinite, as they are destined to last for ever. But while they are everlasting they are at the same time, as you know, intolerably intense, unbearably extensive. To bear even the sting of an insect for all eternity would be a dreadful torment. What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of hell for ever? For ever! For all eternity! Not for a year or for an age but for ever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness; and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away, and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would scarcely have begun.
Wow! Imagine the effect this had on any young person!
The oppresiveness and fear does not end there, though. The twisted message (albeit sweetened by a nice story of adventure) stays strong in its insistence that one's thoughts are carefully monitord by our loving Lord and that (at the end of the day, at the day of judgment) one's thoughts have more weight than one's actions. P.36 “Why, I thought that the day of Judgement was come, and that I was not ready for it: but this frightened me most, that the Angels gathered up several, and left me behind; also the pit of Hell opened her mouth just where I stood: my Conscience too within afflicted me; and as I thought, the Judge had always his eye upon me, shewing indignation in his countenance.” He was afraid of being Left Behind.
On p. 65 Satan is blamed for man's natural use of his Reason. "Christian made believe that he spake blasphemies when 'twas Satan that suggested them in his mind." ... "which [Christian] verily thought had proceeded from his own mind." What better way to explain the natural thoughts of a faithful man? Blame... Satan! The words "thought control" come to mind here but Bunyan cannot be criticized for being inconsistent as this idea is again revisited in expounding on the sin of questioning or unbelieving. Basically, it is a sin to question. Never mind neglecting, shunning and looking down on your fellow humans (which happens throughout PP), but beware of lustful thoughts!
p.40- “I walk by the rule of my Master, you walk by the rude working of your fancies”. Well, I guess this is called free will and it seems preferable to me to obey oneself over a wrathful demagogic God. But, comfort for the weak: (p.45): “keep in the midst of the Path and no hurt shall come unto thee”.
Macbeth
My pre-class thoughts:Whenever did "hurly-burly" not describe the state of the world? That expression sums up Britain circa 1600. A time of changing monarch's, backstabbing traitors and greed. Shakespeare would feel right at home in the 21st Century.
Macbeth's first advancement is that of being granted the title "Thane of Cawdor" (and it's no coincidence that that previous Thane was a traitor). Macbeth holds this title temporarily, but remains a traitor to the end, when the story really comes to a head. (sorry). As he rises up the ranks and sets his sights on the possibility of kingship, he lives by a Machiavellian code, a code stating that men of greatness (those in charge of states) do not have to abide by the mores of individual men. He gets help in this from his wife who appeals to Macbeth's passion, not his reason, as his reasoning would advise him not to murder the king. Like Eve tempting Adam to share her Fall, Lady Macbeth coaxes her husband by questioning his manhood. In Act I Scene 5 (40-41), Lady Macbeth calls on the spirits to unsex her, and asks them to give her cruelty and “thick blood”... How often in literature do we see a man trying to tempt a woman, thus causing her downfall? Not very often. Will the converse of this ever become cliché?
At least twice (that I can think of) Macbeth gives in to temptation and makes an immoral choice that is later mirrored by someone who choses the higher road:
1) “Merciful powers, restrain in me the cursed thoughts that Nature gives way to, in repose.” Banquo is tempted by the same thoughts as Macbeth but he casts them aside; Nature endows us with Reason (and free will!) that allows us to discriminate between right and wrong.
2) Macbeth is weak-willed and allows Lady Macbeth to damage his manly ego with her doubting his masculinity. But when Ross tells Macduff that his family has been killed, and Macduff's eyes are dimmed with tears, he is urged by Ross to take the news “like a man”. Macduff does so, but only after he "feels it like a man”. Macbeth is, in the end, less potent and less manly (if I may say this without sounding sexist) for caving in to his wife's jeering. There is a time for tears and a time for war, turn turn turn.
King Macbeth, to his detriment, cannot in good conscience live as Machiavelli would recommend. Not only can he not pull it off, he cannot hold his self together and keep his guilt from devouring him from the inside. He becomes, like the citizens of his country, unable to eat or sleep peacefully.
I can see the parallels and can also question whether a heavy-handed ruler like Macbeth (and like Machiavelli's Prince) would be able to maintain rule when other leaders (never mind the people) grow to see through tyranny and despise the ruling tyrant.
Guilt
No matter how one tries to justify his actions, guilt finds a way of wreaking havoc and creating imbalance… Macbeth’s inability to sleep and eat (and this strangely being passed on to the people of Scotland!) as a result of his tormented mind. It takes root in the physical – not only his own body, but that of the country he rules. This is seen in a few instances throughout this course, which brings into question the Descartian mind-body dichotomy. Frankenstein does not fall ill after every calamity just by coincidence any more than Macbeth's inability to eat and sleep come from acute mountain sickness.
Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking is a sure sign of the agonizing guilt she is experiencing. As much as she justifies her and her husband’s actions as right, her subconscious cannot escape the evil that is eating her through the core.
I saw the witches as representing Macbeth’s subconscious. Therein lies the mixture of intuition and evil that Macbeth is predisposed to. It offers him a glimpse of the future, to his loss.
Rationalizing skewed his Reason: Macbeth tries to rationalize his evil deeds. By merely entertaining the possibility, the seed is planted and his mind works in favour of his desire.
His mind finds a way to rationalize his darkest desire. Just like you might see yourself doing something you know is wrong, you convince yourself in the moment of your doing it that it is right or that there is some value in it… this is your mind skewing Reason.
Macbeth dissociates himself from guilt, whereas it devours Lady Macbeth. He is too busy to consider his guilt anyway, but the fact that he cannot sleep and eat hints at his inner anguish.
No comments:
Post a Comment