Philosophy and Literature Blog

      The heart of Lois Gordon's book is her interpretation of the various features of the play in terms of Freudian conglomeration.  She says: "Freud uses the term conglomeration in the process of collecting the fragmentary components of the dream.  This is a concept akin to the mental operation of "secondary revision", which gives final shape and form to the compressed dream image.  In following Freud's procedure, I shall speak of the conglomerative effect or conglomerative refrain in order to indicate what traditionally would be called the dominant theme of the play, always in the form of thesis and antithesis."(pg. 75) Thus, we see the various verbal formulations, including the ambiguous or self-contradictory speeches, dialogues, stage directions(when compared with the dialogue), as if they were disorganized components of a dream.  The assemblage of a theme is therefore analogous to the assembling of a narrative and meaning among the pieces of a drea

"The power of Waiting for Godot derives from its exposure of the emotional life in counterpoint to the existential condition -- Beckett's revelation of the unconscious feelings that accompany the quest for salvation in a world bereft of meaning. Godot's much-repeated 'Let's go.(they do not move)' epitomizes not just the tension of individual action in a meaningless world; it also demonstrates the limits of the will set against the contraining and deterministic forces of a controlling psyche."(pg. 70-71) Existentialism without the freedom.   She asserts the influence of Freudianism on Beckett all the way down to the set design, props, the direction the characters walk and how they move about on the stage: "It is as though Beckett were weaving into his existential landscape a map of the unconscious world, again, either as it functions simultaneously with rational thinking or is transformed into a dreamscape...Each object, word, and movement ultimatel

"Werner Heisenberg and quantum physics, no less than Freud and Sartre, have demonstrated that the limits of our universe are determined by the limits of our measuring instruments, whether they are atomic clocks, blood pressure cups, or nouns and verbs (Gordon pg. 18) I usually dislike it when humanities' types bring in physics to illustrate some point about relativism etc..., but I make an exception in this case.  It is true that there is a fundamental limit to our ability to locate and measure the momentum of particles precisely, and that ultimately science is about what we can measure, and there are apparently limitations on that, and thus on our ability to know.  We spin our theories based on what we can possibly measure. Perhaps we assume that the limitations of what we can measure are the limitations of the universe itself, an obvious intellectual error, but just as there are undoubtedly aspects of the physical universe beyond our ability to measure, there are perhaps t

     I will continue an examination of Waiting for Godot by introducing a selection from the brilliant book, Reading Godot, by Lois Gordon.  When the actual book arrives from Amazon I will read over everything she has to say.  Gordon begins this section with "In a world devoid of belief systems, the mind and heart cry out for validation, for the assurance that life has meaning and actions have purpose.  One may accept, as an existential truth, the assumption that despite the individual's endeavors to comprehend or change the world, "there is no new thing under the sun"(Ecclesiastes), and, as Beckett puts it, "the tears of the world are of a constant quantity..."  But one also occupies a world of temporal measurement.  Time passes and one ages, and, facing these inescapable facts, one journeys with tenacious will through the arbitrary divisions of time and space holding onto goals and belief systems as if they were absolute(Bloom pg. 124) We inhabit both

     I bought the Harold Bloom 'Modern Critical Interpretations' edition for 'Waiting for Godot' and read several of the essays.  All of the essays mention Albert Camus's short essay, 'The Myth of Sisyphus', so I figured I would start by looking over this essay and quoting what some of the interpreter's say; this is an essay I first read in high school and it was a poignant experience to read it again as I remember the effect the essay had on me all those years ago.      One of the first things I noticed when I got my old copy of the essay was an underlining I had made in the essay;  I would have done this some time around 1982: "But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed the water and sun, warm stones, and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness."(pg. 88-89) When I recall the bouts with depression, the sense of futility, along with the melodramas of my adolescence, this line, with its emphasis on si

My next series of articles will be explorations of the dramatic works of Samuel Beckett.  I have read some of his plays and he is becoming one of my favorite author.  So get ready for the ABSURD.  I will start next time with Waiting for Godot.

After a long, tedious, explanation of what is wrong with various versions of "Subjective Theories", without really dealing with what I would call the 'real problem', nihilism, he talks about Kant. I have to say that I find actually reading the text unbearable.  So, I'm going back to the summary to see if he gives me an argument I can sink my teeth into. So, after skimming through much more tedium I  violated all canons of what is good and decent by going right to the "conclusions" section! Sigh, and here is what I was treated to: "everyone ought always to do whatever would make things go best."(pg. 74)   Let's read that again: "everyone ought always to do whatever would make things go best."(pg. 74)  I need a 600 page book for this? Here's another gem: "When there is only one set of principles that everyone could rationally will to be universal laws, these are the only principles, we can argue, that no one could re

I suppose it's not surprising that it's easier to poke holes in the opposition's theories than it is to put forward one of your own; that's one reason why the next chapter, "Subjective Theories", is better.  He gives the example of running away from a snake in the mistaken belief that running will save your life(you should stand still).  He says: "Subjectivists might claim that (A) reasons are provided only by desires that depend on true beliefs, You have no reason to run away, (A) implies, because your desire depens on the false belief that this act would save your life".(pg. 107) He then defines the Telic Desire Theory: "We have most reason to do whatever would best fulfil or achieve our present telic desires or aims."(pg. 108) He then says that the problem here is that sometimes our telic desires are based on false beliefs. Thus we have "the Error-Free Desire Theory: We have most reason to do whatever would best fulfil or

Parfit provides an unilluminating distinction between subjective and objective theories: On many subjective theories, the strength of the these reasons depends on the strength of these desires or on our preferences.  On objective theories, the strength of these reasons depends instead on how good, or worth achieving, the fulfilment of these desires would be. Many of us often have stronger desires for what would be less worth achieving."(pg. 95) Is this guy my Sunday School teacher? He then reiterates the tired formula that we do not choose what we desire etc....; this was known in the 19th century as the "law of motivation", at least is was for Schopenhauer.   He say "we can choose which desires to adopt as aims, and try to fulfil."  What makes him think this?? The book reads like he's writing right off the top of his head, which is not a good thing in this case. "Our desires are rational, I have claimed, when we want events whose features giv

Parfit goes on at some length about how facts give us reasons.  He gives examples like being allergic to walnuts gives us a reason not to eat them.  He goes on to say that reasons counteract other reasons.  None of this is particularly interesting.  He praises rationality as a way of determining how we ought to act.  He goes on at some tedious length about 'relevant' reasons providing 'sufficient' reasons for acting in certain ways, all the while begging the questions that plague the history of ethics -- at least, so far.  My advice is that if he's going to re-establish normative ethics on some sort of foundation that people can really sink their teeth into, he needs to get to it a tad sooner otherwise people will think he doesn't really have anything. Here goes: "When we call something good, in what we call the reason-implying sense, we mean roughly that there are certain kinds of fact about this thing's nature, or properties, that would in certai