Philip Larkin also said, possibly in a letter to a girlfriend, that the personality was not self-chosen; that to have done differently, he would have had to have thought differently, to have thought differently, he would have had to have felt differently and to have felt differently, he would have had to be someone else.
As your fellow UH columnist, John Gray, has been saying for years, we have far less autonomy than we think we have.
Well put… which is why, in the end, I think we have to accept, rather than trying to deny or dispute, the sanctity and specificity of individual experience. Each of us is who he is.
Basil Chamberlain
3 years ago
An interesting, nuanced and gentle article. But I think an important point is being missed. Of course literature can’t supply transcendent meaning. Of course it can’t dictate morality. But I think the great poems, plays and, especially, novels (one may add the great films too – all the narrative arts) are our most comprehensive source of applied ethics – they offer a record of imagined moral choices made in specific defined situations which can help us to clarify the particular implications and consequences of whatever ethical foundation (which will necessarily be generalised) we have. For instance, consider Dorothea Brooke’s situation in Middlemarch, when she is asked to make a promise by her husband, fully intends to make a promise, and would have made that promise, had it not been for the fact that her husband dies before she can do so. Here, the reader has to think very carefully about what a promise is, what it means, what kind of promises are reasonable and unreasonable to make and to demand, and to what extent we should consider ourselves bound by them.
That kind of crux offers, I really think, the sort of scope for pondering that makes literature particularly valuable – it allows us to ask, in a controlled, reflective way, what the particular consequences of particular moral positions may be in particular situations. That’s a habit of mind which we should all strive to cultivate.
I’ve experienced transcendence many times when deeply immersed in a work of art. Theatre has been particularly powerful for me — when a large group of people go beyond their individual selves together, the potential for something very rich emerges. A well-told story is an opportunity to become someone else for a time and develop empathy. You need concentration though — it won’t work if you’ve got one eye on your phone.
Even ordinary, everyday moments can be a gateway to an expansive experience. I’ve found meditation a great help with this, though it does take time and practice.
“Experiencing transcendence” is rather different from “transcendent meaning”, though. I guess it’s the difference between looking at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and being awed by Michaelangelo’s genius, the beauty of the images, the coherence of the scheme, the persuasive expression of an ideology on the one hand (those are all examples of “experiencing transcendence”), and on the other, looking at the Sistine Chapel and actually believing that it is a representation of the verities of Christianity – that would be art imbued with “transcendent meaning”.
Andrew D
3 years ago
Would who want to be someone else?
stephenmoriarty
3 years ago
It’s a Wonderful Life is a knowing reworking of A Christmas Carol. Dickens may have been criticising the predestination of puritanism. He had not long returned from the USA and had criticised what he saw (facilely rather) as the rapaciousness and hypocrisy of puritanism, thus anticipating Weber’s thesis “Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic”. Hence the equal emphasis – again slightly clunky – by Dickens (along with a direct relationship with Christ – “Are you the spirit whose coming was foretold to me?” ” I am.”) on enjoyment and charity and the possibility of change.
It’s a Wonderful Life is also implicitly anti-Puritan and pro-Catholic (its director, Frank Capra, was Italian-born, and the Italian Martini is one of the most sympathetic minor characters).
Thanks. I do think Dickens’ attack on puritanism as the hypocritical basis of capitalism was unfair. I believe Weber’s thesis has also come in for criticism. Am not clever enough to understand free-will/determinism, etc. We may inevitably be “determined” by the past, the entire past including our consciousness, which makes the future unpredictable, and this gives us a seeming-moment of free-will in the present (intuitive leap!!). We don’t like being “determined” by other people though! This is what we mean by “liberty”, but we don’t like loneliness or anarchy either…
It’s more of an inversion than a reworking, Bailey being the anti-Scrooge.
stephenmoriarty
3 years ago
I suppose the interesting thing then is this “Dickensian” (he did not pretend to be a philosopher!) view of “capitalism” as a consequence of a complete lack of free-will and the “liberal” idea of it.
Philip Larkin also said, possibly in a letter to a girlfriend, that the personality was not self-chosen; that to have done differently, he would have had to have thought differently, to have thought differently, he would have had to have felt differently and to have felt differently, he would have had to be someone else.
As your fellow UH columnist, John Gray, has been saying for years, we have far less autonomy than we think we have.
Well put… which is why, in the end, I think we have to accept, rather than trying to deny or dispute, the sanctity and specificity of individual experience. Each of us is who he is.
An interesting, nuanced and gentle article. But I think an important point is being missed. Of course literature can’t supply transcendent meaning. Of course it can’t dictate morality. But I think the great poems, plays and, especially, novels (one may add the great films too – all the narrative arts) are our most comprehensive source of applied ethics – they offer a record of imagined moral choices made in specific defined situations which can help us to clarify the particular implications and consequences of whatever ethical foundation (which will necessarily be generalised) we have. For instance, consider Dorothea Brooke’s situation in Middlemarch, when she is asked to make a promise by her husband, fully intends to make a promise, and would have made that promise, had it not been for the fact that her husband dies before she can do so. Here, the reader has to think very carefully about what a promise is, what it means, what kind of promises are reasonable and unreasonable to make and to demand, and to what extent we should consider ourselves bound by them.
That kind of crux offers, I really think, the sort of scope for pondering that makes literature particularly valuable – it allows us to ask, in a controlled, reflective way, what the particular consequences of particular moral positions may be in particular situations. That’s a habit of mind which we should all strive to cultivate.
I’ve experienced transcendence many times when deeply immersed in a work of art. Theatre has been particularly powerful for me — when a large group of people go beyond their individual selves together, the potential for something very rich emerges. A well-told story is an opportunity to become someone else for a time and develop empathy. You need concentration though — it won’t work if you’ve got one eye on your phone.
Even ordinary, everyday moments can be a gateway to an expansive experience. I’ve found meditation a great help with this, though it does take time and practice.
“Experiencing transcendence” is rather different from “transcendent meaning”, though. I guess it’s the difference between looking at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and being awed by Michaelangelo’s genius, the beauty of the images, the coherence of the scheme, the persuasive expression of an ideology on the one hand (those are all examples of “experiencing transcendence”), and on the other, looking at the Sistine Chapel and actually believing that it is a representation of the verities of Christianity – that would be art imbued with “transcendent meaning”.
Would who want to be someone else?
It’s a Wonderful Life is a knowing reworking of A Christmas Carol. Dickens may have been criticising the predestination of puritanism. He had not long returned from the USA and had criticised what he saw (facilely rather) as the rapaciousness and hypocrisy of puritanism, thus anticipating Weber’s thesis “Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic”. Hence the equal emphasis – again slightly clunky – by Dickens (along with a direct relationship with Christ – “Are you the spirit whose coming was foretold to me?” ” I am.”) on enjoyment and charity and the possibility of change.
It’s a Wonderful Life is also implicitly anti-Puritan and pro-Catholic (its director, Frank Capra, was Italian-born, and the Italian Martini is one of the most sympathetic minor characters).
Thanks. I do think Dickens’ attack on puritanism as the hypocritical basis of capitalism was unfair. I believe Weber’s thesis has also come in for criticism.
Am not clever enough to understand free-will/determinism, etc. We may inevitably be “determined” by the past, the entire past including our consciousness, which makes the future unpredictable, and this gives us a seeming-moment of free-will in the present (intuitive leap!!). We don’t like being “determined” by other people though! This is what we mean by “liberty”, but we don’t like loneliness or anarchy either…
It’s more of an inversion than a reworking, Bailey being the anti-Scrooge.
I suppose the interesting thing then is this “Dickensian” (he did not pretend to be a philosopher!) view of “capitalism” as a consequence of a complete lack of free-will and the “liberal” idea of it.