Jacobin's "Wage-Slavery and Republican Liberty" is an interesting article connecting the political emancipation realized via the American Revolution, and the 'neo-Roman' republicanism associated with the Enlightenment ideals of the Founding Fathers underlying it, to the logically consistent extension of those emancipatory ideals and actions into the economic sphere, suggesting that true independence won't be won until we're liberated from the structural and personal forms of dependence that characterize wage-labour under capitalism.
At the very least, I think this look at how segments of the American working class extended these emancipatory ideals and actions into the economic sphere offers present-day socialists, etc. in the US an interesting rhetorical basis from which to argue that both the philosophical and political foundation of US republicanism, championed by conservatives and liberals, are actually more potentially revolutionary than they're willing to admit, limiting the concept of freedom to one small area of civil society. That "To demand that 'there is to be a people in industry, as in government' [is] simply to argue that the cooperative commonwealth [is] nothing more than the culmination and completion of the American Revolution's republican aspirations."
The revolution isn't won yet!
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Friday, March 8, 2013
bread and roses
Read an interesting op-ed in this month's edition of Jacobin today about what feminism is and how to orient ourselves towards struggles in that direction, such as the Wages for Housework Campaign and the more recent Domestic Workers United movement in New York, both of which tie into the "invisibility of female labor" and the broader fight for radical compensatory mechanisms like a universal basic income—a demand that's "intrinsically feminist because it recognizes the domestic work vital to the reproduction of labor power."
I think it's especially relevant since today is also International Women's Day, which originated in the US as a massive demonstration in 1909 by tens of thousands women and socialists commemorating the 1857 garment workers' strike in New York — where women protested against poor pay and working conditions — and demanding shorter work hours, better pay, voting rights, and an end to child labour. The slogan 'Bread and Roses' is as relevant now as it was on March 8, 1908. As the old song inspired by the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike goes:
I think it's especially relevant since today is also International Women's Day, which originated in the US as a massive demonstration in 1909 by tens of thousands women and socialists commemorating the 1857 garment workers' strike in New York — where women protested against poor pay and working conditions — and demanding shorter work hours, better pay, voting rights, and an end to child labour. The slogan 'Bread and Roses' is as relevant now as it was on March 8, 1908. As the old song inspired by the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike goes:
As we go marching, marching, we're standing proud and tall. The rising of the women means the rising of us all. No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes, But a sharing of life's glories, bread and roses, bread and roses.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
moral arguments for socialism?
Some people tend to criticize the inclusion of 'moral' terms in discussions about economics on the basis that such terminology is confused and arises out of religious assumptions about market forces or the lack thereof. In my opinion, however, ideas about morality and ethics in the realm of economics don't necessarily arise out of religious assumptions; they can just as easily arise out of a careful analysis that combines human emotions with human rationality, especially if 'moral' = 'for the common good.' Hence my opinion that moral arguments and justifications can have a place in such discussions.
From a socialist perspective, for example, I think the potential exploitation inherent in the capitalist system is one place to start. In the Marxist sense, at least, exploitation refers to the worker's lack of ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour. That's why Marx defined slavery, feudalism and capitalism as exploitative systems of production, i.e., in each, the producers/workers have no ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour.
From this perspective, exploitation is an inherent part of the capitalist mode of production, which in turn, ties into Marx's theory of alienation. It's rather complicated, and I don't fully understand everything Marx wrote on the subject as much of it is very abstract, but in short, exploitation is the idea that the capitalist profits far more from a worker's labour than the worker does, and it doesn't really matter whether it's voluntary or not due to the structural and personal forms of dependence that characterize wage-labour under capitalism and compel workers to work for others (e.g., see "Wage-Slavery and Republican Liberty").
Adam Smith et al. assumed that labour creates wealth (surplus value). But according to Marx, in a capitalist system, labour itself becomes a commodity, an object that's bought and sold on the market. Moreover, due to private ownership of the means of production, the product of the worker's labour doesn’t legally belong to them (alienation), nor does the surplus value their labour creates (unpaid labour), which is kept by the capitalist.
Consequently, the product of the worker's labour becomes a commodity that's divorced from the labour expended on its production, thereby obscuring the social relationship between producer and consumer (commodity fetishism). Furthermore, the employer has the ability to increase their profit exponentially by reinvesting the surplus value extracted from the worker's labour into their company while the labourer is forced to spend their (more often than not) meager wages on the necessities of life such as food, clothing, shelter, etc.
If one assumes that giving workers more control over the product of their labour is more 'moral' or socially beneficial than, say, giving that control to a capitalist who treats their labour as a commodity and gives them a smaller wage than their labour is truly worth in exchange, that may be one argument based on both a moral and rational basis.
Taking a broader view of history, one can also make the argument that the foundation of capitalism, private property, is ultimately built upon theft, which isn't only viewed as something immoral but something that's harmful to the commonwealth as well (i.e., a community founded for the common good). For example, a modern argument against socialism is the idea that abolishing private property rights and confiscating the 'rightful' property of one person (or persons) and giving it to another, including to the community as a whole, is immoral or harmful to the commonwealth. However, much of the land and natural resources that one may now 'rightfully' exploit for profit may very well have belonged to, or utilized by, another at some point in time, and was forcibly confiscated (e.g., Native American land). As Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in Discourse on Inequality
And the question can be raised, What's more moral or socially beneficial from this point of view, communal ownership where all (or at least a majority) have a say in the use of, and share in the profit from, property, whether in the form of land, resources, or machinery, or a private ownership, where only a single individual or select few benefit and/or have a say in the production and distribution of commodities that the reproduction of society depends upon?
Another argument may be how the present system actually creates structural unemployment, which hardly existed on a mass scale before it became the dominant mode of production, leaving many working-class people unable to support themselves or their families. This can be seen to be 'immoral' and socially harmful from a certain point of view.
And then there's the argument that under the present system, opportunity is essentially privatized along with everything else the capitalists and free-market advocates can get their hands on, making it just as concentrated as wealth (and, if you've noticed, income inequality is rising while median family income is lower now that it was 30 years ago). Sure, things have improved since the 1900s, when workers (which included large numbers of children) essentially had no rights whatsoever, and were forced to work over 12 hour days in absolutely appalling conditions, but that's been due to the struggle of workers themselves, not due to the benevolence of capitalism.
Capitalism isn't an immoral system as much as an amoral one, in my opinion, (as I'd argue all economic systems are in that they're essentially ways of organizing production and distribution utilized by people with varying degrees of intention); but I think we've definitely outgrown it, just like we did feudalism. And while socialism isn't going to be a perfect replacement if it ever takes its place, I think it has the potential to revolutionize society much the same way feudalism and capitalism have.
For me, socialism isn't so much about the equality of wealth or outcomes as it is the de-privatization (i.e., socialization) of opportunity and the weakening of class antagonisms and hierarchies arising out of social relations unique to capitalism and other predominately exploitative systems. As Marx wrote in The Poverty of Philosophy, "Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist."
Marx's focus, the bodhisattva that he was, is essentially the same as socialism's, which is primarily the question of how to liberate society from its suffering and alienation by changing the material conditions that support it. In the words of Erich Fromm, "[Marx's] concept of socialism is the emancipation from alienation, the return of man to himself, his self-realization."
The present system, however, due to the way its structured, tends to idealize and promote greed (self-interest) over altruism (common good), competition over cooperation, privatization over public ownership, etc., as well as encourage the accumulation of capital into a smaller and smaller number of hands. This, I suppose, can be argued to be less moral and socially beneficial if we place a higher/greater value on things like altruism, cooperation, etc., and if we conclude that liberty in the economic sphere (as opposed to just within the political sphere) is more in line with/promotes the general welfare of the commonwealth.
Those are some of the tentative arguments for including moral terminology in discussions about economics I can think of off the top of my head, at any rate.
From a socialist perspective, for example, I think the potential exploitation inherent in the capitalist system is one place to start. In the Marxist sense, at least, exploitation refers to the worker's lack of ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour. That's why Marx defined slavery, feudalism and capitalism as exploitative systems of production, i.e., in each, the producers/workers have no ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour.
From this perspective, exploitation is an inherent part of the capitalist mode of production, which in turn, ties into Marx's theory of alienation. It's rather complicated, and I don't fully understand everything Marx wrote on the subject as much of it is very abstract, but in short, exploitation is the idea that the capitalist profits far more from a worker's labour than the worker does, and it doesn't really matter whether it's voluntary or not due to the structural and personal forms of dependence that characterize wage-labour under capitalism and compel workers to work for others (e.g., see "Wage-Slavery and Republican Liberty").
Adam Smith et al. assumed that labour creates wealth (surplus value). But according to Marx, in a capitalist system, labour itself becomes a commodity, an object that's bought and sold on the market. Moreover, due to private ownership of the means of production, the product of the worker's labour doesn’t legally belong to them (alienation), nor does the surplus value their labour creates (unpaid labour), which is kept by the capitalist.
Consequently, the product of the worker's labour becomes a commodity that's divorced from the labour expended on its production, thereby obscuring the social relationship between producer and consumer (commodity fetishism). Furthermore, the employer has the ability to increase their profit exponentially by reinvesting the surplus value extracted from the worker's labour into their company while the labourer is forced to spend their (more often than not) meager wages on the necessities of life such as food, clothing, shelter, etc.
If one assumes that giving workers more control over the product of their labour is more 'moral' or socially beneficial than, say, giving that control to a capitalist who treats their labour as a commodity and gives them a smaller wage than their labour is truly worth in exchange, that may be one argument based on both a moral and rational basis.
Taking a broader view of history, one can also make the argument that the foundation of capitalism, private property, is ultimately built upon theft, which isn't only viewed as something immoral but something that's harmful to the commonwealth as well (i.e., a community founded for the common good). For example, a modern argument against socialism is the idea that abolishing private property rights and confiscating the 'rightful' property of one person (or persons) and giving it to another, including to the community as a whole, is immoral or harmful to the commonwealth. However, much of the land and natural resources that one may now 'rightfully' exploit for profit may very well have belonged to, or utilized by, another at some point in time, and was forcibly confiscated (e.g., Native American land). As Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in Discourse on Inequality
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
And the question can be raised, What's more moral or socially beneficial from this point of view, communal ownership where all (or at least a majority) have a say in the use of, and share in the profit from, property, whether in the form of land, resources, or machinery, or a private ownership, where only a single individual or select few benefit and/or have a say in the production and distribution of commodities that the reproduction of society depends upon?
Another argument may be how the present system actually creates structural unemployment, which hardly existed on a mass scale before it became the dominant mode of production, leaving many working-class people unable to support themselves or their families. This can be seen to be 'immoral' and socially harmful from a certain point of view.
And then there's the argument that under the present system, opportunity is essentially privatized along with everything else the capitalists and free-market advocates can get their hands on, making it just as concentrated as wealth (and, if you've noticed, income inequality is rising while median family income is lower now that it was 30 years ago). Sure, things have improved since the 1900s, when workers (which included large numbers of children) essentially had no rights whatsoever, and were forced to work over 12 hour days in absolutely appalling conditions, but that's been due to the struggle of workers themselves, not due to the benevolence of capitalism.
Capitalism isn't an immoral system as much as an amoral one, in my opinion, (as I'd argue all economic systems are in that they're essentially ways of organizing production and distribution utilized by people with varying degrees of intention); but I think we've definitely outgrown it, just like we did feudalism. And while socialism isn't going to be a perfect replacement if it ever takes its place, I think it has the potential to revolutionize society much the same way feudalism and capitalism have.
For me, socialism isn't so much about the equality of wealth or outcomes as it is the de-privatization (i.e., socialization) of opportunity and the weakening of class antagonisms and hierarchies arising out of social relations unique to capitalism and other predominately exploitative systems. As Marx wrote in The Poverty of Philosophy, "Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist."
Marx's focus, the bodhisattva that he was, is essentially the same as socialism's, which is primarily the question of how to liberate society from its suffering and alienation by changing the material conditions that support it. In the words of Erich Fromm, "[Marx's] concept of socialism is the emancipation from alienation, the return of man to himself, his self-realization."
The present system, however, due to the way its structured, tends to idealize and promote greed (self-interest) over altruism (common good), competition over cooperation, privatization over public ownership, etc., as well as encourage the accumulation of capital into a smaller and smaller number of hands. This, I suppose, can be argued to be less moral and socially beneficial if we place a higher/greater value on things like altruism, cooperation, etc., and if we conclude that liberty in the economic sphere (as opposed to just within the political sphere) is more in line with/promotes the general welfare of the commonwealth.
Those are some of the tentative arguments for including moral terminology in discussions about economics I can think of off the top of my head, at any rate.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
anna karenina
I recently saw Joe Wright's adaptation of Anna Karenina at a local, second-run movie theatre and I was completely blown away. I went in thinking it'd be a mediocre bore, but came out thinking it was a beautifully crafted piece of cinema.
Both the style and setting were original compared to previous adaptations. The pace was as dizzying at the beginning as it was engrossing once it settled into the dream-like narrative, which itself was powerfully evocative and full of raw, emotive passion and anguish. In addition, while many of the reviews I've read are critical of Keira Knightley's Anna Karenina as a cold and unsympathetic character compared to Jude Law's Alexi Karenina, I saw in her a bold and independent woman whose suffering is, in many ways, a direct result of the pressures of the patriarchal society she lives in.
Her affair, born out of her love and lust, the love and sexual desires of an independent woman, is a subversive act; her 'sin' ultimately a transgression of ruling ideology and conservative social norms. And unlike some, I viewed the ending as a protest/outcry to the moral foundations of such a rigid, prudish, and patriarchal system rather than an admission of her moral guilt, irrationality, or weakness of will.
I thought her character demanded respect as much as sympathy, and adequately portrayed the despair of feminine independence in contrast to the relative comfort and security of subservience in a patriarchal society. Her love was more bravery than betrayal, and I thought the film, intentionally or otherwise, conveyed that (especially via Dolly Oblonsky's admission that she wished she'd done the same), as well as the complexities, and even irrationality, of love and lust as an integral part of the human condition.
I interpret Wright's Anna Karenina to be a tragic love story as much as a critique of patriarchy and bourgeois social relations that seek to constrain and subjugate femininity, and I can't believe it hasn't gotten more attention or praise. It's a fucking work art, in my opinion. 10/10
Both the style and setting were original compared to previous adaptations. The pace was as dizzying at the beginning as it was engrossing once it settled into the dream-like narrative, which itself was powerfully evocative and full of raw, emotive passion and anguish. In addition, while many of the reviews I've read are critical of Keira Knightley's Anna Karenina as a cold and unsympathetic character compared to Jude Law's Alexi Karenina, I saw in her a bold and independent woman whose suffering is, in many ways, a direct result of the pressures of the patriarchal society she lives in.
Her affair, born out of her love and lust, the love and sexual desires of an independent woman, is a subversive act; her 'sin' ultimately a transgression of ruling ideology and conservative social norms. And unlike some, I viewed the ending as a protest/outcry to the moral foundations of such a rigid, prudish, and patriarchal system rather than an admission of her moral guilt, irrationality, or weakness of will.
I thought her character demanded respect as much as sympathy, and adequately portrayed the despair of feminine independence in contrast to the relative comfort and security of subservience in a patriarchal society. Her love was more bravery than betrayal, and I thought the film, intentionally or otherwise, conveyed that (especially via Dolly Oblonsky's admission that she wished she'd done the same), as well as the complexities, and even irrationality, of love and lust as an integral part of the human condition.
I interpret Wright's Anna Karenina to be a tragic love story as much as a critique of patriarchy and bourgeois social relations that seek to constrain and subjugate femininity, and I can't believe it hasn't gotten more attention or praise. It's a fucking work art, in my opinion. 10/10
Thursday, February 14, 2013
happy valentine's day
Valentine's Day often makes me think of Skinny Puppy's "Love in Vein." At first glance, a song that's essentially about shooting up heroin may not seem very appropriate. But if you think about it, it's actually quite fitting considering that what we call love may very well be the result of a complex array of chemical reactions in the brain; and morphine, the active ingredient in opiates such as heroin, has a chemical structure similar to that of endorphins, endogenous opioid peptides that are produced by the brain when one's in the throes of love, and which help to relieve pain and produce feelings of pleasure and well-being. Heroin, endorphins, it's all the same really.
In contrast to my rather vulgar, materialistic ruminations about love, however, I also have a more idealistic appreciation of what we call love, which is heavily inspired by my readings of Plato. Human culture has long celebrated the concept of love, Eros. And while many today only think to celebrate the conventional or 'appetitive' aspects of Eros, such as romantic love and sex, there are other, more refined aspects of Eros to consider as well—aspects that can transcend the heat of human passions and stimulate the rational part of the mind to reach for ever greater philosophical heights.
From an appreciation of common beauty can arise an apprehension of the form of beauty itself. The celebration of erotic love can be transformed into the love of wisdom, of truth. Each appetitive aspect acting as a stepping stone to the rational—an idea that's beautifully illustrated in one of my favourite dialogues from Plato, the Symposium, which I find myself returning to again and again, like some kind of philosophical heroin.
In contrast to my rather vulgar, materialistic ruminations about love, however, I also have a more idealistic appreciation of what we call love, which is heavily inspired by my readings of Plato. Human culture has long celebrated the concept of love, Eros. And while many today only think to celebrate the conventional or 'appetitive' aspects of Eros, such as romantic love and sex, there are other, more refined aspects of Eros to consider as well—aspects that can transcend the heat of human passions and stimulate the rational part of the mind to reach for ever greater philosophical heights.
From an appreciation of common beauty can arise an apprehension of the form of beauty itself. The celebration of erotic love can be transformed into the love of wisdom, of truth. Each appetitive aspect acting as a stepping stone to the rational—an idea that's beautifully illustrated in one of my favourite dialogues from Plato, the Symposium, which I find myself returning to again and again, like some kind of philosophical heroin.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
free-market advocate ron paul turns down voluntary exchange, opts for state intervention
From Techdirt:
Ron Paul, UN Hater, Asks UN To Take RonPaul.com Forcefully From Ron Paul's Biggest Supporters
So there's a 'free market' solution (at a cost of $250,000), but Ron Paul would rather turn down a voluntary exchange in favour of opting for 'government intervention' on the part of the UN (via WIPO)—an organization he's criticized for years as, among other things, a threat to US sovereignty? It almost sounds like an Onion article, and I think his complaint evinces a weakness (one might even say a contradiction) in his political philosophy.
On the one hand, it can be argued (albeit weakly, in my opinion) that Ron Paul has a common law trademark on 'Ron Paul,' so he has a 'right' to request the domain name be turned over to him without any compensation whatsoever, which is consistent with libertarianism's fetishization of property rights and their enforcement. It can also be argued that you can be against something philosophically, but since it's there, you might as well use it.
On the other, it seems a bit petty and hypocritical to me seeing as how the person or persons who currently own ronpaul.com legally purchased a license to own that domain, and Paul would rather go to the UN and have ICANN force them to hand over the domain than pay the asking price or make a counteroffer despite having done nothing in the last 4 1/2 years to acquire it while they helped make it into a massive online community (including a contact list of 170,000+ email addresses) supporting Paul and his campaigns (they were even willing to give him ronpaul.org for free). And that's not even addressing the arguable speciousness of Paul's charge of 'bad faith,' which I think the article does a good job of deflating.
The lesson I take from this is that the free market's great and the UN's a threat to our constitution—unless you don't get your way, then it's cool to run to a UN agency and have them forcibly remove someone's property for you. Just another example of how libertarian, capitalistic self-interest is ultimately self-refuting, i.e., it's in his best self-interest to take advantage of the very institution he feels to be a threat to our liberty when it suits his needs.
Ron Paul, UN Hater, Asks UN To Take RonPaul.com Forcefully From Ron Paul's Biggest Supporters
So there's a 'free market' solution (at a cost of $250,000), but Ron Paul would rather turn down a voluntary exchange in favour of opting for 'government intervention' on the part of the UN (via WIPO)—an organization he's criticized for years as, among other things, a threat to US sovereignty? It almost sounds like an Onion article, and I think his complaint evinces a weakness (one might even say a contradiction) in his political philosophy.
On the one hand, it can be argued (albeit weakly, in my opinion) that Ron Paul has a common law trademark on 'Ron Paul,' so he has a 'right' to request the domain name be turned over to him without any compensation whatsoever, which is consistent with libertarianism's fetishization of property rights and their enforcement. It can also be argued that you can be against something philosophically, but since it's there, you might as well use it.
On the other, it seems a bit petty and hypocritical to me seeing as how the person or persons who currently own ronpaul.com legally purchased a license to own that domain, and Paul would rather go to the UN and have ICANN force them to hand over the domain than pay the asking price or make a counteroffer despite having done nothing in the last 4 1/2 years to acquire it while they helped make it into a massive online community (including a contact list of 170,000+ email addresses) supporting Paul and his campaigns (they were even willing to give him ronpaul.org for free). And that's not even addressing the arguable speciousness of Paul's charge of 'bad faith,' which I think the article does a good job of deflating.
The lesson I take from this is that the free market's great and the UN's a threat to our constitution—unless you don't get your way, then it's cool to run to a UN agency and have them forcibly remove someone's property for you. Just another example of how libertarian, capitalistic self-interest is ultimately self-refuting, i.e., it's in his best self-interest to take advantage of the very institution he feels to be a threat to our liberty when it suits his needs.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
some tentative (and somewhat rambling) thoughts on love and death in the magic mountain
I'm currently reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and it's a really good read so far. It reminds me a lot of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov in a way, particularly its deeply philosophical, political, and psychological themes, which are often explored through casual conversation and other mundane happenings. I find Lodovico Settembrini's discourse to Hans Castorp on the antagonistic relationship between the body and mind especially interesting, for example, in that it also seems to mirror Freud's ideas concerning Eros and Thanatos, with mind equaling Eros and body equaling Thanatos—a theme that, at least to my eyes, reoccurs in various forms throughout the narrative.
The body is presented by Settembrini as an evil when it opposes the cause of "education, liberation, and progress" and "insofar as it represents the principle of disease and death," which is associated with both 'feverish' infatuation, portrayed as a mental precursor to physical illness, and physical illness itself (248). In this context, it's compared to the irrational and destructive power of nature, and not unlike Thanatos, the death drive, in that sense, which Freud thought the root of our aggressive and self-destructive tendencies—tendencies that appear in many ways to be irrational and opposed to our happiness and survival.
The mind, on the other hand, is presented as the nobler of the two opposing forces insofar as it represents reason and the drive to 'rise up' against nature, to refuse to submit to its destructive power—illustrated here by the examples of Prometheus, who "was a lover of humankind and its nobility," and Voltaire, who 'rebelled' against the destructiveness of the 1775 Lisbon earthquake and the passive optimism of Leibniz (247-48). In this capacity, mind is akin to Eros, love, libido, or whatever you want to call it, which was seen by Freud as a constructive and binding force, and corresponds to our innate drive to survive, our love of life, and, in a more refined sense, our love of "humankind and its nobility."
The main and arguably the most interesting difference between Settembrini and Freud is that Settembrini also associates the body with lust as well as death ("One must despise it insofar as it is the principle of gravity and inertia opposing the flow towards the light, insofar as it represents the principle of disease and death, insofar as its quintessence is a matter of perversity, of corruption, of lust and disgrace"), whereas Freud associates carnal lust more with Eros. And why is that? One potential answer to this lies in a later exchange with Director Behrens in a discourse on physiology: life is dying, death, in that both life and corruption are forms of oxidation, a kind of 'burning off' (262). Mind and body, then, are one insofar as they're mutually dependent and share a similar, ontogenetic origin (259).
The resolution (if it can indeed be said to be one) of this contradiction between body and mind that's found by Settembrini, however, is in the use of reason for a purpose, one that specifically furthers the march of progress (mind/Eros) against the irrationality and seeming finality of nature (body/Thanatos). Time in this context is important because it's fleeting, and so shouldn't be wasted. Insofar as the body serves the cause of education, liberation, and progress, there's no fault and it must be defended. But when it "comes wrapped in the ghastly, gamy odor of the grave," it's to be despised and criticized (248). The danger, then, is when one becomes a slave to the body/nature and accepts her uncritically, as our protagonist seems to do in his irrational, obsessive infatuation with the ill Madame Chauchat, and which is both a sexual attraction and an attraction to illness and death. But an even greater danger lies in isolating death as an intellectual principle, something Settembrini strongly warns Castorp about after a discussion with the Jesuit Leo Naphta:
Whatever the case, the more I read, the more it seems to me that this dialectical relationship comparable to Freud's Eros and Thanatos plays itself out in seemingly different yet closely related permutations throughout the book (e.g., mind and body, reason and irrationality, duty and idleness, health and disease, love and death, etc.), suggesting that these conflicting forces themselves act as a mechanism for change and progression in both the individual as well as society, neither being completely affirmed nor denied, accepted or rejected. And I think the reason there's no seemingly final resolution to this conflict, or to Castorp's vacillation between the influences of Settembrini and Naphta, ultimately siding with neither (although Mann's sympathies clearly lie with Settembrini), may be precisely because of this.
And yet, Mann via Castorp hints at one in the form of love, a love that's set apart from reason, a love that's neither carnal nor of death, but a humanistic sort of love that's stronger than death and, because of this, able in some limited sense to transcend this cosmic, psychoanalytical interplay, or if not transcend, then at least enjoy a dominant position (I picture an ouroboros eating its own tail, with the head representing love and the tail representing death). Here I'm primarily thinking of Castorp's hallucination during his near-death experience while trapped in a snow storm (nature/death), which can be seen as a revelation of sorts, a combination of acceptance and transcendence in regard to this eternal antagonism sparked by his hallucinatory dream of love and death, that, at least for a limited time, frees Castorp from his obsession with death, prompting him to exclaim, "For the sake of goodness and love, man shall grant death no dominion over his thoughts" (487).
Of course, Castorp quickly returns to his old ways once he recovers enough from his hypothermia to escape the blizzard and make his way back to the Berghof, but I think this utterance is important in that it attempts to express something I think the story of Jesus' resurrection also attempts to express: a deeper, existential challenge to the seemingly final end of life, and to the eternal emptiness that threateningly looms beyond. In essence, it's a courageous, humanistic, victory cry against death itself, who Paul taunts at 1 Cor 15:55 by asking, "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"
At some deep, subconscious level, there's a constant fear of death buried within the human heart, a fear embedded in its deepest, darkest recesses by eons of evolution, an overwhelming instinct to survive. And this fear of death, of nonexistence, translates into love of life, a defiance of death, and a desire to live in some way forever, a desire for immortality. And in the story of Jesus' resurrection, we have the personification of this desire for immortality, and the promise of complete victory over death. It's a comforting image, and it's difficult not to appreciate that the idea of his resurrection resonances with many on a deeply emotional level regardless of its actual occurrence. I, too, find it a stirring tale.
On the other hand, as strange as it may seem on the face of it, I find a part of myself agreeing with Goethe's Mephistopheles in his preference for the promise of eternal emptiness:
And this antithetical dichotomy of extreme positivism and negativism immediately brings to mind Eros and Thanatos, love and death. As previously mentioned, the former, Eros, corresponds to our innate drive to survive, our love of life, our love of "humankind and its nobility," and in this case, our desire for immortality in the form of the resurrected Jesus.
The latter, Thanatos, corresponds to Mephistopheles' poetic praise of eternal emptiness, of complete and utter annihilation, and our self-destructive behaviour in the form of Judas, who betrayed Jesus, and the Roman soldiers who crucified him. Coming back to the idea of seeing these conflicting forces in the context of a dialectical relationship, one might say that they represent an expression of an ever-evolving consciousness in an ever-evolving universe, a reflection of the psychological contradictions that drive all human endeavors forward.
From this point of view, Judas and those who crucified God in the flesh (body/death/nature) are just as important as the resurrected Jesus himself (mind/love/spirit), with each representing the opposing creative and destructive forces within ourselves; and our spiritual evolution requires the resolution of tensions between the two, which is expressed in the form of the risen Jesus or the revelation of Castorp that: "Love stands opposed to death—it alone, and not reason, is stronger than death. Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts" (487). Easter, then, might be seen as a subconscious acknowledgement of the dialectical relationship between Eros and Thanatos, between life and death, between immortality and the void. And Jesus, who personifies a deified Eros, must rise from the dead so that Hades, who may be seen as a biblical personification of the death drive, never has the final say.
The focus is on Jesus simply because he plays a dual role in the relationship, representing both thesis and synthesis. As Eros, he represents the vitality of life and the desire for immortality, which is ultimately negated by death. But he also represents the synthesis in his resurrected form, the resolution of the tensions between the seeming futility of life and apparent finality of death, between the conflicting drives to create and to destroy, between the lofty desires of the mind and the limitations of the body. And his victory over death, his resurrection, represents life's struggle to survive, to replenish itself, to reproduce, to overcome, and which manifests in us as the otherworldly desire of eternal life, as well as the more mundane desire to live forever through our creations and offspring.
In The Magic Mountain, love plays a somewhat similar dual role, being both a force conducive to illness and associated with death (361) and that which stands opposed to death and is stronger than it (487), a force of vitality and 'burning off'—the consuming force of life itself, which is inextricably tied to death.
But whereas the story of Jesus' resurrection expresses an elaborate, mythologized affirmation of love, Mann's The Magic Mountain offers a more realistic affirmation of the same force or principle, one that takes place in a world where God isn't as eminent—a world filled with base obsessions, disease, war, death, a world where earthquakes senselessly destroy flourishing cities and end thousands of human lives. And by not simply becoming a slave to the body, to death, to nature, by not passively accepting these phenomena uncritically, we have the potential to 'awaken,' as Castorp did on the mountain, to an internal vision that gives our individual lives meaning in a world where we all share a common nature and fate. Unlike Jesus, who completely conquers death, love and death for the homo Dei is ultimately two sides of the same coin.
What I take away from this is that life confronts us with these seemingly conflicting, antagonist forces, these desire and drives, these obsessions, and we struggle to make sense out of them, to find meaning in what seems chaotic and irrational, to find purpose and hope in what may otherwise be a meaningless existence. The difference between the story of Jesus and that of Castorp, however, is that the former has been lazily interpreted as offering hope in some other world (i.e., an eternally-happy ending in a heavenly paradise where death and illness are banished forever), which has the danger of lulling us into the passive sort of optimism condemned by Settembrini via Voltaire. The latter, on the hand, attempts to offer hope solely within the context of this world, even if the ending isn't always happy.
The body is presented by Settembrini as an evil when it opposes the cause of "education, liberation, and progress" and "insofar as it represents the principle of disease and death," which is associated with both 'feverish' infatuation, portrayed as a mental precursor to physical illness, and physical illness itself (248). In this context, it's compared to the irrational and destructive power of nature, and not unlike Thanatos, the death drive, in that sense, which Freud thought the root of our aggressive and self-destructive tendencies—tendencies that appear in many ways to be irrational and opposed to our happiness and survival.
The mind, on the other hand, is presented as the nobler of the two opposing forces insofar as it represents reason and the drive to 'rise up' against nature, to refuse to submit to its destructive power—illustrated here by the examples of Prometheus, who "was a lover of humankind and its nobility," and Voltaire, who 'rebelled' against the destructiveness of the 1775 Lisbon earthquake and the passive optimism of Leibniz (247-48). In this capacity, mind is akin to Eros, love, libido, or whatever you want to call it, which was seen by Freud as a constructive and binding force, and corresponds to our innate drive to survive, our love of life, and, in a more refined sense, our love of "humankind and its nobility."
The main and arguably the most interesting difference between Settembrini and Freud is that Settembrini also associates the body with lust as well as death ("One must despise it insofar as it is the principle of gravity and inertia opposing the flow towards the light, insofar as it represents the principle of disease and death, insofar as its quintessence is a matter of perversity, of corruption, of lust and disgrace"), whereas Freud associates carnal lust more with Eros. And why is that? One potential answer to this lies in a later exchange with Director Behrens in a discourse on physiology: life is dying, death, in that both life and corruption are forms of oxidation, a kind of 'burning off' (262). Mind and body, then, are one insofar as they're mutually dependent and share a similar, ontogenetic origin (259).
The resolution (if it can indeed be said to be one) of this contradiction between body and mind that's found by Settembrini, however, is in the use of reason for a purpose, one that specifically furthers the march of progress (mind/Eros) against the irrationality and seeming finality of nature (body/Thanatos). Time in this context is important because it's fleeting, and so shouldn't be wasted. Insofar as the body serves the cause of education, liberation, and progress, there's no fault and it must be defended. But when it "comes wrapped in the ghastly, gamy odor of the grave," it's to be despised and criticized (248). The danger, then, is when one becomes a slave to the body/nature and accepts her uncritically, as our protagonist seems to do in his irrational, obsessive infatuation with the ill Madame Chauchat, and which is both a sexual attraction and an attraction to illness and death. But an even greater danger lies in isolating death as an intellectual principle, something Settembrini strongly warns Castorp about after a discussion with the Jesuit Leo Naphta:
If [the mind] isolates death in a dualistic fashion, then by that act of intellectual will, death becomes real in actual fact—actu, do you understand? It becomes a force of its own opposed to life, an antagonistic principle, the great seduction—and its kingdom is lust. And why lust, you ask? And I reply: Because it loosens and delivers, because it is a deliverance, and not deliverance from evil, but evil deliverance. It loosens morals and morality, it delivers from discipline and self-control, liberates for lust. (402)
Whatever the case, the more I read, the more it seems to me that this dialectical relationship comparable to Freud's Eros and Thanatos plays itself out in seemingly different yet closely related permutations throughout the book (e.g., mind and body, reason and irrationality, duty and idleness, health and disease, love and death, etc.), suggesting that these conflicting forces themselves act as a mechanism for change and progression in both the individual as well as society, neither being completely affirmed nor denied, accepted or rejected. And I think the reason there's no seemingly final resolution to this conflict, or to Castorp's vacillation between the influences of Settembrini and Naphta, ultimately siding with neither (although Mann's sympathies clearly lie with Settembrini), may be precisely because of this.
And yet, Mann via Castorp hints at one in the form of love, a love that's set apart from reason, a love that's neither carnal nor of death, but a humanistic sort of love that's stronger than death and, because of this, able in some limited sense to transcend this cosmic, psychoanalytical interplay, or if not transcend, then at least enjoy a dominant position (I picture an ouroboros eating its own tail, with the head representing love and the tail representing death). Here I'm primarily thinking of Castorp's hallucination during his near-death experience while trapped in a snow storm (nature/death), which can be seen as a revelation of sorts, a combination of acceptance and transcendence in regard to this eternal antagonism sparked by his hallucinatory dream of love and death, that, at least for a limited time, frees Castorp from his obsession with death, prompting him to exclaim, "For the sake of goodness and love, man shall grant death no dominion over his thoughts" (487).
Of course, Castorp quickly returns to his old ways once he recovers enough from his hypothermia to escape the blizzard and make his way back to the Berghof, but I think this utterance is important in that it attempts to express something I think the story of Jesus' resurrection also attempts to express: a deeper, existential challenge to the seemingly final end of life, and to the eternal emptiness that threateningly looms beyond. In essence, it's a courageous, humanistic, victory cry against death itself, who Paul taunts at 1 Cor 15:55 by asking, "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"
At some deep, subconscious level, there's a constant fear of death buried within the human heart, a fear embedded in its deepest, darkest recesses by eons of evolution, an overwhelming instinct to survive. And this fear of death, of nonexistence, translates into love of life, a defiance of death, and a desire to live in some way forever, a desire for immortality. And in the story of Jesus' resurrection, we have the personification of this desire for immortality, and the promise of complete victory over death. It's a comforting image, and it's difficult not to appreciate that the idea of his resurrection resonances with many on a deeply emotional level regardless of its actual occurrence. I, too, find it a stirring tale.
On the other hand, as strange as it may seem on the face of it, I find a part of myself agreeing with Goethe's Mephistopheles in his preference for the promise of eternal emptiness:
A foolish word, bygone.
How so then, gone?
Gone, to sheer Nothing, past with null made one!
What matters creative endless toil,
When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?
'It is bygone'— How shall this riddle run?
As good as if things never had begun,
Yet circle back, existence to possess:
I'd rather have Eternal Emptiness.
And this antithetical dichotomy of extreme positivism and negativism immediately brings to mind Eros and Thanatos, love and death. As previously mentioned, the former, Eros, corresponds to our innate drive to survive, our love of life, our love of "humankind and its nobility," and in this case, our desire for immortality in the form of the resurrected Jesus.
The latter, Thanatos, corresponds to Mephistopheles' poetic praise of eternal emptiness, of complete and utter annihilation, and our self-destructive behaviour in the form of Judas, who betrayed Jesus, and the Roman soldiers who crucified him. Coming back to the idea of seeing these conflicting forces in the context of a dialectical relationship, one might say that they represent an expression of an ever-evolving consciousness in an ever-evolving universe, a reflection of the psychological contradictions that drive all human endeavors forward.
From this point of view, Judas and those who crucified God in the flesh (body/death/nature) are just as important as the resurrected Jesus himself (mind/love/spirit), with each representing the opposing creative and destructive forces within ourselves; and our spiritual evolution requires the resolution of tensions between the two, which is expressed in the form of the risen Jesus or the revelation of Castorp that: "Love stands opposed to death—it alone, and not reason, is stronger than death. Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts" (487). Easter, then, might be seen as a subconscious acknowledgement of the dialectical relationship between Eros and Thanatos, between life and death, between immortality and the void. And Jesus, who personifies a deified Eros, must rise from the dead so that Hades, who may be seen as a biblical personification of the death drive, never has the final say.
The focus is on Jesus simply because he plays a dual role in the relationship, representing both thesis and synthesis. As Eros, he represents the vitality of life and the desire for immortality, which is ultimately negated by death. But he also represents the synthesis in his resurrected form, the resolution of the tensions between the seeming futility of life and apparent finality of death, between the conflicting drives to create and to destroy, between the lofty desires of the mind and the limitations of the body. And his victory over death, his resurrection, represents life's struggle to survive, to replenish itself, to reproduce, to overcome, and which manifests in us as the otherworldly desire of eternal life, as well as the more mundane desire to live forever through our creations and offspring.
In The Magic Mountain, love plays a somewhat similar dual role, being both a force conducive to illness and associated with death (361) and that which stands opposed to death and is stronger than it (487), a force of vitality and 'burning off'—the consuming force of life itself, which is inextricably tied to death.
But whereas the story of Jesus' resurrection expresses an elaborate, mythologized affirmation of love, Mann's The Magic Mountain offers a more realistic affirmation of the same force or principle, one that takes place in a world where God isn't as eminent—a world filled with base obsessions, disease, war, death, a world where earthquakes senselessly destroy flourishing cities and end thousands of human lives. And by not simply becoming a slave to the body, to death, to nature, by not passively accepting these phenomena uncritically, we have the potential to 'awaken,' as Castorp did on the mountain, to an internal vision that gives our individual lives meaning in a world where we all share a common nature and fate. Unlike Jesus, who completely conquers death, love and death for the homo Dei is ultimately two sides of the same coin.
What I take away from this is that life confronts us with these seemingly conflicting, antagonist forces, these desire and drives, these obsessions, and we struggle to make sense out of them, to find meaning in what seems chaotic and irrational, to find purpose and hope in what may otherwise be a meaningless existence. The difference between the story of Jesus and that of Castorp, however, is that the former has been lazily interpreted as offering hope in some other world (i.e., an eternally-happy ending in a heavenly paradise where death and illness are banished forever), which has the danger of lulling us into the passive sort of optimism condemned by Settembrini via Voltaire. The latter, on the hand, attempts to offer hope solely within the context of this world, even if the ending isn't always happy.
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