Let’s talk about malaise
2017-10-1
2017-10-4
2017-10-30 (L4)
2017-10-30 (L4)
起先 我想到的是authenticity 果然 幾天後 malaise迎面而來
但malaise明顯是 小資的玩意 勞動者 會喝保力達B 為明天的氣力
或活著看到夕陽 (如果你是白班) 午夜的月亮 (如果你是小夜班) 晨曦 (如果你是大夜班)
或下一個滿月 (如果你是連續值班一個月)
malaise 表示還矜(端)着 還矜(端)得住
the condition for one to be one 不止是家庭父母童年 還有that damned modernity
Let's talk about malaise, and much worse
但malaise明顯是 小資的玩意 勞動者 會喝保力達B 為明天的氣力
或活著看到夕陽 (如果你是白班) 午夜的月亮 (如果你是小夜班) 晨曦 (如果你是大夜班)
或下一個滿月 (如果你是連續值班一個月)
malaise 表示還矜(端)着 還矜(端)得住
the condition for one to be one 不止是家庭父母童年 還有that damned modernity
Let's talk about malaise, and much worse
比malaise更慘的是 wasted lives (Zygmunt Baumann) (failure, loser, homeless) 社會底層 (老威) 100 Yen Love Alcoholic (醉死溝渠)
We all need cherished bad faith to sustain ourselves and go on, till that day, then ...
Only a God can save us
Only a stranger's kindness can save us
海公半生 獨居山林 這是一個理想的比例 一般人窮忙一生 連一例一休 尚且不可得 做不到這麼悠閒的事
1. Bad faith (Sartre)
2. Be true to oneself vs. self-deception
3. Courage (to be) (Tillich) (Dare to be)
4. Dare to act
5. Death – the final coming to rest
6. Folly and remorse
7. Beyond redemption
8. No Heidegger this time. (Not likely, however)
9. Not sure if psychoanalysis is helpful or
relevant
10. Now, a la Jacob Golomb (1995), it is about ethics (not metaphysical
at all, in other words)
11. And, since it is about ethics, it is
about dilemma and choice, both of which are so very personal, and quite
inconsequential in terms of the progress of the HISTORY
12. Therefore, this is about anti-hero
13. Now, our problem is, in search of authenticity, after camus
14. Interestingly, the two
thinkers who adopted an ontological approach to authenticity both went through a
kind of midlife Umkehr or ‘conversion’: Heidegger, from the
phenomenological ontology of Dasein to the poetry and mysticism
of Being, and Sartre, from phenomenological ontology to politics. (p. 92)
15. … like Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche, not a philosopher in the technical or academic sense, Camus
expresses ideas and dilemmas that are intimately related to the ideal of
authenticity (p. 119)
16. Unlike Kierkegaard, who
entices us to take an absurd leap of faith, Camus rejects transcendence, adopts
a position of strict immanence3 and invites us to live out a rebellious
acceptance of our absurd fate. He encourages us to win authenticity by ‘an act
of lucidity as one makes an act of faith’ (LACE, p. 81). This illuminates
the dilemma that confronted all the thinkers we have considered: the
singularity and the spontaneity of the ideal of authenticity imply a clash with
the prevailing ethic; yet to resolve this impasse by granting authenticity a
recognized social meaning in turn neutralizes this spontaneity by forcing it
into a fixed ontological yoke. In any event, however, Camus rejects this
solution since ontology is meaningless in an absurd world. (p. 119)
17. Sisyphian life in the
face of the absurd is the only authentic attitude available to mortals who
reject suicide and proudly affirm their lives. (p.120)
18. Camus’s two major
philosophical essays, The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel, are philosophical
commentaries on his understanding of authenticity as it is portrayed in his
novels, short stories and plays. …By generating in us deep existential anguish,
Camus’s fiction offers us a chance to overcome it by being true to ourselves
for the sake of humanity. ‘This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the
future’ (MS, p.
169). (p. 120)
19. The answer…is this: even if one does not
believe in God, suicide is not legitimate…even within the limits of nihilism it
is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism…. The Myth of
Sisyphus…sums
itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst
of the desert. (p. 122)
20. Hence Camus recommends
acceptance and affirmation of life even if it lacks transcendent meaning. The
solution to absurdity is not to escape to philosophy or suicide, but, rather,
to accept it as a given. The sober and creative life is the authentic solution
and indicates an authentic overcoming. To Camus’s generation the war had given
little reason to be hopeful; Camus, like Nietzsche before him, offers hope
without reason as the authentic reaction to the absurdity of immanence embodied
in the myth of Sisyphus. Like the Nietzschean Übermensch, who adopts the
existential formula of amor fati, ‘the absurd man says yes’
(ibid., p. 99).
21. Like Nietzsche, he
demands that we liberate ourselves from the yearning for salvation by
overcoming our nostalgia for it. Camus’s determination to withhold from us any
‘metaphysics of consolation’ (ibid., p. 42) makes authenticity all the more
vital since in his eyes it is the only solution capable of withstanding the
feeling of absurdity. (p. 124)
22. Even if suicide merely
indicates resigned acceptance of the harsh implications of the relationship
between the individual and the world and not the overcoming of this absurd—so
what? It might be claimed that physical suicide is not the solution, since it
creates a hierarchy of values within which there is one sort of action of
ultimate value. In other words, to commit suicide can be seen as preferring one
course of action over all others. But if our existence is sheer absurdity, why would
suicide be any more valuable than Dr Rieux’s useless efforts to cure his
patients in The Plague? (p. 125)
23. Camus knows that he has
no valid argument against suicide. Suicide is an issue subject to the
discretion of each individual who confronts the feeling of absurdity. Camus
claims that we can ‘escape suicide’ to the extent that we are ‘simultaneously
awareness and rejection of death’ (ibid., p. 60). The latter attitude is the
‘revolt’ that gives life its ‘value’ (ibid.)—its authenticity, the only possible
value given the absurd. This ‘majestic’ revolt has ‘something exceptional’
about it, for, Camus feels, it displays ‘human pride’ (ibid., p. 48). It is not
coincidental that at that point in his essay Camus begins to use first-person
sentences such as ‘I must carry…the weight of my own life … alone’ (ibid.).
24. Camus, following
Nietzsche, declares: I embrace a lucid and sober attitude, since I want to
attain authenticity, to live intensely but without ‘stage-sets’ that distort my
selfhood; hence I turn away from suicide which will prevent me from engaging in
revolt, the practical embodiment of authenticity. (p. 125)
25. Thus the feeling and
notion of absurdity and the constant struggle against their nihilistic
implications are necessary conditions of authenticity. ‘I am authentic ergo it is absurd’ is Camus’s
existential version of the Cartesian Cogito. ‘Only from chaos is a
star born’, Nietzsche claims; and Camus develops this idea, maintaining that
only from the feeling of absurdity and from the complex sensations that
constitute its pathos is the aspiration to authenticity born. This happens when
the ‘stage-sets’ of normative ethics ‘collapse’ and the question of where to
go—‘suicide or recovery’ (ibid., p. 18)—becomes inescapable. (pp. 125-126)
26. According to Camus, no
ethical rule can be sustained in an absurd world. ‘What rule, then, could
emanate from that unreasonable order?’ (ibid., p. 58) asks Camus, and answers:
‘There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave
badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of
rules’ (ibid., p. 57). Here Camus alludes to the many self-proclaimed moralists
who preach at the city’s gates while themselves eschewing morality. He
describes them as having ‘clean’ consciences, because they never use them. For
Camus, the ideal of integrity, or, in Nietzschean language, truthfulness in
life, stands above the objective ethical norms of honesty and sincerity.
Authenticity reigns ‘beyond good and evil’; it does not require, nor can it
have, ethical rules for the rational justification of actions. Authenticity is
a personal, intuitive morality that springs from freedom and spontaneity
without any external a priori dictates of Reason, God or History. The authority
of authenticity lies in itself. (p. 127)
27. To conclude is to reach
an end together, but the authentic posture, as understood by the philosophers
of authenticity, forbids me from presuming to conclude for you or for us. Each individual has to
come to her own conclusions about authenticity. In fact,
encouraging you to ponder this existential issue and to entice you into drawing
your own conclusions is a central objective of this book. As Nietzsche advises
us through Zarathustra, ‘if you would go high, use your own legs’. (p. 143)
28. From the historical
perspective, however, the intuitive and individual routes to authenticity seem
to be more viable and productive than the ontological-phenomenological
approaches. (p. 143)
29. Authenticity calls for an ongoing life of
significant actions. It is actions that shape our authenticity. The thinkers we
have looked at preferred action, or Heideggerian ‘care’, to reflection (which,
Kierkegaard claims, ‘freezes action’) and knowledge (which ‘kills action’
according to Nietzsche). But meaningful activity is only possible in the
context of intersubjective interaction, namely, within society. (pp. 143-144)
30. Authenticity, we saw, is
best forged and revealed in ‘boundary’ or extreme existential situations. Yet
such circumstances presuppose a social context. (p. 144)
31. The literature on
authenticity abounds in descriptions of conflicts between individuals acting on
different ethical maxims. These conflicts highlight the need for resolute and
authentic decisions and spontaneous actions. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard argue
that one knows what one is only after realizing what one is not. (p. 144)
32. But can authenticity,
thus understood, ever be implemented? Here too we have looked at some
convincing arguments to the effect that authenticity is highly problematic at
best. (p. 144)
33. In his study of
authenticity, Charles Taylor warns against an unrestrained, egocentric
individualism. His sympathetic attitude to the ideal of authenticity as
countering the ‘malaises of modernity’1 is remarkable evidence that the issue
is far from having been closed by Camus, or, for that matter, by the present
study, which stresses the aesthetic model of authenticity.2 (p. 145)
34. There is today a grave
danger that we are facing the death of authenticity. Poststructuralist thought
and the other currently fashionable streams of what is vaguely called
‘postmodernism’ attempt to dissolve the subjective pathos of authenticity which
lies at the heart of existentialist concern. This study should be seen as an
attempt to redress the postmodernistic devaluation of the authentic self by
embarking on historical reconstruction. (pp. 145-146)
35. Let me end with a
personal vision expressed in terms of a musical analogy. I envisage a society
of authentic individuals as analogous to an orchestra without a conductor,
where each individual plays her own composition. Sometimes one member of the
ensemble will be in tune with the others, but not always. There is only one
proviso: no one composition can overcome the others, and no player can suppress
another’s self-expression. From the outside, the music produced by these
individuals sounds like sheer cacophony, but for the participants each of their
pieces has meaning, while the music played by the others functions as the
inevitable background against which they struggle to perfect their original
melodies. (p. 146)
36. Finally, let us recall
Kierkegaard’s historical description of the emergence of the authentic ideal:
‘With every turning point in history there are two movements to be observed. On
the one hand, the new shall come forth; on the other, the old must be
displaced.’4 At these turning points we will encounter
the authentic individual. Just as the decline of the ethic of objectivity set
in motion the appeal for authenticity, so the decline of the ethic of
subjectivity in the postmodern era, and the suppression of individuality
encouraged by the mass media and multinational markets, will invigorate the
quest for authenticity as a personal, corrective ideal if not an objectively
viable norm. Only the return to our authentic pathos can prevent the betrayal
of what is dearest to each of us: our own selfhood. (pp. 146-147)
37. Malaise --- It has something to do with
authenticity, which is meant exactly to transcend it.
38. But, even
malaise can be faked. In other words, there are two kinds of malaise, one
authentic, the other inauthentic.
39. The
authentic malaise is near the abyss of the void, so near, that one cannot be
saved, more often than not.
40. Who am I?
What am I? Which of the two am I? Am I safe? Am I fake? Nothing but a fake?
41. Waiting for
Godot (Beckett, 1953) can be read as a work of mid-20th-century
malaise.
42. What about
ours? In the early 21st-century?
43. No articles in
the pep-web, which
means psychoanalysis has nothing to with it.
44. No one is
immune to it. I mean no one.
Reference
- The
Ethics of Authenticity, by Charles Taylor, Harvard University
Press, 1992 (pdf)
4.
Only a God
Can Save Us: Heidegger, Poetic Imagination and the Modern Malaiseby,
by Henk J. Van Leeuwen, Common Ground Publishing, 2009 (e-book CGPublisher)
5.
In Search of
Authenticity: Existentialism from Kierkegaard to Camus, by
Jacob Golomb, Routledge, 1995 (questia,
pdf)
6.
Postmodernism and
Psychoanalysis: A Heideggerian Critique of Postmodernist Malaise and the
Question of Authenticity, by M. Guy Thompson, in Way Beyond Freud: Postmodern Psychoanalysis Observed, ed. by
Joseph Reppen, Jane Tucker, Martin A. Schulman, Open Gate Press, 2004 (pdf)
7.
Subtle
Suicide: Our Silent Epidemic of Ambivalence about Living,
by Michael A. Church, Charles I. Brooks, Praeger, 2009 (accessible via questia)
8.
The World
Without Us, by Alan Weisman, Thomas Dunne Books, 2007
(accessible via scribd)
9.
Wasted
Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts, by Zygmunt Bauman, Polity,
2003 (kindle)
PS.
PS.
authenticity is spiritual courage, it is 'dare'
itself, it has to deal with self-doubt
malaise is physical, besides being psychological
both are existential
both say something about our ways of being-in-the -world
歷史的例子 文學的例子 是使徒列傳 傳燈錄 忠烈祠 諸神殿 是用來證明的
為什麼形上需要證據 因為它很容易是人拿來騙人的 因為它很難被證明它是存在的
now, you see, we have to deal with nihilism , after all
Why did Matthew Scudder keep 使徒列傳 in company in those cold New York nights, in that small hotel room, watching out his lonely window ?
threshold thinking ~ boundary thinking ~ abyss thinking
malaise is physical, besides being psychological
both are existential
both say something about our ways of being-in-the -world
歷史的例子 文學的例子 是使徒列傳 傳燈錄 忠烈祠 諸神殿 是用來證明的
為什麼形上需要證據 因為它很容易是人拿來騙人的 因為它很難被證明它是存在的
now, you see, we have to deal with nihilism , after all
Why did Matthew Scudder keep 使徒列傳 in company in those cold New York nights, in that small hotel room, watching out his lonely window ?
threshold thinking ~ boundary thinking ~ abyss thinking
