Month: October 2020

Dugins “Freedom and Will” section regarding Heideggers is particularly relevant to Pavel Fyodorovich Smerdyakov’s character in The Brothers Karamazov. Specifically, why Smerdyakov is such a strange and hard to read character. Heidigger is highly critical of human beings (in general) and their nature. Midway through Chapter 6, Dugin writes: “Herein lies his uniqueness: he is the most terrible of all that is terrible; he is the most aggressive of all that is aggressive; and he is the most subjugating among all that subjugates” (130). From what I understand from this, is that Heidegger believes that all human beings are inherently negative. This is where Heidegger turns to logos, or “the word of God” to inform our decisions and “boundless freedom” (135). He states: “Philosophy is not about Heraclitus as a man, but about the logos, and we must only listen to it; it philosophizes, and it truly risks.” 

Smerdyakov is a bizarre and hard to read character. He seems to lack a moral compass and justifies his outlook on life based on the lack of existence of a God or higher power. Perhaps, Smerdyakov’s strange (and somewhat sadistic) personality comes from his lack of faith (or “logos” as heidegger would say). However, it doesn’t seem fair to only judge Smerdyakov’s  personality on a lack of faith. His upbringing and the environments he’s been brought up in are also probably influential to his personality, specifically the fact that his father was mostly absent and his father’s relationship with his mother. 

I also think that Heidegger’s ideas of freedom and will relate back to Smerdyakov’s eventual suicide (Note: I have not finished the novel, but I do know some of the later parts from another class I was in). In the suicide note he writes “I exterminate my life by my own will and liking, so as not to blame anybody,” showing his independence as a being and his complete removal from God and society. 

Ultimately, Smerdyakov’s characterization could stem from a lack of faith that Heidegger seems to think is necessary for moral development. (*Conclusion*)

Both the wedding guest from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the narrator from Notes from the Underground are saddened characters because of their flawed thought processes and inability to restructure their perception of reality. 

We learn from The Philosophy of Another Being that Heidegger has extensive thoughts on originality and the thinking process. On page 16 Dugin states:

“In very rare instances, a philosopher [a thinking person]  is capable of carrying out an interesting and original synthesis of different schools; and even more rarely, with intervals measuring in centuries, those thinkers appear that blaze new trails and truly open new horizons for the rest of mankind.” He then later states “And here is the most crucial truth: one must first bow before an authority (even if also with a “secret wish” of later overthrowing this authority) and think about oneself and the world in the inner hall of great ideas and theories. Yet those who strive for originality — immediately and at any cost — do not stay long in the field of philosophy; their place is the market.” 

Essentially Heidegger believes that the pursuit of original thought is nearly pointless, and that the most “original thoughts” from those we consider great are actually just combinations and selective parts of different pre-concieved philosophies. The most meaningful and influential thinkers use a given framework (or “bowing before an authority”) before making any actual progressive or important strides. In both of this week’s readings, we see the two most extreme sides of this spectrum of thinking. 

The wedding guest is an underthinker who takes what he is given at face value without truly digesting and deciphering the knowledge, and the Narrator from N.F.T.U is the over thinker, who is so obsessively concerned with his own thoughts and place in the universe that he fails to make any progressive strides in any aspect of his life. Despite how differently these characters process information and understand their reality, they are left equally hollow and yearn for a better life. 

The wedding guest from Ancient Mariner (for the most part) is a blank character. We know virtually nothing about him other than the fact that on his way to a wedding he becomes stuck listening to the Mariner after becoming transfixed by his eye. He serves as a canvas that the themes of a story can imprint upon, which is exactly what ends up happening. The last stanza of Ancient Mariner is 

“622He went like one that hath been stunned,

623And is of sense forlorn:

624A sadder and a wiser man,

625He rose the morrow morn.”

We know from this stanza that the Mariner’s story had some effect on the wedding guest’s perception of the World/reality, specifically line 624 which states he woke up as “A sadder and a wiser man.” However, how the wedding guest came to this conclusion, is largely undisclosed. We do not see him grapple (or even think) about the Mariner’s story at all. Rather, it seems as if the Mariner’s story simply had this effect on him, and now he accepts this sadness and wisdom as part of his reality. 

Conversely, the Narrator from N.F.T.U seems as if he cannot stop thinking. In Chapter II, he states that he is “convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness.” (7)  The narrator is so self aware, and so concerned with his understanding of reality that he has become entirely subsumed by these thoughts, leading him to a depressive and dark space. At one point, the narrator even states “Perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I’ve never been able to start or finish anything.” () 

Ultimately, both protagonists exist on opposing sides of the same spectrum. The wedding guest takes all information he is given at face value and doesn’t truly process or make his own meaning of the things he is told. Meanwhile the Narrator from N.F.T.U is so concerned with his existence and his lack of originality that he becomes subsumed with thought, leaving him in a state of paralysis where he is not progressing himself or the society he exists in. 

*** (I think) I used an Isocolon (from Classical English Rhetoric), in that I examined the protagonists from each reading and compared their way of thinking using Heidegger’s analysis of “original thought” as the basis for both. ***

*** I also used a Peroratio to summarize my points at the end of the blog post***