> Gary Kern wrote:
>
> Wait a minute! There are two different concepts here:
>
> 1. A person's life is complete, no matter how or at what age he dies.
> 2. No one dies before his work is done.
>
> The first is the idea that EJ has been arguing in DIE SCHERE. I
> strongly disagree with it, but understand how one could interpret life
> this way.
>
> The second may have been expressed in DIE SCHERE, but if so, I missed
> it. In any event, I reject it even more strenuously than the first.
>
> Thomas Friese writes:
> Despite your clear examples, I fail to see the intrinsic incompatibility of
> these two statements (and indeed of your examples).
*******************************
GK:
The incompatibility is this: In the first case, Mozart (or anybody)
dies and we interpret that life in a way that makes that life complete.
We interpret his last symphonies as his last ("mature") symphonies, we
see the steps leading to his death and we find an overall concept for
his short life: he is the child prodigy, the genius for whom everything
was easy, the eternally youthful spirit.
In the second instance we say, prior to that interpretation,
conceptuaally even prior to his death, that his work was done. He was
already finished, he had already expressed himself to the full, his
death came only as an end to his life, not to his art, which was
complete prior to it. In other words, Mozart had gone as far as he
could go, had his say, done what he had to do.
The one is post factum, the other is (conceptually) a priori: that's
the incompatibility.
********************************
TF:
Mozart dies when his
> allotted work is done - not before, not after. Who are we to judge what was
> allotted to his life, to make an external judgement on what constitutes a
> "full" life in each individual case?
GK:
Who are we? We are human beings who feel pain when tragedy strikes, who
mourn a life cut off prematurely, who rage against the murderous and
indifferent blows of fate. If we take the view that no one dies before
his work is done and a person's life is complete no matter when he dies,
then there is no tragedy, the whole course of human history is reversed.
We become impartial, impersonal, inhuman grains of sand.
It is not presumptious of us to deem a person's work incomplete when he
is cut off in the full prime of his powers. Let us take a graphic
example. A lexicologist begins an encyclopedia of German etymology; he
projects a set of 10 volumes, A to Z. He is working on volume 3, letter
G, and has just penned a couple of sentences on the word "Gott" when he
runs out of coffee and decides to go out and get his favorite Kenya AA.
He crosses the street, remembers that he meant to put a note "See
Visigoth," and is struck dead by a MacDonald's hamburger truck. Is it
presumptuous to say that the young lexicologist, even given his fatal
passion for rich coffee, had not yet completed his work?
Yes, of course, post factum, post mortem, we will celebrate his
brilliant beginning, others will complete the set of 10 volumes and he
will forever be frozen as a known quantity, the promising scholar who
died so oddly. People will even giggle about it. But only if we
remember his humanity, what he set out to do and what happened to him
will we mourn his loss: he, like Mozart, like anyone, was not done.
And what do you mean "allotted"? Biologically Mozart was allotted 60-70
years, but historically he lived only 35. Surely you don't mean that
God allotted him 35, and we should not judge God's plan. But if you do,
then I must say that I judge God's plan every day.
**********************************
TF:
In fact the only person who could ever
> judge would be the subject himself. The anarch has this orientation to
> justification of a life - "no judge above me", not gods or other men!
GK:
Not so. When a person contracts a fatal disease, he learns in time to
accept it and to interpret his past life accordingly. But we who
survive him know that without that disease he would have thought
differently and done more. This is not to judge him, but to judge fate,
God.
**************************************************
TF:
A
> tragic perspective on life would reconcile the above two ideas - a life is
> imperfect and full of unfulfilled potential even when it perfectly conforms
> to its plan - as Junger would put it, the fault lies in the initial
> imperfection of Creation.
GK:
I agree entirely that the fault lies in the initial imperfection of
Creation. Do you remember Schopenhauer? He wrote that since God is
conceived as all-powerful, he could have arranged things better. Things
are not for the best. Schop advised us to consider the perspectives of
two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other. It is man who
sees the flaw here.
If you accept proposition 2, then you cannot sustain a tragic view of
life. Everyone completes his work and dies in time. Where's the pity
there?
************************************************************
TF:
> What is "preposterous" is not the second idea but the act of speculating on
> "what if" with anything more than intellectual play in mind. Replay Mozart's
> last years with just a few changes and so much else in others' lives would
> also change - right up to you and I and to the future even. To some degree,
> Venator can do this with the Luminar, however all that he reaps is a deeper
> understanding of the tragic nature of history.
>
> I am also curious: if you start to play the game of "what if", where do you
> draw the line? Put in your own terms, would the creative forces of Mozart et
> al ever be exhausted? If not, then their deaths, even after a millenium,
> would remain tragic... So you would argue for degrees of tragedy then?
>
GK:
There is no "what if" about it, if we are talking about degrees of
certainty. If Mozart had not died, would he have lived to an older age?
Yes, of course. That's not "what if." Would he have gone on composing
and, as he aged, created wonderful works? There can be no doubt about
it. If the embryo is not aborted, will it become a human being? Yes, it
is teleologically predestined to be such. No "what if" about it. If a
little girl is not killed by a rapist, will she not grow into a woman
and lead a certain sort of life? If a poet is not sent to a Siberian
death camp, will he not write poetry? The "what if" factor is simply
the act of opposing "what happened," not the act of speculating on a
changed future.
*********************
GK: It is the nature of man to oppose nature.
>
> TKF: ... and to always fail ...? I truly believe that Junger would view a
> tragic perspective as the only salvation from the inescapable cruelty of
> life.
GK:
You can't say, "AND always to fail," because you haven't accepted the
preceding statement. If you accept the initial two propositions, taken
from EJ, then there is no opposition to nature, fate, God, but rather
total acceptance. A young man was blown apart in the trenches--it's OK,
his work was already done, his life was finished anyway. A mathematical
genius had a bad love affair and committed suicide--it's OK, he had
already thought up his best formulas, and somebody else will improve
upon them. A nation sent millions of "enemies of the people" to
concentration camps, radioactive death camps, firing squads--it's OK,
all of those millions had completed their "allotted" tasks, their work
was done, what followed did not affect the fullness of their lives.
No, I am not trying to politicize your position, but only to draw out
the consequences of it. That is why I think this discussion is so
important. Jünger's mental gymnastics are themselves a response to
tragedy, but they lead to total quietism. What is, is right. Any
dictator, gang banger or drunken driver can kill you, and we'll say, no
problem, his life was lived, his work was done, no need to get upset.
In this case, we will have been the losers too, because we will have
ceased to raise a human cry against tragedy. We will have deprived
ourselves of the right to judge, to have a critical view of life.
As to your latter question, yes, I think there may be different degrees
of tragedy, but let's leave that for next time...
GK
