The Twentieth Century

1. The Twentieth Century HUM 2052: Civilization II Spring 2013 Dr. Perdigao April 5-8, 2013

2. Cleaving • “‘Freedom’ and ‘responsibility’ are large and abstract ideas: they are part of an ambitious rethinking of human existence, and of the relationship of individual and society, that characterizes mid-century thought. In their breadth, they interrogate fundamental assumptions about human nature and lay claim to universal significance.” (2096) • Shift in conceptualization of the individual in the larger world against the backdrop of the horrors of World War II • “The existential condition, according to Sartre, is the condition of all humanity, the ‘essential plurality’ of human beings; their inescapable connectedness, is a given for Hannah Arendt; and the power of language to crystallize and to shape thought described by George Orwell, exists wherever speech is found” (2096).

3. Toward the Existential • Existentialism—Perry, Chapter 30 (793-795) • Response to anxiety and uncertainty during time of world wars, popularity after World War II (Perry 793) • Some as atheists, some believed in God but not Christianity, some were Christians, Jewish • Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), like Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir, involved in resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II—choice for French citizen to be a patriot or a traitor during German occupation (Perry, 9th ed., 807) • Declined Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 and French Legion of Honor in 1945 • Evil as “central and permanent fact of human existence” (Perry, 9th ed., 807) • Facing capture and death, recognition of solitude in a hostile universe; rediscovered human freedom (Perry, 9th ed., 807)

4. Being and Becoming • Sartre as atheist; atheistic existentialism, rooted in individual rather than God, pre-established ethic, “uniform conception of human nature” (Perry, 9th ed., 807) • “In Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, the French thinker proposed a theory of human existence that found eager adherents in a postwar society tired of authoritarian structures and ready to experience the pleasures of freedom” (2102). • Novel Nausea (1938), play No Exit (1944) • Breaks with Camus as a result of his support of totalitarian regimes, support of social revolution • “. . . he explored the relationship between absolute freedom for the individual and a moral responsibility for collective action” (2103). • Individual versus the collective—from Dostoevsky to Marx and Engels. How the self is located in the world. Responsibility for individual choice, freedom to choose independent of regulating structures. We must choose our own ethics and create ourselves through our actions (Perry 795).

5. “I’m free in all the ways that you’re not” • “We are not objectified instruments, determined and shaped by material forces, as Marxism teaches. Nor do unconscious drives determine our actions, as Freud contended. For Sartre, we are not helpless prisoners of our genes, of the environment, of historical forces, or of culture. Rather, we alone are responsible for who we are and for the feelings that torment, trap, and immobilize us. Even though the conditions in which we find ourselves impinge on our existence, it is up to us to decide what to do about them” (Perry, 9th ed., 807).

6. “Existence precedes essence is a famous statement of that paradigm: our actions are constantly determining the person we will have been at the end. There is no pre-existing essential identity. . . Instead, the existential self is always in process.” (2103). • Continuation of Pirandello’s scheme in the sense of the freeplay of identity and meaning. “There exist no higher realm of Being and no immutable truths that serve as ultimate standards of virtue. It is unauthentic to submit passively to established values, which one did not participate in making. The individual has nothing to cling to; he or she is thrown into the world ‘with no support and no aid’” (Perry, 9th ed., 807). • Potential identity as existential self comes into being through a series of conscious choices, only “essential” or fixed at moment of death • “. .. each person is an absolute choice of self from the standpoint of a world of knowledges and of techniques which this choice both assumes and illumines; each person is an absolute upsurge at an absolute date and is perfectly unthinkable at another date.” (2105) • Rather than abstract philosophy, true philosophy “makes commitments and incurs risks” (Perry, 9th ed., 807).

7. Die Welle? • http://www.thewave.tk/ • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVRXXbU-z7U • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFq6xIaAFtc&feature=related • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwur20pbygk&feature=related

8. Applications of Theory • “Any belief in civilization, in common humanity, or in divine Providence is sorely tested: Borowski’s bleak picture questions everything and does not pretend to offer encouragement” (2304). • Here is the“burden of guilt” that all carry, even though this protagonist attempts to suppress it with his “impersonal attitude” (2304). • The attempt to “suspend, for the moment, one’s humanity” in the midst of a landscape underwritten with the “hollowness of their civilized image” (2306). Ultimately, the story paints a picture of “spiritual desolation that not only illustrates a shameful moment in modern history but raises questions about what it means to be civilized, or even ‘human.’” (2307) • This is the tearing of the veil— “the horror” Marlow conceals. It is the culmination of what Montaigne argued about civilized and savage. Here the masking in language of “Ladies and Gentlemen” juxtaposed with horrors of the experience.

9. Contexts • Tadeusz Borowski (1922-1951) • Borowski arrested, sent to Auschwitz with Maria Rundo in 1943 • 1946 collection We Were Auschwitz, “literature of atrocity” • Own job in camp as orderly in hospital, “burden of guilt,” connection to Arendt • Letters to Maria—published in Auschwitz, Our Home • “world of antiheroes, those who survive by accommodating themselves to things as they are and avoiding acts of heroism” (2305) {Edgar Derby?} • The World of Stone (1948 collection)—life in postwar Germany, disgust at the “false normalcy of postwar society” (2305)

10. Paradoxalist? • Emphasis on his writing, how he will “grasp the true significance of the events, things, and people” he has seen; “For I intend to write” (2305). • Courted by Poland’s Stalinist government, wrote stories, intelligence work in Berlin for Polish Secret police; but with revelation of Soviet prison camps, became disillusioned, felt “complicit with the oppressors” • Committed suicide by gas July 1, 1951 • Theodor Adorno’s famous comment that “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” in 1949

11. Framing the Text • Birkenau (second and largest of three concentration camps at Auschwitz) (2306) • “systematic dehumanization” and “common vulnerability” leads to “alienation and rage at their fellow victims rather than at their executioners” (2306) • “gentlemen” • Red Cross ambulance • “the only permissible form of pity” in deceit (2313) • “Canada” • “Religion is the opium of the people” (2309) • Darwin (2315) • “throw out circles of light into the impenetrable darkness” (2319) • Esperanto (2311) • “unnatural mothers” (2317) • “are we good people?” (2315) • 131-132 (2314) • “It was a good, rich transport” (2320)