The
reflection for this week has a primary emphasis on the last pages of The Fall by Albert Camus and the first
few ideas by Soren Kierkegaard found within the textbook. Following up from my
consideration of last week’s post on The
Fall, I wanted to continue off of the already asserted theme of dominance
that is identifiable within the character of Jean-Baptiste. More importantly,
what follows from this theme is the concept of judgment. Yet still more
importantly, who has the ability to judge? This is critically relevant in the
theme of The Fall and something that
appears to be answered by Jean-Baptiste himself. Jean-Baptiste appears to
function from the position that judgment is a sort of hypocritical position. This
idea of hypocritical judgment can be explained through the concepts of
subjectivity and objectivity.
From here,
I want to take a brief pause to examine a remark made by an individual during
class discussion. Within the discussion itself, this individual made a remark
that essentially alleged that no statement can escape the grasp of
subjectivity. Or, in other words, that subjectivity is apparent in any
statement, including facts. Yet, as Thad and many other students were quick to
point out, that statement is completely false. There are most certainly objective
statements (i.e. indisputable facts). Therefore, the idea of obtaining a high
level objectivity, according to Jean-Baptiste, is essential to the relevance of
judgment. More narrowly-tailored, Jean-Baptiste believes that the recognition
of one’s own guilt will subsequently create the ability to maintain objectivity
in judgment. The idea of subjective judgment becomes apparent following the
event of hearing laughter on the bridge. This laughter is representative of
society’s acknowledgment that his judgment is subjective, and therefore, irrelevant.
Thus, Jean-Baptiste is searching for this objective judgment. He understands
that he cannot pass judgment on others without first passing judgment upon
himself. This is crucial to the idea that Jean-Baptiste is a “Judge-penitent.”
He reserves the right to judge others, but only because he first acknowledges his
own problems and imperfections and judges them accordingly.
Aside from the notion of judgment,
slavery is also a reappearing theme that has an intense function within The Fall. This idea of slavery was a
theme brought up within class discussion, and I believe useful for understanding
the final passage of The Fall as well
as being a good transition into the works of Kierkegaard. The idea of slavery
is very much similar to the idea of relief. Slavery is relief from obligation.
While the final few lines of the story state “but let’s not worry! It’s too
late now. It will always be too late. Fortunately!” (Camus, 45), we can see
that Jean-Baptiste is most likely aware of the fact that if presented with the
situation over again, that there is a very good possibility that he would once
again not take action. However, there is no need to worry because there is no
chance of this. So, this knowledge of a past you are unable to change is
consistent with the idea of slavery as well as portraying the fact that Jean-Baptiste
is not a perfect human being.
Similar to my reflection essay for
last week, this week’s readings only incorporated a little bit of Kierkegaard’s
works, and therefore I will only briefly discuss some of the main themes of
these first works, while reserving next week’s reflection for the rest. To
begin, Kierkegaard asserts that there are essentially three distinguishable
forms of life: The aesthetic, ethical, and religious. He goes on to point out
that the third phase, the religious life, is admirable and ultimately a form of
life that can only be acquired by passing through the other forms. These
distinctions of forms of life may be relevant to the idea that Kierkegaard
wanted to point out the differences between being a Christian and becoming a Christian.
In other words, he wanted to point out that many individuals were born into the
life of Christianity and their identity as a Christian was more likely to be
shaped and sculpted as a social identity.
While the aesthetic and ethical lives
are very interesting, Kierkegaard wants to point out what it means to become a Christian.
This religious phase of life is emphasized in relation to the themes of reason
and existence. In the words of Kierkegaard himself, “can one demonstrate that
to be a rational actuality which is at odds with reason? Of course not, unless
one would contradict oneself. One can only prove that it is at odds with reason”
(Kierkegaard in Solomon, 28). Following from this, and something that I find
extremely interesting, is the idea that one does not prove their faith or
existence through reason, but “one proves his presence by the attitude of
submission, which may have many different forms according to the customs of the
country” (Kierkegaard in Solomon, 28). This is what is most important to
Kierkegaard in this section.
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