>On Thu, 13 Jul 2000 12:19:45 -0400 Yoshie Furuhashi
><furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
>
> > No, _hope_ to lead by examples, while maintaining _silence_ over morality.
>
>To remain silent about morality is to assume, on some level, that one already
>possesses it. The reason one would remain silent about morality is precisely
>because of the "hope" that a particular fantasy about morality will come true.
>At least you are consistent on this point, but it marks a deliberate
>censorship
>of 'secret' aspirations in public praxis.
Sigh. I suppose you may say it's "'secret' aspirations" in psychoanalytic terms. As you wish. Psychoanalysis always suspects "dirty" motives behind any speech or action, including silence and even absent-mindedness. In psychoanalysis, even rest, sleep, & leisure become *work* -- stay vigilant, examine dreams, scrutinize "Freudian slips" (they can never be "mere" typos!). Frenetically pornographic discourse, appropriate for industrial capitalism & the Protestant work ethic, as it were (or incitement to speech, according to Foucault). I'd say it's in the eye of the beholder, though. Anyhow, silence may not imply certitude of knowledge. It may imply many other things -- reluctance to make others listen to you go on & on about morality. Or dislike of Logos (not as in truth, but as in branding).
>The model here is that of the Christian evangelist --> who are
>not allowed to "dissent" in mixed company.
Christian evangelists don't follow this model. If they did, they couldn't evangelize, in that Christianity is a religion of the Book. Christianity is about confessions, not about silence.
>I definitely advertise them!
>because my mind would already be made up and the rejoinders
>would be superfluous.
If "the rejoinders would be superfluous," why advertise? (We should all feel silly replying to you, I suppose.)
>I suspect my reading of Beckett differs slight from yours. The absurdity of
>Beckett is not that it encourages an ethical encore! rather, that it reflects
>that the peacefulness of the void and the peacefulness of
>reconciliation can no
>longer be distinguished. We are already dead. Such an
>incomprehensible state of
>affairs gives us reason to pause, and reflect, if even only for a moment.
Properly performed, I think Beckett can encourage us to adopt a comic attitude to what we may feel like our "tragedy," "failure," etc., the attitude expressive of affectionate regard for human obstinacy (or so says Simon Critchley) Besides, Beckett took part in the French Resistance. No reconciliation for this guy: "I must go on, I can't go on, I will go on." I'm giving Beckett a rank-and-file activist interpretation here.
Now I return to the void (instead of giving a workout to "my psyche" -- I'm not a gym bunny, you see). ;)
Yoshie