From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Naphtha and Settembrini, James and Joe
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 19:37:14 GMT



                              Monday, the 27th of July, 1992
  
Some Responses to John Wojdylo:  
  
                                                  I would say that Mann's view
  of Settembrini is quite favourable (despite Naphtha probably having arisen in 
  his mind earlier in the formulation of the novel), contrary to Mr. Morris's
  assertions. 

I don't accede to the ``contrary to...''. As I indicated before, the
Joe Green-esque bit I started with was more of a conversational
bait than a statement of *my* position. I would say that Mann's view of
Settembrini is on the whole favourable, but that Mann sees certain extremes
and absurdities in Settembrini's views and sees that these extremes
can give suck to creatures like Naphtha.

  To answer a further query of Mr Morris's,  I do believe that he has something
  important wrong: it is his identification of all forms of absolute power
  as being equally evil. 

OK, but this is now moving beyond a discussion of Mann.

                          Settembrini firing a pistol into the head of 
  Rochefoucault in the name of Justice is as evil as a Marxist/Leninist
  shooting a round into the squalid brain of Nicholas II, or a hypothetical
  Jewish scum in 1929 firing into the pretty head of Adolf Hitler, following 
  publication of that inspiring work, _Mein Kampf_, thereby averting World
  War 2 and the loss of 60 million lives.

I find this last telling. I think you are saying that you believe I am
morally relativistic to the point that I am unwilling to judge anything
evil, that ``everything is permitted''. You are seriously in error
about this.

Your last example confuses a number of my points. Let me elaborate:
I like a roughly Aristotelean model for the human psyche that sees
three ``dimensions'' for human will: thinking, making, and doing.
For thinking, the standard by which we judge is Truth. For making,
the standard by which we judge is Beauty. For doing, the standard
by which we judge is the Good. Epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics
are then the three branches of philosophy which investigate most
closely these three standards, whether the standards exist or no,
what they are, etc.. I've also given you lineages to mark what I call ``left'',
``right'', and ``liberal'', each of which I think elevates a different
one of these three standards to sovereignty within the sphere of political
thought.  OK, now *I* think the appropriate standard for judging legislation
is the standard associated with doing, that is, the moral standard.
(I also think that Naphtha elevated an aesthetic standard, whereas
Settembrini at his most absurd moments elevated an epistemological
standard.)

Now, in my way of thinking about moral judgments, I believe that
I can judge myself, and I believe that it is possible, if
difficult, for me to judge others. This possibility of judgment stems first
from my belief in my own free will (inscrutability to any sort of
``scientific'' determinism when it comes to my moral choice) and second
from the external indications that other human beings give me which
would make me understand that they exercise the same moral freedom. In fact,
unless there be some level of moral freedom, I do not see how any moral
judgment were possible.

All right, now within the sphere of moral judgments, I see three
distinct levels of (negative) judgment: intellectual error, moral evil, and
criminal injustice. I call ``criminally unjust'' any act which physically
trespasses on another human being in such a way that the act is free,
and causes the physical damage. I call ``intellectually in error''
a mistake in facts or reasoning that may not be directly concerned with
the moral sphere. I call ``morally evil'' the kind of error that's
in between these two. Now, my point is that once I have made these intellectual
judgments, there remains for me to decide what to do about them, which
is in itself, a moral judgement. I judge that the only right response to
either intellectual error or moral evil is argument. I think criminal
injustice does deserve physical punishment, but it and it alone.
 
If the only nasty thing Hitler had ever done was publish _Mein
Kampf_ (I'm talking about my impression of a book I have not (yet)
read), then I would say, regardless of the horror of the content of
the book, anyone would be criminally unjust to kill the man just for
having written a book. If your claim, John, is that the mass murders
and war and crimes came from the book, I strongly disagree. My guess is that
when I will read it, I will judge it to be both morally evil and intellectually
in error. I am certain, though, even without reading it, that _Mein Kampf_
cannot be criminally unjust. It's just a book. I think that the mass
murderers and criminals didn't have to do what they did, that human beings
still had moral choices, *free* moral choices, to make even after the
publication of this book, and I judge the Nazis criminal precisely because
they chose to do the evil they did when they could have and should have 
chosen otherwise.
  
John begins an apposite aside:
  It's part and parcel of the Joycean view of fiction, that one ought to live
  and let live, and not try to influence others in a moral way--even if only to
  be true to oneself, against those impinging on one's own world.

You know, I actually agree with you about this. Except I think it
goes back to Nietzsche at least. I wouldn't expect you to have followed all
my various skirmishes with Joe Green, but this was exactly my objection
at him. It's what I meant when I joked that ``Adler, Lewis, Paglia, Bloom,
and Bloom'' were his gods. At least in his projected persona, he didn't like
any of this ``objectifying ilk'' at all. It was all just ``writing'' and
he probably thought these were boring writers. (I say
``persona'' because it wasn't necessarily what *he* believed. He jumped
quite rightly into objectification with ``Because there's no fucking
other side to the Holocaust''.)

  Fine as long as one lives in a utopia. Or as a hermit.
  Or if one knows that one's book will 
  be read by a hermit or in a Utopian society. It's possible to read,
  seriously, Joyce's cleverness -- immense dexterity at
  language etc. -- and find it means 
  very little. Can it be damaging? (How on earth can something pretty to look 
  at be damaging?) Simple: become a disciple of Joyce and live and let live --
  everything is beautiful, even Mein Kampf.  So the lessons of the 20'th
  century are forgotten.

It seems to me that the lessons of the 18th Century are being forgotten here.
I would say that _Mein Kampf_ need not be beautiful (or even moral) for its
author to retain a Right to Life. I think Hitler lost that Right when he
killed, not when he wrote.
  
  Joyce made at least one valuable contribution: he made it plain that most of 
  what's interesting in modern life is what happens inside one's head.  Fine.
  Now go watch any film by Andre Tarkovsky to see how this idea is dealt
  with in a moral way; leading, of course, to darkness, fear etc. and little
  hope for the world. Still, that's a trip that has to be made, according to
  this view -- dodging the pain contributes to the problem, rather than
  help solve it. 

I've seen ``Sacrifice'' and ``Nostalghia''. I agree with you that
Tarkovsky takes Joycean technique in an un-Joycean moral direction.
It's an interesting example, John.

I would say that, just as there's a mean streak in Nietzsche,
there's a mean streak in this old world. A failure to objectify,
then, is a failure to address this mean streak, a moral failure.
Yes. Joe's litera-cheer is only a part of literature.

I've often mentioned here that I think the moral universe in the
20th-Century is different. That tragedy no longer is ours, we have
left only pathos and irony. The Durrenmatt quote. We've replaced the
tragic tension between Fate and Free Will with the table tennis
of Peer Pressure and Psychology.

This essential incompleteness, however, doesn't stop me from finding
both Joyce and Green delightful artists.
  
               Mike Morris
          (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)

  
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