3 posts tagged “german”
Obviously this prefigures a lot of later stuff, but what I really like is the setting of consciousness in a very wide field. In very broad terms the linking of self-consciousness and being-with-others seems right to me, and certainly a much better avenue than all the arguments that take a narrow tack on phenomenal experience (zombies! redness!) and thereby seem stipulated as insoluble. A quale of bathood isn't any kind of convertible currency.Das ganze Leben wäre möglich, ohne dass es sich gleichsam im Spiegel sähe: wie ja thatsächlich auch jetzt noch bei uns der bei weitem überwiegende Theil dieses Lebens sich ohne diese Spiegelung abspielt -, und zwar auch unsres denkenden, fühlenden, wollenden Lebens, so beleidigend dies einem älteren Philosophen klingen mag. Wozu überhaupt Bewusstsein, wenn es in der Hauptsache überflüssig ist? - ... so darf ich zu der Vermuthung weitergehn, dass Bewusstsein überhaupt sich nur unter dem Druck des Mittheilungs-Bedürfnisses entwickelt hat, - dass es von vornherein nur zwischen Mensch und Mensch (zwischen Befehlenden und Gehorchenden in Sonderheit) nöthig war, nützlich war, und auch nur im Verhältniss zum Grade dieser Nützlichkeit sich entwickelt hat.
The whole of life would be possible without it, as it were, seeing itself in a mirror. Even now, for that matter, by far the greatest portion of our life takes place without this mirror effect; and this is true even of our thinking, feeling, and willing life, however offensive it may sound to older philosophers. For what purpose, then, any consciousness at all when it is in the main superfluous?... I may now proceed to the surmise that consciousness has developed only under the pressure of the need for communication; that from the start it was needed and useful only between human beings (particularly between those who commanded and those who obeyed); and that it also developed only in proportion to the degree of this utility.
Nietsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals (Zur Genealogie der Moral). Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1967 (1887).
I guess the thing to say about the first piece is that the title is hard to translate. The reigning English versions "Use and Abuse of History" and "Advantages and Disadvantages of History" both get one term right while sacrificing the other for euphony: "advantage" would be Vorteil, "abuse" would be Mißbrauch or Mißhandlung. It isn't really a pros-and-cons argument about historical study and life, since we always use history in the service of life, and it's only the perverse nature of scientific study (which is really what Historie is; the succession of historical events itself is Geschichte) that allows us to forget this. The point is less to revamp historical study than to integrate it into a fuller life overall.
The thing to say about the second piece is that when I got to the section on punishment, I realized I could get rid of all my Foucault.
I'd always thought that Berg must have heavily altered this for his libretto, so after re-viewing the opera on DVD today (nice singing, great costumes and sets, expressonist blocking intermittently awkward), I decided to check out the source and -- rube that I am -- was amazed to find it almost word-for-word identical; all Berg did was to change a few lines, omit a few scenes, combine some minor characters and tidy up the ending, which was unfinished at Büchner's death but presumably would have shown Johann Woyzeck's public execution, which historical event caused quite a stir in 1821. So all the features that I thought of as quintessentially modern were actually written in 1836. I suppose the creepy doctor with his reflexive clinical vocabulary can be explained by Büchner's medical training, which gave him advance notice of how important science would become, but that doesn't explain the abrupt scene shifts, the incredible compression of the dialogue, the air of abstraction that hangs over everything. I had the same "I can't believe it's not modern!" reaction when reading Lenz last year, and apparently it's how everyone reacts to Büchner, but damn. Here, this is my version of one scene -- in its entirety -- that's not in the opera.
Street. Marie with girls in front of the house door.
GIRLS (singing). On Candlemas the sun shines bright
Upon the fields of corn.
They all marched up and down the street,
They all marched two by two.
The pipers in the front,
The fiddlers right behind,
They had red…
FIRST CHILD. That one's no good!
SECOND CHILD. What one do you want, then?
FIRST CHILD. The one you started with.
SECOND CHILD. I can't.
OTHERS (alternating). Why not? Because! Why not because? Someone sing! Marie, you sing to us!
MARIE. Come here, you little crabs.
Ring around the rosy,
King Herodes.
....
Grandmother, tell a story!
GRANDMOTHER. Once upon a time there was a poor child who had no father and no mother, everything was dead and no one was left in the world. Everything dead, and the child went out and cried day and night. And since no one was left on earth, it tried to go up to heaven and the moon was giving it such a friendly look, and when it finally got to the moon, the moon was a piece of rotten wood and so it went to the sun and when it got there, the sun was a wilted sunflower and when it got to the stars they were little golden gnats, stuck there like the shrike sticks them on the blackthorn, and when it tried to go back down to earth, the earth was a knocked-over pot and it was all alone and it sat down and cried and it's sitting there still and it's all alone.
WOYZECK. Marie!
MARIE. (startled) What is it?
WOYZECK. Marie, we have to go, it’s time.
MARIE. Go where?
WOYZECK. How should I know?
