Monday, October 18, 2010

belief is absurd, but necessary

The "real self", that is, a coherent, unified subject underneath the show, is a fiction. There is nothing but the show itself.

Man is nothing in himself. Without the narratives, the clothing and the “things that make life the way we wish it were,” there is no one. That’s why we need to buy a life story. The nothingness is all the more apparent if we consider the impossibility of our autobiography. An autobiography is the history of one’s life written by oneself. The “I” is experienced by us as emptiness and as desire. In other words, as dissatisfaction. It is this constant dissatisfaction that creates what Marx identifies as “the proliferation of needs.” Rather than recognizing that we lack, we constantly strive to “make our lives as we wish they were.” The clothes in this case really do make the man. The narratives give us the sense of being the main character in a story far more interesting than the one we live. Now all I need to do to be that character is to buy the costume. I recognize the absurdity of it, but, ironically, I am still committed to the fiction. In fact, recognizing the absurdity only makes me more comfortable buying, as I at one and the same time recognize and refuse to recognize that there is nothing to me but the narratives. Kierkegaard, taking up a dictum attributed to the early Church Father Tertullian, said “I believe because it is absurd." Now we buy because it is absurd, but we have to if we are to maintain that fiction that gives us coherence, and we have to believe that it is absurd to avoid recognizing the lack of coherence, to avoid recognizing what reality shows us: that there is no unified subject beneath the appearance, that beneath the appearance there is no one at all.

The ironist recognizes this, but, necessarily, lives in the fiction. The ironist is in a much better position, however, than the cynic. Cynicism leaves one in an endless loop wondering why everyone doesn’t understand the contradictions he sees. The ironist does understand this and also understands her own commitment to the fiction. The cynic is frustrated that it doesn’t make sense that we participate in the fiction. The ironist simply smiles at it. She doesn’t experience the lack of a coherent self and consistent world. If she did, she would be psychotic. Nonetheless, the ironist recognizes the necessity of the fiction and appreciates the absurdity.

- Norah Martin


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