Previous - 22. Restoration vs wabi sabi
Rebecca Goldstein
p149 Rebecca Goldstein [worth following that link] on Karl, "... He is not a selfish creature who devotes himself to the gratification of his own personal desires. No, he is a dutiful sort, one who submits his will to the imperatives he sees as serving the greater good. A model boy, as his grieving mother recalls him, the parish priest's favorite.p150 "His submissive posture before the demands of normative abstractions [it seems this is Ayn Rand jargon. Something to consider.] does not alter when he turns from Christianity to Nazi ideology. In some fundamental sense, horrible to say, his moral nature does not change at all.... It seems to me, that his 'conscience,' his normative makeup, remains essentially the same both before his Nazi conversion and after." A great observation and I will expand on this myself later.
Me
And here's my observation: As presented, I don't believe that Simon speaks in the presence of Karl. How would Karl have known that this Jew understood the story, I assume in German, he was telling? It seems to me that this is really more of an ethical thought experiment than a real life anecdote. This is important because quite a few of the commentators try to parse the selection of Simon by Karl and the way Karl addresses Simon. I think it's a mistake to focus on the details of this story.Hans Habe - Wiki
p159 "... Those who are born murderers are the pathological exceptions -- their deeds, as a matter of fact, are more pardonable than those who were born 'healthy...' " Karl is worse because he started out with ethical (Catholic) standards and "fell" into Nazi sin.p161 "For the [Nazi] regime we are discussing there is no 'problem' of forgiveness. The crimes of the regime were unforgivable, the regime has been tried and destroyed. Meanwhile we are faced not with Mephistopheles, but with Faust. [My ears perk.] Corruption, though a force of permanent duration, cannot exist without collaboration from the corrupted. The corrupted, in a word, are not victims of the corrupters, but collaborators. With the words 'Terrible vision!" Faust turns away, but the ghost rightly defends himself: 'You invited me cordially, you have long dabbled in my domain . . . You have passionately striven to see me, to hear my voice, to gaze on my countenance . . .'
"The firm is Faust & Co. or, if you prefer it, Mephistophelies & Co., partners just like Hitler and Karl S. The proof lies in the counterproof. The devilish Nazi regime did not corrupt everybody, and of those whom it corrupted most stopped at murder. I cannot accept the excuse that the system relieves the individual of responsibility... Resistance to evil is not heroism but a duty. [But see Me below.]
As I've pointed out in my earlier blogging of Faust, what people write about Faust is mostly interesting in revealing something about themselves, rather than giving us any insight into Goethe's confusing creation. So what does this passage tell us?
In the passage Habe quotes, Faust, in a moment of Romantic, existential despair, invokes the "Spirit of Earth" but is frightened, just as he is later blinded by the direct light of the sun and has to fall back on an indirect view in the prismatic mist of the waterfall. In this case Mephisto is the indirect contact Faust can handle. So is Habe suggesting that Karl, while attempting to be a good Hitler Youth and SS volunteer, is undone by the reality of the burning Jewish family? That he is not enough of an Übermensch for the stark reality of the Nazi ideal?
This distinction between victim and collaborator, while I don't entirely reject it, I question as it is precisely the seduction of the good boy Karl into the, ultimately failed, SS volunteer that is the form his victimization takes.
And since Habe has introduced Faust to the conversation, this is the kind of thing Mephisto repeatedly does to Faust: Giving him the means to seduce and ruin Gretchen; to lead the Emperor into (new levels of) fiscal disaster; and finally setting him up to create a new City on the Sea (my play on City on a Hill or even City of God) leading to acts of cruelty strikingly similar to the fate of Karl's Jewish family. Wow. If this is really where Habe was going why wasn't he this explicit... the spirit of Goethe, perhaps.
And yet I don't buy Karl as a "Faustian" character in the striving sense of that term. For one thing he isn't an "agent" in any of this. This also relates to what I said in my post #16. about U.S. service men during WW2. They may have been appalled by the reality they were contributing to, but they themselves were not the agents of these atrocities. (Atrocities I've argued elsewhere you might not want to undo even if you could.) Which is not to say individual U.S. servicemen weren't agents of their own intimate scale atrocities that were at least as morally questionable as the better known Crimes Against Humanity. But we aren't through with Habe yet.
p162 "... in the history of man since the beginning of Creation, love and justice have opposed each other. At one period justice was the human ideal, at another, love. The divine idea of justice in love, love in justice, mankind has magnanimously left to the Creator.
"Forgiveness is the imitation of God. Punishment too is an imitation of God. God punishes and forgives, in that order. But God never hates. That is the moral value worth striving for, but perhaps unattainable."
Now this reminds me of The Brothers K. Dostoevsky repeatedly talks about the forgiving nature of true Orthodox Christianity. This is the substance of that discussion about the RC role in jurisprudence in the West. That the Church should never be in the position of judging and condemning criminals but always in the position of forgiving them.
p162 "One of the worst crimes of the Nazi regime was that it made it so hard for us to forgive. It led us into the labyrinth of our souls. We must find a way out of the labyrinth -- not for the murderer's sake, but for our own... "
Interesting that he should choose one of Michel Foucault's favorite words. If you view Foucault as one of the victims -- or collaborators -- as a result of his childhood during the occupation of France, than this certainly would apply.
Jose Hobday - Wiki
p174 "...the words of my Seneca mother to me when I was badly wronged and wanted revenge and retaliation stay with me: 'Do not be so ignorant and stupid and inhuman as they are. Go to an elder and ask for the medicine that will turn your heart from bitterness to sweetness. You must learn the wisdom of how to let go of poison.'p175 "Forgetting and forgiving... are of a piece... From my experience, wrongs will return to the mind for years and years and years. Each recall asks for forgiveness, and you stay in the power of that act until you let go. Compassion is all-embracing, extending to all creation -- to plants and to animals, including the two-legged variety. Forgiveness is of the heart. I would have forgiven, as much for my own peace of mind as for Karl's... No one, no memory, should have the power to hold us down, to deny us peace. Forgiving is the real power...."
This Native American perspective is strikingly similar to the Tibetan Buddhist perspective.
Christopher Hollis - Wiki
"The Sunflower, whether wholly autobiographical or in parts fictional, is an intensely moving and vivid book..." Someone else doubts the reliability of this story.Harold Kushner - Wiki
p186 "Forgiving is not something we do for another person... Forgiving happens inside us. It represents a letting go of the sense of grievance, and perhaps most importantly a letting go of the sense of victim...."This, again, is similar to the Dalai Lama's position.
Lawrence Langer - Wiki
p188 "...Of course, Wiesenthal and not Bolek records these words for the reader, and this raises a question of narrative authority in the text of The Sunflower that would require separate investigation."Langer points out several other questionable aspects of the tale we are told. I mention this because I don't think we can take this tale as literally true, but as an ethical thought experiment.
p189 "Deep in the bowels of Dante's Inferno is a sinner whose presence must have confounded Dante's readers, because they believed that this sinner was still alive. In fact, he was; but Dante the poet invents the heretical idea of acts so outrageous that they condemn the soul of the sinner to eternal damnation before his death. Hence the possibility of an unrepentable and thus unforgivable crime is not a new one, though Dante could not have known how this quirk in his orderly design for Hell might herald our current threatening impasse about atrocities that are beyond guilt and atonement."
p190 "...The vital question to ask about this text is not whether Wiesenthal should have forgiven the SS man. It is rather why the SS man, as a young boy, against his father's wishes, joined enthusiastically in the activities of the Hitler Youth; and, again presumably against his father's wishes, he volunteered for the SS... why he then pursued a career in that murderous league of killers without protest, including the episode he tells of on his deathbed; and most important of all, why he had to wait until he was dying to feel the time had come for repentance and forgiveness. On these issues, the SS man is deftly silent."
Me
I can't hold off any longer. Too many people are raising issues I need to respond to.Several of these commentaries have talked about the guilt of all Germans living under the Nazi regime. This brings up the question, not of the nature of good and evil, but of what constitutes sociological good behavior. I think you can argue that "good" behavior on the part of an individual is behavior that benefits your group and that solidifies your position in that group. I realize this is influenced by The Righteous Mind.
Yes, in this relativistic interpretation Nazi behavior is only "wrong" because the Germans (and Japanese) lost. In the Nazi world, and also in the world of the Camps where God was viewed as "on leave," the Final Solution was neither good not evil, wrong or right. This is the ultimate expression of Ivan Karamazov's "everything is permitted."
(For Dostoevsky there would be nothing really new in this story -- though the shear scale of Nazi evil would take some getting used to. And I'm pretty sure his response would be an Orthodox version of the Dalai Lama's, expressed in the words of Father Zosima.)
Even worse, to not behave as Karl did -- to remain aloof as Karl's father had or as the author both of and within Doctor Faustus did -- is sociologically wrong behavior and can only be justified with an appeal to arbitrarily derived moral codes and "Gods." Or, to be a little more fair, it can be justified by the sociological claims of a religious group... whose identity is based on arbitrarily derived moral codes and "Gods." Even then it is easier to demonstrate why Hitler Youth behavior is "good" within a nationalistic context than to justify behavior based on cult dogma.
Jesus, everything I read from here on out really is going to be informed by my reading of Faust, The Brothers K, Doctor Faustus, and The Righteous Mind.
What I would really like to know (if I truly believed there was a Karl) is what exactly caused him to abandon the ethical beliefs of his parents and join the Hitler Youth. This process must be documented someplace. There must have been tens of thousands of people after the war trying to justify themselves and showing how they were seduced in such and such a way.
Feeling off
This afternoon, after going to the gym this morning and running around all afternoon only to come home to discover the contractors were leaving early (when I'm here before 4pm they don't get away until close to 4:30, if I just barely make it by 4 or am a few minutes late they are invariably on their way out) and they didn't do half the things they are supposed to do before leaving. So I had to do them.At any rate, when I finally sat down I was feeling off -- almost like I was coming down with something. So I did all the things I do at a time like that including making soup. But I also had cravings for some things I don't usually have around (yogurt, English muffins, Orange Juice), and I didn't feel like walking 12 blocks to the supermarket, so I went to one of the little markets scattered around my block.
I chose the 2nd closest one which is tiny and sits under a building maybe 70 meters away as the crow flies. Their stock is pretty amazing, considering the size of the place, so I found everything I wanted. It's not cheap, but I like being able to give them at least a little business from one year to the next. Also it makes me feel smug about my neighborhood. If I'm looking for something specific and uncommon (this has happened) I can follow this nautilus-like route where I hit six different markets and am still less than two blocks away from home. The two slightly bigger market options are just over two, maybe three in one case, blocks away. Try finding that in a "planned community."
And everything was delicious.
No comments:
Post a Comment