Permanent email address

I'll probably be on campus until August, so until then you can contact me if necessary at miyasaki@uwm.edu. I'll probably be keeping regular afternoon office hours, as well.

After August, you can reach me at the following email address: d.miyasaki@utoronto.ca.

Thanks again everyone for your hard work and discussion ideas. Have a great summer, and best of luck with your future studies!

Donovan

Live Ionesco

You'll find the final study questions, and a link to information about Tuesday's movie, in the previous post.

I've been looking for nearby theatre productions of No Exit and Rhinoceros without any luck. However, if you're up for a trip to Chicago, you can see Ionesco's first play (or "anti-play") The Bald Soprano. It's playing here from May 13th to June 24th. It's definitely an Ionesco classic--in ways funnier, and definitely even more bizarre, than Rhinoceros. You can read it online here (it's short).

Final Study Questions

You'll find the final study questions below. Tuesday we'll be watching a film, so the next discussion will be our final one on Thursday. Although our discussion will focus on study questions 1 and 2, do take a look at the others--they will help you focus your thoughts about the final reading.

Also, in preparation for the film, you might want to take a look at this New York Times review, since it will give you some context and additional background information about the film.

Finally, some aphorisms by Franz Kafka that I think go well with Beauvoir's novel:

You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have free permission to do so and it is in accordance with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering that you could have avoided.

The strength to deny, that most natural expression of the perpetually changing, renewing, dying, reviving human fighting organism, we possess always, but not the courage, although life is denial, and therefore denial affirmation.

What is laid upon us is to accomplish the negative; the positive is already given.

Faith in progress does not mean faith that progress has been made. That would be no faith.

He who renounces the world must love all men, for he renounces their world too. He begins from that point to divine the true nature of mankind, which cannot but be loved, provided that one is capable of it.

The indestructible is one: it is every human being individually and at the same time all human beings collectively; hence the marvelous indissoluble alliance of mankind.

1. Think of at least two ways in which we might be able to positively apply existentialist ideas to our personal lives. (You might consider broader, general views that these thinkers all agree on, or more specific ideas from a specific author.) How might their ideas change the way we live, choose our values, or make decisions about how to act?

2. Think of at least one real-world contemporary issue--a social, moral, or political debate or problem--that existentialist thought might help us better address or confront. How do existentialist ideas (either as a group or an individual thinker's) apply? Do they help us decide how to respond?

3. One way to define "murder" is as any act of killing that is not necessary for the defense of one's own life or the life of another. On this view, it's okay to kill only if it's to save lives. On the basis of a view similar to this one, Jean's mother accuses the Resistance fighters (and, unknowingly, her own son) of murder. After all, they knew their attack would likely lead to the retaliatory killing of innocent hostages, yet they also knew these deaths would probably not save anyone else's life ("Did that bomb save the life of a single Pole?"). Is she right that this is murder? Why or why not?

4. At the end of the novel, Helene convinces Jean that her death is not his fault, but the result of her own free choice. However, Jean realizes that the hostages who will be shot as a result of his actions, unlike Helene, do not have any choice. What message is Beauvoir trying to convey? Is he guilty for their deaths or not?

Things to consider: First, remember Beauvoir's paradox in which every action for humanity is also an action against humanity. Also remember she insists that we should not take either our goal or the means to achieve the goal as unconditionally, absolutely good. Jean sometimes fails to do this. For example, when arguing for armed resistance, he says, "We must only be concerned with the end we have to achieve and do everything necessary to attain it" and that even when it's the "blood of others. The price would never be too high." So Beauvoir may mean to critically portray Jean's character and choices, even if she is sympathetic to the idea of armed resistance.

Updated list of short assignment grades

Here's a new list of short assignments turned in--updated to include the ones you've just turned in. If you're not on the list, email me.

Current Short Assignment Grades

(For the new study questions, and some background about the Beauvoir novel, see the previous two posts.)

I've put together a list (here) of the current (as of 4/30) number of short assignments turned in (you need a total of six for an A). Please check the list to make sure it's correct. If you're not on the list, it's because you still need to send me a 4-digit code of your own choice to use. If you haven't, email me with the code. I will also use it at the end of the term to post final grades.

Remember that after this week, you will have only one more opportunity to submit short assignments--I will not accept short assignments after Tuesday, May 8th. If you still need more short assignment credits, consider submitting your final essay early (the 10th) or doing a longer short assignment for extra credit. If you'd like to do a longer assignment, it should be at least 4 pages. Non-standard topics or formats should be approved by me before handing them in.

Week 15 Study Questions

If you haven't already, be sure to read the previous post for background information about the Simon de Beauvoir novel that we'll be reading an excerpt from next week.

Tuesday (CR 221-27, Simone de Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity)

1. [Note that this question is from last week] What does Beauvoir mean when she says, "No action can be generated for man without its being immediately generated against men"? How does she criticize those who would use this as an excuse for oppression, or for sacrificing the individual to the group?

2. According to Beauvoir, in our actions toward others, we should take the other's good as an "absolute end [or goal] of our action." However, "we are not authorized to decide this end a priori [in advance or without appeal to experience]." Be able to explain the meaning of this quotation, using one of more of her examples in your explanation (the suicide attempt, the drug addict, or the individual "living in a situation of falsehood").

3. On the question of the former Soviet Union, Beauvoir criticizes both the staunch supporters and staunch opponents of the USSR. What fallacies does she attribute to the arguments on each side?

4. How does she respond to the militant political view that the true hero will "blindly direct himself toward an uncontested goal," thus avoiding "the pitfalls of ambiguity"? What alternative view does she present--what is the proper method of ethical decision or the proper ideal to try to realize in political action?

Thursday (CR 228-50, Simone de Beauvoir, The Blood of Others)

1. Jean Blomart worries that his friends will consider him a coward for taking a non-combat post in Paris, even though Helene arranged it against his will. He even seems to think that it might be true. Is he a coward? If he is, what should he do?

2. Why does Jean compare becoming a soldier once again to the "wonderful holidays" he experienced in childhood?

3. Jean's friend Gauthier defends his decision to continue writing and publishing his political newspaper under the control of the Nazis, saying he's just being "clear-headed." Is he right to do so? What would you do in his situation? Jean admits to himself that he's no better than Gauthier. Why?

4. When Helene's friend Denise criticizes her decision to accept a job in Berlin, Helene says it doesn't matter, since in time another system will replace the Nazis. To Denise's objection that what matters is the time in which we live, Helene replies: "It matters if we make it matter . . . It is we who decide. . . . Why should I decide if it's my personal fate that matters, or that of France, or of this century in which I happen to have been thrown?" What does she mean? Why does she later change her mind about the job in Berlin?

Introduction to Beauvoir's novel The Blood of Others

Since we'll be reading an excerpt from the end of Simone de Beauvoir's World War II novel The Blood of Others, I thought I'd give you some background information about the story and characters. (Check back for the study questions--they should be up in the next day or so.)

The novel begins with a quote from Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being." In the opening scene, we find out that a young woman named Helene has been seriously wounded while participating in a Resistance bombing mission against the Nazis. She is sleeping, but there is little hope that she will survive the night. In the next room, her friends and fellow Resistance fighters discuss plans to complete their mission the next day. Among them is her ex-lover, Jean Blomart, who has volunteered to take over the job that Helene failed to complete: to personally set the time-bomb.

As Helene sleeps and Jean waits for daybreak, he reflects back on the events that have lead up to this night. The majority of the novel is narrated from Jean's point of view, as he remembers his childhood, his break from his family, the beginnings of his relationship with Helene, the onset of the war, and their first activities in the French Resistance.

Although most of the novel is presented from the perspective of these past events, the narrator occasionally breaks into the story in order to comment, as he sits at Helene's deathbed, on his memories of these past events. This can be a little confusing, so just note that whenever you see a passage of narration that's completely italicized, it represents Jean's thoughts in the present time (on the night of Helene's death).

The character of Jean Blomart is loosely based on Jean-Paul Sartre. He is a young man from an upper middle-class background who has cut off ties from his family, abandoning a possible career as future owner of his father's printing company in order to become a laborer and union-leader. He's an active agitator for the political left, but refuses to join the Communist party out of a desire to preserve his intellectual independence--and out of an unwillingness to impose, through revolutionary action, his own values on others.

When Jean first meets Helene, she is free-spirited, selfishly individualistic, and a bit childish. She eventually falls deeply in love with him, but Jean doesn't feel the same way toward her. He initially tries to end their friendship to avoid hurting her, but it doesn't work--she only grows more attached to him. Jean's most striking personality trait is his commitment to the value of freedom--both his own and others--so it pains him to realize that he is involuntarily imposing emotional suffering on Helene. He eventually decides to lie and tell her he loves her in order to end her suffering. Despite this, he does truly care for her, and they have a reasonably happy relationship until the approaching war forces them to choose between personal happiness and social responsibility.

Beauvoir presents Jean's decision to pretend he loves Helene as a kind of bad faith: he's trying to avoid realizing the consequences his own freedom must have upon others. Throughout the novel Jean is plagued by guilt over his role in Helene's fate. He feels he is indirectly her murderer, since she would never have joined the Resistance without his influence.

Helene, on the contrary, exhibits a different form of bad faith. We learn that she had a devoutly religious upbringing, and Beauvoir's characterization suggests that in her love for Jean, Helene has tried to overcome the loss of security and authority that she once found in religion. Helene devotes herself to Jean so that she can avoid the anguish of taking up her own freedom.

Not only that, Helene's love seems selfish. When France enters the war against Germany, she is completely unwilling to accept Jean's decision to join the fight. By refusing to think about how her own happiness and peace of mind might come at others' expense, Helene denies that her choices are made on behalf of others as well as herself, thus ignoring any responsibility she may have to others.

Our selection from the novel begins with Jean's return from the front lines to Paris. Helene has used a powerful family connection to get Jean restationed, against his will, in Paris--far from the danger of combat. Jean is very upset, and feels he's betraying his friends who are risking their lives at the front...