posted
The Fragility of Goodness is a large academic paper weight by a brillant American philosopher named Martha Nussbaum. It's interesting, and it requires intense study. I haven't finished, but I've absorbed what I have read and I want to talk about the thesis, which is as follows:
Living a good life is partially determined by individual agency and partially determined by luck. Luck in the Ancient Greek sense, luck as morass of powers beyond ones control, and that's why living a good life is such a fragile and precious thing.
It's a simple thesis, but it runs deep because she understands the Greek tragedy as portraying appropriately the relationship between agency and luck in living a good life.
Forces to which we are subject but are beyond our control are deified. Forces of nature were Titans and forces of Man were the Olympic Gods, and the play between us and the Gods constituted the struggle to live the good life.
I think this play between luck and agency is at the heart of life and good fiction. I can't think of a book that I like and that everyone has read, but we can talk movies. There is a reason why For the Love of the Game, a Kevin Costner baseball movie, brings me to tears. I think it's because that movie captures that play between agency and luck. The entire movie takes place in one baseball game and Costner is pitching a perfect game. Anyone who knows about baseball knows that there is nothing more fragile than a perfect game. The best pitcher in history can get through seven innings on the strength of his arm, but the flesh is weak and the arm gets tired and the batters get smarter and in the end you need team defense for those last three innings. For the Love of the Game portrays the fragility of this perfect game exquisitely. It also mirrors this fragility of the game with his fragile relationship with Kelly Preston's character. As a love story, the movie is middling, but it is my favorite baseball movie.
Good love and politics and child rearing are all fragile, partly determined by individual agency and partly by luck. I'm sure that the parents of the Columbine kids have thought about this, and hell, anybody whose ever gotten their heart broken understands the fragility of a good relationship, because in the end, the relationship depends on variables that are not in your control; namely, how the other person feels.
I think that this is why there is so much bad fiction out there. I think it has something to do with science and judeo-christianity. Science seeks to undermine, predict, and control, even the soft sciences like political science and economics seek to deftly manipulate people or the market, or at least appear to deftly manipulate the people or the market, and thereby undermine the rightful fragility in this world.
And there is something about the idea of an omnipotent God that belies the fragility of the good life, and I think that's what makes so much Christian literature boring. Christianity neuters all aspects except individual agency. It doesn't matter how abject ones circumstance, if one believes in God or does "good" deeds, everything will be okay or be according to his plan. Where is the fragility in this? What's at stake?
I think that portraying this fragility is the work of good fiction, and fiction that turns from this fragility has lost some crucial insight. Thanks for listening.
posted
Those are some cool points. I definetly must take that into consideration with this novel I am struggling with. I want that novel to be good. Writing stories seems to be more agonizing than childbirth in a way as no labour takes 5 agonizing years.
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posted
That is very interesting. I can definately see the validity in the thesis. There are forces beyond our control and those definatly influence the rest of the decisions we have to make. Thanks for sharing this.
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posted
Not only do they influence the rest of the decisions, the stronger thesis is that they inform the quality of our life.
Your living a good life is only partially dependent any decision you make. The problem is portraying the partial dependence, that's where the fragility comes in.
That's the radical departure from Christian salvation where some agency(either accepting Jesus, or good deeds, etc) is enough to guarantee salvation, or its opposite where Grace is wholely dependent upon the will of God and has nothing to do with your actions. Both those beliefs are two sides of the same coin, and neither of them are fragile. Again, that's a huge problem that Christian fiction has to overcome.
I can't think of a better example of this than marriage, a real marriage without pre-nupes or any of that nonsense. Or maybe gambling, where you control the bet but you don't control the cards. I think that Steinbeck portrays the fragility well in his work, where the dignity of his characters is wrapped up in both their agency and is at the mercy other forces, internal and external.
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posted
Ciderhouse Rules is a bit like that. I do love that book. And even a Prayer for Owen Meany is pretty interesting, but it can be seen more as an example of "Christian" fiction from the way Owen believes in God.
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quote: I think that portraying this fragility is the work of good fiction...
I think it would be a serious mistake to insist that all good fiction fulfill the same specialized function.
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posted
I spoke to strongly. Portraying this fragility isn't the exclusive aim of good fiction, but I do believe that its(the portrayal of this fragility) is a necessary component.
*Spoilers* Prayer for Owen Meany
Owen believing in God doesn't make the story a work of Christian fiction. The dangerous and compelling part of Owen Meany takes shape when we find that Owen's life has been informed by his parents telling him that he was immaculately concieved.
I didn't appreciate the heavy handed predestination in Owen Meany. It may just be the case that I don't think the world runs like that a just god doesn't reward all of those staving and degraded people along the globe with the riches of heaven. I also don't think that people are a desconsolate in first world countries are so because, "it was meant to be." Appeciated the story over all, though. Predestination doesn't seem to be a doctrine for society's outcasts. It seems to be a consolation for the haves and the tired, or in a moment of uncertainty, the arrogant.
Foul Ball is an especially good chapter, from my memory. That chapter, and the book, shows how a confluence of seemingly disparate events lead to the death of John's mother. All of the events were the unforseen- and reasonably unforseeable- consequences of the agent's action.
It's hard to square God with Fragility.
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posted
I think you may be shortchanging the dramatic possibilities of predestination, Irami. You seem to be saying that Christian theology makes grace (what's at stake) either mechanical or a given. But the theological basis of predestination is that God is both omnipotent and unknowable; therefore, though you or I might be saved, we have no way of knowing for sure. The struggle for that knowledge is one of pain and uncertainty; attaining it is as close as humanity can come to the transcendent. However, even when we fight and bleed and get as close as we can to God, perfect knowledge is still impossible, and salvation is never sure. There's a real undercurrent of dread in Puritan literature. Hawthorne's God (particularly in "Young Goodman Brown," which is all about the horror of ignorance) offers anything but consolation.
Irving's predestination is theologically fuzzy, but I think he occasionally taps into this sort of angst. Owen *doesn't know* what he's supposed to do; the book, in part, is about him trying to figure out what God wants for him. And the possibility that he's unconsciously making it up is too often missed. Irving's narrator is a believer, but it's a much more interesting book if the reader doesn't automatically buy it.
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posted
I think that done properly it is possible to show the EXTREME fagility of shuch things and still be a christian work. Nothing is more fagile than salvation because it all depends on one persons choices and decisions. Not all the miricles in the world can save somone if they dont' want to be saved, so in the end all salvation balances on the thin thread of free will.
Where most of the Christian lit seems to get it wrong is that they don't spend enough time on the actual characters and focus on their "mesage", which makes far less of an impact on the reader most of the time.
I think I would like to read that paper, Irami, regardless of if I agree with the premise...it sounds very thought provoking. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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There are two by that name though...one is about the Bulgarian Jews in WWII....different authors, of course.
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posted
I think that there are ways to portray fragility in Christian earthly life. I know that I'm missing something crucial either in the dogma or practice.
The fragility of faith seems to be a place to be mined. True faith, faith that looks like hope, absent any personal relationship with Jesus. Another place for fragility is the book of Job or Faust. Both great stories. There you have a tricky God and no talk of heaven. Without appeals to heaven, the stakes of earthly life have been raised. Then, as with the good christian fiction that comes to my mind, the play is between a nearly omnipotent devil trying to get at the one thing He can't get at, which is man's free will.
But outside of those stories, once you have a bunch of true believer with their eyes on heaven, *shrugs* any worldly hardship they endure seems small, and I think that's where the bad fiction comes in.
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It's a great book. Mammoth. It's not for the uninitiated, and the prose isn't electrifying, but you get the feeling that she is speaking the clear-sighted truth. She doesn't talk much about Christianity at all, I was just riffing, the book concerns Greek tragedy and luck, and how the Greek tragedy may have been a more appropriate vehicle for a people searching for truth. That is anthropocentric truth, neither objective nor relativist "truths."
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For the record, one of the reasons that the bodily suffering of Jesus does not move me, at all, is because in the end, he goes to heaven. And really, if one merely needs to suffer lashings and a slow death to get the kingdom of heaven, it's a steal as twice the price. It's the equivalent of eating brussel sprouts.
quote:For the record, one of the reasons that the bodily suffering of Jesus does not move me, at all, is because in the end, he goes to heaven.
And yet, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus presumably _knew_ that he would go to heaven, and yet prayed for the cup to be taken from him. Mark's Jesus suffers profoundly through Gethsemane. He - who Mark believed to be the Son of God - questioned if it was worth it. This Jesus is an intensely interesting figure; he is anxious, he suffers, seems to doubt his own abilities, asks his disciples repeatedly who they think he is as though he needs the reassurance, and paradoxically despite his attempts at self-concealment , doggedly pursues a course that leads to his own death. This is a complex, human personality; far from the quasi-supernatural, entirely self-assured Jesus of John.
I guess I agree that assurance sucks the life out of story. But I don't think that Christian theology necessarily eliminates the stakes. You seem to be thinking that the promise of salvation eliminates human drama; that it trivializes the pain and struggle of our stories. I don't think it does; in fact, I think it can raise the stakes.
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