Literature as Philosophy in Motion

Last year, I came across a browser page on Tolstoy and Doestoevsky
and Existentialism. It said that "Literature is Philosophy in motion."


I was helping a student on line today with questions on North Korea
and also Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I saved and edited the dialogue because it touches on some
interesting ideas.

I made some comments about the novel "Babbitt" by Sinclair Lewis.
Below are a few excerpts. The entire dialogue is at:

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/page025.htm

The Swing of the Pendulum

(excerpts)

In a way, the history of the whole world is about empowerment of the
oppressed; slaves being liberated, women geting the vote, free
education for all, religious freedom of worship, free speech,
everybody having a vote, freedom of press.....


I just now remembered Thoreau's words, "Most men lead lives of quiet
desperation."


I found the sparknotes summary for Babbitt.


Babbitt seeks to expose the hypocrisy and emptiness underlying
middle-class life.

Think about this thought I just had, namely, that all of history is like a
constantly swinging pendulum, swinging back and forth between
various opposites; between wealth and poverty, war and peace,
conservative and liberal, debaucherry and strict morality, religious
fervor and atheism..


The people made strong say by slavery, or poverty, or suffering, or the
challenge of pioneering, well, they effect some big change. But then
the next generation, which is has it easy, in affluence, or peace and
safety, why, they loose that pioneering super-hero spirit. They
become flabby.

There is never any end, never any peace, never any balance or
equilibrium where the pendulum stops swinging......
We are always struggling and fighting for peace, prosperity, freedom,
morality.... but we never achieve peace, we are never free, we never
eliminate poverty.... we are never collectively moral.

We are ever driven by a pendulum and illusion.

Babbitt acknowledges and embraces the possibility that future
generations might find a way out of the hollow morass middle-class
society had become.

If you watch those 1950 programs like Ozzie & Harriet and Leave it to
Beaver... it is a false Babbitt-like representation of human life, of
happiness and morality.... something which we would have liked to
believe, to convince ourselvse of... except it was false, phoney, a lie,
and not the way things really are in life or families.

In my pendulum example .... it is only under suffering and adversity
and a people develop courage and character to seek revolution and
reform.... but the peace and prosperity of that reform and freedom
leads to a weak character, to decadence, and to decay and
corruption.... so the cycle repeats all over again.
The extreme reaction of the privileged to hollowness, Babbitt
proclaims, is hollowness.

Babbitt is first and foremost a parody of post-World War I middle-class
American culture. The name of the town, Zenith, implies that Babbitt's
community views itself as the highest point of American civilization.
The Babbitts' marriage, like their house, is mostly appearance with
little substance. Their morning conversation has a feeling of
monotony; while there might have been genuine feeling in it at one
time, it is now an empty routine carried out for the sake of creating
the appearance of married contentment.

Despite all of Babbitt's failings, it is important to remember that he is
the product of a culture that exerts great pressure to conform. He is
not evil, nor is he entirely insensitive.

Each of us is a product of our culture and our times.
The Novel, Babbitt, makes the point that middle-class values actually
discourage real human relationships. Instead, it encourages people to
become carbon copies of one another, much like the industrial
economy produces standardized, mass-produced material objects.

Babbitt and his friends live mechanical, dull, conventional lives as if
they were robots instead of human beings.


You have heard of the Quakers and the Shakers.... (and the Shakers
made great furniture).... well... the Shakers in this country had
COMMUNES , farms where everyone worked in common.

All of Europe was amazed at the economic success of the Shaker
communes.... including Marx and Engels who started the communist
movement....

You see how strangely things work... the Shakers never thought about
the unusual influence they had half way around the world.... and a
century later...

Just as an example of how..... what we do... what we say... can have
unexpected long range results....

Sometimes good with results... sometimes bad results.....
Lets look at REALLY long range cause and effect....

I mean... Judaism had become corrupt in a way.... and Jesus was like a
reformer...

May be Jesus didnt know what the church would be like... and the
middle ages.... and then the Roman Catholic corruption.. and the
Protestant reform...

But... long story short... that leads to a little group called Shakers...
who inspire Marx and Engels... which leads to communism... and North
Korea

Thank you for sharing the link, Sitaram - how interesting. I, too, have reflected on the subject of philosophy incorporated into fiction; some of the epic stories and poems, such as those by Homer, Ovid, Virgil, Seneca, Terence, Dante, and many more, can show the most blatant of included philosophy. Almost any piece of fiction, I think, contains an author's aspects of philosophy, ethics probably seeming the most common; some fiction authors who distinguish themselves in my mind: Leo Tolstoy, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), D.H. Lawrence, Giovanni Boccaccio, and, of course, Jean-Paul Sartre.