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The Meaning of Life
Can you hear me all right at the back? Is that all right? Well, about a year ago Iwrote this extraordinarily cheap and remarkably attractive book called “The Meaning Of Life”, which you’ll be delighted to hear, is coming out in paperback in April.So, it is even more cheapthan it used to be.
You might think of course, that is rather a general topic to write about,particularly for an academic. Academics are supposed to write about very specialized areas. In fact, when I was a student in Cambridge in the 1990’s…No, that’s a lie. Actually it was the 1960’s.One of my hobbies, one of my pass times was reading a very very thick book, in which all of the titles of the doctoral, the PGD thesis being conducted in Cambridge,were listed in all the different faculties.
I used to have a great pleasure at just the share of pedantry, the share of pedantic nature of these titles. My favorite was a title that read:“Some Aspects of the Vaginal System of the Flea”.
You need good eye sight for that kind of work. I like that, nothing too ambitious. It’s a very modest English kind of understatement. Leave something to posterity: “Some Aspects of the Vaginal System of the Flee”. Well, this is a bit different, it is a bit wider and it’s concerned…One of the problems of writing books with titles like this,“Monty Pytonesque” titles, is that you get an enormous number of letters from mad people.
All my life I’ve had letters from mad people. You can usually identify them, because of this strain… All mad people have the same handwriting. I don’t know whether they are told this in certain institutions, but they all have the same rather crazed handwriting on the letter, on the envelope. And they usually include very complex symbolic diagrams: earth, air, angels, devils… But to my dismay, I haven’t had a single crazy letter since writing this book. So please, do send in crazy letters with symbolic diagrams, I just love to have them.
The meaning of life is such an enormous question, so fundamental a question that it’s funny,it is comic.It’s somomentous as to be comic, but it’s not the most fundamental question one can ask. Actually there’s an even more fundamental question, which I will tell you for a small fee after this lecture, later on.
No,that’s alright, I’ll tell you now. It is a famous question asked by various philosophers likeAnselm. So that’s the question: why is there anything at all? Rather than just nothing. How come anything? It’s hard to get a question more fundamental than that. Some philosophers think that that’s a valid question, and others think that it’s not a valid question. Similarly, with the question “what is the meaning of life?”. Is that a valid question? What are we doing in asking that question?
There are philosophers who some people think are so deep as to be meaningless. Martin Heidegger, for example.I don’t think that about Heidegger, but some people would say that Heideggeris so deep as to be meaningless.Is that true of this question? What of the idea that there is no meaning of life, and that that’s an excellent think? That is a good think. Why?Because it allows us to create our own meanings, there’s no given meaning to life, some people will argue, and that frees us to make whatever meanings we want. In other words,“meaninglessness” is good for you. Some people would believe that.
But the trouble with the phrase, the question “what is the meaning of life?”, is that I think almost every word including “is”,”the” and “of”,is problematical , is difficult. Let me just go through the question as pedantically as I can, and show you what I mean. First of all, what is the meaning of life? Well, you know for some people, it might be a who, yes? God, for example, in my case Kate Winsletis the meaning of life.
Don’t let this go beyond these four walls. Don’t tell anybody about that,but she for me is the meaning of life. Not long ago some people thought that Hitler was the meaning of life. It can’t be a person, admittedly God is not a person in the same sense that Dick Cheney is arguably a person, but in some extended sense that he or she is. What is the meaning of life? Well, some people might say it should be what ought to be. I mean, is the meaning of life something that we have given here or now, or is it something…Is it a project? Is it something that we strive for? As when we say, what is the purpose of life?It implies it’s a goalthat westrive in towards? Is it something to be achievedrather than just passively discovered or accepted?
What is “the” meaning of life?Well clearly that’s difficult. That little “the” is very difficult, because it implies that there is only one meaning of life and why should we believe that?You know?What if there are as many meanings as there are persons.
A liberal pluralist or a postmodern pluralist would typically argue that life’s meanings disseminate all over the place. There might it be a lot of little meanings, rather than one big meaning. I’ll come back to that, in a moment . The meaning oflife , now what kind of “of” is that?Is that what we call a possessive “of” , meaning a meaning that life has, could life for example have a meaning , which we might never discover, which none of us might ever discover?Would that be logically possible? Could life have a meaning independently of what we make it ?Could there be a meaning but we don’t and maybe can’t know what it is?All of these questions are possible. And then finally…And for example could we all be wrong about the meaning of life? Is that possible?
That there’s a meaning of life but nobody has found out what it is, and we’ve all been wrong in our various interpretations. Finally the meaning of life, wellthe word life again is very problematical, isn’t it? Because some people might say: -look, there isn’t a single thing called life which could have a single meaning or even five or six different meanings , just as you couldn’t say that there’s something called furniture which has a single colour or a single texture. So, the word life is just an abstraction from very very different individual existences and they couldn’t all have the same meaning, ok?
What about this idea that there are many different meanings around the place and therefore they must all stack up to one big meaning. Maybe here as Wittgenstein might say …. We’ve just been prisoners of a metaphor, you know? It’s “the house of cards” metaphor that maybe there are all of these different cards or meanings stuck on top of the other and they need a firm foundation if they are not to tuple over.But somebody might say: well that’s just ametaphor. To get yourself out of that problem just change the metaphor, maybe, yes? And again to revert to a question I’ve just raised, when things have inherent meanings built into them in the sense that jelly beans have colours and children have measles. Is meaning something we just get up to with things?
Ultimately writesFriedrichNietzsche: “Man finds in things nothing but what himself has imported into them”. Is that true? It is true that we sort of take out with one hand what we’ve put in with the other? And isn’t there something slightly futile or circular about that? Behind this argument there’s an interesting theological argument, and I’ll show you theological arguments can be interesting , can even be exciting . It went on during the middle ages between people who were known as realists and people who were known as nominalists . Nominalists in the middle ages believed that things couldn’t have inherent meanings or natures or essences because if they did that would limit the power of God , if God really is to be omnipotent he can’t be restrained, he can’t be limited by the universe that he has created. That would be, that would constitute a break on god’s own liberty . Against that case there’s a realist case advanced by people like ThomasAcquinas for example, which really argues that things really do have inherent meanings and values and natures or essences and God has to respect them.
God is to some degree limited by the nature of his universe. God can’t just arbitrarily decide that two and to equals five . Rene Decart thought he could. Yeah? Because in this matter Descartes was a nominalist . God can’t decide that two one two or five, why not? Because two and two don’t equal five . And that’s as true for God as it is for us. In other words God isn’t an arbitrary tyrant a kind of whimsicalpop star type of creature which every win has to be obeyed and who could certainly just decide that I’m a toffee apple or something , you know? This isn’t possible, all right? God must respect the texture the nature, the grain of the universe that he created even if he is presumably very likely he now bitterly regrets having created it, in first place. And wishes he calls the whole thing off, you know a long time ago. And wish he hadworked ona much less ambitious project. It’s a question of whether God condemns murder because murder is wicked , or whether murder is wicked because God condemns it. Whether in fact God might have condemned not torturing each other in a different kind of universe. That would be an absolute freedom on God’s part.
Anyway I will leave that medieval argument but only to point out that post-modern anti- essentialism has a long and not terribly reputable history,yes? In the middle ages anti-essentialism is a way of preserving the arbitrary and possible tyrannical part of God. Anyway in this book in this extraordinary remarkable and cheap book, I do actually I do conclude that what is the meaning of life is a crucial question, is a genuine question largely because i wouldn’t take my publisher’s advance if Ihad concluded differently.
But I do think it is. There are lots of questions that look genuine on the surface and they turn out not to be. I mean grammatically , “what is the meaning of life?” sounds as perfectly coherent, perfectly in order but it might turn out to be a question like what is the taste of arithmetic’s or what is the color of geometry. As Wittgenstein would say we could be bewitched by our grammar into believing in entities or questions or propositions that don’t really make sense. Think of the lot of the way we’ve talked about soul language, the language of the soul, you know? “Where in the body is the soul?”, makes the soul sound like the kidneys, you know? Like a kind of invisible pair of kidneys , you know?That whole is perfectly coherent grammatically but actually it conceals a certain deceptiveness on grammar kind of Wittgenstein bewitches into various kinds of mystified ways of think. Well I conclude as I say that the meaning of the question “what is the meaning of life?” is not actually that kind of question , though I do think it’s interesting to reflect that there might be a meaning to life , that we might never discover as I said before or more to the point that we are not even, in a sense meant to discover, and I mean maybe there’s a meaning to life which must necessarily remain mysterious or impenetrable or enigmatic to us if we are to survive at all and I say that because something like that, of course, is a very modern way of thinking , a way of thinking that comes into existence you might say with late modernity, with people like Marx and Freud, and before them with Arthur Schopenhauer .
Schopenhauer the most gloomy philosopher who probably has ever written. So pessimistic he is hilariously funny without actually intending to be. There’s something very funny about unrelieved gloom , anyway Schopenhauer is that kind of thinker, and for Schopenhauer at the very core of ourselves , at the very core of our identities there lies something that is monstrously alien to us. There’s a long modern tradition of believing that in the core of the self there is something which is absolutely impersonal, whether you call it “Geist” or history or language or structure or the unconscious or the real, the debate is not weather that exists , lots of modern thinkers think that the roots of identity are deeply impersonal . The question is very often, weather this thing at the center of ourselves, which makes us what we are yet which in another sense is entirely alien to us, whether this thing is friendly or unfriendly .
Now somebody like Thomas Aquinas believes that that thing which is closer to me as he says than I am to myself has the name of God, and of course for Acquinas that’s a friendly thing what makes me for Acquaines in a paradoxically way, what makes me free and independent what brings me to my own autonomous existence is exactly my dependence on god. Is the one’s dependence on God which frees us to one’s ownselfhood.
For someone like Hegel is also something friendly, but with Schopenhauer it isn’t .He calls it the will and it’s avaricious ruthless, malicious, implacable force, which uses us for it’s own selfish purposes and then just tosses us aside like so much garbage. Freud is very influenced by Schopenhauer and Freud will call that will the death drive ….For Freud is what makes us what we are, yes? That theme, now the fact the only reason life goes on for Schopenhauer is that we don’t know about this will. He happens to know about it, you know? Because he’s a philosopher but , you know? Just as Hegel thought with great modesty that history and thought had culminated inside his own head,yes? That was one of the many ends that history the modern age has proclaimed .
Putting an end to history is a very historical thing to do, you know? There’s a just as there’s a long tradition of breaking with history. The avant-garde always thinks he can just wipe history out and start from nothing create ex-nihilo, there’s a long history of doing that.
The word modern comes to us from antiquity, “modernous”. Anyway that’s another paper I’ve just strived into.For Schopenhauer the only saving grace of life is that we don’t know about this will, because there’s something called consciousness which the will breeds in us to persuade us cunningly that we are in charge of our own destinies.But actually we are not, ok? Similarly, for Nietzsche if we were only aware for a moment of the blood and violence and squalor and misery and which belong to the history, and which are gone into our making if we were aware of that, we would be paralyzed and we would be unable to act.
Therefore, for Nietzsche as for Freud at the very center of the self there is a necessary amnesia. And the oblivion of many of the forces which went into our making, because without that the human subject, the human agent couldn’t work.
The message of what the modern age is repression is good for you. Repression is good for you, right? It’s only by certain salutary, a certain salutary a certain saving repression that we can work at all. That directly contradicts the old, what you might call the old libertarian model, yes? Which is that there’s something wonderfully creative inside here struggling to get out. In my case that’s true actually, you know? Struggling to get out,and the only problem is that something out there call it history or patriarchy or class or colonialism or whatever is stopping it from emerging.
It’s a very naïve idea isn’t it, you know? If that was so, this impulse almost certainly would have broken explosively through whatever is there stopping it. It is of course the fact that in that sense I’m my own worst enemy that the chains of the oppression aren’t here what Freud calls the super ego but it has many different names, that’s why liberation is so exhausting and difficult a task because it requires that most extraordinary hardemancipation to free ourselves from ourselves, yes? And that’s of course very difficult.
Anyway, for Freud in this tradition of modernity, the scandal of human life is not sexuality and not even infantile sexuality lots of people have known about that, you know? Novelist infants, for example. Now, you were supposed to laugh but it doesn’t matter,ok? Maybe it’s the translation.
That’s not a scandal, you know? The scandal is that much of what went into our making must be repressed for us simply to be the speaking living walking talking subjects that we are and that repression is not of course,once and for all , you know? It’s not some original fall from grace it is a permanent ceaseless process that will scar the human “psyque” from within. And this is why, the human animal can define us, the speaking animal or the laughing animal but very significantly after Freud, the neurotic animal. It is our sickness which makes us, which is the other side of our creativity.
Is it our repression what makes us what we are and of course there is a long story in human history of that. It is known as the story of the fortunate fall the“Felix Culpa”. The fall of course happened, but it was a fall up and not down, you know? It was a fall up from the innocence of our “creaturliness” up into history, culture, language, politics and so on,yes? And that’s an enormous emancipation and it carries out the part which can bring ourselves to nothing as Adam does in the garden.
What is being said then, by the series of modern thinkers is this extraordinarily scandalous idea: what if consciousness was always false consciousness?What if false consciousness were not simply states of mind we fall in to occasionally .
But what if consciousness is inherently falsifying?As it is for Nietzsche and for Schopenhauer and for many other modern thinkers. Marx has a slightly different view of this, I thought you would expect me to mention him at least once so there it is, you know?
Pretty painless.I promise not to do it again For Marx of course…Marx says famously: “all the most important social processes go on behind the backs of the agents concerned” . That’s not particularly about false consciousness, it’s just the way things are to a certain extend. The complex social processes that we engage in can’t every moment be transparent to us.
Whereas to act significantly there’s a lot to which be blinded, you know? Just as for us to be egos there must be… ego must be put in place by an unconscious which is structurally shot out by ego. That shootting out is necessary for this sense for this whole tradition many of the most important developments forces processes by definition fall outside the range of human consciousness.
And this results in a certain humbling of our idea of consciousness. There is in the modern age in particular,it is an old idea but it come to the fore in the modern age and it is the idea of some sort of saving illusion or oblivion you have this again in Nietzsche, some veil which conceals the dreadful Dionysian a beast which is behind it.
Although for some thinkers what the vale is concealing is just the fact that there’s nothing behind it, that it’s simple absence. After this theory a very modern idea: the truth is deadly and destructive as it often is said the drama of Henry Ibsen that truth is destructive, the truth is a medusa’s head which will turn us to stone and will perish by it.
The truth is that which we will perish by unless there is some salutary intervention of some kind of fiction, yes? Some fiction which will save us from this. Is the mark of radical thought instantly that the truth is usually assumed to be unpleasant, yes? A difference between radicals and others is that we suspect that the truth is normally pretty unpleasant whereas…other people around the place who think basically everything is ok. The different, I think the crucial political difference between people these days between people in general is between is not so much between if they are let’s say left or right or conservative and socialist but people who think that basically, with few horrendous exceptions, everything is getting better and those of us who think it’s a pernicious illusion and that things are very bad indeed.
The first set of people is known among others as Americans I just gave a talk about a week ago at a very liberal university in the USA and I talked about terrorism and groups that kidnapped and torture and murder people for their squalid political ends, and I said: for example the CIA . And there was not a single murmur from this impeccably liberal Obama Hilary Clinton supporting . Why? Not necessarily because they didn’t agree but as in Germany a few years ago, they didn’t dare. They didn’t dare to show agreement in public.
What if the meaning of life was not as we sometimes think about it something that’s very enigmatic and allusive and sort of hidden, but is something so obvious, so glaringly obvious that we simply overlook it, you know? Like The old example of the name of the country on a map in such large letters that we don’t notice it.
Nothing is hidden said Wittgenstein, everything is open to you. Is that true?What did he mean by that? What if the secret of life wasn’t some sort of, the meaning of life wasn’t some kind of buried secret that life has? But was for example a certain way of living?
What if the meaning of life was a certain way of living?.A certain kind of practice? think for example of the new testament on point Mathew sets up the vision of Christ arriving on clouds of glory and uses a lot of kind of standard old testament imagery here , you know? Trumpets and angels and so on . And what happens?
In a marvellous literary device, he very deliberately deflates the whole grandiose old testament imagery in the figure that we call bathos from the sublime if not the ridiculous to the very very prosaic, because the test of salvation of course, turns out to be not some celebrating some special cult or ritual as you all says is the old testament with sacrifices.But instead what you are doing about the poor, what you are doing about the immigrants, are you protecting the widows and the orphans from the violence of the rich .
Jesus who continues that tradition, turns out very disappointingly boring and prosaic because salvation isabout giving somebody a cup of water, you know?Or visiting them when they are in prison or sick. I mean nothing grand about it at all. Is whatFreud would call dis-sublimation the sublime is brought down to the prosaic and as Charles Taylor has argued Christianity or more properly Judeo-Christianity I mean Jesus is nothing if not a Jewinvents the concept of everyday life. The idea that everyday life is where everything is decided, you know? And not in some special realm on beyond it is a revolutionary idea.
Certainly you don’t find that in the literature or the epic and pastoral and tragedy andand so on. The locus of transcendence is imminence, is here and now. All very ethical, all very material all very Judaic, you know?
I’ll contrast that with the , with what today often goes beyond the name of spirituality makes me think with all of this Madonna and the cabala and all that you know? I must here make a confession to you which I hope it won’t go outside these four walls perhaps you can just switch the camera off for a moment which is that I am, don’t tell this to anybody, yes? But I once slept in Madonna’s bed she wasn’t in it herself. Perhaps she hadn’t been in it for about ten years I’m afraid but I used to know a dancer in new york who was Madonna’s flatmate long before Madonna was Madonna and when I stayed with her in that house I slept in Madonna’s bed.
I thought you might like to know that. For people who have likesortof 90 houses and an inconceivable amount of money the spiritual is not of course anything practical and mundane. It’s exactly the opposite of that. That’s what they’re trying to get away from. THE spiritual is whatever is the opposite to their agents of managers and minders and bodyguards and lawyers and so on .
That’s why people who are in every other way completely and ruthlessly“disworldly” but who’ll driven insane by celebrity and adulation. Believe that events on earth are controlled by a spaceship behind the cloud or something like that, they wouldn’t believe that if they only had 38 pounds on the bag.
Nobody is as otherworldly as the worldly. A credulous superstition. They have a pathetic ability to believe anything at all is just the other side, is just a flip side of that crash materialism.
Instantly all radicals I take it, there are 2 things about radicals, one is you always know a radical by the fact that he or she is a traditionalist. As Trotsky said: “We radicals have always lived in tradition”. It’s not our tradition are their traditions. So we create the value of tradition and the other distinguishing remarkable distinction is their otherworldliness.
Anybody who doesn’t believe in otherworldliness hasn’t been reading the newspapers.They really think this world is allthere is.That there’s no need to transform it. So the extremely rich and powerful are fantasists to the core. Marx, I mention him again, Marx saw that money was kind of fantasy basically. Shakespeare believes that, too.
Think of those kind of so-called hard headed pragmatists, who behave as thou the world bank and chocolate chip cookies, and Britney Spears will always be with us. Thank god they won’t be at least in the case if some of those things.
Those with their heads really stuck in the sand , those real… the fantasisits , those who flee from reality are those who think that this, given a tweak or two is about as good as it can get. The idea, they reject the idea that things might be a great deal better than they are. No Utopianism, no fantasy , straight realism . Since realism is the basis of all ethical and political virtue , it’s about trying to see the situation as it is , a tremendously hard thing to do given the illusions that are endemic to us , but trying to see the situation as it is, is the basis of all the ethical and political virtues. To be a fantasist of power is to miss that point. People who think that this is more or less as good as you will ever get , the Toni Blair office world , for example.
There’s a character in Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters” who says “everything must have a meaning”. And another character says :“look out at the window it’s snowing, what is the meaning of that?”.This person expects things to have an inherent meaning, maybe somehow symbolic but some people would argue, that expecting things to have inherent meanings, to have meanings built into them and then feeling terribly despondent when you discover they don’t , is a bit like say expecting to be born wearing a small wooden hat and you won’t because you aren’t. People would say well there’s nothing tragic here, nothing to be anguished about , it’s just isn’t the case that babies are born with small wooden hats on their heads.
No need to feel down in the mouth about it, we haven’t lost anything .It’s just the way things are, why are you getting so worked up about it? This is what a certain kind of postmodernist would say to somebody who seems to believe that things have inherent meanings .
You shouldn’t expect things to have meanings built into them for a certain kind of post-modernist view life is just one of those things like snow, or cornflakes, or Britney spears , for example.Just as the American philosopher Richard Rorty would say, don’t scratch where it doesn’t itch. Don’t get worked up about pseudo-problems about things having built in meanings.
Now, contrast that with modernism, high modernism. Modernism isold enough to remember a time, or so it believes, when there were things like identity reality truth foundations and so on and it’s still mournful , it’s still nostalgic for the passing of those things. It’s old enough to remember things when they existed but it’s also where of the crumbling around it.
The eclipse of meaning , the disappearance of built in meaning is felt by high modernism to be a kind of scandal, an anguish a melancholia a source of melancholy .
And tragedy often springs I think from transitional periods where what can still remember, what the memory of a given order is still active but where you feel it increasingly crumbling, I think Shakespeare is probably a good example of that kind of transitional tragedy.
But notice here that the experience of meaninglessness or absurdity presupposes some idea of meaning. In other words, you couldn’t complaint that life was utterly absurd unless you have some idea of the non-absurd to compare it by. Life couldn’t be absurd all the way through because then you would have no criteria of meaning or value by which to make that judgement .
Just as if you have a situation in a human condition in which there was absolutely nothing but suffering as Schopenhauer believes, then it wouldn’t actually be tragic because tragedy depends upon a sense of value. Tragedy depends upon that suffering is afflicting people or situations that are somehow valuable. We would have no normativestate of affairs by which to measure that suffering. Samuel Beckett, the drama of Samuel Beckett arguably is approaching that post-tragic situation.
On the other hand, post modernism as compared to what I’ve just been talking about , the typical modernist work of art has a reveals a kind of absence a gap or hole something , something is missing , something is mournful , something, some truth is still in a shadowy way there , but every time you look at it straight it vanishes like the character in Eliot’s “wasteland” who seems to walk beside you, but every time you look at him he vanishes . Post modernism by contrast thinks that this is just, that your sense of having lost something is actually bogus. Because there was never something there in the first place.
Post modernism is too young and brush to remember a time where there seem to be truth and it’s utterly without nostalgia, unless the nostalgia is ironic. It just takes the kind of anguished modernists aside and says in a kind of Californian way: It’s ok. Just cool it. Don’t worry. For them is just that things like truth or identity or reality or foundations never even existed. Any more than the tooth fairy exists. Oh, I’m sorry if anybody does believe in the tooth fairy , I’m very sorry to ruin your illusions.
Maybe one problem with the meaning of life is that with modernity is not that there’s too little meaning around, but that there’s too much. There’s a kind of surface of meaning of interpretations in the modern period. There are just too many conflicting versions of say the good life, of what constitutes the good life around the place and the extraordinary thing is that we probably have to settle for the fact that we will never agree even on fundamentals.
That would have struck many an ancient or medieval thinkersas almost unintelligible. That we can’t even agree on fundamentals, you might have thought that we could agree on fundamentals but then we vary on particulars. No. Not at all. Modernity is defined by an absolute conflict of opinions even on fundamental issues. Almost nobody believes that roasting innocent people over fires is a good thing to do. That it’s a good hobby, a way of passing your time. Only a few seriously weird people believe that. They are hiding in caves around the place. But we don’t agree on why we agree on that . There is fundamental disagreement on why we agree on that fact. And it could well be that we will never actually resolve those conflicts. The price of a liberal society is it’s lack of consensus and that is ideologically worrying to the powers that be, and the result of that can be real conflict so that civilisation in a sense of a free play of ideas can lead to barbarism. It can lead to those conflicts breaking out in a much more bloody way.
You might say how can there be a single meaning of life, in the sense that absolutely everything , you know from Hilary Clinton to the Grand Canyon , absolutely everything is stuck up into a single meaning. They are all part of the same narrative, I mean not even an individual life is that, it would be implausible that even individual life is stuck up to a single story.
Some people see a shape to their lives , a meaningful pattern but we must remember that meaningful patterns are very close to paranoia. Paranoia being among other things a condition in which we compulsively seek connections between everything and as Freud commented the nearest thing to paranoia is philosophy. And also philosophers, particularly “Hegelian” philosophers. So, do we have to conclude then that life is what we make it?
There’s a profound philosophical statement for you: life is what you make it. No I don’t think so, any more than a poem is just what you make it. Don’t think meaning canjust be individualist in that sort of way. This if you like, is what one might call an altruist theory of meaning, a sort of pick and mix theory of meaning . We just cobble together whatever meanings as individuals we find significant.
But for one thing this ignores the way that we are constrained by what Marx calls our species being. Our creaturely material existence as animals, whatever else human beings are they are in arethe first place natural material objects. And anything more interesting than that they can get up to, must go on within that situation.
Human beings are extraordinarily finite and limited and precarious and vulnerable and frail creatures and any ethics or politics which doesn’t have a secret compact with that, which doesn’t understand that, is not likely to endure.
One of the most destructive aspects of the American society is it doesn’t secretly believe that , it doesn’t believe that the only enduring power is one which is on the basis of a compact with failure and frailty. In the United States nothings is worse than being a looser therefore the American dream is a perniciously anti-material fantasy, that believes that human beings can in a Faustian way continue to develop infinitely and without end the result of that, is of course, the fall, that’s what Adam and Eve believed and the result is that you overreach yourself in a kind of heuristic movement as the united states is presently doing in Irak and Afganistan and you risk bringing yourself to nothing . The human animal is the animal who can develop too fast and who can loose its roots and its own “creatureliness” and its own “bodilyness”.
So any authentic ethics or politics in my view has to root itself in that realistic awareness of our extreme limitations. Let me just finish by saying , you’ve listened to all this very patiently and you’re a delightful audience but of course you didn’t come here just to hear all this philosophical stuff, you came here to know the meaning of life.
Well it’s all there really. However I hope I don’t in this book just cope out, I do of course what philosophers always infuriating they do, they don’t answer questions, they analyse them.
A lot in this book also consists of analyse the question whether it makes sense, however I try not to cope out and I try to give a few answers as well. Which philosophers don’t normally do. But I’m not a philosopher actually so maybe that’s why I did it. And I consider various candidates for the role of meaning of life. Two of them which have been historically more persuasive are happiness and love. One of the problems of both of them being of course that they are both desperately ambiguous and obscure concepts, that’s why we need a special language called moral philosophy in order to investigate what counts as there things, what counts as happiness or love in a particular situation .
I don’t know about in Spanish or in Catalan but in English the word happiness has a very feeble kind of ring, it reminds one of those kind of people in straight jacket at holiday camps with glaze grins on their faces cavorting around , the word happiness is a very feeble word . A much better word of course is Aristotle’s word for happiness: Eudemonia .Although in English sounds a bit like a disease which means something like self-realization , self-fulfilment . For a long tradition from Aristotle to Thomas Acquinas to Marx the whole point about morality is it’s about enjoying yourself .It’s about fullness of life energy , spirits vitality self-fulfilment , self-realization. Only in the modem époque you get this disastrous idea following largely from Immanuel Kant: “ if it feels pleasant , it can’t be good for you”. It’s a disastrous puritan idea. Morality as for the new testament is about abundance of life not about repression or denial.
Of course we sometimes have to sacrifice and deny ourselves but we do it in the name of greater and deeper happiness for more peoplethat’s called being a martyr. A martyr is somebody who gives up his or her live not because they think it’s worthless , that’s being a suicide, but because they think it’s very precious but there’s something even more precious which is the greater happiness of more people .
That’s the meaning of the crucifixion if you like, it’s not the idea that self-denial is an end in itself, the difficulty with love of course as Heidiger says is that our ideas of love are so caught up with romantic and erotic traditions that we’ve lost almost entirely the new testament sense of love as “Agape” the definitive case of love is of course love for a stranger .Anybody can love a friend , it’s love for a stranger and indeed love for an enemy is the definitive case of love . Love has nothing to do with feeling lovely , nothing to do with cosy, warm in fact it has nothing to do with sentiments at all , it has to do with how you behave .
One of the problems in saying that love and happiness are quite persuasive candidates for the meaning of life is that they are not always compatible .Love might lead you to have to sacrifice some of your happiness caring for a sick relative or something of the kind there is a kind ofwasure which is common to the Judeo -Christian tradition and to the socialist tradition that in the end they converge. But the end is a long time coming .
I don’t know if those are the answers to the meaning of life, there are certainly more convincing answers like power or sex or drinking as much whisky as its compatible with still crawling or indeed working in the Oxford library.
When I was a tutor in Oxford I had a veryvery conservative student who I asked him when he was graduating, what he was going to do?and he said he wanted to become an Anglican priest , but he said he wanted to have first some experience with life so he was going to take a job at the Bodleian library . Probably he is still there. The book ends by revealing the meaning of life. And I’m allowed, here and now in Barcelona in the early days of Februaryin 2008, to revealto you what it is. It says in the end that the meaning of life is a jazz band , what do i mean by that? Well, I’m terribly sorry I’ve just come to the end of my time you’ll just have to buy the book .
| Translation - Spanish
SUBTÍTOLS
El sentit de la vida
00:00:04:15 00:00:06:03 Em sentiu bé al fons?
00:00:06:06 00:00:07:16 Em sentiu?
00:00:10:01 00:00:15:01 Fa un any vaig escriure aquest llibre
tan econòmic i interessant
00:00:18:04 00:00:20:23 titulat "El sentit de la vida"
i us encantarà saber
00:00:21:08 00:00:23:13 que surt en edició de butxaca a l'abril,
00:00:23:22 00:00:26:14 així que encara serà més econòmic.
00:00:27:23 00:00:32:20 Potser pensareu
que he triat un tema molt general,
00:00:34:00 00:00:35:00 especialment venint d'un teòric.
00:00:35:14 00:00:40:04 Se suposa que els teòrics
han d'escriure sobre temes especialitzats.
00:00:40:20 00:00:45:12 De fet quan estudiava a Cambridge,
durant els anys noranta...
00:00:46:07 00:00:48:10 No, és broma.
Eren els anys seixanta.
00:00:52:08 00:00:55:03 Un dels meus passatemps,
00:00:55:13 00:01:02:13 era llegir un llibre molt gruixut
on hi havia totes les tesis
00:01:03:09 00:01:07:20 que es feien a Cambridge,
en diferents facultats.
00:01:08:15 00:01:15:15 Vaig gaudir molt de la pedanteria
d'aquests títols.
00:01:16:14 00:01:17:14 El meu preferit era:
00:01:18:11 00:01:23:19 "Alguns aspectes
del sistema vaginal de la puça".
00:01:28:20 00:01:30:24 Has te tenir bona vista
per fer un treball com aquest.
00:01:31:12 00:01:36:00 M'agraden aquests temes,
no són gens ambiciosos,
00:01:38:00 00:01:43:04 només una descripció ben modesta,
deixar alguna cosa per la posteritat.
00:01:44:07 00:01:46:03 "Alguns aspectes
del sistema vaginal de la puça".
00:01:46:23 00:01:49:06 Això és una mica diferent,
una mica més ampli.
00:01:51:10 00:01:56:13 Quan escrius llibres com aquest,
a l'estil "Monty Python",
00:01:58:10 00:02:03:13 reps moltes cartes de gent boja.
00:02:06:18 00:02:08:19 Tota la vida n'he rebut.
00:02:10:16 00:02:15:21 Les identifiques
perquè totes tenen el mateix estil.
00:02:16:15 00:02:19:19 No sé si els ho ensenyen al manicomi,
00:02:21:02 00:02:25:04 però sempre hi ha la mateixa lletra
al sobre.
00:02:26:06 00:02:30:06 Normalment, hi inclouen
elements simbòlics
00:02:31:02 00:02:34:02 com la terra, l'aire, àngels o dimonis,
00:02:34:19 00:02:38:19 però lamentablement
no n'he rebut cap
00:02:39:15 00:02:40:19 des de que he escrit aquest llibre.
00:02:41:01 00:02:43:22 Així que, si us plau,
envieu-me'n
00:02:45:02 00:02:47:13 amb símbols i tot
que m'encanten.
00:02:50:02 00:02:53:09 El sentit de la vida
és una qüestió tan immensa,
00:02:53:21 00:02:55:18 una qüestió tan fonamental
00:02:56:11 00:02:59:06 que és divertida,
és còmica.
00:03:00:01 00:03:03:12 És tan transcendental,
que és còmica.
00:03:04:12 00:03:08:10 Però no és la pregunta més fonamental
que ens podem fer,
00:03:08:19 00:03:11:05 encara n'hi ha una altra
que n'és més.
00:03:12:02 00:03:16:14 Us la diré a canvi d'un petit xec
després de la conferència.
00:03:17:01 00:03:18:14 No, us la diré ara.
00:03:19:23 00:03:24:06 És una pregunta famosa
que s'han fet varis filòsofs com Anselm
00:03:24:16 00:03:30:12 i és: "per què existeix res?"
Podria no haver-hi res.
00:03:31:15 00:03:32:22 Per què existeixen les coses?
00:03:34:04 00:03:37:00 És difícil trobar una pregunta
més fonamental que aquesta.
00:03:37:14 00:03:40:18 Alguns filòsofs pensen
que és una pregunta vàlida
00:03:41:03 00:03:43:02 i d'altres pensen que no ho és.
00:03:44:09 00:03:47:12 El mateix passa amb
"quin és el sentit de la vida?"
00:03:47:24 00:03:52:11 És una pregunta vàlida?
Què fem en preguntar-nos això?
00:03:53:05 00:03:58:20 Hi ha filòsofs
que són tan profunds
00:03:59:08 00:04:00:18 que se'ls considera irrellevants.
00:04:02:03 00:04:04:01 En Martin Heidiger, per exemple.
00:04:04:11 00:04:06:05 Jo no ho penso això den Heidiger,
00:04:06:13 00:04:11:08 però molta gent considera que Heidiger
de tan profund és irrellevant.
00:04:11:12 00:04:14:08 Amb aquesta pregunta passa el mateix?
00:04:16:02 00:04:19:23 I si no hi hagués cap sentit a la vida?
00:04:20:17 00:04:24:17 Aquesta és una forma
de pensar excel•lent. Per què?
00:04:25:17 00:04:29:19 Perquè ens permet crear-nos
els nostres propis sentits de la vida.
00:04:30:09 00:04:33:11 Alguns creuen que no hi ha
un únic sentit de la vida
00:04:33:18 00:04:37:12 i això ens dóna llibertat
per donar-li el sentit que volem.
00:04:37:21 00:04:41:00 En altres paraules,
que no tingui sentit és bo.
00:04:42:04 00:04:43:11 Hi ha persones que pensen així.
00:04:45:21 00:04:49:09 El problema amb
"quin és el sentit de la vida?"
00:04:49:19 00:04:52:22 és que cada paraula,
00:04:53:15 00:04:57:00 incloent "és", "el" i "de"
00:04:58:01 00:05:00:03 és problemàtica,
és complicada.
00:05:00:21 00:05:04:09 Ara analitzaré la pregunta
tan pedantment com pugui.
00:05:04:09 00:05:07:23 Us mostraré a què em refereixo.
Primer de tot,
00:05:08:06 00:05:09:19 quin és el sentit de la vida?
00:05:10:21 00:05:13:16 Alguns més aviat es pregunten: "qui és?"
00:05:15:17 00:05:16:21 Déu, per exemple.
00:05:17:05 00:05:21:10 En el meu cas la Kate Winslet
és el sentit de la vida.
00:05:23:02 00:05:28:19 No ho digueu a ningú això,
però per a mi ella és el sentit de la vida.
00:05:30:15 00:05:34:01 No fa gaire alguns pensaven
que era en Hitler el sentit de la vida.
00:05:34:10 00:05:37:21 No pot ser una persona.
Déu no és una persona
00:05:38:19 00:05:43:02 en el mateix sentit en què Dick Cheney
pot considerar-se una persona.
00:05:45:09 00:05:47:10 Però en un sentit més ampli,
00:05:48:00 00:05:52:16 quin significat té la vida?
00:05:53:24 00:05:57:03 Alguns diuen
que té el que ha de tenir.
00:05:58:11 00:06:01:18 És una cosa que hem donat?
00:06:01:24 00:06:06:14 És un projecte?
És una cosa per la que lluitem?
00:06:06:24 00:06:09:23 Com quan diem:
quin és el propòsit de la vida?
00:06:10:21 00:06:13:07 Això implica que és una meta
per la que ens esforcem.
00:06:13:24 00:06:18:16 És una cosa que s'aconsegueix?
És quelcom que es descobreix?
00:06:19:05 00:06:22:23 Quin és el sentit de la vida?
00:06:23:20 00:06:26:06 Això és difícil de respondre.
Aquest petit "el"
00:06:26:16 00:06:31:05 és difícil perquè implica
que només n'hi ha un de sentit.
00:06:31:10 00:06:32:24 I perquè hauríem de creure
que això és així?
00:06:33:22 00:06:37:10 I si hi hagués
tants significats com persones?
00:06:38:20 00:06:42:04 Un pluralista liberal
o un pluralista post-modern
00:06:42:13 00:06:47:14 diria que els sentits de la vida
es disseminen per tot arreu.
00:06:47:19 00:06:51:03 Pot ser que hi hagi petits significats
en comptes d'un gran significat.
00:06:51:11 00:06:53:14 Tornaré a aquest tema
d'aquí a un moment.
00:06:54:22 00:06:58:09 El sentit de la vida.
00:06:58:22 00:07:00:07 Quina mena de "de" és aquest?
00:07:00:21 00:07:03:02 És el que anomenem
un "de" possessiu,
00:07:04:06 00:07:06:00 referint-nos a un sentit
que té la vida?
00:07:07:08 00:07:11:20 I si la vida tingués un sentit
que no poguéssim descobrir mai?
00:07:12:23 00:07:16:05 Que ningú el descobrís.
És possible això?
00:07:17:14 00:07:25:06 La vida podria tenir un sentit
independentment del que en fem?
00:07:26:13 00:07:32:08 Podria tenir un sentit
que no fóssim capaços d'esbrinar?
00:07:33:09 00:07:34:16 Totes aquestes idees són possibles.
00:07:36:01 00:07:39:18 Podria ser que tots
estiguéssim equivocats
00:07:40:11 00:07:41:04 sobre quin és el sentit de la vida?
00:07:41:09 00:07:42:03 És possible això?
00:07:43:10 00:07:46:09 Que hi hagi un sentit a la vida,
però que ningú l'hagi descobert,
00:07:46:22 00:07:49:12 que tots ens hàgim equivocat
en les diferents interpretacions.
00:07:50:02 00:07:54:23 En el sentit de la vida,
la paraula vida també és difícil.
00:07:55:13 00:07:59:14 perquè no hi ha una sola cosa
que s'anomena vida
00:07:59:24 00:08:02:07 que tingui un sol significat
00:08:02:16 00:08:05:07 o cinc o sis significats.
00:08:06:00 00:08:08:12 Igual que no podem dir
que hi ha una cosa anomenada mobiliari,
00:08:09:01 00:08:11:19 que té un sol color o una única textura.
00:08:12:04 00:08:18:14 Així que la paraula vida
representa existències individuals
00:08:18:24 00:08:21:00 i no pot ser que totes
tinguin el mateix significat.
00:08:23:21 00:08:28:10 I què us sembla la idea
que hi ha diferents significats
00:08:28:20 00:08:33:01 i per això han de provenir
tots d'un mateix gran significat.
00:08:35:17 00:08:41:15 Potser com diria Wittgenstein
som presoners d'una gran metàfora.
00:08:42:17 00:08:45:00 Com un castell de cartes
00:08:45:20 00:08:50:03 on diferents cartes
es sustenten l'una a l'altra
00:08:50:15 00:08:54:16 i necessiten una bona base
per a no caure.
00:08:55:11 00:08:58:07 Algú podria dir:
això només és una metàfora,
00:08:58:21 00:09:01:17 per solucionar aquest problema,
només has de canviar de metàfora.
00:09:03:23 00:09:06:00 Torno al tema d'abans,
00:09:06:06 00:09:10:18 ¿les coses tenen significats inherents
en sí mateixes,
00:09:11:06 00:09:14:13 de la mateixa forma
que els caramels tenen colors
00:09:15:06 00:09:16:20 i els nens
tenen el xarampió?
00:09:17:14 00:09:20:15 O el significat és una cosa
a la que arribem?
00:09:23:19 00:09:27:09 Friedrich Nietzsche diu
que l'home troba en les coses
00:09:27:16 00:09:31:02 allò que ell mateix els ha aportat.
00:09:31:23 00:09:32:14 Això és així?
00:09:33:03 00:09:36:21 És cert que extraiem amb una mà
el que hem posat amb l'altra?
00:09:37:22 00:09:40:10 Això no és una mica fútil?
00:09:42:00 00:09:46:17 Darrere d'això hi ha
un argument teològic molt interessant
00:09:47:00 00:09:48:07 i demostraré que
els arguments teològics
00:09:48:11 00:09:50:07 poden ser interessants
i fins i tot emocionants.
00:09:50:18 00:10:00:13 Va tenir lloc a l'edat mitjana,
entre els realistes i els nominalistes.
00:10:00:14 00:10:07:01 Els nominalistes creien que les coses
no podien tenir significats inherents,
00:10:07:06 00:10:13:13 natures o essències,
perquè això limitaria el poder de Déu.
00:10:14:08 00:10:18:03 Si Déu és omnipotent
no pot ser refrenat,
00:10:18:10 00:10:21:23 no pot ser limitat
per l'univers que ell ha creat.
00:10:22:09 00:10:26:13 Això impediria
la llibertat de Déu.
00:10:29:23 00:10:32:00 En contrast amb això,
tenim un exemple realista
00:10:32:08 00:10:34:11 defensat per gent com Tommaso d'Aquino,
00:10:36:11 00:10:41:04 que diu que les coses tenen significats
inherents, valors, i natura
00:10:41:11 00:10:44:20 o essències i Déu ho ha de respectar.
00:10:45:14 00:10:48:24 Déu està limitat fins a cert punt
per la natura del seu univers.
00:10:49:08 00:10:54:18 Déu no pot dir que dos i dos fan cinc.
00:10:56:16 00:11:00:18 René Descartes creia que sí que podia,
perquè en aquest aspecte
00:11:01:03 00:11:03:14 Descartes era nominalista,
però per algú com Aquino
00:11:03:15 00:11:07:19 Déu no pot decidir que dos i dos fan cinc.
Per què?
00:11:08:13 00:11:10:05 Perquè dos i dos no fan cinc.
00:11:10:16 00:11:13:00 I això és tan cert per Déu
com per nosaltres.
00:11:13:01 00:11:16:11 És a dir,
Déu no és un tirà arbitrari,
00:11:18:01 00:11:21:13 ni una celebritat capritxosa
00:11:22:06 00:11:24:12 de qui hem d'obeir cada antull
00:11:24:23 00:11:30:06 i que de cop pot decidir
que jo sóc una poma de caramel.
00:11:31:08 00:11:33:13 Això no és possible.
00:11:35:10 00:11:40:24 Déu ha de respectar la textura,
la natura de l'univers que ha creat.
00:11:41:09 00:11:47:02 Fins i tot si lamenta haver-lo creat,
cosa molt possible,
00:11:47:12 00:11:52:11 i desitja haver-ho eliminat tot
fa temps
00:11:53:04 00:11:56:05 i haver-se dedicat a fer
un projecte més senzill.
00:11:56:06 00:12:03:04 La qüestió és si Déu condemna el crim
perquè el crim és dolent,
00:12:03:21 00:12:07:11 o si el crim és dolent
perquè Déu el condemna.
00:12:08:00 00:12:13:09 Déu podria haver condemnat
el fet que no ens torturéssim,
00:12:13:23 00:12:15:14 en un altre univers.
00:12:16:06 00:12:19:01 Llavors Déu tindria
molt de temps lliure.
00:12:20:24 00:12:25:15 Deixo aquest tema medieval,
però vull comentar
00:12:26:18 00:12:28:07 que l'anti-essencialisme post-modern
00:12:28:24 00:12:32:14 té una llarga història
amb no gaire reputació.
00:12:34:03 00:12:37:00 A l'edat mitjana,
era una forma de preservar
00:12:37:00 00:12:43:01 l'arbitrarietat possiblement tirànica
de Déu.
00:12:43:22 00:12:47:00 En aquest llibre
tan sensacional i barat,
00:12:47:13 00:12:53:08 acabo dient que el sentit de la vida
00:12:53:11 00:12:57:15 és una qüestió crucial i genuïna,
00:12:58:04 00:13:00:09 perquè no hauria pogut comptar
amb la promoció dels meus editors
00:13:00:17 00:13:02:22 si no ho hagués fet.
00:13:03:05 00:13:06:06 Però penso de veritat que ho és,
hi ha altres preguntes
00:13:06:11 00:13:10:08 que semblen genuïnes al principi,
però que després no ho són.
00:13:11:12 00:13:15:16 Quin és el sentit de la vida?
Sembla una pregunta coherent,
00:13:16:00 00:13:19:06 sembla tot en ordre,
però pot acabar sent una pregunta com
00:13:19:18 00:13:24:14 ¿quin gust té l'aritmètica? o
¿de quin color és la geometria?
00:13:25:06 00:13:28:00 Com diria Wittgenstein,
podem ser embruixats
00:13:28:06 00:13:32:04 per la gramàtica i creure en entitats
00:13:32:14 00:13:35:14 o en preguntes o en frases
que no tenen sentit.
00:13:36:10 00:13:40:13 Penseu en la forma com parlem
del llenguatge de l'ànima.
00:13:43:04 00:13:45:13 Preguntar-se a quina part del cos
es troba l'ànima,
00:13:46:11 00:13:51:16 fa que l'ànima sigui com els ronyons,
com un parell de ronyons invisibles.
00:13:53:18 00:13:58:20 Tot això sembla coherent gramaticalment
però oculta un cert engany.
00:13:59:02 00:14:05:09 La gramàtica segons Wittgenstein
ens embruixa amb pensaments mistificats.
00:14:05:18 00:14:08:07 Per acabar vull dir
que "quin és el sentit de la vida?"
00:14:08:11 00:14:10:15 no és aquest tipus de pregunta,
00:14:12:12 00:14:16:24 tot i que crec que és interessant
pensar que hi podria haver
00:14:17:20 00:14:21:00 un sentit a la vida
que potser no descobrirem mai,
00:14:21:14 00:14:22:07 com he dit abans,
00:14:22:16 00:14:29:02 o que no hauríem
de descobrir mai.
00:14:30:19 00:14:36:11 Potser hi ha un sentit a la vida
que ha de seguir sent misteriós
00:14:38:04 00:14:42:14 o impenetrable o enigmàtic per nosaltres
si volem sobreviure.
00:14:43:01 00:14:48:08 Ho comento perquè aquesta
és una forma de pensar molt moderna.
00:14:48:19 00:14:54:04 És una forma de pensar
que apareix a l'època moderna,
00:14:54:09 00:14:55:23 amb gent com Marx, Freud
00:14:56:14 00:15:00:12 i abans que ells
amb Arthur Schopenhauer,
00:15:00:17 00:15:05:22 el filòsof més pessimista
que ha escrit mai.
00:15:06:12 00:15:09:05 És tan pessimista
que és divertidíssim,
00:15:09:12 00:15:11:04 sense la intenció de ser-ho.
00:15:11:12 00:15:13:19 Hi ha alguna cosa que fa riure
sobre el pessimisme absolut.
00:15:15:24 00:15:21:11 Per Schopenhauer, al nostre interior,
00:15:21:23 00:15:23:04 al nucli de la nostra identitat,
00:15:23:08 00:15:26:24 hi ha alguna cosa
que ens és monstruosament aliena.
00:15:27:06 00:15:29:24 Hi ha una llarga tradició moderna
en creure això.
00:15:30:19 00:15:35:14 Que al nucli de l'ésser
hi ha alguna cosa impersonal.
00:15:35:15 00:15:39:20 Ho podeu anomenar
"Geist", història, llengua,
00:15:39:24 00:15:43:10 estructura, l'inconscient o lo real.
00:15:43:22 00:15:46:09 El debat no tracta
de si això existeix.
00:15:46:15 00:15:49:12 Molts pensadors moderns
creuen que les arrels de la identitat
00:15:49:17 00:15:51:05 són profundament impersonals.
00:15:51:06 00:15:54:03 La qüestió és
si aquesta cosa
00:15:54:17 00:15:58:08 al nucli del nostre ésser,
que ens fa ser el que som,
00:15:59:04 00:16:01:15 però que en un altre sentit
ens és completament estranya,
00:16:02:00 00:16:04:15 és quelcom amistós
o no.
00:16:05:17 00:16:07:14 Per algú com Tommaso d'Aquino,
00:16:08:07 00:16:13:05 aquesta cosa més propera a mi
que jo mateix,
00:16:13:19 00:16:14:17 és Déu.
00:16:15:19 00:16:17:21 Així que per Aquino
és una cosa amistosa.
00:16:18:16 00:16:25:05 Paradoxalment per Aquino
el que em fa lliure i independent,
00:16:25:15 00:16:31:07 el que em permet ser autònom
és la meva dependència a Déu.
00:16:32:03 00:16:35:19 Això és el que fa lliure
a l'individu.
00:16:37:06 00:16:40:24 Per Hegel també és
quelcom amistós,
00:16:41:08 00:16:42:12 però per a Schopenhauer
no ho és.
00:16:42:22 00:16:45:20 Ell ho anomena la voluntat
i és una força avariciosa,
00:16:46:16 00:16:49:13 despietada, malèvola i implacable
00:16:50:16 00:16:53:23 que ens utilitza pels seus propis fins
00:16:54:19 00:16:58:11 i després ens aparta
com si fóssim escòria.
00:17:00:00 00:17:02:10 En Freud,
molt influenciat per Schopenhauer,
00:17:03:02 00:17:05:11 ho anomena
impuls a la mort.
00:17:06:05 00:17:08:08 Per Freud
això es troba al nostre nucli
00:17:08:18 00:17:10:12 i és el que ens fa ser com som.
00:17:14:20 00:17:20:06 L'únic que dona sentit a la vida
per Schopenhauer,
00:17:20:16 00:17:22:10 és que no la coneixem
aquesta voluntat.
00:17:22:23 00:17:25:13 Resulta que ell sí que la coneix
perquè és filòsof,
00:17:26:14 00:17:28:23 igual que Hegel
molt modestament pensava
00:17:29:11 00:17:33:05 que la història i el pensament
havien culminat dins el seu cap.
00:17:34:14 00:17:37:03 Aquest és un dels primers
fins de la història
00:17:37:21 00:17:39:08 que ha proclamat l'edat moderna.
00:17:40:05 00:17:43:07 Posar una fi a la història
és molt típic de la història.
00:17:44:07 00:17:47:06 Hi ha una tradició
de trencar amb la història.
00:17:47:23 00:17:52:01 L'avantguarda sempre pensa
que podem apartar la història
00:17:52:12 00:17:53:09 i començar de zero.
00:17:53:10 00:17:55:19 Hi ha una llarga tradició
de crear a partir del no res.
00:17:56:04 00:17:57:20 Això s'ha fet des de fa temps.
00:17:58:18 00:18:02:08 La paraula modern
ens arriba des de l'antiguitat.
00:18:02:18 00:18:05:03 Bé, això
només és un comentari.
00:18:07:01 00:18:09:03 Per Schopenhauer
el que dona sentit a la vida
00:18:09:08 00:18:10:22 és que no coneixem
aquesta voluntat,
00:18:11:06 00:18:15:02 perquè la voluntat ens aporta
una cosa anomenada consciència
00:18:15:15 00:18:19:16 per persuadir-nos
que tenim el nostre destí a les mans,
00:18:20:02 00:18:21:08 però no l'hi tenim.
00:18:22:21 00:18:27:16 Per Nietzsche si fóssim conscients
00:18:28:17 00:18:32:04 de la sang,
la violència, la misèria,
00:18:32:09 00:18:33:23 el sofriment i la opressió,
00:18:34:15 00:18:37:21 que formen part de la història,
que formen part de nosaltres,
00:18:38:13 00:18:40:22 ens quedaríem paralitzats
00:18:41:19 00:18:43:09 i seriem incapaços d'actuar.
00:18:43:21 00:18:48:12 Per això Nietzsche i Freud
creuen que al centre d'un mateix
00:18:48:20 00:18:51:08 hi ha una amnèsia necessària,
00:18:52:22 00:18:56:18 un oblit de moltes de les forces
que ens han creat,
00:18:57:02 00:18:59:06 perquè sense això
l'ésser humà,
00:18:59:23 00:19:01:19 l'agent humà
no podria existir.
00:19:02:07 00:19:04:09 Així que el missatge
de l'era moderna
00:19:04:19 00:19:07:07 és que la repressió és bona.
00:19:09:24 00:19:13:13 És només a través de
certa repressió sana
00:19:14:02 00:19:15:04 que podem funcionar.
00:19:15:13 00:19:21:03 Això contradiu
el vell model llibertari,
00:19:22:00 00:19:26:01 que diu que hi ha quelcom
meravellosament creatiu dins nostre,
00:19:26:23 00:19:28:00 que lluita per sortir.
00:19:28:24 00:19:30:14 En el meu cas això és així.
00:19:32:06 00:19:35:13 El problema
és que hi ha alguna cosa allà fora
00:19:35:14 00:19:37:17 que en podem dir història,
00:19:38:00 00:19:41:06 patriarcat, classe, colonialisme
o com en vulgueu dir,
00:19:41:17 00:19:43:13 que no ho deixa sortir.
00:19:44:02 00:19:45:13 Aquesta idea és molt innocent.
00:19:47:02 00:19:50:10 Si fos així,
aquest impuls llibertari
00:19:50:18 00:19:54:10 en algun moment
hauria trencat violentament
00:19:54:15 00:19:56:12 contra el que sigui
que li impedeix sortir.
00:19:56:20 00:20:00:15 Està clar que en aquest cas
jo sóc el meu pitjor enemic,
00:20:01:16 00:20:03:20 que les cadenes de la opressió
són aquí dins.
00:20:04:11 00:20:06:05 És el que Freud
anomena super-ego,
00:20:06:19 00:20:08:02 però que té molts noms.
00:20:09:04 00:20:12:17 És per això que l'alliberació
és tan esgotadora i complicada,
00:20:12:22 00:20:16:23 perquè requereix
una emancipació molt dura
00:20:17:08 00:20:21:12 per alliberar-nos de nosaltres mateixos
i això és molt complicat.
00:20:23:00 00:20:26:21 Per Freud
en aquesta tradició moderna
00:20:27:06 00:20:31:11 l'escàndol de la vida
no és la sexualitat,
00:20:31:24 00:20:34:14 ni tan sols la sexualitat infantil.
00:20:35:11 00:20:38:08 Molta gent ho sap això. Per exemple:
els infants novel•listes .
00:20:40:04 00:20:42:00 Ara se suposa que havíeu de riure
però no passa res,
00:20:42:22 00:20:44:02 potser és culpa de la traducció.
00:20:45:20 00:20:46:20 Això no és un escàndol.
00:20:46:21 00:20:53:12 L'escàndol és que molt
del que va contribuir a crear-nos,
00:20:54:16 00:20:55:23 hagi de ser reprimit
00:20:57:03 00:21:03:02 per a que puguem ser els subjectes
parlants, vivents i caminants que som.
00:21:03:03 00:21:06:08 Aquesta repressió
no és per sempre.
00:21:08:02 00:21:10:08 No és una caiguda en desgracia
en els orígens.
00:21:10:18 00:21:13:01 És un procés permanent i incessant
00:21:14:09 00:21:17:14 que marcarà
la psique humana.
00:21:18:07 00:21:21:18 Per això l'animal humà
pot ser definit com
00:21:22:22 00:21:25:05 l'animal parlant o rialler,
00:21:25:16 00:21:28:06 però Freud el defineix
com l'animal neuròtic.
00:21:29:01 00:21:34:23 La nostra malaltia és l'altra cara
de la nostra creativitat.
00:21:35:07 00:21:37:14 És la nostra repressió
el que ens fa ser com som.
00:21:38:09 00:21:40:17 Hi ha una llarga tradició sobre això
a la història humana
00:21:41:00 00:21:43:06 i és la història
de la caiguda afortunada,
00:21:44:06 00:21:45:06 la "Felix Culpa".
00:21:45:20 00:21:47:02 La caiguda va succeir,
00:21:48:03 00:21:50:02 però va ser una caiguda cap a munt
i no cap avall.
00:21:51:13 00:21:54:05 Va ser una caiguda
des de la innocència
00:21:54:23 00:21:57:15 cap a la història, la cultura,
les llengües
00:21:57:16 00:21:59:07 i la política,
entre altres coses.
00:22:02:22 00:22:05:09 Això suposa
una emancipació enorme
00:22:05:14 00:22:09:23 i ens va conduir al no res
00:22:10:14 00:22:12:04 com li passa a Adam al jardí.
00:22:14:15 00:22:17:14 Què opinen
els pensadors moderns?
00:22:18:13 00:22:21:02 La idea més impactant és:
00:22:21:15 00:22:25:09 què passaria
si la consciència fos falsa?
00:22:26:19 00:22:29:15 I si la falsa consciència
no fos simples estats d'ànim
00:22:30:07 00:22:31:12 en que ens trobem
de tant en tant,
00:22:31:19 00:22:35:13 sinó que fos
inherentment falsa?
00:22:35:21 00:22:38:16 Ho és per Nietzsche
i per a Schopenhauer
00:22:39:03 00:22:40:03 i per a molts altres
pensadors moderns.
00:22:40:14 00:22:42:23 Marx té una visió
una mica diferent d'això.
00:22:43:06 00:22:45:06 Crec que esperàveu
que el mencionés almenys un cop.
00:22:46:21 00:22:49:21 Prometo que no ho faré més.
00:22:51:19 00:22:56:13 Marx diu
que tots els processos socials
00:22:57:04 00:23:00:23 són duts a terme
pels agents a qui afecten.
00:23:02:05 00:23:04:09 Això no tracta
sobre la falsa consciència
00:23:04:11 00:23:06:10 només de
com són les coses.
00:23:06:19 00:23:10:11 Els processos socials complexos
en que ens involucrem
00:23:10:22 00:23:13:15 no ens poden ser
transparents en tot moment.
00:23:14:11 00:23:15:23 Per a que puguem seguir endavant
00:23:16:04 00:23:18:12 hi ha moltes coses
que no hauríem de conèixer.
00:23:22:06 00:23:25:13 Per a ser egos
l'ego ha de ser establert
00:23:25:18 00:23:30:02 per un inconscient
que serà expulsat per l'ego.
00:23:30:14 00:23:32:05 Aquesta expulsió és necessària.
00:23:33:04 00:23:38:04 Segons aquesta tradició
molts dels desenvolupaments
00:23:38:09 00:23:44:17 forces i processos més importants
queden fora de la consciència humana.
00:23:45:14 00:23:50:16 Això comporta una certa humiliació
a la nostra idea de consciència.
00:23:53:07 00:23:57:15 Hi ha una idea antiga
que entra en acció a l'edat moderna:
00:23:58:03 00:24:01:15 la idea d'una il•lusió alliberadora
o oblivió.
00:24:02:01 00:24:05:08 Això també ho creu Nietzsche,
que hi ha una mena de vel
00:24:05:12 00:24:11:08 que oculta l'horrible abisme
dionisíac que hi ha al darrere.
00:24:12:13 00:24:15:13 Alguns pensadors
creuen que el que oculta el vel
00:24:16:21 00:24:20:22 és el no res.
Només un buit.
00:24:22:02 00:24:25:01 A partir d'aquesta teoria
ha sorgit una idea molt moderna:
00:24:25:10 00:24:27:16 "La veritat és mortal
i destructiva",
00:24:28:08 00:24:30:14 com es sol dir
a l'obra dramàtica de Henrik Ibsen.
00:24:31:02 00:24:34:01 La veritat és destructiva,
és com el cap de Medusa
00:24:34:23 00:24:39:10 que ens convertirà en pedra
i acabarà amb nosaltres.
00:24:39:15 00:24:46:00 La veritat ens matarà
a menys que hi intervingui
00:24:46:12 00:24:50:13 d'algun tipus de ficció.
La ficció ens pot salvar.
00:24:51:19 00:24:53:21 És en el marc del pensament radical
00:24:55:06 00:24:59:01 on s'assumeix que la veritat
és desagradable.
00:25:00:12 00:25:01:22 Una diferència entre els radicals
i la resta
00:25:02:13 00:25:05:17 és que nosaltres sospitem
que la veritat sol ser desagradable.
00:25:06:01 00:25:10:24 Hi ha altra gent
que pensa que tot està bé.
00:25:11:15 00:25:16:23 La diferència crucial entre la gent
00:25:17:22 00:25:22:13 no és de si són de dretes, d'esquerres
conservadors o socialistes,
00:25:22:19 00:25:29:08 sinó entre els que pensen
que tot va millorant
00:25:30:16 00:25:32:24 i els que pensem
que això és una il•lusió
00:25:33:17 00:25:35:21 i que les coses van molt malament.
00:25:36:11 00:25:38:24 Als del primer grup
se'ls coneix com Americans.
00:25:42:16 00:25:46:13 Fa una setmana vaig fer una xerrada
a una universitat molt liberal
00:25:46:14 00:25:49:24 als Estats Units
i vaig parlar de terrorisme,
00:25:50:09 00:25:55:03 sobre grups que segrestaven, torturaven
i assassinaven gent
00:25:56:19 00:26:00:04 pels seus fastigosos ideals
i vaig donar com a exemple la CIA.
00:26:01:21 00:26:06:04 No es va sentir ni un rumor
en aquesta universitat liberal
00:26:06:23 00:26:10:13 de l'Obama i la Hillary Clinton.
Perquè?
00:26:10:22 00:26:12:23 No perquè no hi estiguessin d'acord,
00:26:13:00 00:26:16:23 sinó que tal com passava a Alemanya
fa uns anys,
00:26:17:07 00:26:20:24 no s'atrevien a mostrar
que hi estaven d'acord en públic.
00:26:23:11 00:26:30:07 I si el sentit de la vida
no fos quelcom enigmàtic i amagat,
00:26:30:19 00:26:37:10 sinó que es tractés d'una cosa
tan evident
00:26:38:04 00:26:39:14 que la passéssim per alt.
00:26:39:19 00:26:44:10 Com el cas del país sobre un mapa
que està escrit amb lletres tan grans
00:26:44:20 00:26:46:03 que no les veiem.
00:26:47:16 00:26:50:03 Wittgenstein deia
que no hi ha res amagat
00:26:50:09 00:26:53:09 que tot està a la vista.
Això és cert?
00:26:53:18 00:26:55:08 Què volia dir amb això?
00:26:56:02 00:27:02:10 I si el sentit de la vida
no fos una mena de secret amagat
00:27:02:20 00:27:06:17 sinó que fos una certa forma de viure?
00:27:07:10 00:27:12:17 I si fos com una mena de pràctica?
00:27:14:00 00:27:18:02 En el Nou Testament
crec que és Mateu
00:27:18:11 00:27:23:02 que descriu com Crist
arriba entre núvols de gloria
00:27:23:24 00:27:28:07 i utilitza un munt d'imatges
típiques de l'Antic Testament
00:27:28:24 00:27:35:17 com trompetes o àngels
i amb un mecanisme literari meravellós
00:27:36:09 00:27:41:19 desinfla conscientment les imatges
de grandiloqüència de l'Antic Testament,
00:27:42:04 00:27:47:01 a través de la figura anomenada "Bathos"
des del sublim o ridícul
00:27:47:14 00:27:49:01 fins al més prosaic.
00:27:49:21 00:27:52:00 La prova de la salvació
00:27:52:22 00:27:57:13 no consisteix en celebrar
un culte especial o ritus
00:27:58:07 00:28:04:02 com es diu a l'Antic Testament
o es fan sacrificis i ofrenes.
00:28:04:15 00:28:07:20 El que compta és
com tracteu als pobres i als immigrants
00:28:08:08 00:28:12:08 o si protegiu a les viudes i els orfes
de la violència dels rics.
00:28:13:00 00:28:18:02 Jesús continua amb aquesta tradició
i esdevé molt avorrit i prosaic
00:28:18:12 00:28:23:05 perquè es veu que la salvació té a veure
amb donar un vas d'aigua a algú
00:28:24:14 00:28:30:06 o en visitar a algú que és a la presó
o que està malalt. Res especial.
00:28:30:19 00:28:33:08 És el que Freud anomenaria des-sublimació,
00:28:33:22 00:28:36:14 El sublim queda rebaixat al prosaic.
00:28:37:03 00:28:38:21 Com diu Charles Taylor
00:28:39:06 00:28:42:03 el món cristià
o millor dit el judeo-cristià
00:28:42:09 00:28:43:23 que Jesús al cap i a la fi és un jueu
00:28:44:17 00:28:46:23 inventa el concepte del dia a dia.
00:28:47:24 00:28:51:23 La idea
que tot és decideix al dia a dia
00:28:52:20 00:28:54:22 i no en una mena de reialme
al més enllà,
00:28:55:11 00:28:57:08 és una idea revolucionària.
00:28:57:24 00:29:01:08 Sens dubte això no ho trobareu
a la literatura èpica,
00:29:01:20 00:29:05:15 pastoral o a la tragèdia.
00:29:07:01 00:29:11:02 El transcendental
és troba en l'imminent.
00:29:11:10 00:29:15:03 Té lloc aquí i ara.
Tot molt ètic,
00:29:15:15 00:29:18:10 molt material i molt jueu.
00:29:21:14 00:29:28:08 Contrastaré això amb el que avui en dia
s'anomena espiritualitat.
00:29:28:19 00:29:32:15 Penseu en això
de la Madonna i la càbala.
00:29:34:19 00:29:39:16 Ara us haig de fer una confessió
que espero que no surti d'aquí.
00:29:40:18 00:29:42:24 Pots apagar la càmera un moment?
00:29:43:17 00:29:47:01 No ho digueu a ningú això,
00:29:47:11 00:29:49:11 però jo vaig dormir
al llit de la Madonna.
00:29:52:14 00:29:54:04 Ella no hi era.
00:29:54:05 00:29:57:10 Em temo que feia
deu anys que no hi dormia.
00:29:58:20 00:30:01:15 Jo coneixia a una ballarina a Nova York
que compartia pis amb Madonna
00:30:02:03 00:30:07:09 molt abans que fos famosa,
em vaig quedar a casa seva
00:30:08:07 00:30:11:02 i vaig dormir al llit de la Madonna.
He pensat que voldríeu saber-ho.
00:30:14:15 00:30:20:00 Per la gent que té unes noranta cases
i molts diners,
00:30:21:04 00:30:24:15 l'espiritual no és gens pràctic.
00:30:25:09 00:30:29:14 És justament el contrari d'això.
Ells n'intenten fugir.
00:30:30:12 00:30:34:04 L'espiritual és just el contrari
que els seus agents, managers
00:30:34:24 00:30:37:16 goril•les, guardaespatlles, etcètera.
00:30:39:12 00:30:45:14 És per això que viuen en un altre món
i són despietadament materialistes.
00:30:47:02 00:30:51:00 Han perdut el cap per la fama i l'adulació.
00:30:52:01 00:30:55:05 Que el que passa a la terra
està controlat per una nau espacial
00:30:55:16 00:31:01:07 no s'ho creurien si només
tinguessin 38 lliures a la butxaca.
00:31:03:22 00:31:06:19 No hi ha ningú més fantasiós
que els mundans.
00:31:08:06 00:31:13:13 Tenen una habilitat patètica
per creure qualsevol cosa,
00:31:13:21 00:31:19:12 que es troba just al costat oposat
del seu materialisme.
00:31:20:22 00:31:27:04 Sobre els radicals
cal saber dues coses:
00:31:27:11 00:31:31:20 que sempre els reconeixeràs
pel fet que són tradicionalistes,
00:31:33:09 00:31:36:19 com va dir Trotski: "Els radicals
sempre hem viscut en la tradició",
00:31:37:20 00:31:42:15 només que les seves tradicions
són diferents.
00:31:43:02 00:31:47:11 L'altre distintiu d'un radical
és que són fantasiosos.
00:31:49:06 00:31:52:21 Algú que no creu en la fantasia
no ha llegit els diaris.
00:31:54:13 00:31:57:22 Es pensen que aquest món està bé així,
que no cal millorar-lo.
00:32:01:23 00:32:05:11 Els rics i poderosos
són fantasiosos al màxim.
00:32:05:20 00:32:10:03 Marx veia que els diners
eren una mena de fantasia.
00:32:10:08 00:32:13:11 Shakespeare també ho creu això.
00:32:15:16 00:32:20:01 Penseu en els anomenats
realistes pragmàtics
00:32:21:00 00:32:24:07 que es comporten com si el banc mundial,
00:32:25:24 00:32:29:05 les galetes de xocolata
o la Britney Spears
00:32:30:06 00:32:34:22 haguessin de durar per sempre.
Per sort no serà així.
00:32:35:24 00:32:38:20 Aquests que amaguen el cap sota l'ala
00:32:39:17 00:32:43:11 els fantasiosos
que fugen de la realitat,
00:32:44:03 00:32:50:11 són els que pensen que el món
està tan bé com pot arribar a estar.
00:32:54:01 00:32:58:22 Rebutgen la idea de
que coses poguessin millorar.
00:33:00:02 00:33:03:21 Res d'utopies o fantasies,
només realisme rotund.
00:33:04:03 00:33:09:09 El realisme és la base
de les virtuts ètiques i polítiques,
00:33:10:12 00:33:14:18 tracta de veure la situació tal com és
i això és difícil
00:33:15:07 00:33:17:03 perquè les il•lusions ens són endèmiques.
00:33:17:22 00:33:21:03 Així que el realisme, és la base
de les virtuts ètiques i polítiques
00:33:22:17 00:33:26:21 i ser un fantasiós del poder
implica evitar-lo.
00:33:27:15 00:33:31:17 Hi ha gent que pensa que el món
està tan bé com es pot esperar,
00:33:32:06 00:33:34:05 com Toni Blair i els seus.
00:33:36:16 00:33:40:08 Hi ha una personatge
a "Les tres germanes" de Chekhov
00:33:41:04 00:33:44:20 que diu que tot ha de tenir
algun significat
00:33:45:21 00:33:50:21 i un altre personatge diu: mira,
fora està nevant què significa això?
00:33:53:09 00:33:56:02 Aquesta persona espera
que tot tingui un significat inherent
00:33:56:19 00:33:58:22 potser de manera simbòlica.
00:33:59:02 00:34:04:18 Alguns dirien que esperar que les coses
tinguin significats inherents
00:34:05:04 00:34:11:06 dins de sí mateixes i sentir-te abatut
00:34:11:24 00:34:13:16 quan descobreixes que no és així,
00:34:14:00 00:34:18:18 és com esperar néixer
amb un barret de llana.
00:34:20:08 00:34:23:12 Això no pot passar.
00:34:25:18 00:34:29:03 Hi ha gent que dirà
que no hi ha res tràgic en això
00:34:29:10 00:34:31:09 no hi ha motiu per angoixar-se,
00:34:32:12 00:34:36:01 simplement no naixem
amb barrets de llana.
00:34:37:17 00:34:42:19 No cal deprimir-se,
no hi hem perdut res.
00:34:43:23 00:34:47:08 Les coses són així
i no cal posar-se nerviós per això.
00:34:48:06 00:34:50:20 Això és el que li diria
un post-modernista
00:34:51:13 00:34:55:15 a algú que creu que les coses
tenen significats inherents.
00:34:57:24 00:35:01:04 No hem d'esperar que les coses
tinguin significats en sí mateixes
00:35:01:11 00:35:03:03 segons la visió post-modernista.
00:35:04:14 00:35:06:16 La vida és una d'aquestes coses,
00:35:08:11 00:35:12:01 com la neu, els cereals
o la Britney Spears.
00:35:13:20 00:35:17:19 I com diria el filòsof americà
Richard Rorty:
00:35:18:14 00:35:20:24 No grateu a on no pica.
00:35:21:14 00:35:25:08 No us capfiqueu per problemes
sense importància,
00:35:26:00 00:35:27:12 per si les coses
tenen significats inherents.
00:35:29:00 00:35:32:21 Ara contrastem això
amb l'alt modernisme.
00:35:34:05 00:35:36:17 El modernisme
és suficientment antic
00:35:37:11 00:35:39:21 com per recordar una època
00:35:40:15 00:35:44:09 en que hi havia coses com
la identitat, la realitat,
00:35:44:17 00:35:47:04 la veritat, els fonaments, etcètera.
00:35:48:04 00:35:50:18 I encara se sent afligit.
00:35:52:03 00:35:55:00 Se sent nostàlgic
d'aquestes coses,
00:35:55:06 00:35:58:21 perquè encara es recorda
de quan existien,
00:36:00:02 00:36:02:15 però també és conscient
que aquestes coses s'ensorren.
00:36:04:19 00:36:06:08 L'eclipsi del significat,
00:36:06:18 00:36:09:03 la desaparició del significat inherent,
00:36:09:21 00:36:13:01 és considerat com un escàndol
per l'alt modernisme,
00:36:14:10 00:36:18:07 com una angoixa,
una font de malenconia.
00:36:19:09 00:36:24:05 La tragèdia sovint sorgeix
de períodes transitoris,
00:36:25:00 00:36:29:09 on encara tenim a la memòria
un determinat ordre
00:36:31:21 00:36:34:14 que encara està actiu
però que es va ensorrant.
00:36:35:11 00:36:37:08 Penso que Shakespeare és un bon exemple
00:36:37:21 00:36:39:21 d'aquest tipus de tragèdia transitòria.
00:36:42:03 00:36:46:22 Fixeu-vos que la idea de l'absurd
00:36:48:14 00:36:51:16 pressuposa alguna idea del sentit.
00:36:52:24 00:36:56:12 No et pots queixar de que la vida
és completament absurda
00:36:57:18 00:37:01:22 sense saber què és el no absurd
i així comparar-ho.
00:37:03:03 00:37:05:09 La vida no pot ser absurda
de principi a fi,
00:37:06:16 00:37:09:10 perquè sinó no tindríem criteri
00:37:09:24 00:37:11:17 per poder fer aquesta valoració.
00:37:12:14 00:37:18:22 Si tinguéssim una vida
on només hi hagués sofriment,
00:37:19:24 00:37:21:11 com creu Schopenhauer,
00:37:22:05 00:37:23:24 no podria ser tràgica
00:37:24:05 00:37:26:14 perquè el ser tràgica
depèn d'una valoració.
00:37:27:06 00:37:30:03 La tragèdia depèn del fet
que el sofriment està afectant
00:37:31:04 00:37:33:22 a persones o situacions
que són valuoses.
00:37:35:09 00:37:39:19 Sense això no tindríem forma
de mesurar el sofriment.
00:37:40:17 00:37:43:06 L'obra dramàtica de Samuel Beckett
00:37:43:24 00:37:48:02 s'aproxima a aquesta visió.
00:37:50:00 00:37:54:15 Si comparem el post-modernisme
amb el modernisme,
00:37:57:00 00:37:59:11 veurem que una obra d'art modernista
00:37:59:20 00:38:03:05 revela algun tipus d'absència,
algun buit o un forat,
00:38:03:19 00:38:06:15 hi manca alguna cosa,
es percep una tristesa.
00:38:06:16 00:38:11:00 Alguna veritat encara roman allà
de forma borrosa,
00:38:11:12 00:38:14:06 però si la mires fixament desapareix
00:38:14:11 00:38:16:11 com el personatge de "La terra gastada"
de T.S Eliot,
00:38:16:19 00:38:20:01 que sembla caminar al teu costat
però quan el mires desapareix.
00:38:20:20 00:38:22:05 El post-modernisme, en canvi,
00:38:22:13 00:38:27:21 creu que aquest sentiment de pèrdua
és fals,
00:38:28:14 00:38:31:03 perquè no hi ha hagut res
en cap moment.
00:38:32:16 00:38:34:20 El post-modernisme
és massa jove i descarat
00:38:35:18 00:38:38:13 per recordar-se de l'època
en que semblava existir la veritat.
00:38:38:22 00:38:42:18 No sent nostàlgia,
a menys que la nostàlgia sigui irònica.
00:38:43:19 00:38:47:06 I si troba a un modernista
rumiant angoixat
00:38:48:17 00:38:52:03 li dirà a l'estil Californià:
tot va bé.
00:38:53:22 00:38:55:22 Li dirà: tranquil,
no et preocupis.
00:38:58:23 00:39:04:00 Per a ells coses com la veritat
la identitat o els fonaments,
00:39:05:05 00:39:07:05 són tan irreals com els angelets.
00:39:08:16 00:39:11:01 Ai, potser algú d'aquí
creia en els angelets.
00:39:11:22 00:39:14:16 Em sap greu arruïnar-vos la il•lusió.
00:39:15:15 00:39:18:10 Potser un dels problemes
del sentit de la vida
00:39:20:05 00:39:25:22 és la gran quantitat de significats
que atribuïm a les coses.
00:39:28:06 00:39:31:15 Hi ha un excés
de significats i d'interpretacions
00:39:32:06 00:39:36:13 a l'època moderna.
Hi ha masses versions en conflicte
00:39:37:10 00:39:38:21 amb què és una vida bona,
00:39:39:06 00:39:42:05 en què consisteix una vida bona.
00:39:42:14 00:39:48:16 El més sorprenent és
que potser mai ens posarem d'acord
00:39:49:04 00:39:50:11 ni tan sols en els fonaments.
00:39:51:11 00:39:55:03 A molts pensadors
de l'antiguitat o medievals,
00:39:55:12 00:39:59:20 els hauria semblat incomprensible
que no hi hagi acord ni en els fonaments.
00:39:59:24 00:40:02:19 Ens podríem posar d'acord
en els fonaments
00:40:03:03 00:40:05:16 i discrepar en alguns detalls,
però no.
00:40:06:16 00:40:10:14 L'època moderna es caracteritza
per un conflicte d'opinions
00:40:10:17 00:40:12:20 fins i tot en els fonaments.
00:40:13:24 00:40:18:01 Tothom està d'acord
en que cremar innocents
00:40:18:07 00:40:23:01 no és una cosa bona a fer,
no és un bon passatemps.
00:40:24:07 00:40:26:16 Només un grupet d'estranys
creu que ho és.
00:40:27:11 00:40:29:10 Aquests s'amaguen en coves.
00:40:30:11 00:40:34:09 Però no ens posem d'acord
en per què hi estem d'acord.
00:40:36:09 00:40:39:12 Hi ha desacord absolut en això.
00:40:40:16 00:40:44:04 Pot ser que mai resolguem
aquests conflictes.
00:40:44:11 00:40:48:14 El preu d'una societat lliberal
és la falta de consens.
00:40:49:07 00:40:53:03 Això és molt preocupant
00:40:53:15 00:40:56:02 i el resultat d'això
pot ser un conflicte molt greu
00:40:56:18 00:41:00:14 en què la civilització,
entesa com a joc lliure d'idees
00:41:01:02 00:41:02:12 pot acabar a la barbàrie
00:41:03:05 00:41:06:18 i aquests conflictes poden ressorgir
d'una forma més sanguinària.
00:41:07:24 00:41:13:17 Dir que hi ha un únic sentit a la vida
i que absolutament tot,
00:41:14:20 00:41:18:21 des de Hillary Clinton
fins al "Grand Canyon",
00:41:19:09 00:41:22:07 està lligat a un únic sentit,
00:41:22:19 00:41:25:23 que forma part d'un tot,
00:41:26:05 00:41:31:16 fins i tot la vida de cada individu,
no és possible.
00:41:32:03 00:41:36:18 No pot ser que tot
estigui connectat.
00:41:40:04 00:41:43:04 Hi ha gent que veu un patró significatiu
a les seves vides,
00:41:44:07 00:41:48:09 però els patrons significatius
s'apropen molt a la paranoia.
00:41:49:07 00:41:54:23 La paranoia és un estat en què
veiem connexions entre totes les coses
00:41:55:06 00:42:00:05 i com deia Freud el més proper
a la paranoia és la filosofia,
00:42:01:12 00:42:05:16 i també els filòsofs.
Especialment els que pensen com Hegel.
00:42:08:13 00:42:12:16 Hem de pensar que la vida
és el que fem amb ella?
00:42:13:04 00:42:18:00 "La vida és el que fem amb ella"
és una declaració molt profunda,
00:42:19:13 00:42:21:00 però no crec que sigui certa.
00:42:21:06 00:42:24:22 Igual que un poema
no és el que tu en fas
00:42:26:04 00:42:29:17 i amb el sentit de la vida passa el mateix
00:42:30:13 00:42:34:01 d'això se'n podria dir
teoria voluntarista del sentit,
00:42:34:15 00:42:37:00 una teoria que consisteix
en barrejar-ho tot,
00:42:37:18 00:42:44:10 on cadascú hi inclou els sentits
que li interessen.
00:42:45:15 00:42:49:12 Això passa per alt el fet
que l'ésser humà està limitat
00:42:50:01 00:42:53:05 pel que Marx anomena:
el nostre ser com a espècie,
00:42:53:10 00:42:56:15 la nostra existència material
com a animals que som.
00:42:57:19 00:43:03:08 Davant de tot, els humans
som objectes materials
00:43:04:07 00:43:07:11 i si arribem a ser alguna cosa
més enllà d'això,
00:43:08:02 00:43:10:17 ha d'estar vinculada
a aquesta condició.
00:43:11:08 00:43:14:08 Els humans som
extraordinàriament finits,
00:43:15:02 00:43:19:22 limitats, precaris, vulnerables
i fràgils.
00:43:20:19 00:43:26:02 Qualsevol ètica o política
que no entengui això,
00:43:26:11 00:43:29:08 que no ho tingui en compte,
segurament no durarà gaire.
00:43:29:21 00:43:32:24 Un dels aspectes més destructius
de la societat americana
00:43:33:12 00:43:35:09 és que no hi creu en això.
00:43:35:23 00:43:39:01 No creu que l'únic poder perdurable,
00:43:39:10 00:43:44:07 és el que està relacionat
amb el fracàs i la fragilitat.
00:43:45:03 00:43:48:21 Als Estats Units no hi ha res pitjor
que ser un perdedor,
00:43:50:07 00:43:56:02 per això el somni americà
és una fantasia anti-material
00:43:57:03 00:44:01:00 i creuen que l'ésser humà
pot fer igual que Faust
00:44:01:20 00:44:04:24 seguir desenvolupant-se infinitament.
00:44:05:16 00:44:08:10 La conseqüència d'això,
és la caiguda.
00:44:09:04 00:44:10:06 Això és el que creien Adam i Eva
00:44:11:04 00:44:15:09 i el resultat és que t'extralimites
en una mena de moviment heurístic
00:44:16:11 00:44:19:10 com ho estan fent els Estats Units
a l'Irak i a l'Afganistan
00:44:20:00 00:44:21:16 i t'arrisques a moure't cap al no res.
00:44:22:04 00:44:26:20 L'ésser humà es pot desenvolupar
massa ràpid pel seu bé
00:44:27:07 00:44:31:19 i pot perdre les seves arrels
i la seva essència.
00:44:32:14 00:44:35:15 Penso que qualsevol ètica
o política,
00:44:36:00 00:44:41:24 ha de ser conscient
de les nostres limitacions.
00:44:43:10 00:44:45:04 Per acabar vull dir una cosa.
00:44:46:04 00:44:50:20 M'heu escoltat pacientment
i heu estat un públic encantador,
00:44:51:03 00:44:54:09 però no heu vingut aquí
per sentir aquest tema filosòfic
00:44:54:17 00:44:56:16 heu vingut per saber quin és
el sentit de la vida.
00:44:57:16 00:45:00:15 És tot aquí, de veritat.
00:45:03:19 00:45:08:07 En aquest llibre intento
no evadir-me
00:45:09:01 00:45:12:17 i no fer com els filòsofs
00:45:13:04 00:45:15:08 que no responen a les preguntes,
només les analitzen.
00:45:16:05 00:45:19:24 Jo també analitzo preguntes
00:45:20:06 00:45:25:07 però procuro donar algunes respostes,
00:45:26:11 00:45:27:24 cosa que no solen fer els filòsofs.
00:45:28:08 00:45:30:17 De fet no sóc filòsof i potser
per això dono respostes.
00:45:31:16 00:45:33:17 He tingut en compte molts candidats
00:45:34:00 00:45:36:08 per ser el sentit de la vida.
00:45:37:03 00:45:42:03 I els que han estat més convincents
00:45:42:08 00:45:45:10 són la felicitat i l'amor.
00:45:47:07 00:45:53:07 El problema és que tots dos
són molt ambigus i obscurs
00:45:53:23 00:45:58:06 i necessitem un llenguatge especial
que s'anomena filosofia moral
00:45:59:07 00:46:01:17 per saber en què consisteixen,
00:46:01:22 00:46:05:02 què és felicitat o amor
en un context determinat.
00:46:05:21 00:46:08:18 No sé si en espanyol i en català
passa el mateix,
00:46:09:01 00:46:13:09 però en anglès la paraula felicitat
té un so molt feble.
00:46:14:15 00:46:17:03 Recorda a algú
amb una jaqueta a ratlles,
00:46:17:18 00:46:22:07 que està de vacances
en unes colònies d'estiu.
00:46:24:03 00:46:28:06 La paraula felicitat és molt feble.
Aristòtil fa servir una altra paraula
00:46:29:11 00:46:33:06 que és mol més encertada: eudemonisme.
00:46:33:23 00:46:35:24 Tot i que en anglès sembla
el nom d'una malaltia,
00:46:37:20 00:46:41:17 significa: realització personal.
00:46:42:00 00:46:46:00 Des d'Aristòtil
fins a Tommaso d'Aquino,
00:46:46:08 00:46:48:21 passant per Marx,
l'objectiu de la moralitat
00:46:49:05 00:46:50:13 és passar-s'ho bé.
00:46:51:21 00:46:56:16 Es tracta de tenir una vida plena
amb energia, ànim, vitalitat,
00:46:57:03 00:46:59:05 autosatisfacció i realització personal.
00:46:59:13 00:47:05:02 És a l'època moderna que ens arriba
aquesta idea d'Immanuel Kant,
00:47:06:06 00:47:09:06 que diu: "si una cosa et dona plaer
no pot ser bona".
00:47:11:04 00:47:13:06 És una idea puritana desastrosa.
00:47:13:11 00:47:15:02 La moralitat,
com mostra el Nou Testament,
00:47:15:11 00:47:18:24 tracta de tenir una vida plena,
no sobre repressió ni negació.
00:47:19:08 00:47:22:14 De vegades ens hem de sacrificar
i privar-nos de coses,
00:47:23:06 00:47:27:00 però ho fem per fer més feliç
a més gent.
00:47:27:09 00:47:28:20 Això és ser un màrtir.
00:47:29:13 00:47:31:22 Un màrtir és algú que dóna la seva vida
00:47:32:09 00:47:35:17 no perquè cregui que no val res,
això ho faria un suïcida,
00:47:36:17 00:47:39:22 sinó perquè tot i valorar-la molt,
s'estima més donar-la
00:47:40:00 00:47:42:10 a canvi de fer feliç a més gent.
00:47:42:21 00:47:44:17 Aquest és el sentit de la Crucificació,
00:47:45:01 00:47:49:05 no és que la idea de l'abnegació
tingui una fi en si mateixa.
00:47:51:00 00:47:54:23 Les idees que tenim sobre l'amor
00:47:56:14 00:47:59:12 estan tan lligades a les tradicions
romàntiques i eròtiques
00:47:59:20 00:48:05:08 que hem perdut el sentit de l'amor
de què parla el Nou Testament: l'àgape.
00:48:06:01 00:48:09:16 Un cas clar d'amor
és l'amor per un desconegut.
00:48:10:12 00:48:12:00 Qualsevol pot estimar un amic,
00:48:12:04 00:48:16:22 però el cas més clar d'amor
és el que se sent per un enemic.
00:48:17:11 00:48:20:19 L'amor no té res a veure
amb trobar-se a gust, amb la comoditat,
00:48:21:06 00:48:26:01 amb la calidesa ni amb els sentiments.
Té a veure amb com et comportes.
00:48:27:17 00:48:29:18 Un dels problemes per dir
que l'amor i la felicitat
00:48:30:02 00:48:35:12 són el sentit de la vida,
és que no sempre són compatibles.
00:48:37:14 00:48:42:17 L'amor et pot dur a sacrificar
part de la felicitat:
00:48:43:14 00:48:46:09 cuidar a un familiar malalt,
per exemple.
00:48:46:16 00:48:51:17 Hi ha una mena de creença
a la tradició judeo-cristiana
00:48:51:23 00:48:57:01 i a la socialista i és que al final
l'amor i la felicitat s'uneixen,
00:48:57:16 00:48:59:17 però falta molt pel final.
00:49:00:16 00:49:03:15 No sé si aquestes són les respostes
a quin és el sentit de la vida,
00:49:04:03 00:49:08:17 sens dubte hi ha respostes
més convincents com el poder, el sexe,
00:49:09:05 00:49:13:11 beure tant whisky com puguem aguantar
00:49:15:10 00:49:18:15 o treballar a la biblioteca d'Oxford.
00:49:19:20 00:49:25:13 Quan era professor a Oxford
tenia un estudiant molt conservador
00:49:26:07 00:49:28:16 i li vaig preguntar que
què faria quan es gradués
00:49:29:13 00:49:32:00 i em va dir
que volia ser sacerdot anglicà,
00:49:32:19 00:49:35:22 però que primer volia adquirir
una mica d'experiència en la vida
00:49:36:17 00:49:39:01 així que es volia posar a treballar
a la biblioteca Bodleian.
00:49:40:17 00:49:41:22 Encara hi deu ser.
00:49:45:24 00:49:49:16 El llibre acaba revelant
el sentit de la vida
00:49:51:07 00:49:56:10 i ara, a principis de febrer del 2008
a Barcelona,
00:49:56:21 00:50:01:02 us revelaré el final.
00:50:01:10 00:50:04:03 El sentit de la vida és una banda de jazz.
00:50:05:22 00:50:07:19 Què vull dir amb això?
00:50:09:04 00:50:13:03 Ho sento, se m'ha acabat el temps.
Haureu de comprar el llibre.
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More Less | | Master's degree - Autonomous University of Barcelona | | Years of translation experience: 3. Registered at ProZ.com: Jul 2011. Became a member: Jul 2011. | | N/A | English to Spanish (Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).)
English to Catalan (Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).)
| | APTIC (Association of Translators and Interpreters of Catalunya) | | DejaVu, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, SDL TRADOS, Wordfast | | oriontranslator endorses ProZ.com's Professional Guidelines. | | About me Welcome to my profile!
I work in all fields of translation and I’m specialized in literary and audiovisual translation. I’m very interested in audiovisual and video-game translation and localization, as well as creating subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. I’ve been translating and subtitling audiovisuals for the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona since March 2011.
Please, contact me if you are interested in receiving high quality translations always on time and you will get an uncompromised quote.
Have a nice day :) | This user has earned KudoZ points by helping other translators with PRO-level terms. Click point total(s) to see term translations provided.
Total pts earned: 16
(All PRO level)
| | Language (PRO) | | English to Spanish | 16 | | Top general fields (PRO) | | Tech/Engineering | 8 | | Other | 4 | | Science | 4 | | Top specific fields (PRO) | | Media / Multimedia | 4 | | Mining & Minerals / Gems | 4 | | Games / Video Games / Gaming / Casino | 4 | | Internet, e-Commerce | 4 |
See all points earned > |
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Keywords: translation, traducción, traducció, translator, traductor, subtitle, subtítol, subtítols, subtítulo, subtítulos, subtitles, subtitling, subtitular, subtitulation, subtitulació, subtitulación, audiovisual, audiovisuales, audiovisuals, literary, literari, literària, literario, literaria, literature, literatura, correction, corrección, correcció, revision, revisión, revisió, proofreading, video games, videojoc, videojocs, videojuego, videojuegos, comic, còmic, cómic, comics, cómics, còmics, dubbing, doblaje, doblatge, Catalan, Spanish, English.
Profile last updated
May 7 |
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