Begam, Samuel Beckett

[Dave Monroe]

>From Richard Begam, Samuel Beckett and the End of
Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1996), Chapter
Two, "Madness and the Cogito in 'Murphy,'" pp. 40-65
...

"... Murphy provides a kind of alternate history of
the cogito ..." (Begam, p. 42)

"... there is certainly a kind of madness at work in a
dualism that radically dissevers mind from body, that
scizophrenically splits expereence into utterly
disjunct realms." (Begam, p. 43)

"In separating inside from outside, mental from
physical, Murphy seeks what is, in effect, the
philosophical analogue to schizophrenia, a cogito
founded on madness." (Begam, p. 45)

"In good Geulincxian fashion, the inner and outer
worlds of Murphy have intercourse--otherwise we would
not know 'that they have anything in common'--but
'through what channel that intercourse [is] effected'
(109) remains mysterious.  The inner world, which
tells the story of Murphy and his psychotic
withdrawal, promises and absolute freedom, whereas the
outer world, focusing on Neary and company in pursuit
of Murphy, guarantess a rigid determinism.  As the
chief representative of the outer world, Neary acts as
Murphy's opposite.  Thus, while the former is a strict
'Newtonian' (201) who believs that 'all life is figure
and ground' (4), the latter yearns to enter into a
'tumult of non-Newtonian motion' (113); while the
former works to define boundaries and assure
stability, to discover, as the title of his
tractate--'The Doctrine of the Limit' (50)--suggests,
the latter strives to transcend all limits, to become
a 'missile without provenance' (112)." (Begam, pp.
46-7)

Much also made of allusions to 1 Corinthians 13:12,
"For now we see through a glass darkly" and so forth
...  

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