GRGR Nothingness (was Re: Pynchon as propaganda)

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 2003-04-07 at 09:46, Terrance wrote:
> Paul Mackin wrote:
> > 
> > On Mon, 2003-04-07 at 00:42, davemarc wrote:
> > > From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
> > >
> > > > So far, nothingness seems to mean a lack of God's grace.
> > > >
> > > > Nothingness is the Christian 'Other.'
> > > >
> > > Isn't this consistent with Dostoevski's portrayal of Svidrigailov in Crime
> > > and Punishment...and with some of the (religious) imagery in Paradise Lost?
> > 
> > I'd say so. Svidrigailov freely opts for nothingness. A free
> > existentialist man.
> > 
> > Doestoevki is theism in it's most extreme form. In his awareness of the
> > nothingness without God.
> > 
> > If there is no God, all is permitted.
> > 
> > And if we come out of nowhere we are headed for oblivion. Don't know it
> > he said this or was it someone else but it represents his position
> > perfectly I think..
> > 
> > P.
> 
> In a Godless world, Man is condemned at every moment to invent Man. 
> 
> "Dostoyevsky said, 'If God didn't exist, everything is possible.'
> That is the very starting point of existentialism...
> 

This makes D the near perfect novelist. Represents both sides of the
question. Think Pynchon might desire this kind of universality as well.


> 
> 
> See Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism, trans. Bernard Frechtman (NY:
> Philosophical Library, 1947), pp 27-28. Originally published as
> L'existentialism est un humanisme (Paris, 1946). 
> 
> Of course, Pynchon toys with existentialism in the short stories. In his
> Ford Application he tells of his youthful wanderings in these
> philosophical ports and storms.  
> 
> We should do well to consider where it is that Sartre and Heidegger got
> the concepts "nothingness" and "das Nichts" in the first place and of
> course it's fairly obvious that they got these from Judeo-Christian
> theology (the merged streams of Greek and Jewish thought). And Pynchon,
> as far as we know, was raised in the catholic faith and read neither
> Sartre nor Heidegger. We know that he read Augustine, Aquinas, de
> Chardin, and Miguel De Unamuno. We also know that he read Max Weber and
> Elaide and Freud and Milton and Thomas Hooker and so on. So perhaps we
> need to compare grace or creativity or Genesis with  nothingness the
> void (what Dante names Dis) and annihilation or "breaking out of the
> cycle" (Blicero). 
> 
> We should do well to read the "Essence of Catholicism" (Pynchon alludes
> to this text in the novel V.) because the the forces of passion over
> rationality, heart over head, faith over reason, can be both creative
> and destructive.  Max Weber, sees creativity not in the will of God but
> in the charismatic individuals who claim to represent his will. In GR,
> the arbitrary creativity of charismatic individuals becomes routinized
> in rational and traditional authority. To understand the evil that
> Blicero represents (pathetic Bureaucratic man become a God-man), we need
> to remember that Charismatic authority is revolutionary. And
> 
> "Charismatic authority is thus specifically outside the realm of
> everyday routine and the profane sphere. In this respect, it is sharply
> opposed both the rational and particularly bureaucratic, authority, and
> to traditional authority, whether in its patriarchal, patrimonial, or
> any other form." 
> 
> Thus Jews and Greeks each arrived independently at the real discovery of
> death--a discover which occasions, in peoples, as in men, the entrance
> into spiritual puberty, the realization of the tragic sense of life, and
> it then that the living God is begotten b y humanity. The discovery of
> death is that which reveals God to us, and the death of the perfect Man,
> Christ, was the supreme revelation of death, being the death of the man
> who ought not to have died but did die. 
> 
> Of course, the reply to this tragic sense of life, to what Paul of
> Tarsus, the hellenizing Jew and Pharisee termed "Nothingness" was the
> birth of Christian theology--death, resurrection, redemption,
> salvation...even of the body. Ah, there's the rub.

The body above all.  We can't have disembodied souls wandering
around.This seems like an essential part of the Christian position.
There is no existence without matter. Aristotle and St. Thomas would
insist. Only God can exist without being part of the material
universe.(angels are a problem here) Unfortunately there is an awful lot
of muddle about souls being stranded in Limbo or Purgatory awaiting the
Last Judgment. It's a timing problem mainly. Might have been handled
better.

P.