Choice in Everyday Life by Urquhart Robert;

Author:Urquhart, Robert; [TK::ENTRY=HASH(0X27C3D1C)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2011-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

8

The time of crossword puzzles

The idea of scales of choice allowed us to see choices fitting together within a broad framework, forming an order, without the need to fall back on distinctions such as higher and lower, greater and lesser, important and trivial, etc. (see p. 102). Life choice then turned out to be the most encompassing element of this order for the individual, the largest scale. The account so far of life choice, and the other scales of choice it embraces, has allowed very considerable freedom to the individual—to the point of admitting the possibility that individuals can at least to some degree create themselves. I have concentrated on individual determinants of life choice, and in putting aside other issues I have been assuming something like conditions of calm and normalcy. I want now to consider what happens when abnormal or emergency conditions take over— those of war, or political or economic crisis, for example. Such events may invade the ordinary situations of life choice, and trump its deliberations, so that the individual may be forced to move beyond the normal sense of the largest scale.

I will begin with two actual examples of something of this kind. Gustavo Durán, as a young man, was a promising musician, a composer and pianist, a student of de Falla, a friend of Lorca. When the Spanish Civil War began, he was in the army reserve. He was one of relatively few in the army who came to the defence of the Republic. It turned out, unexpectedly, that he was an excellent soldier, and he became one of the leading republican combat commanders. When Franco and the Falangists won, he had to flee Spain. He never returned to the life of a professional musician, but became an international civil servant, with a distinguished career at the United Nations.1 Michael Dummett is a leading contemporary British philosopher. But for several years in the mid 1960s he curtailed much of his philosophical activity to engage in political action for the purpose of preventing the entrenchment of racism in British society. At the end of this period, he came to the conclusion that, because of the failure of “our politicians, of the Labour and Conservative Parties alike,” this purpose could not be achieved. He returned to the consolations of philosophy.2

It seems somehow wrong to describe what happened to Durán as a matter of choice. The scale of the crisis precipitated by the rebellion of the generals made it virtually impossible not to take sides (in fact, the sides were largely set well before the rebellion). The immediate necessity for a military defence of the Republic laid out the primary task, especially for those already under arms. But Durán’s success as an army officer is very striking, with its oddly inverted echoes of “The Jolly Corner.” Nothing in his previous life, nor in his plans for the future, suggests it at all. Yet it was in him, and could possibly lay claim to showing what he ought

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