Think, Pig! by Rabaté Jean-Michel;

Author:Rabaté, Jean-Michel;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2016-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

Beauty and Torture

We have seen in the discussion of aesthetics that there is just a step from Watt’s serial verbal permutations to the contemplation of Beauty, a step that was taken when Kant’s “purposiveness without a purpose,” the definition of beauty, appears in the second part of Molloy. Even if it acquires an ironic ring, the expression asserts a principle according to which meaning is granted to the world, even in the most innocent forms of beauty like flowers in the mountains. Beckett wants to query such assurance. He uses Moran’s wish to work for serious motivations “more serious and imputable less to pleasure than to business.”18 Moran adds: “For it was only by transferring it to this atmosphere, how shall I say, of finality without end, why not, that I could venture to consider the work I had on hand.”19 First, Moran needs to withdraw from the “spray of phenomena,” because he can only see his true goal when allowed to reach a purely disinterested activity. The Kantian paradox works better in the French text of Molloy with “finalité sans fin.” This passage asserts that the aim of Moran’s quest is not the object, that is Molloy, but the establishment of a link. This link is both a report and a rapport, which is the same word in French, both a narrative and an intellectual connection. The establishment of such a double rapport implies that we consider natural beauty as defined by Kant’s judgment on the beautiful.

The judgment attributing beauty to Zweckmässigkeit ohne Zweck, “the form of purpose without a purpose” is an oxymoron meaning that a reflective judgment stemming from my perception of beautiful objects can give me an idea that the world containing such beautiful objects has the form of teleology. If I see beauty in the world, the world acquires the form of a purpose, without necessarily being teleological in itself. Whenever I perceive beauty, I sense that the world is not absurd, even if it is replete with absurd people, situations, and commands. Thus, the relation without a relationship, to translate a rapport sans rapport, again offers a key, as we have perceived in reference to Levinas: “For where Molloy could not be, nor Moran either for that matter, there Moran could bend over Molloy. And though this examination prove unprofitable and of no utility for the execution of my orders, I should nevertheless have established a kind of connexion, and one not necessarily false. For the falsity of the terms does not necessarily imply that of the relation, so far as I know.”20

If the link between beauty and duty is not probed further in Molloy, a neo-Kantian appreciation of beauty as quasi teleology resurfaces in Three Dialogues, written more or less at the same time. When Freud smiles at Kant’s naivety facing the beauty of stars at night, he makes room for the argument that the beauty of the world justifies the intervention of God, even though no divine handiwork is discernible in the distribution of moral conscience among human beings.

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