Destiny Domesticated

Jos De Mul, Bibi Van Den Berg

Description

Destiny Domesticated investigates three ways Western civilization has tried to tame fate: the heroic affirmation of fate in the tragic culture of the Greeks, the humble acceptance of divine providence in Christianity, and the abolition of fate in modern technological society. Against this background, Jos de Mul argues that the uncontrollability of technology introduces its own tragic dimension to our culture. Considering a range of literary texts and contemporary events, and drawing on twenty-five centuries of tragedy interpretation from philosophers such as Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, literary critics George Steiner and Terry Eagleton, and others, de Mul articulates a contemporary perspective on the tragic, shedding new light on philosophical topics such as free will, determinism, and the contingency of life.
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Prologue

1. Destiny Domesticated

2. Chance Living

3. Fatal Politics

4. The (Non-)Reproducibility of the Tragic

5. The Art of Suffering

6. Awesome Technologies

7. Tragic Parenthood

8. Fateful Machines

9. Exodus

Notes
Works Cited
Name Index
Subject Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Religion
• Christianisme
• Philosophy
• Mathematics
• Christianity
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 30 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438449739
• Langue: English

Extrait

DESTINY DOMESTICATED
DESTINY
DOMESTICATED
The Rebirth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Technology
Jos de Mul
With translation assistance from Bibi van den Berg
Originally published as De domesticatie van het noodlot : de wedergeboorte van de tragedie uit de geest van de technologie © 2006 Klement & Pelckmans
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Jenn Bennett Marketing by Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
de Mul, Jos, 1956–
[Domesticatie van het noodlot. English]
Destiny domesticated : the rebirth of tragedy out of the spirit of technology / Jos de Mul ; With translation assistance from Bibi van den Berg. pages cm
“Originally published as De domesticatie van het noodlot : de wedergeboorte van de tragedie uit de geest van de technologie © 2006 Klement & Pelckmans.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4971-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Fate and fatalism—History. I. Title.
BD411.M7713 2014
190—dc23
2013008104
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Prologue
1. Destiny Domesticated
2. Chance Living
3. Fatal Politics
4. The (Non-)Reproducibility of the Tragic
5. The Art of Suffering
6. Awesome Technologies
7. Tragic Parenthood
8. Fateful Machines
9. Exodus
Notes
Works Cited
Name Index
Subject Index
FOREWORD
A ccording to Seneca, many found their fate while trying to avoid it. This book’s author pursued fate, in the blind hope that this might help him to escape his destiny.
This book, which was written over a period of more than ten years, deals with the connections between three themes that I have discussed separately in earlier works. It shares its focus on the human struggle for happiness and harmony with Romantic Desire in (Post)Modern Art and Philosophy (State University of New York Press, 1999). With respect to the theme of human mortality and fragility, it ties in with The Tragedy of Finitude (Yale University Press, 2004). And the focus on the uncontrollable nature of technology builds on Cyberspace Odyssey (CSP, 2010). What unites these three themes is the notion of the tragic, which marked the beginning of European culture and has been reborn in our technological culture.
Many have assisted me in my search for fate. I sincerely thank my colleagues and students at the Faculty of Philosophy of Erasmus University (Rotterdam), the Department of Art History of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), and the Department of History at Fudan University (Shanghai), for their inspiring and lively commentaries on the preliminary versions of the chapters of this book.
He who is lucky enough to walk the same hallways as Awee Prins knows that there are lightning conductors, but destiny conductors as well. I take this opportunity to thank Awee especially for the enthusiasm he brought to bear on reading the draft version of this book, and the sharpwitted and stylistically clever comments he provided. I thank Tim van den Hoff, Marjolein Wegman, Dora Timmers, and Julien Kloeg for their help in creating the index, in proofing the text, and in composing the bibliography. I also thank James Peltz, co-director of SUNY Press, and Andrew Kenyon, acquisitions editor, for their encouraging enthusiasm, and Jenn Bennett, assistant production editor, and Alan Hewat, copy editor, for their first-rate assistance during the production of the book. Last but not least I thank Bibi van den Berg for bringing in her enthusiasm, precision, and swing in the translation of this book.
When writing about fate one realizes how defining past events can be for the rest of one’s life. Every day I am grateful to my parents for the fact that they encouraged me, a long time ago, to follow my passion for philosophy. And I’m still grateful to Leen and Elly de Koeijer for introducing me to the fascinating worlds of mythos (Homer) and logos (Pythagoras) as a child. In my turn I hope my daughter Elize, who just like her father embarked upon the stormy sea of philosophy, will also find inspiration in both worlds. And I am grateful to my wonderful wife Gerry for keeping my faith in the muses alive.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T his book was originally published in Dutch in 2006 and has been revised and updated for the present edition. Several parts of this translation have been previously published as articles in journals or book chapters.
The interpretation of Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound in the Prologos and Exodus appeared as “Prometheus Unbound. The Rebirth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Technology,” in The Locus of Tragedy , ed. Arthur Cools, Thomas Crombez, Rosa Slegers, and Johan Taels (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 279–98.
Parts of chapter 3 (‘’Fatal Politics’) found their way into “Europe: The Tragic Continent,” a lecture held in the Series Conversations on Europe , organized by the Center for European Studies, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), on Feb. 7, 2008. This text has been published in the Michigan Paper Series 2008 ( http://www.ii.umich.edu/UMICH/ces-euc/Home/Resources/Michigan%20Paper%20Series/deMul_Europe_Tragic.pdf ).
Chapter 4 (“The (Non-)Reproducibility of the Tragic”) has been published under the same title in XPONIKA AIΣΘHTIKHΣ / Annales d’esthetique / Annals for Aesthetics , Vol. 46B (2011): 191–202.
Chapter 6 (“Awesome Technologies”) was published under the same title in: Curtis Carter, ed., Art and Social Change. International Yearbook of Aesthetics . Vol. 13 (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009), 120–39.
Chapter 8 (“Fateful Machines”) has been published as “Moral Machines” in Techné. Research in Philosophy and Technology 14 (2010): 226–36.
An adapted version of the final section of Chapter 9 (“Possibility of an Island”) is being published under the same title in Aesthetics and Phenomenology , Vol. 1 (2013), in press.
PROLOGUE
Ah! Ah! What sound, what sightless smell approaches me, God sent, or mortal, or mingled? Has it come to earth’s end to look on my sufferings, or what does it wish? You see me a wretched God in chains, the enemy of Zeus, hated of all the Gods that enter Zeus’ palace hall, because of my excessive love for Man.
—Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
W HEN F ATE K NOCKS
F ate. Sooner or later it knocks at everyone’s door. In many different guises. It can enter our lives gradually in the guise of an incurable disease or spring on us suddenly in the guise of an unexpected oncoming car in our lane. It can befall us from the outside like a devastating tsunami, but loom up also from within like an all-consuming jealousy. Fate can befall us unintentionally, or done to us—or another person—on purpose. It comes in the horrible guise of war violence and the intoxicating appeal of an addiction. It is painful when it happens to us, and often even more painful when it befalls someone we love. Without wanting it, our frail happiness is continuously interrupted by fatal events. And even when we are lucky enough to avoid grand catastrophes in our lives, in the end we inevitably lose our loved ones and we ourselves die. While fate inescapably befalls us we find it hard to bear that thought. It is a burden that we cannot carry, but that we also cannot shed.
Fate astounds us and raises many questions. What exactly is this inevitable fate? Are we its accidental victims or does our destiny have a reason? And if it does have a reason, then to whom or what do we owe that? And especially, how can we live with it? Many answers have been formulated to these questions throughout history, and oftentimes these were radically different. Moreover, numerous strategies have been developed to “tame” fate. This book discusses the many guises that fate may take, and the key transformations that have taken place in our attitude toward fate throughout European history. Particularly, I will address the circumstances of the tragic attitude toward fate.
Just like the concept of “fate” the word tragic is used in quite a variety of meanings. In ordinary language it is often used as an adjective and then, most of the time, it simply means that something was really sad. When a traffic accident is called fateful or tragic in the newspapers, then this usually means that it was an accident with fatal consequences. While tragedies do not necessarily have to end in death we do tend to use the word for events with an exceptionally bad ending. When a policeman arresting a bank robber accidentally breaks a window by shooting his gun this is not a tragedy. When he hits a colleague, who as a result will have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, then we will be more inclined to call the event tragic. Tragedies are events that end catastrophically in some way or another.
However, with this demarcation the meaning of the word tragic has not been exhausted fully. After all, not every catastrophic event is a tragedy. The word also says something about the nature of the catastrophe. “The tragic personage,” George Steiner remarks in his book The Death of Tragedy , “is broken by forces which can neither be fully understood nor overcome by rational prudence” (Steiner 1961, 8). Perhaps the policeman in the example cited above could have prevented the accident by taking better care of his colleague’s position. A parent who notices that his house is on fire and only has time to save one of his two children is torn apart by a tragic choice. Both options have a fateful and fat