Revising the Human in Samuel Beckett’s Aesthetic Education

KELLY S. WALSH

탈경계인문학Trans-Humanities

2015, 8(1), pp.47-72
Publisher : Ewha Institute for the Humanities: EIH
Research Area : Other Humanities

KELLY S. WALSH ¹

¹Yonsei University

ABSTRACT

While Beckett, with his aesthetics of ignorance and impotence, has often been claimed as an antihumanist, his abiding artistic concern remained the elusive question of the human and its ends or purposes. Admittedly, this humanism is “cruelly humane,” as it compulsively excavates the depths of human abjection, suffering and infirmity; but even as the human remains unknowable in Beckett, the impetus to “go on” with the endeavor is appallingly resilient and affecting — and, artistically, it is remarkably fruitful. What emerges from this inexhaustible drive for ends and purposes, in a world of “finality without end” or “purpose without purposiveness,” is a kind of play, which ranges from the laughable and pitiful to the excruciating and poignant. And it is precisely in this play, I argue, that Beckettian humanism and Beckettian aesthetics converge. Revising the aesthetic tradition of Kant and Schiller, his work rejects the beautiful, and its putative harmonization of the mental faculties, as the privileged and proper domain of art; instead, it activates a confrontational aesthetic, the experience of which is predominantly one of discord and discomfort. Through its play, this aesthetic takes us back to our human finitude, revealing, in place of freedom and transcendence, the indefinite and grimly humorous. For Beckett, then, play seems to be constitutive of both the art and the human, and we are never more human than when we play. The ends and meaning will remain indefinite, but such play may have the capacity to revitalize the imagination and encourage us to go on, wherever that may be.
KEYWORDS

Beckett, aesthetics, humanism, play, Kant and Schiller
REFERENCES (35)

[book] Badiou, Alain / 2003 / On Beckett / Clinamen

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 1984 / Collected Shorter Plays / Grove

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 2006 / The Grove Centenary Edition: Volume IV: Poems, Short Fiction, Criticism / Grove : 495~510

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 1958 / Endgame and Act without Words / Grove

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 1964 / How It Is / Grove

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 2006 / Beckett after Beckett / UP of Florida : 15~21

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 1958 / Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable / Grove : 177~288

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 1958 / Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable / Grove : 5~176

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 1957 / Murphy / Grove

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 2006 / Samuel Beckett, The Grove Centenary Edition: Volume IV: Poems, Short Fiction, Criticism / Grove : 511~554

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 1995 / The Complete Short Prose: 1929–1989 / Grove : 259~265

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 1995 / The Complete Short Prose: 1929 –1989 / Grove : 100~154

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 2006 / Samuel Beckett, The Grove Centenary Edition: Volume IV: Poems, Short Fiction, Criticism / Grove : 555~563

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 1958 / Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable / Grove : 289~414

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 1954 / Waiting for Godot / Grove

[book] Beckett, Samuel / 1953 / Watt / Grove

[journal] Ben-Zvi, Linda / 2011 / Beckett and Disgust: The Body as ‘Laughing Matter / Modernism/modernity 18(4) : 681~698

[book] Blau, Herbert / 2006 / Beckett after Beckett / UP of Florida : 22~38

[book] Blau, Herbert / 2004 / Sails of the Herring Fleet: Essays on Beckett / The U of Michigan P

[book] Cavell, Stanley / 2002 / Must We Mean What We Say?: A Book of Essays / Cambridge UP : 115~162

[book] Critchley, Simon / 2000 / Very Little … Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature / Routledge

[book] Deleuze, Gilles / 1990 / Logic of Sense / Columbia UP

[book] Gibson, Andrew / 1990 / Reading Narrative Discourse: Studies in the Novel from Cervantes to Beckett / Palgrave

[book] Kant, Immanuel / 1951 / Critique of Judgment / Hafner

[book] Kant, Immanue / 2004 / Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics: That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science: With Selections from the Critique of Pure Reason / Cambridge UP

[journal] Maude, Ulrika / 2011 / Beckett and the Laws of Habit / Modernism/modernity 18(4) : 813~821

[book] McMillan, Dougald / 1988 / Beckett in Theatre / Riverrun

[journal] Murphy, P. J / 2011 / Beckett’s Critique of Kant / Sofia Philosophical Review 5(1) : 193~209

[book] Myskja, Bjørn K / 2002 / The Sublime in Kant and Beckett: Aesthetic Judgement, Ethics and Literature / Walter de Gruyter

[web] / 2014 / The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969 / Nobel Media AB / Nobelprize.org

[book] Pater, Walter Horatio / 2005 / The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry / Dover

[book] Pilling, John / 2010 / A Companion to Samuel Beckett / Blackwell : 63~72

[journal] Rabaté, Jean-Michel / 2011 / Beckett’s Three Critiques: Kant’s Bathos and the Irish Chandos / Modernism/modernity 18(4) : 699~719

[book] Schiller, Friedrich / 2004 / On the Aesthetic Education of Man / Dover

[book] Stewart, Paul / 2011 / Sex and Aesthetics in Samuel Beckett’s Work / Palgrave
KCI Citation (0)

KJC Korea
Journal Central

Statistics

Tools