Читать книгу Narrative Ontology - Axel Hutter - Страница 20

In contrast to their actions, the selfhood of human beings is designated as their character, which, as we say, ‘shows’ itself in one’s actions. We can recognize our character only on the basis of our concrete actions, yet we act the way we act because we have this character and not another character – that is, because we are this human and not some other human. A human being’s character thus shows itself not in the changing ‘what’ of the diverse actions but, rather, in the ‘how’ of acting, which remains the same so long as one’s understanding of oneself and of freedom remains the same.

In light of a human being’s character, the blind spot in the conception of freedom of action becomes particularly clear. Anyone who believes to understand freedom on the basis of freedom of action will concede that one’s character cannot be conceived as though one chose it or brought it forth ‘freely’. In fact, it is immediately clear that a human being’s character recedes from the operational access of that person’s actions, for the character always precedes each single action. At the same time, the actions through which the character finds expression are ascribed not simply as free actions; rather, they are ascribed to the individual in a more distinctive way, precisely because the individual’s character shows itself in them.

Yet accountability implies liability. The idea of freedom of action justifies human liability in the fact that the guilty individual could have also acted differently. Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s critical philosophy of the freedom of the will, which shows clearly the illusory and thus unfree nature of a mere freedom of action, understands liability, by contrast, as the possibility for the guilty party of also having been different. That is, the guilty party could have changed his or her character – which would show itself, in turn, in changed actions in which the character necessarily expresses itself. Regret and ‘the pangs of conscience’, according to Thomas Mann, following Schopenhauer, aim for this reason ‘at being, not at action’.

Here, the enigma of human being comes to a head in the enigma of the freedom of the will and the freedom of character. It is just as clear that one can speak seriously of freedom only where it bears not merely on action but, firstly and above all, on character, on the actual willing and selfhood of the actor, as it is unclear at first glance how a ‘free’ change of character should be possible, since the character that always precedes every single action eludes being objectified for precisely this reason. How can one change freely one’s being, the selfhood that one designates with the word ‘I’?

The question in which the being of human being becomes a question reveals clearly that a critical understanding of freedom requires an equally critical ontology. Yet it is precisely this insight – as should now be clear – that underlies Kant’s doctrine of the double aspect of being. This can be known in its double form, as empirical literalness and as intelligible meaning, such that both aspects belong strictly together, thus allowing us to understand the being of concrete reality in the first place.

A consequence of the double aspect of existence as being and meaning for the selfhood of human being is that here, too, one must distinguish between the empirical character and the intelligible character, as letter and as spirit of the one, inherently differentiated reality of human being. Since the empirical character always stands under the ‘influence of certain motives’, any freedom attributed to it in its literalness that has not been understood would be a mere fiction. Instead, human freedom manifests itself in the capacity of humans to understand their empirical character, and thus to develop an intelligible character.

The free selfhood of human beings is rooted in their concrete self-understanding in such a way that it is called ‘character’. Human lived existence is never mere literal being; rather, it is selfhood that is interpreted and understood always anew. For this reason, one’s being changes when one’s understanding of oneself changes, for one realizes one’s freedom concretely in understanding. Human freedom is a dependent, finite autonomy. It is dependent on being in a literal sense, which lies before this freedom and underlies it. But this being does not exhaust the essence of human existence, for human beings are able, in understanding mere literalness, to emancipate themselves from being blindly caught up in what is given and prescribed. The empirical–intelligible double aspect of human personality must, then, more specifically be understood as the double aspect of being and meaning, of empirical literalness and intelligible interpretation.

For this reason, Kant states that ‘The human being who is conscious of having character in his way of thinking does not have it by nature; he must always have acquired it’ (2006, 194). It therefore ‘does not depend on what nature makes of the human being, but on what the human being makes of himself, for the former belongs to temperament (where the subject is for the most part passive), and only the latter enables one to recognize that he has a character’ (192). Yet the ‘acquisition’ of a character cannot ensue in steps since the character designates the whole of human selfhood that always lies before all the single actions and operations. ‘Wanting to become a better human being in a fragmentary way is a futile endeavour, since one impression dies out while one works on another; the grounding of character, however, is absolute unity of the inner principle of conduct as such’ (194).

Forming a character, which implies at the same time changing the inner principle of the past way of life, can take place only in human beings waking up with a jolt out of the dream of their previous existence. They wake up by becoming aware that their settled, as it were, ‘natural’, understanding of their selves and the world – which makes them understand this or that but not the whole of their existence – is akin to the instinct of an animal, rather than the character of a free human being. The acquisition of a character, that is, the beginning of a true self-understanding can for this reason, according to Kant, not be achieved ‘gradually, but only, as it were, by an explosion which happens one time as a result of weariness at the unstable condition of instinct. Perhaps there are only a few who have attempted this revolution before the age of thirty, and fewer still who have firmly established it before they are forty’ (194).

Kant’s last remark is especially insightful for the line of thought pursued here, for it draws attention to the extent to which human beings, in their self-understanding, are dependent on having a past that serves as a basis, as it were, as a ‘text’ of understanding. Right here, a new definition of human freedom as narrative can begin – namely, by opposing the erroneous idea that human beings are free, at most, despite their past, which they can no longer change through action; on the contrary, human beings are free purely on the basis of their history and thanks to their past. If human beings had no past, then they would not be free from the outset, because they would not at all know how to understand themselves.

This also renders intelligible the conclusion of Thomas Mann’s ‘philosophical confession’ that the ‘deepest thought’ that he could ever ponder ‘belongs to those I had reflected upon before they were expressly thought out for me, before I had read them’ – for the ‘deepest’ thinking is here evidently understood as reflecting, because it is always already walking in traces that have been thought before, in ‘footsteps’ and models of the past. But the point of this concluding expression is that thinking loses no freedom or originality through its reference to the past in its reflecting, but on the contrary gains ‘depth’ in the first place. Actual contemplation and understanding begins for Thomas Mann in becoming aware of how that which always seemed plausible to him in an unclear way had already been thought by Schopenhauer. Originality is for him not only the marking of the first understanding, but equally – and even more so – the marking of the later understanding.

It is thus appropriate to provide a reflective interpretation of that which so pointedly calls for one – which ought to ensue in the present enquiry by reflecting upon Thomas Mann’s narrative reflection in a philosophical manner and with a philosophical intent. This enquiry thus sets for itself the goal of clarifying the peculiar narrative self-knowledge that underlies his thought and work. This is only possible, though – as the introduction has shown – when one at the same time makes explicit the conception of a narrative ontology that enables such a self-knowledge in the first place.