Re: Second Coming and Fear and Trembling


Subject: Re: Second Coming and Fear and Trembling
From: David Welch (welchfam@GTE.NET)
Date: Tue Aug 17 1999 - 03:01:07 EDT


Marshall Smith wrote:

> I'd also like to discuss what Percy meant by "the despair of pure
> possibility." I have my ideas, but would like to see what you all
> think.

I think that Percy meant by "the despair of pure possibility" pretty
much what Kierkegaard meant in *The Sickness Unto Death*. Kierkegaard
discusses how "possibility" and "necessity" are equally essential to the
Self's becoming itself. A self that has the former but lacks the latter
suffers from the "despair of possibility." Kierkegaard writes: "What
really is lacking is the power to obey, to submit to the necessary in
oneself, to what may be called one's limit. Therefore the misfortune
does not consist in the fact that such a self did not amount to anything
in the world; no, the misfortune is that the man did not become aware of
himself, aware that the self he is, is a perfectly definite something,
and so is the necessary."

It might be an oversimplification, but it seems to me that Binx Bolling
in *The Moviegoer* suffers the despair of possibility, whereas Tom More
in *Love in the Ruins* is afflicted by the despair of necessity (e.g.,
in how he can never quite "leave" the mental hospital).

Dave



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