Re: Moviegoer and despair


Subject: Re: Moviegoer and despair
From: David Alan Beck (dabeck@IUPUI.EDU)
Date: Fri Nov 19 1999 - 13:37:20 EST


Rhonda,
Good point. My only answer would be that he may be doing what Aunt Emily
expects him to do, but he seems to want to do it in his own way (i.e.
through intersubjectivity). I can't imagine his aunt giving him advice
to help others AND be helped along.

Interestingly, as I was (still!!) revising my paper, I came across this
quote from Converstations...:

"Binx lived almost entirely in what Kierkegaard called the aesthetic mode
of consciously cultivating certain experiences, of living in a certain
place with a certain feeling to it and having sensations about being
there.... But in the end--we're using Kierkegaardian terminology--in the
end Binx jumps from the aesthetic clear across the ethical to the
religious. He has no ethical sphere at all." (65-6)

So maybe the decision places him above the ethical in the sense that
he has made it HIS choice (by adding his own twist).

What do you think?

David Beck

"Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle,
curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf."
                                                    - Annie Dillard
                                          from "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"



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