Summary
When the self tries to become “pure” by casting out all non-self, its nature and identity becomes obscure. Descartes found the right symbolism for this residual self which knows nothing except its own existence. The last sixteen years of Rousseau’s life were one great effort to attain this state of pure selfhood where “time stands still” and the fuga temporum becomes mythical durée. Samuel Beckett pierces Rousseau’s last illusions: what is left when a self reaches its “pure” state is not the “eternal moment” of bliss but hopeless suffering just this side of non-existence, and loss of all certainty except the certainty that this consciousness must go on moving without end. Time has become the “eternity” of unwanted existence, an invisible prison without walls and without exit.
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References
“God and man, world and society form a primordial community of being. The community… is knowable only from the perspective of participating in it.” Eric Voegelin: Order and History, Vol. 1. Louisiana University Press: 1956, p. 1.
Marcel Raymond lists five “very evident reasons” why Rousseau’s quest for the self had to be “a vain, chimeric, hopeless enterprise” which was nonetheless inevitable, once the Cartesian revolution had passed from the realm of ideas into the “sentiment de l’existence.” J.-J. Rousseau: La quête de soi et la rêverie. Paris: Corti 1966, pp. 191 f., 161, 169.
“Consciousness cannot be defined: we may be ourselves fully aware what consciousness is, but we cannot without confusion convey to others a definition of what we ourselves clearly apprehend. The reason is plain: consciousness lies at the root of all knowledge.” Sir William Hamilton: Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic. Vol. 1, Lecture XI. Boston: 1859, p. 132. But if consciousness lies “at the root of all knowledge,” how can we ourselves without confusion be “fully aware” what consciousness “is”? — The theory of symbolization used in this paper is Eric Voegelin’s: op. cit., p. 1 ff. (“The Symbolization of Order,” which I briefly summarized in The Southern Review 3 (1967) 289 f.) and his Anamnesis. München: Beck 1966.
Discours de la méthode, Quatrième partie. AT VI, p. 33, 3–11.
Nicolas Malebranche: Recherche de la vérité IV, xi, § 3. O. C. (Paris: Vrin), Vol. II, pp. 98, 99,103.
Samuel Beckett: Proust [1931] and Three Dialoges with Georges Duthuit [1949]. London: Calder, 1965, p. 15.
Hegel: Vorrede zu Phänomenologie des Geistes (ed. Lasson 3), p.24.
Rousseau: Confessions XII. O. C. (Pléïade) I, p. 589.
Rousseau: Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, Premier dialogue. O.C. I, p. 676.
Sur l’origine de l’inégalité, O. C. III, p. 169 and Jean Starobinski’s note, ibid. p. 1344.
Rousseau describing his “reform”: “I gave up gold lace and white stockings... and sold my watch, saying to myself with incredible joy: Heaven be thanked, I shall never need to know what time it is.” Confessions VIII. O. C. I, p. 363. For a psychoanalytical interpretation of this text see John Cohen’s report in “Disorders of the Inner Clock,” in J. T. Fraser (ed.): The Voices of Time. New York: Braziller 1966, p. 271; the diagnosis is “a peculiar type of temporal derangement.” But this is, I think, to misunderstand that inveterate symbolizer Rousseau; it also fails to distinguish between the Inner Clock and Inner Time. Cf. the Beckett section below.
In the Preface to the Discours on Inequality Rousseau asks: “What experiments would be necessary to achieve knowledge of natural man? And what are the means for making these experiments in the midst of society?” O. C. III, p. 123 f. His answer, at this stage, was: the thought experiment. In Julie he tries out the model of the “société intime”, splendidly analyzed in Jean Starobinski’s J.-J. Rousseau: La transparence et l’obstacle. Paris: 1967, Ch. 5. Julie must die if the survivors are to return to themselves in resigned recollection of the past. In Émile, Rousseau uses the developmental model of the Discours on Inequality to study what J. H. Broome has called the creation of “an artificially produced man [in] an artificially produced natural society” (Rousseau: A Study of His Thought. New York: 1963, p. 104.) In their first encounter with actual civilized society, Emile and Sophie suffer moral shipwreck; the planned sequel was to bring a resolution parallel to that in Julie: death of one partner, resignation of the survivor in the tranquil acceptance of the irrevocable. About the third model, the Contrat Social, Rousseau himself has said the necessary: “Forcé de combattre la nature ou les institutions sociales, il faut opter entre faire un homme ou un citoyen; car on ne peut faire à la fois Tun et l’autre.” The best institutions are those best designed to denature man “et transporter le moi dans l’unité commune.” Emile, O. C. IV, p. 248 f. The self must die if the common self is to come into existence.
Confessions XII. O. C. I, p. 589.
Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, Première Promenade. O. C. I, p. 995.
Ibid., p. 999.
Cinquième Promenade, ibid., p. 1047.
Ibid., p. 1046.
“I feel already my imagination ice over, all my faculties get feebler. I expect to see my reveries become colder from day to day until boredom will rob me of the courage to continue; and so my book will naturally end, if I continue it, when I approach the end of my life.” Note jotted down on a playing card, O. C. I, p. 1165. Again in the second Promenade: “... un tiède allanguissement énerve toutes mes facultés, Pesprit de vie s’éteint en moi par degrés…”, ibid., p. 1002.
Samuel Beckett: The Unnamenable. We cite the New York edition: Molloy. M alone Dies. The Unnameable. Three Novels. Grove Press: 1957, p. 420. Quotations from Beckett’s Murphy are from the first two pages and from the brief Section VI.
Rousseau: Rêveries. Cinquième Promenade. O. C. I, p. 1047.
In a “non-interview” with Israel Shenker (New York Times, June 5, 1956) Beckett is reported to have made the non-statement that Kafka’s form “seems to be threatened the whole time - but the consternation is in the form. In my work there’s consternation behind the form, not in the form. In the last book — L’Innommable — there’s complete disintegration. No T, no ‘have’, no ‘being’.” Beckett on the painter Masson (in 1949): “Though little familiar [with his past problems]..., I feel their presence not far behind these canvasses veiled in consternation.” Proust, p. 109.
So cited by Tom F. Driver, “Beckett by the Madeleine.” Columbia Forum, Summer 1961, p. 23.
The Unnameable, p. 419. Subsequent page references in square bracketts refer to this work in the New York edition.
Ibid., p. 420.
“Qui Corpus ad plurima aptum habet, is Mentem habet, cujus maxima pars est aeterna.’ Ethica V, propos. 39.
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Sebba, G. (1972). Time and the Modern Self: Descartes, Rousseau, Beckett. In: Fraser, J.T., Haber, F.C., Müller, G.H. (eds) The Study of Time. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-65387-2_31
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