As has been seen through the course of history, trying to rectify the
image of the hero with the image of the saint has been not only difficult but
evidently impossible for most, with only a brilliant few coming forth with
nearly satisfactory but still incomplete attempts at doing so. In no small way, the way of the saint and the
way of the hero seems to have an ever widening gap in the time of what Thomas
Kuhn would classify as the scientific revolution. This gap can visibly be seen in the trenches
of World War I where Wilfrid Owen wrote his poem, Dulce et Decorum Est, asserting to the hero’s journey within the
context of that which is pointless even when fighting for something greater
than oneself.
Leading up to the first
half of the twentieth century, in which both World War I and II took place,
there was an undeniable shift in the worldview of many. The influential writings and inquiry of Marx,
Darwin and Freud typify the beginnings of this new worldview, one in which
force is recognized as being of primary importance.
For Karl Marx, the new worldview was determined by
economics. The force of economics is
what drives the individual toward a search for meaning through the derivation
of their human capacity for labor and the ability to transform nature by way of
said labor in productive and meaningful ways.
Marx also believed that the industrial revolution brought with it
alienation for humanity in terms of the fact that people were no longer as
directly connected to the labor in which they found meaning. People had quite literally been replaced by
machinery in their ability to transform nature and therefore, they had lost
their ability to find meaning as they once had.
Through the production of commodities, in Marx’s view, a person finds
meaning and value. Therefore, if a
person no longer produces as they once had, as an individual; it is a linear line
of thinking to believe that the human being will lose their grasp of what gives
their life meaning. This view of the
loss of meaning being tied so directly to the loss of human production within
the force of economics gives way to a reinterpretation, according to Professor
Ambrosio, to the struggle of the hero.
That is, the struggle of the individual in the face of the need for
commodities and the loss of personal production of such commodities.
Charles Darwin, though not concerned with economics but
rather with the biological character of the human being and the world the human
being inhabits, offered to the worldview of creationism, which is often
associated with the idea of the saint, evolution in the form of natural
selection. Intelligent design and
evolution appear to be two sides of an ongoing debate, dating back to Darwin
and his theory of natural selection. For
many, this debate is hard pressed to find a middle ground and therefore, it
widens the gap between hero and saint that much further. Believers in intelligent design often do not
see the human being as a byproduct of functional traits that have prolonged the
ability to survive but, rather, as a person created precisely for meaning and
in many cases, the glorification of God.
In the context of the hero, the idea of evolution is impersonal and
ruled by necessity. The drive of adaptation is the force by which humanity has
evolved.
Sigmund Freud also viewed the world in the light of
necessity and struggle as is common in the heroic ideal. In his case, however, the necessity was
anything but impersonal. For the
individual, according to Freud, it is necessary for the human being to struggle
against the drives of the id, which are repressed by the superego. According to Professor Ambrosio, it is precisely
this that lends itself to the viewpoint of the tragic hero by way of finding
meaning in the struggle and therefore giving meaning to an individual’s life.
While the views of these extraordinary minds leaves
little in the way of the saintly ideal, there came a writer by the name of
Fyodor Dostoevsky, who returns us to the worldview of the saint. Coming from the Russian Orthodox perspective
of Christianity, Dostoevsky returns us to the roots of faith. Dostoevsky appears to have taken on the
problem of evil in a direct affront in the Brothers
Karamazov. He not only introduces us
to a character, Father Zossima, who is an idealized version of the saint but
also to a young man by the name of Ivan who rejects the meaning of God and is
therefore a direct threat to the Russian Orthodox way of life, which in
Dostoevsky’s view appears to be nothing short of the way of the saint. Within the context of these stories, both
included in the Brothers Karamazov,
one can find the identity of Dostoevsky and his perspective that all are
responsible for all, to all. The force
of the problem of evil, asks the individual to fight back by way of accepting
their freedom and face up to their responsibilities as such. This perspective takes on deeper meaning when
contrasted to Friedrich Nietzsche, who held the view that no one is responsible
to anyone for anything.
Nietzsche’s outlook on life, revealed in his story, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is heroic in
nature. He believed in the will to self
mastery and that everyone obeys someone whether it is self or an outside
source. Yet, he did not find that anyone
was responsible for this for any definitive reason, as one who abides by the
way of the saint would. He did, however,
reason that necessity will bring about what needs to take place in order to
ensure survival and that this will come internally from the individual and
their participation in reality as it truly is.
As previously mentioned, there are forces at work in
humanity. These forces, such as the force of the economy, will push until
another force pushes back, determining the path in which humanity takes over
the long haul, if there will be a long haul at all. In light of the progress of science and the
culmination of the industrial revolution ensuing into the arms race in the
first half of the twentieth century, the world saw the mass destruction of both
world wars. It could appear that the
ever expanding view of the heroic ideal, even in modern terms is quietly and
quickly drowning out the ideal of the saint. While this may be simply the
nature of things and the necessity that the heroic ideal finds essential, it
may be something to contemplate that the world appears to grow colder as the
gap widens between the hero and the saint at a time when the destruction of
those that the saint finds inherently valuable is undeniably possible. According to Thomas Kuhn, incommensurability
is the inability to translate two rival theories into each other’s terms. Though he meant this to relate to scientific
theories, it can easily be seen here that in the broad spectrum of human
knowledge and the search for meaning, the ideals of hero and saint are very
much incommensurable in more ways than originally believed to be understood.
REFERENCES
Ambrosio, F. Philosophy,
Religion, and the Meaning of Life (The Great Courses Series). Lecture 19.
Ambrosio, F. Philosophy,
Religion, and the Meaning of Life (The Great Courses Series). Lecture 20.
Ambrosio, F. Philosophy,
Religion, and the Meaning of Life (The Great Courses Series). Lecture 21.
Ambrosio, F. Philosophy,
Religion, and the Meaning of Life (The Great Courses Series). Lecture 22.
Ambrosio, F. Philosophy,
Religion, and the Meaning of Life (The Great Courses Series). Lecture 23.
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