The undivine comedy: The question of happiness and success (or whatever) after German philosophy
Ming Lim, University of Leicester
This paper considers the question: how can one be successfully humorous and also successfully-be-oneself in the post-utopian age? What categories do we work with in trying to answer this question? In other words, is there anything happy at all about the future for the human beings left among us? Is laughter still possible? Or merely obscene?
As a way of dancing around the question, I shall draw on linguistic -- as opposed to political (see Jameson, 2005) -- categories of the Utopian. The first argument to consider is the “German strategy.” In this regard, let us take up Heidegger's concept of 'the Open' in (poetic) language and in ourselves, developed from Rilke. He discusses the concept at some length in 'The Origins of the Work of Art', and 'What Are Poets For?. Although recently neglected by Heidegger buffs, these works are more relevant than ever in our degraded times. Heidegger presents a vision of the Ur-words, primal in their conceptual fullness and also part of our constitution, our being in the world. Does Heidegger give a satisfactory account of fun or happiness, however?
As a point of comparison, Paul Valéry’s take on the question (the sexier French view, if you like) is to claim that a poetic idea is conceptually empty while still deserving of the term 'idea.' Heidegger's Ur-terms seem to be driving in a similar direction – i.e, away from the language of summary, of technique and technology, of conceptual dominance. Instead of a technology of linguistic proliferation, therefore, Heidegger posits spareness and a certitude of meaning which is, paradoxically, ‘open’ to the world. Is the bridge between Heidegger’s the ‘Open’ and Valery’s ‘poetic art’ what we need for the humour of being human to emerge?
A consideration of these musings takes place through Orwell’s vision in 1984 of how language is stripped to fewer and fewer words, erasing even the concepts of happiness and fun. The dark power of his novel lies in his view that messianic understandings of history may provide a way of re-agitating our desire for moral normalizations. The future of human nature lies not in sober and weighty considerations of the implications of language on the human body, but on a humorous account of the horrors of the project itself.
One idea, following from what the above, is: is the notion of happiness just an 'idea' in messianic thinking? It's clearly (still) something we want to keep and we do use 'it', from time to time, in common parlance, and often in good faith even, but does it have any conceptual significance any more?
References
Habermas, J. (2003), The Future of Human Nature. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Plessner, H. (1970), Laughing and Crying: A Study of the Limits of Human Behaviour, trans. J.S. Churchill and M. Green, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, pp. 27-32.