HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE HO2032 5/11/02 "HARDY'S PHILOSOPHY QUESTIONS"
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From: Scotty2705@aol.com
Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 16:10:44 EDT
Subject: Re:Tess .
 

How would you explain away the "Unsympathetic First Cause". Somebody put the 
question to me and I wasn't quite sure how to go about it.

Another question that was put to me was how to go about offering an 
explanation of the issue of Society V Nature.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Iain Walker.

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Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 21:28:42 -0500
From: Glen & Sara van Alkemade <gvanalkemade@jpusa.org>
Subject: Re:Tess .
 

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "explain away". This phrase
seems to sum up Hardy's worldview: that it seems likely there is/was some
sort of Prime Mover or First Cause behind the universe, but that whatever
it was, it is not particularly interested in our personal welfare. This
idea is effectively (and weirdly) portrayed in "The Dynasts".

Society v Nature? Here I will hazard an opinion as an avid retail consumer
of Hardy, and not as a scholar. It is my opinion that Hardy was pretty good
at picking apart the hypocrisies of his society in his day, but as a
natural philosopher, I find him uncompelling. In Tess he makes the point
that much of Tess' distress was magnified by real and imagined social
scorn, and that rabbits in their warrens know no such distress. That's
great for the rabbits, but it doesn't do much for Tess. He points out that
cows and insects get along better than people do, but does not seem to
offer insight into what it is I am supposed to learn from the cows, nor
does he offer a program for applying the peaceful ways of Nature to the
unruly mess of Society.

I look forward to the List's assault.

Glen & Sara van Alkemade
Jesus People USA
920 W. Wilson Ave #422
Chicago Il 60640
(773)561-2450 ext 1142

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From: "Andy B" <andybelyea@rogers.com
Subject: RE: Tess .
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 10:31:00 -0400
 

1.  ON TH's PHILOSOPHY and "EXPLAINING AWAY"

No assault here, but some ramblings from one who is hacking out a paper on
Hardy's animals and his "philosophy" - the latter being a term that must be
used cautiously in discussing TH, because he is far too (intentionally?)
inconsistent and contradictory to be pinned to a philosophical system like
"natural philosophy" (or to a philosopher like Schopenhauer - sorry Mary Ann
Kelly).

Note:  (What other names pop up in place of First Cause? - Prime Mover,
President of the Immortals, Immanent Will, Unconscious Will, Universal Will,
Chance, Wheel of Fortune, Wheel of Destiny, Nemesis, Fate, Circumstance,
Casualty, Ultimate Causality, The Scheme of Things, Nature, and others too
numerous to list.  He uses them sometimes interchangeably and sometimes not.
This would drive those who like systems and clear-cut terms and definitions
and formal logic quite nuts, I think).

At times, TH asserts that something like a First Cause may have started the
ball rolling and then stepped back with indifference - as in _The Dynasts_,
you're right.  BUT we've always got to pair that Hardyean explanation of the
universe  off against little snippets like this one from The Life which, to
me, directly opposes any notion of indifference:

That the Unconscious Will of the Universe is growing aware
of Itself I believe I may claim as my own idea solely - at which
I arrived by reflecting that what has already taken place in a
fraction of the whole (i.e. so much of the world as has become conscious)
is likely to take place in the mass; and there being no Will outside the
mass
- that is, the Universe - the whole Will becomes conscious thereby: and
ultimately, it is to be hoped, sympathetic (Life 335).

How might the Unconscious Will be "growing aware" of itself?  Well, it
certainly isn't through indifference.  It would have to have something that
IS self-aware on which to model itself, and that something is us.  We're the
most evolved and thus all "it" has to go on.

Hardy posits that "it" may be watching us humans (in a semi-conscious,
somnambulistic way) with an eye to wondering whether to allow other
non-humanly-conscious parts of itself to become more conscious like humans.
Subtly, sneakily, tentatively.  Parts of the Will are like "feelers."   I
see TH's creatures acting as feelers for the Will - you mention cows, but
sheep, horses, dogs and, especially birds seem to observe us at times in his
work.  The latter have the broadest (a la The Dynasts) "Spirit-like"
perspective of the human condition and might thus be the most suitably
active of these feelers.

Does such an idea make philosophical sense?  Is it logical?  Does it stand
to reason?  I suggest that TH knows he's being philosophically contradictory
and doesn't care.  He knows that we're all contradictory and paradoxical;
reason and logic and systems and science don't define the human condition
any more than religions or philosophers do.  They only attempt to explain
it.  I think it miffed TH that "ideas" could take on the power of truths.
And so his own "it" ("it" being any one of the labels above) cannot be
logically proven and nor can it be explained away; it's unprovable.  It's
almost as though we have to take TH as making a unique assertion of faith.
What I find neat is that guy who thought the world might be round probably
started with a similar assertion, as did that other one who saw an
exoskeleton in a rock and started wondering about the age of the world and
conventional teleological explanations of our existence.


2.  ON SOCIETY VS NATURE

If TH's animals are the part of the Unconscious Will (or First Cause or
whatever label we want to stick on "it") most likely to achieve
consciousness, then what is supposed to be learned from cows (your query) is
that whether they ever do become conscious may depend on our humane
treatment of them and of each other.  If we humans are to claim to be more
developed than other species, it must, for Hardy, show in the benevolence
and altruism we display toward each other and toward those things which by
virtue of our evolution - namely, our self-awareness, consciousness, and
intellect - we necessarily place at our mercy.  Many of Hardy's rustics seem
to "get" this; they seem to be on one hand less consciously evolved and yet
on the other more humane and attuned to the bigger existential picture than
the more socially-developed humans he constructs.  They sidestep worms and
can understand without neurotic anxiety EXACTLY why dogs drive sheep over
cliffs.  Moreover, they don't have certainties on which to base their
sympathy and understanding; TH's point, I think, is that they are not
arrogant enough to assume certainties of any kind.

You're right - there's no "program" for social change in TH.  His
"philosophical" ruminations do not translate into a coherent socio-political
framework for action.  He leaves that up to others, like most artists do.
But he DOES offer an alternate existential perspective which, if adopted and
lived outwardly by all humans everywhere every day, might become the seed
for tangible moral and social change.

Hard to believe Hardy was (and still is, often) labelled a pessimist.

Just some thoughts.

Andy

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