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The Relation of Berkeley and Plato to “Waiting for Godot

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The Relation of Berkeley and Plato to “Waiting for Godot University of Illinois Press "To Be Is to Be Deceived": The Relation of Berkeley and Plato to "Waiting for Godot" Author(s): Eric P. Levy Source: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 101, No. 2 (Apr., 2002), pp. 222-237 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27712209 Accessed: 19-10-2015 21:07 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.97.58.73 on Mon, 19 Oct 2015 21:07:28 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "To be is to be deceived": The Relation of Berkeley and Plato to Waiting for Godot Eric R Levy, Univerisity of British Columbia a Waiting for Godothas provoked wide range of interpretations, respectively emphasizing Christian, Existentialist, Marxist, Freudian, Hobbesian, po and elements cite some litical, Cartesian, semiotic, biographical (to only known -1But the most recurrent?if not con better approaches) perhaps is that it sensual?assumption made by critics regarding Waiting for Godot concerns of earlier cultural as the universal plight man, unprotected by surances or belief systems. A seminal critic in this regard isMartin Esslin, according to whom the play reveals "the full horror of the human condi tion."2 Indeed, the play itself suggests its own universality, as when Vladimir (a) identifies Pozzo's fallen state with "all humanity" (p. 54L) or (b) at at tributes Everyman status to himself and Estragon: "But at this place, this we or not" moment of time, all mankind is us, whether like it (p. 51L).3 Samuel i. For a summary of critics treating the first four categories, see Andrew Kennedy, more recent Existentialist Beckett (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), p. 31. For see and Existence in interpretations, David McCandless, "Beckett and Tillich: Courage St. Waiting for Godot,'" Philosophy and Literature, 12 (1988), 48-57, and Lance John Butler, Samuel Beckett and theMeaning of Being: A Study in Ontological Parables (London: Macmillan, see 1984), pp. 74-113 (drawing on Heidegger and Sartre). For a Hobbesian reading, Rob on A. McCar ert Zaller, "Waiting for Leviathan," in Critical Essays Samuel Beckett, ed. Patrick to later thy (Boston: Prentice-Hall, 1986), pp. 160-73. F?r the play's relation the passive resistance movement of the early sixties, see Herbert Blau, "Quaquaquaqua: The Babel of Beckett," in The World of Samuel Beckett, ed. Joseph H. Smith (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 1-15, at p. 9; and Rosette Lamont, "Beckett's Metaphysics of Choiceless Awareness," in Samuel Beckett Now, ed. MelvinJ. Friedman, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Univ. of Chi cago Press, 1975), pp. 199-217, at p. 217. For Cartesian commentary, see Sheila Rabillard, a "The Body in Beckett: D?n?gation and the Critique of Depoliticized Theatre," Criticism, see 34 (1992), 99-118, at 114, n. 2. For semiotic and linguistic interpretations, Jean Alter, Anna White "Waiting for the Referent: Waiting for Godot?" in On Tieferring in Literature, ed. side and Michael Issacharoff (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1987), pp. 42-56; Man uela Corfariu and Daniela Roventa-Frumusana, "Absurd Dialogue and Speech Acts: Beck ett's En Attendant Godot,'" Poetics, 13 (1984), 119-33; and Wolfgang Iser, Prospecting: From Reader Response toLiterary Anthropology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 152 93. For biographical analysis, see S. E. Gontarski, The Intent of "Undoing" in Samuel Beckett's Dramatic Texts (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1985), pp. 35-36; Deirdre Bair, Samuel to Beckett: A Biography (London: Harcourt, 1978), p. 386; and James Knowlson, Damned Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), pp. 378-82. 2. Martin Esslin, The Theatre of theAbsurd (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), pp. 37-38. 3. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, trans. Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove Press, 1954). are text. All quotations from the play pertain to this edition, and cited parenthetically in my Journal of English and Germanic Philology?April ? 2 002 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois This content downloaded from 129.97.58.73 on Mon, 19 Oct 2015 21:07:28 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Relation and Plato to for The of Berkeley Waiting Godot 223 In her recent study of the play as an inversion of the extreme Nominal ism of Kroll offers a valuable of Bishop Berkeley, Norma reinterpretation Waiting for Godot in these terms. According to Kroll, in Waiting for Godot Beckett "inverts [Berkeley's] trust in God's unwavering regard of his cre ation" such that God's perception (represented by the absent Godot) is withdrawn "from the human to contend predicament," forcing humanity with the resultant metaphysical "discontinuities."4 In Kroll's view, the play illumines the of human existence in terms of problematics metaphysical the control of its victims as are to be con factors beyond who, individuals, as manifestations of the fortune of mankind."5 strued "particular general The will a of the present study pursue contrary analysis play, replacing the notion of universality or irremediable human condition with the idea of deliberately sustained self-deception. In this context, the plight of nor Vladimir and Estragon is neither inherent inevitable, but doggedly a unno devised. Underpinning this interpretation is web of heretofore ticed allusions to or invocations of the works of both Berkeley and Plato? whose constructions of as we shall philosophers reality constitute, see, a philosophical opposites whose polarity is crucial to deeper understand ing of Waiting for Godot. Moreover, the relation of Berkeley and Beckett one we shall find is completely different from the adduced by Kroll. For whereas to Godot the absence of example, according Kroll, symbolizes is the sole of we shall God who, in Berkeley's system, guarantor certainty, that Godot or excuses the of discover justifies perpetuation uncertainty. I. THE RELEVANCE OF BERKELEY TO WAITING FOR GODOT notes As Lance St. John Butler (writing shortly before Kroll) (without the in the course of commentary), play invokes, Lucky's stupendous name has never before speech, the of "Bishop Berkeley" (p. 29L).6 But it been observed that Lucky is also explicitly associated with Berkeley's cel ebrated description of the intellectual confusion resulting from improp to that er philosophical concepts. According Berkeley, the uncertainty re The letters, "L" and "R" after the page number refer to the left and right hand pages spectively. 4. Norma Kroll, "Berkeley Inside Out: Existence and Destiny in Waiting for Godot," JEGP, a of Beckett's later 94 (1995), 530-53, at 530, 535. For Berkelean interpretation work, Film, A between Beckett and see Sylvie Debevec Henning, "'Film': Dialogue Berkeley," Journal of Beckett Studies, 7 (1982), 89-99. 5. Kroll, p. 552. 6. Lance St. Butler, Godot and in to Beck John " "Waitingfor Philosophy," Approaches Teaching Brater York: ett's "Waitingfor Godot, ed. June Schlueter and Enoch (New MLA, 1991), pp. 48-55, at p. 52. This content downloaded from 129.97.58.73 on Mon, 19 Oct 2015 21:07:28 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 2 24 levy arrests in its toward about the nature of real the mind progress certainty ity stems, not from the unintelligibility of reality, but from the erroneous intellectual principles employed to understand "the nature of things."7 Speculative reason stymies its own philosophical investigations by the mistaken ideas with which it thinks: "that fine and subtle net of abstract ideas, which has so miserably perplexed and entangled the minds of men."8 The image of the intellectual net, which "stay[s] and embarrass [es] the mind in its search after truth," explicitly recurs in the figure of Lucky who, just before the stupendously inconclusive act of thinking ("unfinished for reasons in which he mentions does unknown,"p. 29L) "Bishop Berkeley," a dance in a net: "The Net. He thinks he's entan depicting entanglement gled in a net" (p. 27L) .9Both this phrase describing Lucky and Berkeley's phrase describing intellectual perplexity deploy the words "net" and "en declamation the in tangled." Indeed, Lucky's concerning quandary which man more his search for and or, precisely, philosophical meaning "wastes wastes and constitutes an of what pines pines" (p. 29R) unrivalled example Berkeley, in the famous inaugural paragraph of A Treatise Concerning the Human terms "forlorn Principles of Knowledge, skepticism."10 In on closer that a re fact, inspection, inaugural paragraph provides on markably penetrating gloss the opening situation in Waiting for Godot, where Estragon is seen "sitting on a lowmound," by the side of" [a] country road" (p. 7L). After a prolonged and futile struggle to "take off his boot," he lapses, "giving up again," and declares his frustration: "Nothing to be done" (p. 7L). Berkeley's inaugural paragraph displays the same imagery regarding a figure seated by a road, in a state of dejected futility. But in Berkeley's passage, that sense of futility is caused by intellectual, not phys frustration. The seated the efforts of reason to ical, figure, perplexed by illumine "the nature of has to things," given up the attempt ascertain truth by philosophic "speculation," and succumbed to "a forlorn skepticism": Yet so it we see the illiterate bulk of mankind is, that walk the high road of plain common and are sense, governed by the dictates of nature, for the most part easy and undisturbed.
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