We continued some discussion after class yesterday. Binx seems to succumb to the ideas that he hated and to join a profession of science upon the realization that he cannot break away from the categories. I believe that is precisely the problem, though. He has not succumbed to these categories, he has become content with himself. He allows himself to live in the categories without the categories influencing his life. He is no longer hindered by malaise. He has learned to live in the world unlike Banquo's ghost.
This was the goal of the existentialists. It was not to separate self from the world, but to learn to live in it without being affected by the objective categories.
Ad augusta per angusta,
Will Drake
P.S. I commented on Rachel's "Lip Piercing."
What do you call becoming content with yourself? Especially when it is something that you don't want to do. I would call it succumbing to these ideas or this profession. There is a difference between becoming content with something when you are happy about it and when you absolutely hate everything that you are becoming content with. He's trying to numb his senses due to the fact that he hates everything about the man he's becoming.
ReplyDeleteSo funny! I just took the opposite view in my blog.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting thought though- to be content within the categories. Because i agree that we do indeed exist within the categories, and that in our attempt to break out of these categories we create for ourselves another category (The category of a person who breaks out of categories).
But i think too that we will never really be content within them. That mitchell said that we are not at home in the world, and to a certain extent contentedness is a type of malaise.
food for thought. I don't know the answer really, except that i don't want to give up the Search just yet.