Schopenhauer and beckett : theatre of asceticism

Abstract

It is the central argument of this thesis that the plays Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Happy Days are Schopenhauerian-informed, Beckettian theatre of asceticism. By proposing this understanding of Beckettian tragedy, this work presents a challenge to the life-affirming reading of Beckettian art presented by Adorno, Cavell, Deleuze, Critchley, and Badiou, for whom Beckett's work exemplifies art's capacity to provide genuine resistance to nihilism. In contrast to the life-affirming interpretation of Beckett's work, I believe the spectator to the performance of these three Beckettian tragedies witnesses something unique in the history of theatre: deliberately generated, self-inflicted physical and mental suffering undertaken with the intention of attaining a painless, will-less, state. Beckett is the first tragedian to stage ascetic practice where, in Schopenhauerian terms, the human intellect refuses the agreeable and, instead, looks for disagreeable in its attempts to break the will. To understand Beckett's contribution to asceticism, it is vital that we understand Beckett's work in relation to Schopenhauer, Beckett's most important ascetic predecessor. In the process of developing his own ascetic method - that of representational deprivation - Beckett utilizes and develops the central aspects of Schopenhauer's philosophical system. By so doing, Beckett incorporates both ascetic and non-ascetic elements of Schopenhauerian philosophy into his own ascetic thought. These non-ascetic elements include Schopenhauer's understanding of the dynamically sublime, the experience of boredom, and the conception of the self as that comprised of willing and knowing subjects. Only by understanding the foundation upon which Beckettian asceticism is built can one then also appreciate the significant development of asceticism that one finds in Beckettian tragedy. On the Beckettian stage, one witnesses the practice of a variety of ascetic methods which focus on inhibiting the body, methods such as self-mortification, fasting, poverty, and celibacy. With a long history of implementation, these ascetic methods may be referred to as 'traditional' asceticism. It is this version of asceticism that Schopenhauer discusses at length in the Fourth Book of The World as Will and Representation. In addition to the depiction of traditional asceticism, Beckett employs the artistic medium of tragedy to display the effectiveness of radical ascetic methods of his own devising. These 'Beckettian' ascetic methods, which operate in conjunction with traditional methods, focus on depriving the will - that perpetually striving aspect of the self (WWR 1: 164-5) - of the knowledge that it requires to strive. In its attempts to attain the will-quieted state of 'nothingness', Beckettian asceticism starves the mind as much as it starves the body. Show more