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Literature and Philosophy (Individual vs. state (Ursula K. Le Guin The…

- - - - MIND/BODY DUALISM: when Gregor gradually grow used to his insect body, he comes to enjoy crawling around in the room, eating rotten food, and finds that his human instincts gradually disappear. He finds himself struggling to hold on to his human side, because his insect body is starting to produce an identity of its own. Contrary to Descartes’ Cogito, body in Kafka’s story plays a vital role in forming one’s identity as Locke has contended in his Essays.
        
        Mind/body dualism
      - INTERSUBJECTIVITY:
        Gregor’s feels ashamed that he cannot bring home the bread. This shows that his identity also depends on others’ perception of him.
        
        Others vs. our own identity
        
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    - - FREEDOM:
        If one read Gregor as the cause of his metamorphosis, one can argue that Gregor is fully exercising his freedom that Sartre has argued that all men are condemned to have. Furthermore, Gregor can count as one of Nietzsche’s free spirits: going beyond the good and evil of his family/company, choosing to rid his family of the burden that is himself. It is a path that is, just like Nietzsche argues, hard for others to understand and lonely. In other words, suiciding is an active choice that transcends the binarism of life.
        
        Gregor shows Sartre's harsh optimism, and Nietzschean free spirit.
      - BAD FAITH:
        However, one can also read Gregor’s actions as an example of living in Sartre’s so-called bad faith. His suicide is an easier option than continuing to live on, and his action is a manifestation of his cowardice. Turning into a giant bug is against his will, being a dispensable creature that is always taken for granted by his families, and is slave to companies finally drive Gregor to give up his freedom of living.
        
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    - - Perceptions of others
  - - - Others vs. our own identity
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      - Racial identity depends for a large prat on how others perceive us
    - - Who are we?
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- - - - Hannah Arendt Eichmann in Jerusalem
        
        TWISTING KANTIAN ETHICS: Arendt points out how Eichmann has twisted Kantian categorical imperative to his own purpose. Instead of becoming the moral judge of his own actions, Eichmann takes Hitler’s instructions as the maxim against which he judges the morality of his own actions. This is the contrary of what Kant has proposed.
        
        BANALITY OF EVIL: normally in sentencing a crime, the intentions of the perpetrator is taken into consideration. However, in the case of nation-dictated genocide, Eichmann has committed the crime of thoughtlessness. He did not bear ill will towards Jewish people, but he followed the horrendous instructions from his superiors without second thought.
        
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      - Joshua Oppenheimer The Act of Killing
        
        THOUGHTLESSNESS: Anwar and his fellow former executioners/gangsters have committed similar crime as Eichmann. As accomplice to the second most atrocious genocide in human history, a lot of them brag about their past acts of killing without remorse or reflection. However, their lack of remorse or reflection can also be a sign of denial. For example, Anwar constantly has nightmares in which his victims stare at him. At the start of the film, he brags about his killings just like his fellow killers. However, his bragging is gradually revealed to be a sign of his guilty conscience. His thoughtless serve as a self-protecting mechanism. If he doesn’t think about the atrocity of his crimes, then he can still live on and live with himself.
        
        Thoughtlessness or denial?
        
        TRUTH/UNTRUTH: Nietzsche points out that we falsify all the time in daily life by filling people and objects with our perceptions of who/what they are. Oppenheimer’s method of documenting the reenactments of killings reflect this kind of idea. In order to live with themselves, the killers falsify/fictionalize the world that they live in, denying and bragging about their crimes.
    - - W. E. B. Du Bois Souls of Black Folk
        
        DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS: Du Bois describes the identity of African Americans as double, “two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings” in the same body. African Americans often find their history a two-fold story, with the consciousness of how white people view them constantly at war with their own self-identity.
        
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      - Charles W. Mills The Metaphysics of Race
        
        RACIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM: Race is not a biological fact, but an ontological, objective status constructed by social consensus. Mills uses the example of “quace” system to demonstrate how race socially constructed. Like the gender acts in Butler’s theory, race has its roots not in biological traits, derives its reality from an agreed-upon social intersubjectivity.
        
        Race is a socially constructed ontological reality
        
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        RACE PROBLEM CASES: Mills proposes important criteria that people use to determine racial identity. However, there are many problem cases that arise when conflicts among criteria appear. For example, Mills uses the example of Mr. Oreo, whose skin color is black, but is unhappy with his African American ancestry. Mr. Oreo try to lead a “white” life, and hopes to have white skins. Mills asks is Mr. Oreo black or white?
      - Jordan Peele Get Out
        
        DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS: The scene where Chris falls down a black hole when his girlfriend’s mother, Missy Armitage, hypnotizes him is a wonderful rendering of Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness. Missy Armitage intensifies the power of control the half of Chris’ consciousness that is created by white people’s perception of African Americans. Chris’s “black” consciousness consequently loses control, imprisoned in a black hole of his subconsciousness. Chris’ fight to set loose his “real” consciousness is the symbolic journey that Du Bois hopes African Americans can embark on.
        
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        PROBLEM CASE OF RACE: Rose Armitage’s grandmother and grandfather have all gone through the Coagula surgery. The surgery has changed the complexion of their skin, but their identity remains intact. Like Mill’s racial problem cases, they expose the fact that race isn’t biologically constructed, but a reality constructed by society.
        
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  - - - ESSENCE: following existentialism humanism, de Beauvoir argues that women are not defined by their biological traits. Women is not an a priori truth, and does not possess an essence. However, existentialism humanism also points out that our identity depends on each other (intersubjectivity). Women have always been seen as the dependent other, exterior to the untagged male normative. This is where women’s dilemma arises: to live freely and not in bad faith, women have to have the recognition of another free conscious being. When women are recognized as free beings, how can they live authentically?
        
        Recognition from another free being
    - - GENDER ACTS/ PERFORMANCES: Butler offers an ontological critique of gender, arguing against the substance-based reality of gender. Gender is nothing but a set of acts that are historically-constituted. Gender are these acts that we perform, but not something that we are.
        
        Acts/performances
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    - - PRINCE/COBBLER: from the thought experiment of the prince and the cobbler, Locke shows how one can be the same person but at the same time different men. The separation of men from person have become the concept in law, which can count corporations/organizations as person, though they are not men.
      - MAD/SOBER MAN:
        Locke points out that one body can be two different persons and men at different times. However, because the law cannot determine clearly when one loses consciousness and become another person/man albeit being in the same body, one still needs to be hold legally accountable for one’s actions across different time.
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    - - Rationalist vs. empiricist view of self
  - - - Is the self knowable? Does time trouble our sense of self?
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  - - - Critique of Utilitarianism
      - Support for Utilitarianism
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      - UTILITARIANISM: Creon’s actions can be read as doing what must be done to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest amount of people. If a conflict God’s law and men’s law is not resolved in post-war Thebes, it is very possible that people will soon take sides again, plunging into deeper chaos.
        
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  - - - Moral worth of actions lies in consequences vs. motives
      - Conflict of duty