Philosophy and Literature: Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge

A recent rereading of Thomas Hardy's novel The Mayor of Casterbridge has inspired a view thoughts about philosophy and literature.

It is a novel which is particularly close to tragedy, as define dby Aristotle in The Poetics, a hero falls in the world and endures suffering as the result of an error of judgement. As a novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge repeats the situation in a structure more complex than tragedy. An Aristotelian terms. a repeated tragedy within an epic. The tight structure of tragedy is repeated across a work with the episodic associational structure of epic.

The tragic falls: Henchard sells his wife while drunk and angry with her; Henchard ruins himself later when he is a wealthy farmer and a mayor, by engaging in a reckless attempt to win a commercial battle with his ex-friend and manager Donald Farfrae; he misses the chance to marry his ex-girlfriend before Farfrae wins her over; he misses the chance to tell his step-daughter Elizabeth-Jane that he is not her biological father when he finds out himself: he misses the chance to tell the truth to Elizabeth-Jane and her biological father. He goes through many little falls due to his self-destructive character leading to our next topic.

The hero Michael Henchard has many 'anti-hero' qualities. He is a loner and is disposed to arbitrary destructive and self-destructive acts. He is a Dostoevskian character in this sense, and has some resemblance with the heroes of Knut Hansun, themselves presumably drawing on Dostoevsky. Like Dostoevskey's characters he tends to promote scandal. One memorable example is his attempt to welcome a member of the Royal Family to Dorchester after he has fallen from being mayor and is a rather disreputable laboourer.

The anti-hero, I believe, receives its classical description and theorisation in Lukacs' Theory of the Novel. Lukacs refers to the growing contradiction in the novel between the hero and the world. The hero does not see herself in the world and cannot follow the laws of the world. There is an opposition between subjectivity and the world. The hero can increasingly only exist as insane or criminal. In this argument, the anti-hero is the necessary hero of the novel since Cervantes.

The Dostoevskian aspects of Henchard, irritability, irrationality, self-destruction, provocation of scandal, excessive pride coexisting with excessive humility, draw us towards Bakhtin"s discussion of the novel through Dostoevsky in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Bakhtin emphasises all these aspects of Dostoevsky in a discussion of what he takes to be the ideal form of the novel in Dostoevsky. The most Bakhtinian concern is the provocation of scandal and that leads us to the preoccupations of Rabelais and his World. Famously Bakhtin there dwells on the carnivalesque as an important moment in popular culture until recent times, referring to festival moments where social hierarchy is inverted, and power is mocked. The rise of Henchard from labourer to mayor and rich farmer, and his subsequent fall to labourer again has this structure in general. One moment in the novel particularly suggest the Carnivalesque. This is the 'skimmity ride' in which disreputable local characters humiliate a couple in the novel. In general the Skimmity Ride is a rural practice of mocking a couple where the wife does not 'belong' wholly to the husband. In this case they the locals parade large dummies of Henchard and his ex-girlfriend Lucetta. The intention is to humiliate Lucetta and her husband Donald Farfrae. The consequence is that Lucetta miscarries and dies. This is the Carnivalesque as a festival of resentment, rather then the neo-Marxist reading of Bakhtin in which the Carnival is the release of popular radical energies. In this case, the mocking of power is clearly an example of evil, and is described in terms of every kind of economic, social and psychological resentment coming to the surface. It very much suggests Rousseau on self-love and imagination, and Nietzsche on ressentiment.

In its tragic aspects, Hardy's novel seems to confirm Hegel and Kierkegaard's analysis of the difference between Ancient and Modern Tragedy. Ancient Tragedy refers to the burden of fate carried by a family or a nation , it refers to pollution that afflicts the hero which comes from an unconscious or inherited transgression of boundaries. In Modern Tragedy, the hero bears all this alone from deliberate willed decision. Henchard demonstrates a strong sense of unbearable guilt not just at his actions, but at his who,e existence. The novel ends with his desire to be forgotten. Elizabeth-Jane is left to reflect in a more measured novellistic way on the burdens of existence, so tragic elements are modified by the novellistic which presents a whole world or varied fortunes. The tragic elements also have to be seen in terms of Schopenhauer, whose philosophy Hardy knew,a s did many literary writers of the time. Henchard's sense of the futility of existence is like Schopenhauer. The role of tragedy relates to Schopenhauer, as does the role of music. Henchard is partly destroyed because he normally lacks the music which communicates with his inner self, a view of music clearly taken from Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Representation.

Envy in Rawls: Rousseau, Nietzsche and Resentment

Rawls versus Nietzsche
Chapter 81 of Rawls' A Theory of Justice addresses 'Envy and Inequality', with passing reference to Nietzsche. Nietzsche appears on three occasions in the book, and is the representative of what is bad. H eis lined with Aristotle as Perfectionist, a follower of the morality of self-perfection. Nietzsche is presented as giving an egomaniac version of perfectionism. Aristotle's moral ideal is an emotionally controlled slave owning aristocrat who regards himself as superior to slaves, labourers, foreigners and women. That does rather leave a question mark over any assumption that Aristotle is morally preferable to Nietzsche, but our main concern here is the comments on envy. Nietzsche turns up as the bad philosopher who finds envy everywhere. Rawls quite rightly observes that Nietzsche places envy at the centre of social relations and psychology.

Ressentiment, Envy and Egalitarian Liberalism

Structure of Ressentiment in Nietzsche
Rawls does not think that envy is an intrinsic part of human relations. For Nietzsche, envy as ressentiment, is at the heart of all psychology and social relations. Consciousness itself is constituted in the pain of the denial of instinct, and that denial is repeated in the origins of society. Those structures of ressentiment are given another form in the relation of master and slave, which reduces the slave to ressentiment in the powerlessness which prevents the execcution of revenge against the master. Ressentiment clearly translates from French as 'resentment' and as it contains the word 'sentiment' brings in strong overtones of feeling itself. Nietzsche regarded the animal which can feel consciously as the animal which has a consciousness structured by ressentiment. In Nietzsche, that refers to the desire for revenge frustrated and turned into an impotent obsession with imaginary punishment. It is suggested that time itself produces such a reaction, as time places the past outside the power of consciousness. The realisation of the relation is a major dramatic and structural element of Thus Spoke Zarathustra; and is discussed in On the Genealogy of Morality in a relatively discursive manner.
Eliminating Envy in Rawls
Rawls refers to envy as the product of inequality that cannot be justified to those who have less. The idea of justified inequality is a pillar of Rawls' thought. It is expressed in his famous 'difference principle'. That principle is presented as the product of a rationality that precedes actual social relations, that is the 'veil of ignorance' which allows the design of a political system without regard to the place of the designer in any hierarchy in that system. Difference, that is inequality, is justified where it benefits the worst off in that society, where it increases the living standards of the poorest. The point of the chapter is that following the difference principle eliminates envy. Where the poorest can find that inequality raises their living standards, the inequality does not result in envy. That envy avoidance requires special measures to compensate for unjustified inequality, e.g. disadvantage that results from disability. Rawls' liberalism here seems rather utopian, envy will be eliminated by sufficient public spending judiciously targeted.
Philosophy of Envy in Rousseau and Nietzsche
Rousseau is one of the main positive references for Rawls. Strangely he omits the account of envy in Rousseau's discourse on inequality. Rousseau thinks of envy as emerging after the institution of property where individuals compares themselves with each other, and imagine how they appear in the imagination of others. This is the negative opposite of the sympathy Rousseau thinks humans feel for each other by nature. The possession by any person of more than other people will result in this envy. Rousseau sees envy as the inevitable result of inequity, All that can avoid envy is complete equality between individuals.

A Silence in Rawls
Rousseau exists in Rawls in a rationalised form, as a theorist of contract. The more extreme and disturbing aspects of Rousseau are silently excluded in Rawls. Instead we get a framework for rationally limiting envy. There is a lot of scope for intervening against unjustified inequality through compensation, but no scope for eliminating inequality. Rousseau accepted that large states will have social inequality, but is guided by the ideal of an autarchic community of small property owners. No such state can exist for Rawls. The Rtawlsian society is not driven by the energies of envy, or passion of any kind.

Conclusion
Rawls imagines a system of political justice which excludes passion. Envy itself is based on a depersonalised comparison between individuals. Rousseau's citizens are driven by political and social passions, Rawls' social actors are driven by a rational conception of society detached from individual interests and passions. Both Nietzsche and Rousseau deal with the human animal separated from nature, Rawls imagines a purely rational agent abstracted from any individual desires.