| Popis: |
In some deep spot in the psyche, humans need enchantment. The unknown provides opportunity for humans to invest an element with enchantment, for example, blank spots on the map and the sky. In Tom Stoppard’s play Jumpers, the main female character Dotty, a singer and actress has had a nervous breakdown because of a landing on the moon. Disenchantment is a process of rationalization; enchantment is the opposite of rationalization. As areas of human experience become increasingly explored by reason, they become unavailable for enchantment. According to Max Weber, “The increasing intellectualization and rationalization do not, therefore, indicate an increased and general knowledge of the condition under which one lives” (139). Weber clarifies his point, “It means something else, … that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted” (139). Behind this may be Phenomenological concepts explained by Schutz and Luckmann. We again recall William James’s dictum that “any object which remains uncontradicted is ipso facto believed and posited as an absolute reality.” [James, Principles of Psychology, II, 289.] Husserl also comes to the same conclusion. [Erfahrung und Urtiel, 74a, pp. 359ff] (Schutz and Luckmann 30) “Of the imaginer (the dreamer), who lives in a world of imagination, we cannot say that he posits fictions as fictions; rather, he has modified actualities, actualities as-if. … Only he who lives in experience and from there ‘dips into’ imagination, whereby what is imagined contrasts with what is experienced, can have the concept of fiction and actuality” [Husserl’s italics] [Erfahrung und Urtiel, p. 360) (Schutz and Luckmann 30–31). Disenchantment is shown in the play to be spreading to more vital areas such as religious belief. Dotty’s husband, the main male character, believes in reason, but he knows that irrationality is essential as well; humanity needs balance. He says in Jumpers, “The National Gallery is a monument to irrationality! Every concert hall is a monument to irrationality! … The irrational, the emotional, the whimsical … these are the stamp of humanity which makes reason a civilizing force” (40). The negative effect of disenchantment and how humanity overcomes this problem provides a key entering point for an analysis of Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers. |
