on 23/6/04 3:04 pm, Shaw, Dan at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Folks:
>
> What I wanted to ask the members to address is the usefulness (or lack
> thereof) of the theories proposed by Freud in understanding their own personal
> lives. As is so often the case, the ground shifts to ideology, and the
> discussion of the merit of the theories per se is driven to the background.
> Why this is the case with Freud and Jung (and, interestingly, with
> Heidegger)and not, for example, with most great artists or writers (where we
> are much more likely to separate their work from their personal life, condemn
> their individual pecadilloes but focus our critical acumen on their timeless
> productions) is beyond me.
While not wanting to drag the discussion further from Dan's original
hoped-for path, I would point to one exception: Wagner. However, in that
case we have to ask why we continue to listen to the music of Ravel or
Musorgsky, or read the books of Dostoevsky all of whom made anti-Semitic
comments. Indeed, on that basis we could shelve a large portion of European
culture. In America Charles Ives made some very disparaging marks about
homosexuals causing some to have difficulty with him and his work. On the
other hand, his success as a business man meant that he was able to buy a
house for the composer Lou Harrison (whose work he admired) and his male
partner and allow them to escape the exigencies of making a living.
People seem to be waking up to the implications of the text of Bach's St
John Passion though it still gets performed, though Stravinsky's Cantata has
been proposed as a work that should be shelved or only performed with a
'health warning' because of its anti-Semitic text.
Why, e.g., should the soundness of Heidegger's
> theories of authenticity and resoluteness be compromised in any way by the
> fact that he failed to exhibit either trait in his dalliance with the Nazis?
As Dr Johnson observed, one need not be a carpenter to be able to spot a
badly made table.
j
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