[Mourning Milan Kundera] Serious contempt: Milan Kundera's "Edward and God"

(The original text was published in Function Words Intangible)

Text｜ Li Jingheng

I often hear people say, "Living seriously" and "The most important thing to be a human being is sincerity." What exactly is "sincerity"? What does it mean to be "serious"? What kind of attitude should we adopt to live? In "Edward and God", collected in the short story collection "Laughing Love", Milan Kundera puts forward a unique perspective on these issues through the story of the protagonist Edward.

The story itself is not complicated, but quite interesting. Eduard has just graduated from normal school and found a teaching job in a small town. As a teacher, he just regards teaching as a job to earn a living without any sense of mission. He doesn't have any religious beliefs, but when he fell in love with Alice, a Christian, he pretended to believe in God without hesitation in order to please her, and even went to church with her to attend gatherings. Unexpectedly, he was first seen coming out of the church by the headmistress of the normal school, and later by the school workers who taught him and saw him marking the cross on his chest with a cross. Since socialism opposes all religions, his "belief" is contrary to the "scientific" spirit advocated by the state, so he is questioned that he cannot educate young people without prejudice and become a role model for them. In order to keep his own livelihood, Edward, who has no interest in politics, pretends that although he believes in God emotionally, he actually agrees with the country's policy intellectually, and constantly fights against his "faith"; Said that he liked her, and even used his body to win her support.

In the end, he convinces Alice of his piety and courage, and is willing to sleep with him; at the same time, he tricks the principal into believing that he has a good impression of him, and successfully gets the principal's support and keeps his job. On the surface, this is simply an overly inspirational story: a smart boy who doesn't take anything seriously, with a clever mind, full of big lies, and enviable good luck, successfully solves all crises , and get everything you want. However, as long as you think carefully, you will find that it contains various subtle entanglements.

When we were young, our parents always taught us to be honest and serious in doing things. But as we grow up and become more involved in the world, we will gradually understand that telling the truth will be annoying, and it will make us easy to be counted by others; people take advantage of. In order to protect themselves, some people try hard to hide their true self, cynical, and make life a hypocritical joke. However, the value of sincerity does not seem to disappear because of this, but becomes more valuable, and is even regarded as a manifestation of courage. Edward's older brother is a man who doesn't hide his thoughts, so when he heard his brother smugly brag about how he pretended to believe in God to attract Alice, and how Alice sacrificed herself to him because she mistakenly thought he was a martyr, his brother said : "I may have many flaws, but there is one flaw I don't have: I never pretend, I speak my mind in front of everyone."

Edward does not agree with this understanding of "sincerity". He always tried his best to divide everything into two categories: serious and unserious, and believed that only serious and important things should be taken seriously. As for those irrelevant things, we only need to be perfunctory, we might as well make fun of them, and even pile up all kinds of lies according to the needs. According to his understanding, those things that are simply produced by the interaction of a bunch of uncontrollable external events and forces, accidentally imposed on oneself, and purely responsible, are ridiculous and meaningless, and are not worth taking seriously at all. Only things that are out of one's own nature and based on free choice are serious and important, have meaning and value. Edward also values ​​sincerity and depreciates hypocrisy. However, he doesn't think that "never pretending" like his brother, "speaking his mind in front of everyone" is sincere. He asked his brother, "Why should one tell the truth? What makes us obligated to do so? Why do we think that telling the truth is a virtue?"

He makes a very interesting point:

Imagine you meet a madman who says he is a fish and we are all fish too. Are you going to argue with him? Are you going to take off your clothes in front of him to show him that you don't have fins? Are you going to speak your mind to his face? … If you tell him the whole truth - only the facts and what you really think, you are having a serious conversation with a madman, and you will be a madman yourself. The world around us is just like that. If I stubbornly speak the truth to the world, it means I take the world seriously. And to take something so insignificant seriously means to completely lose one's own seriousness. If I don't want to take madmen seriously, and make myself mad, I have to lie.

In other words, sincerity means taking serious things seriously and not taking serious things seriously; and one is truly sincere when one takes unimportant things seriously and not seriously important things of hypocrisy. Therefore, being serious about things that have no meaning and importance at all, and insisting on telling the truth to hypocritical people does not mean that you are sincere; on the contrary, only lying and belittling them will not make yourself a hypocritical and not serious person . In this absurd world, lying has instead become a moral duty.

However, in Edward's eyes, the field of innocence and lying is the truth, but it was the religion, country, career and love that Europeans seemed to value most at that time. He sees through everything like a god: Alice is not really a devout Christian, but because during the revolution, her father's business was nationalized, she used her faith as a political revolt out of hatred. Since she doesn't take faith seriously at all, and he is only interested in her body rather than really loving her, of course he doesn't need to seriously tell her what he really thinks. By the same token, the state's promotion of atheism is nothing more than diverting the public's attention by anti-religion to cover up the incompetence of its totalitarian rule; and the principals, school workers, etc. do not really agree with the state's absurd policies, but only for their own self-interest. Benevolence and morality. Therefore, in order to keep this teaching position that is not out of ideals but just a means of living, it is the correct attitude to do what they like and show the image they want so that they can get out. Therefore, he tried his best to be very frank and serious, and even had rational discussions with Alice, the principal and others to share his "inner struggle", but the essence was one lie after another.

What's even more interesting is that if he doesn't value religion, country, career and love, what else is there to value in life—even life itself? What's the point of everything? On the surface, Edward laughs at this false and absurd world with an otherworldly and cynical attitude. The problem is, if he really wants to implement his principles, he can only take everything seriously, including his own views, feelings and life. Alice once told him: If there is no God, all suffering is in vain, all suffering in the world is just for nothing, and everything is meaningless, making it difficult to survive. Edward does not believe in God, so he can only accept that in the end, everything—including his life and preferences—is just the result of the interaction of various accidental conditions, without any reasonable and inevitable arrangement behind it, so it has no meaning and value. But he can't give up the desire to have God: if he can't take anything or anyone seriously, he's living a miserable life because in the end nothing makes sense. What's even sadder is that he finally discovered that he has been just like other people all along. When he racked his brains and even sold his body in order to keep a living and satisfy various desires, he was simply adapting to this world and imitating these people. hypocritical people. If they were just false shadows, he was only a shadow of shadows, worse than them.

In such a vain generation, most people spend their lives on unimportant things, and dismiss the really serious and important things. Edward was too honest to admit that he had found what mattered among insignificant things, and to treat it all with a serious contempt; but he was also too weak to cease secretly yearning for what mattered. This is the price of living sincerely, and realizing all this is also the ultimate tragedy of human beings.

李敬恒香港中文大學哲學系博士。 現職明愛專上學院人文及語言學院高級講師，主要教授思考方法、哲學史、道德哲學及政治哲學等課程。 多年來致力於哲學普及，曾任港台節目《哲學有偈傾》、網上節目《哲學係咁傾》主持。

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