French writer Pascal Brückner (born in 1948), laureate of the Medici and Renaudeau awards, is known in Russia primarily as a novelist - his books The Divine Child and Beauty Thieves have been translated into Russian; soon there will be a translation of the novel "Bitter Moon", which served as the basis famous movie R. Polansky. Brückner's essays were hardly translated in our country. Meanwhile, Brückner's journalistic talent, who continues the traditions of European rationalism and never tires of emphasizing his connection with the philosophers of the Enlightenment, deserves no less attention. Usually, his essays, which make up, as it were, a single series, bear paradoxical titles: “The Temptation of Innocence” (published in Russian in 2003 in the journal “ Foreign literature”), “Forced Happiness”, “Poverty of Wealth” ... A through inventory of existing values, revision of myths about universal happiness, equality, wealth, free love.
Brückner's views on the modern world are distinguished above all by their common sense. Having lived for many years in America, this supporter of the humanist Western civilization, to which he includes both Old and New World, was able to protect itself from narrow pro- and anti-Americanism. His latest essays are "Crying white man” and “The Tyranny of Repentance” - can serve as a warning to those inhabitants of a “prosperous” Europe who tend to fetishize the “deprived” third world, indulging in self-abasement and beautiful-hearted illusions.
Book " Eternal euphoria. An Essay on Forced Happiness” was first published in 2000 and republished later. The author tries to trace the development and perversion of the ideal of happiness inherent in European culture after the Age of Enlightenment. The essay consists of four parts. The first describes, one might say, the history of the issue, tells how the Christian cult of suffering was replaced in the 18th century by the exhausting pursuit of earthly happiness, how gradually this happiness became something like an obligatory attribute complete person. It also shows how the desire for well-being, health, beauty, sex appeal becomes an obsession, creates depression, deprives people of their carelessness, and ultimately makes them unhappy. The second part is an overview of the modern world, which is dominated by mediocrity and vulgarity. The third part deals with the "brilliance and poverty" of the bourgeoisie; the author admits that happiness is not in money, but advises not to trust too much those who shout about it the loudest. Finally, the fourth part returns to the theme of suffering: forbidden, banished from the surface of life, it explodes the realm of eternal euphoria from within. Bruckner, of course, does not give recipes, but expresses hope for the possibility of a reasonable synthesis of the thesis (the cult of suffering) and antithesis (the cult of happiness) in the form of "the art of living happily, recognizing suffering and overcoming it."
The book contains a lot of documentary materials, digressions illustrating this or that position of the author; in all seriousness chosen subject it is easy to read. In this sense, Brückner is faithful to the spirit of French classical essays, from Montaigne to Choran, which is so loved and appreciated in Russia.
Uniting the suffering
Something almost imperceptible, but perhaps decisive, has changed in our attitude towards the disease. We are just as afraid as before and strive to avoid it, but we no longer want to be delivered from it. external force, whether it be medicine or something else, but we wish, if possible, to take part in the process of recovery ourselves. Indicative in this sense is the story of AIDS. Because the long time, unable to defeat the disease, society was content with stigmatizing the sick, they - first of all, homosexuals and drug addicts - were literally forced to invent social, legal, political means to resist ostracism and contempt, to the point that they came up with their own, secular funeral rites. This is an amazing example of how vigorous activity men and women united by a common misfortune had a beneficial effect on their entire worldview. AIDS (although at first denied its existence and many believed it was just a fabrication made up to denigrate gays) not only made it obvious ancient connection sex and death. He brought face to face two worlds that had long ignored each other: the world of youth and the world of death - at the end of an age that promised, if not immortality, then at least longevity. It overturned our wildest hopes and plunged us into almost medieval horror, because in the shadow of this virus whole generations of new ones can lurk, waiting for their turn to mow us down. Most importantly, he dispelled the myth of the omnipotence of medicine, made the terrible word “incurable” sound again, which was banished from our language with shame, and instilled in people an almost forgotten fear of deadly diseases.
Because of all this, AIDS has acquired a special position, has become as much a medical problem as a political one: it turned out to be the most, dare I say, "useful" of all epidemics; the explosion of emotions and curses that she aroused made us reconsider everything: scientists - to change the direction of work, patients - to take a certain position, society - to take a different look at diseases that were previously considered shameful and not subject to publicity. Perhaps it was thanks to AIDS, this cymbal ringing, sounded in the midst of general carelessness, that the patient became an object of law (and not just a passive client of doctors), a member of society who can demand a fair trial (as was the case with infected blood), discusses on an equal footing with doctors methods of therapy, and sometimes a member of the governing board of the hospital. Now he consciously participates in all procedures, not only learns medicine through his illness, but also, by combining his own efforts with the efforts of others, helps his healing. For example, in a Swiss clinic for children with cancer, deadly cells are drawn on the board every morning, and the children repeat in chorus: “Cells, you will not kill me, I will kill you myself!” Everyone who comes with his personal tragedy into a comradely circle begins to manage his illness and help others - to share medical and legal experience with them. By accepting his fate in this way, a person ceases to be its slave and acquires dignity.
Shared suffering and the will to overcome it strongly bind people and lead to "meaningful being". Whatever form the associations of the afflicted may take, they all proceed from the same premise: all traditional philosophy and politics are unarmed in the face of misfortune and can offer the people whom it has befallen nothing but useless scientific chatter and half-dead Christianity. Instead of weeping, giving up and suffering alone, these people come together. And now, thanks to a multitude of often small, touching, and sometimes extraordinary actions, the disease takes its rightful place in human thoughts, and outside of any parties, religions and services, a new network mutual assistance.
Victims or Breakers of Barriers
When it is said that a third power, the power of victims, is emerging in our society, they mean people who refuse to take into account physical disabilities and want, despite them, to equal others in freedom and responsibility. They are not satisfied with the stigma of victims, and instead of flaunting their illness, seeking exclusive rights for themselves, they go out into Big world to be accepted as full citizens. An example of such behavior is a young French pilot who, after being chained to wheelchair, founded a movement for the right of those like her to return to the helm. These people do not want to put up with discrimination, express their dissatisfaction in legal and political forms and thus change the norm, increase the level of tolerance for everyone. Forced to fight against the indifference of the authorities, distrust of medical, including psychiatric, examinations, they must fulfill the inevitable demand: “Prove that you have suffered.” Then, and only then, will they set a judicial precedent, set an example for others, and widen the circle of officially recognized victims of harassment.
Everything has shifted: besieged by claims of patients with hemophilia, cancer, AIDS, disabled people of various kinds, now society itself is trying to adapt to this new scourge and cope with its hardships, showing both pragmatism and voluntarism. What was taken for granted yesterday is unacceptable today. We used to think that some people were unlucky, now such thoughts are declared prejudices, we can only talk about "correctable defects" (Ernst Cassirer). As everywhere in the world of wage labor, there is a struggle for dignity, for an unbiased attitude (to change the view of the disabled is the main objective Society "Teleton", in addition to raising funds to combat myopathy). Thus, seriously ill patients, victims of accidents and accidents ... struggle with segregation, with the fact that they are shunned as plague-ridden, as violators of grandeur. They fight for their place in the human community.
microrevolutions
What's the use of marching against AIDS? asks one philosopher. Does anyone advocate for it? And why then are there no marches against cancer or a heart attack? This rather reasonable remark can be answered that the purpose of such a manifestation is to gather, mobilize forces, this is a symbolic action that reminds the society that the problem concerns everyone.<...>Indeed, Act Up demonstrations, whose participants are dressed in dark clothes, carrying posters in the form of leaflets confirming the diagnosis and whistling, are very similar to the processions of penitent brothers who passed through the streets of medieval cities, reminding people that death awaits everyone. Every time modern consciousness encounters the most essential, that is, death, religiosity awakens in it. Modern man- this is a sufferer who has rebelled against suffering, and rebellion can manifest itself in different ways: as a complaint to the Providence-State, as a claim for damages, and finally, as a battle by the forces of large or small associations. You can combine all three options, but in any case, you have to choose between the position of the victim, withdrawn into your misfortune, and participation in the struggle, which forces you to look for new solutions, instead of whining to no avail. Or go headlong into illness and endlessly chew on disgusting details, or change yourself and not pretend to be a martyr, but live freely. Perhaps our time will not be able to definitively lean towards the first or second solution. Well, the choice is ours.
However, all these micro-revolutions in no way reduce the despair of the condemned, the loneliness of the dying. It is possible to overcome certain diseases and vices, but not evil in general, it is reborn in new forms and, with devilish resourcefulness, slips away from our most perfect traps. Each time cancels the horrors of the previous one, but immediately receives its own cross. Well, at least our attitude towards suffering is becoming different, not like positivist optimism, religious dogma or sybarite stubbornness, indistinguishable from surrender. “The worst wounds in war are those who flee the battlefield” (Oscar Wilde).
Compassion is not love
Mankind has made a grand revolution by declaring sympathy, "that inborn disgust that we experience at the sight of other people's suffering" (Rousseau), a natural virtue; thanks to it, the whole world, including both people and animals, appears as a single body, every scratch on which we acutely feel. It is through the horror that causes us pain inflicted on another person or animal, our little brother, that law develops. When Rousseau writes: “Every suffering being is my neighbor,” he, of course, extends the principle of equality and solidarity to all peoples and to all living things. Thus, in the center human life It turns out not fun and joy, but suffering. And his statement can be changed: “My neighbor is only the one who suffers” (and who enjoys life, that enemy?).
Beware of the vultures who get annoyed when we are all right, and who flock to our doorstep when something is wrong and feast on our grief. Beware of all who exalt the poor, the outcast, the fallen. Their sweet speeches give away hidden contempt, in the poor they do not see people equal to themselves. An evil grimace emerges from under the mask of mercy... Only the poor are worthy of indulgence - while they are in poverty.
“If you are pitied,” said Cicero, “it means that they envy you, for whoever is saddened by your adversity can also be saddened by your luck.” Considering compassion as an effective participation in the grief of one's neighbor and a sign of the brotherhood of everything living on earth is an invention of Rousseau. It is high time to replace compassion with co-joy, co-fun, it would be better if we looked with pleasure at other people's successes, and did not pounce like watchdogs on everyone who life is better than us. This would be the true face, and not the guise of love: not false sympathy, but heartfelt affection for a person. "Delectatio in felicitate alterius", as Leibniz said, that is, the joy that we experience from the happiness of other people. It is far more generous to have fun when another is well, than to lament when he is bad.
Translation from French and introductory note by Natalia Mavlevich.
*Pascal Bruckner. L "euphorie perpetuelle. Essai sur le devoir de bonheur. Grasset, 2000. Fragments of the fourth part of Pascal Bruckner's book, which is being prepared for publication by Ivan Limbach's publishing house (St. Petersburg), are offered to the attention of OZ readers. - Note ed.
On the formal requirements for a claim, which must be accompanied by a conclusion medical expertise, clinical examination data and evidence of damage, see article: Gilles Trimaille. L "expertise medico-legale: confiscation et traduction de la douleur. In: La Douleur et le Droit. PUF, 1997. P. 498-499.
In his dissertation on the effects of post-traumatic stress, Dr. Louis Jehel, examining 56 victims of the Paris S-Bahn attack on December 3, 1996, found that women and children were the most vulnerable in such circumstances and that those who, having received also a physical injury, was hospitalized. He calls for the creation in France of a more effective system of assistance to victims of terrorist attacks.
Act Up - Association for the fight against AIDS (as well as drugs, prostitution, etc.). - Note. per.
See on this: J. F. Lae. L "Instance de la plainte. Une histoire politique et juridique de la souffrance // Descartes et Cie. 1996.
Per. from fr. N. Mavlevich. - St. Petersburg: Ivan Limbach Publishing House, 2007. - 240 pp. Pascal Bruckner, laureate of the Medici and Renaudo awards, is known to the Russian reader as a novelist ("The Divine Child", "Thieves of Beauty", "Bitter Moon").
But Brückner is also one of the brightest thinkers of contemporary France. He continues the tradition of French classical essays, from Montaigne to Choran, which is so loved and appreciated in Russia.
Each of his essays touches on issues that characterize modern civilization. The theme of the published book is the development and perversion of the striving for happiness that has been characteristic of European culture since the 18th century. Brückner traces how the Christian value system was replaced by a secular-hedonistic one in the Age of Enlightenment, how, as we approach the end of the 20th century, the cult of happiness, health and success, which tyrannically controls the modern world, is strengthened. Introduction
Unspoken duty.
Paradise is here and now
Life is like a dream and like a lie
"A Christian is a man not of this world" (Bossuet).
Desired suffering.
The golden age - and then?
An amazing promise.
Paradoxes of Eden.
Suffering persists.
Components of happiness
The mechanism of self-hypnosis.
Obsessive generosity.
Health, sex and constant anxiety.
Farewell, carelessness!
Way of the Cross Euphoria.
Insipid world, go Triumph of mediocrity
Sweet and sour epic gray
Burden and Deliverance.
Raging inertia.
Routine fanatics
Flour-boredom.
The king of rubbish.
Meteomania.
Medical epics.
Real life doesn't disappear
Unfulfilled meetings with fate.
Poison envy.
The mystique of key dates.
Digging in the garden or destroying everything to the ground?
Divine whim.
Bourgeoisie, or the Abomination of Prosperity
Mediocrity and dullness in the greenhouse of well-fed contentment
Be a monk or a soldier
War? And what? It's fun!
Bitter triumph
What is happiness for some is vulgarity for others
Bottomless abyss.
Bourgeois usurper.
Healing kitch.
Since money does not bring happiness, give it away!
Are the rich a model of happiness?
Desirable and hateful.
Complete virtuality.
Moderation - the new morality?
Is misfortune illegal?
suffer criminally
The garbage mountain grows
TO new culture suffering?
The union of the suffering.
Victims or Breakers of Barriers
microrevolutions
unattainable wisdom
Is there any benefit from suffering?
Magnificent martyrs
Forced truce
Conclusion
Croissant Madame Verdurin.
List of tie-ins
"How are you?".
Pleasure is not denied.
Eternal losers.
The rise of the familiar.
The world through the prism of fun.
Sweet horror.
Jail Calendar.
Two kinds of holidays.
Fulfilled desires fade.
happiness gene?
All life down the drain.
Fitzgerald, or Wealth as Salvation.
Falling stars.
Doctors and patients.
Compassion is not love
Success of Buddhism in the West?
The main idea of the book is already announced in the subtitle: "". This phrase is rather contradictory. The question arises: how can happiness be forced, because this is the highest good in life, to which we all aspire? The author agrees with the statement that happiness is the most important thing for a person, but only makes a small correction: for a person of our culture.
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He begins his book with an excursion into the Middle Ages, when people did not yet put happiness on the pedestal of life ideals. Saving your soul meant much more than enjoying life. The fallen creature, which is called man, must first atone for his guilt, original sin, and then think about pleasures. But this “later” will come in another world.
People did not think about happiness, and for them it was what it is in its essence - a fleeting and unpredictable feeling. And in our era, they twisted this concept, suggesting that it can be achieved intentionally.
Brückner shows modernity in the context of the extension of culture. All our ideals and concepts originate from ancient times, only today they have changed beyond recognition. The author cites Chesterton's words: Modern world full Christian ideas driven to madness” and, in particular, his analysis is based on this.
The author believes that Christianity, with its gloomy picture of the world, gave impetus to our incessant pursuit of happiness. The Holy Scriptures speak of a paradise where sinners go, and we are trying to build the same paradise on earth. This became possible in the Enlightenment, when, thanks to the development of science and technology, a person was able to establish complete control over his life. Now the reins of government from the invisible God have passed into his hands.
That's just what this happiness should be, remains unknown. In the Bible, it was the abstract bliss of a soul that ascended to heaven, where everything is in abundance, you just have to want it. Maybe it was extraordinarily tempting for medieval man, which had to do with the smallest, however, for our more spoiled contemporary, this is of little interest. Moreover, it's boring. Boredom or askedia (despondency) has long been considered a disease of aristocrats and monks, that is, those people whose life flowed measuredly and monotonously, without constant struggle for a piece of bread. Now, as the standard of living rises, more and more people experience it.
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Politicians and public figures argue that real happiness is something that has yet to be achieved by the joint efforts of citizens. However, such faith in a brighter future discredited itself during the Soviet Union.
Our culture has different concepts happiness, whether American dream: a house, a car, a dog, or leftist ideals about rebellion against the system in the name of freedom of desire. However, this rebellion ossified and subsided, and "freedom of desire" became an advertising slogan.
Perhaps the image of the "consumer society" has become a kind of symbol of the dream of happiness. Material well-being maybe not its most important component, but the most easily accessible, so for many it replaces the whole whole.
In the New Age, after the overthrow of the divine law, what will be the life of mankind depends only on it. Now you do not need to rely on luck to get a drop of happiness, a person must achieve it himself. Instead of curbing desires, their complete saturation became the standard. It is required not to deny yourself anything and actively, tirelessly improve your life. Such power over state of mind is not only a blessing, but also a heavy burden. It can cause self-flagellation, low self-esteem and depression if others have achieved more success in the path of entertainment than you.
Pascal Bruckner claims that everything has changed in our age of the pursuit of happiness. He analyzes our relationship to health, sex, nutrition, spiritual practices and especially routine. It has become a huge problem now that “happiness has ceased to be a sudden luck that falls to our lot, a bright flash against the backdrop of gray everyday life, but has turned into something ordinary and urgent.”
When spiritual life became less important than wealth human life has lost its deep meaning. "Medieval aspiration to the sky gave way to the flat mediocrity of modern times," the author writes. Now the joys of life have become commonplace, and even spiritual practices that could return greatness and significance to a person’s everyday deeds are available in our culture only in an adapted form. They, like everything else in the media, are created for people who are more willing to relax and have fun than to do something serious. Describing Delai-Lami's teachings, Bruckner argues that after each of his sentences, one should expect off-screen laughter, like in American sitcoms.
There is nothing more vague than the concept of happiness; this old, worn-out, false word itself is just right to be banished from the language. Since ancient times, people have only been doing what they argue and quarrel with each other, finding out what it is. Blessed Augustine already cites 289 different interpretations of it, in the Age of Enlightenment about fifty treatises were written about happiness, but we constantly project onto past times and other cultures that idea of happiness and that preoccupation with it, which are peculiar exclusively to ourselves. There is something mysterious in the very nature of this concept, something that feeds endless, contradictory judgments; like water, it is able to take the form of any vessel, but there is no such vessel that would completely contain it. Happiness can be drawn from action and contemplation, from spiritual and physical comfort, from wealth and poverty, from virtue and vice. Talking about happiness, said Diderot, gives an idea only of the speaker himself. But we will be interested in something else: that passionate desire for happiness, which has obsessed Western civilization since the French and American revolutions.
Plans happy life encounter at least three paradoxes. First, as already mentioned, the concept of happiness is too vague. Secondly, as soon as happiness is achieved, it is replaced by boredom and apathy (from this point of view, the quenched, but constantly renewed thirst for happiness would be the ideal, only then can both despair and satiety be avoided). And, finally, endless happiness excludes all suffering to such an extent that it makes a person defenseless against it, if it nevertheless arises.
The first circumstance, that is, the abstractness of the concept, explains the attraction of happiness and the anxiety that accompanies it. Not only do we not have much confidence in the universally offered happiness from a ready-made kit, but we can never be sure that we are really happy. If you are wondering, then something is wrong. The cult of happiness also breeds conformity and envy, two ills of a democratic society, in other words, the pursuit of fashionable pleasures and increased attention to the chosen ones, the minions of fate.
The second, that is, concern for maintaining well-being, was established in modern secular Europe along with the triumph of mediocrity - a phenomenon that arose at the dawn of the New Age and meant that the place of God was taken by worldly life reduced to everyday life. Mediocrity is the victory of bourgeois values: mediocrity, insipidity, vulgarity.
Finally, the focus on the exclusion of suffering leads to the opposite results: it turns out to be the core of the entire system. Modern man suffers because he does not want to suffer, just as the desire for absolute health can become a disease. Our time shows the world a strange sight: the whole society without exception professes hedonism, and at the same time, every little thing torments people and spoils their lives. Misfortune is not just a misfortune, but much worse - a failed happiness.
So, by forced happiness, I mean the ideology inherent in the second half of the 20th century, which forces us to consider everything from the position of pleasantness / unpleasantness; euphoria imposed on us, which shamefully banishes or squeamishly dismisses everyone who for some reason does not experience it. There is a double obligation: on the one hand, to make your life a paradise, on the other hand, to reproach yourself if you cannot achieve this. Thus, perhaps the best achievement of mankind is perverted: the opportunity given to everyone to arrange their own destiny and improve the conditions of their existence. How did it happen that the right to happiness, the central and boldest idea of the Enlightenment, turned into a dogma, into a rigid code? That is what we are trying to trace.
There are infinitely many interpretations of the highest good, the collective consciousness associates it with health, then with wealth, then with beauty, then with comfort, then with success - a myriad of talismans that should lure it like a bird bait. Gradually, the means are elevated to the rank of an end and one after another are recognized as untenable, since they do not provide the desired good. Victims of a deplorable misunderstanding, we, by using means that should lead us to happiness, often only move away from it. And therefore, we are often mistaken, believing that it can be demanded as something due to us, that it can be learned like some school subject, that it is bought, has a price expressed in money, that others know the true recipe for happiness and it is enough to imitate them, to snatch a portion for yourself.
Contrary to the stilted expression, repeated in every way since the time of Aristotle - although he had something else in mind - it was far from all people and it was not always characteristic to strive for happiness; it is a feature of Western civilization that has certain historical coordinates. In addition to happiness in the same culture, there are other values: freedom, justice, love, friendship, which can come to the fore. What, besides the most general, and therefore empty words, can be said about what are the aspirations of all people on earth from the beginning of time? We have nothing against happiness we are talking not about this fragile feeling itself, but about its transformation into some kind of collective drug that everyone is obliged to take in one form or another: chemical, spiritual, psychological, informational, religious. Whereas the deepest and most sophisticated sciences and philosophical schools admit that they are powerless to guarantee the happiness of whole nations or individuals. Every time it touches us, we feel it as a kind of grace, a special grace, and not as the result of precise calculation or thoughtful behavior. And, perhaps, precisely because the dream of finding perfect Happiness with capital letter impossible, we especially appreciate the good side being: pleasure, luck, luck.
Pascal Bruckner. Eternal euphoria. An essay on forced happiness. Introduction
