Philippa Foot on Desires, Reasons, and Actions.

November 17, 2010 at 9:51 A.M. My deepest sympathy is extended to Congressman Charles Rangel (for whom I have voted more than once) whose frustrations and concerns at not being confronted with witnesses against him is something understandable. Mr. Rangel appears to be a victim -- along with several other African-American politicians -- of a Right-wing attack machine featuring many Cuban-American political figures that operates "behind-the-scenes." This is entirely apart from the merits or faults in Mr. Rangel's actions.

Mr. Rangel is accused of underpaying his taxes. Rangel then paid the necessary taxes with a penalty. If you wish to see real crime and unethical conduct, see "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead." Jeffrey Toobin, A Vast Conspiracy (New York: Random House, 1999). (Where do anti-Clinton warriors go after the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal? Miami.)

October 27, 2010 at 11:33 P.M. The General Assembly voted 180 to 2 (U.S. and Israel alone voting against the majority) to end the embargo against Cuba. I believe that this was the correct vote as a matter of human rights and international law. I hope that, some day, the U.S. will join the global community on this issue. I realize that by making this true statement I am risking my life and making further state-protected crimes against me, together with public censorship, inevitable. However, there are times when we must speak truth to power. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba" and "Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")

My support for Israel has not changed. I did not expect Israel to vote against the U.S. I still support sovereignty and peace for the Palestinian people. Although I disagree with the administration on the Cuba issue, I am highly supportive of Obama administration efforts to renew the peace talks in the Middle East. Despite the successes for Republicans in the interim elections there is still no viable alternative to Obama/Biden/Clinton on the Republican side. I wish to make it clear to readers, as I have on many prior occasions, that I have more in common with any Republican than with a nihilist. Violence is never a solution and must always be deplored, especially when the innocent suffer, as they usually do. ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "Nihilists in Disneyworld.")

October 26, 2010 at 5:01 P.M. "Errors" inserted since this morning will now be corrected. The goal of repetitive or induced frustrations and constant harassments is to generate an intemperate remark or violent reaction that proponents of these methods can point to in justification of their crimes. While I doubt that such tactics will work with me, I am sure that they have been used effectively against many people in many parts of the country, especially inmates and patients in institutions, in order to "control" persons or enslave "trouble makers." One responsibility of intellectuals in a democracy is to be "trouble makers," gadflies for the powerful who are held to account for their actions. Noam Chomsky, Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship (New York & London: The New Press, 2003), pp. 47-50.

October 25, 2010 at 11:35 P.M. A new "error" mysteriously appeared in this essay which had been left alone for a few days. I have now corrected the inserted "error." On Wednesday (October 27, 2010), the UN will hear arguments concerning the US embargo against Cuba. Cuban-Americans who favor the embargo -- mostly for financial reasons, since many of them make money from the embargo -- will cause the US to be embarassed, again, by a losing vote. My support for ending the embargo may explain the sudden insertions of "errors" in several essays, including this one, together with increased computer crimes committed against me. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

October 22, 2010 at 11:11 A.M. A number of obstacles created, I believe, by Cuban-American opponents of my views with political protection made it difficult for me to reach these blogs today. At any time I may be prevented from accessing the Internet. These writings may be defaced or destroyed. I will continue to struggle against these obstacles in order to write essays and short stories, plays and film scripts. If necessary, I will attempt to reach public computers later today. I have reason to believe that several of these writings are appearing in non-U.S. media. Like the famous "Big Mac," I am being globalized.

October 21, 2010 at 9:00 P.M. "Errors" were inserted in this essay, possibly by Cuban-American racists horrified at the prospect of a lecture by Professor Cornel West that is promoted, by me, here. I will make the necessary corrections. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me'" and "Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")

October 21, 2010 at 11:56 A.M. Several essays have been altered. I will try to make necessary corrections over the next few days. Among the works in which "errors" were inserted is "Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz." I believe that I have now corrected the alterations of that work. Professor Derrida was not a Communist. Jacques Derrida called for the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Among those echoing that call are Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro.

Friday, October 29, 2010 at 7:00 P.M. at "Harlem Stage - Aaron Davis Hall, 150 Convent Avenue at West 135th Street, Cornel West and Carl Dix in Dialogue: 'What Future for Our Youth?' Please be there. I will certainly be attending this discussion."

Naturally, a conflict now makes it impossible for me to attend this event. I will do my best to be in two places at once. I expect continuing defacements of this text in response to this posted notice. Revolution Books, 146 W. 26th Street, NY, NY and (212) 281-9240. http://www.harlemstage.org/ ($20.00 or $10.00 with student i.d.)

Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), $9.00 at Strand Books.

Recently, I learned of the death of Philippa Foot. I am dismayed by the decline in numbers among first-rate philosophers -- especially women -- in the English-speaking world. Philosophy is in a bad way. There has never been a time when philosophy was not endangered. Philosophers are always predicting the imminent demise of their subject. Also, philosophers are always getting into trouble. We need philosophy to be "rescued" on a regular basis. This will require philosophers to get into trouble.

Why do I say this? Well, philosophy must be concerned to question the shibboleths of society. Philosophers must be skeptical and internationalist in their attitudes. Philosophy is not ideology. Philosophy is not necessarily "patriotic." Like science, philosophy is concerned with truth and ways of knowing truth, regardless of authority or prestige, power or wealth of would-be proponents of truth. Ideas are -- or should be -- examined on their merits, not on the basis of their proponents "influence." ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")

Universities today are embarrassed by philosophy. A tiny number of academics in elite universities soldier on, teaching the difficult techniques and scholarship to young persons, or "non-traditional" students, among whom there may be another David Hume or Baruch Spinoza, Mary Wollstonecraft or George Santayana. These brave souls in academia must endure the condescension of their colleagues in lofty areas -- such as industrial studies and marketing -- since colleagues who teach "useful" subjects have little patience for this abstract discipline called "philosophy."

Philosophy, we are told, may be very nice but it is not useful or "practical." I disagree. I am sure that philosophy is among the most useful subjects a person can and should study, especially early in life. From the point of view of an observer, a marginal person in American society more amused than angered by the stupidity and insanity that is (are) more prevalent today than ever before, this absurd disdain for philosophy is also tragic because it translates into suffering for many people. The importance and meaning of suffering will be relevant to my substantive argument.

Many of our greatest errors today are philosophical blunders. We are going to bring "democracy" to Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, and we will teach people to "move on" from religion. Good luck in those efforts. Democracy is a philosophical concept of government dating from the ancient Greek world which may be impossible without the historical preconditions that societies must develop, usually painfully, that allow democracies to endure.

It is possible to call a government a "democracy" which is really another form of government, like dictatorship. Sadam Hussein called himself "President" and held "elections." I would not classify Hussein's Iraq as a democracy. Religion is an expression of the spiritual component in human nature which will express itself in other areas of life if it is denied in traditional religious forms. One can be a "religious" -- indeed, zealous -- atheist, a "believer" in non-belief and proselytizer, without joining a traditional religious organization of any kind or club of fellow non-believers. (Richard Dawkins?)

"A Spot of Bother."

Philippa R. Foot (1920-2010) may be one of the last members of a British generation that could refer to Hitler and Nazism as a "spot of bother" recalled from her youth. She was related to Grover Cleveland, one of the more obscure American presidents (deservedly, obscure) and Bernard Bosanquet, a distinguished idealist philosopher. Mrs. Foot was related by marriage to Michael Foot, a successful Labour politician and, if I recall correctly, a Prime Minister. I seem to remember that Mr. Foot was a leader in the effort to end the nuclear armaments race and a good socialist. My kind of guy.

Philippa Foot did not marry Michael Foot, as I always thought, but (I believe) she entered into conjugal bliss with Richard Foot, an historian. Bernard Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State (London: MacMillan, 1951). It is entirely possible that she confused the two men and may have believed herself married to the wrong "Foot" as it were.

David Cameron has decided to cut the British budget in order to cope with a high deficit. Travel vouchers for members of Parliament will not be touched. Unhappily, the BBC fee will be frozen and there will be drastic reductions in programs and "services" offered by the network. I suggest to Brits that a second Civil War may be necessary.

Where is today's Oliver Cromwell? Surely, the National Health Service is beyond these "shenanigans"? ("There will always be an England.")

Philippa Foot attended Oxford University with a witches' coven of fascinating and, often, beautiful as well as slightly mad British women at the mid-twentieth century high point of English-language philosophizing just before the great catastrophe struck. There is a delightful and charming tradition of British eccentrics, that is, persons who seem to have emerged unscathed from the pages of Evelyn Waugh or Noel Coward. Mr. Coward was a house guest at my family's home in Havana, I am told, many years ago. Think of the dazzling wit and seductive charm of that great eccentric Gordon Brown or Boris Johnson. ("A Philosophical Investigation of Ludwig Wittgenstein.")

One expects these women to traipse into a room holding a cigarette in a long filter in one hand and a martini glass in another, wearing an evening gown, a string of pearls, and roller skates -- like Boy George. Perhaps this is only a typical entrance for Kate Winslet or a slow and dull evening for Helena Bonham Carter. Naturally, these women may fit easily into my extended family. All of these women and most British philosophers write very well. Professor Foot (she eventually taught somewhere in California) is best known for defending a form of ethical objectivism and cognitivism:

"Best known for her work in moral philosophy, Professor Foot wrote two highly influential articles in the 1950s arguing against prescriptivism, the analysis of ethical belief and judgment propounded by R.M. Hare. In these papers ('Moral Arguments' (1958), 'Moral Beliefs' (1958), she argues that moral beliefs must concern traits and behaviour [sic.] that are demonstrably beneficial or harmful to humans, and that what shall be regarded as beneficial or harmful is not a matter for human decision. [emphasis added] Moral beliefs cannot, therefore, be dependent on human decision. ... More recently her work has been concentrated on virtue theory [Aristotle, Aquinas, Elizabeth Anscombe,] and on the limits of utilitarianism. For many years a fellow of Sommerville College, Oxford, she has also held many posts in America."

Ted Hondereich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), at pp. 283-284. ("Bernard Williams and Identity.")

I mentioned the beguiling and curious British women who were Mrs. Foot's colleagues at Oxford University and in the philosophical profession. Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, later Elizabeth Anscombe and Mary Warnock were among these women. There is a secret and shared experience among these fine ladies which has not been noted by commentators.

All of these brilliant women (with the possible exception of Ms. Anscombe who attended Oxford and mostly taught at a place called "Cambridge University") were tutored by Donald McKinnon at Oxford. All of them read F.H. Bradley's Appearance and Reality under McKinnon's supervision at about the same time. McKinnon guided them through the grand tradition of Western thought as the darkness approached England's shores. Several of the best philosophers in Britain during the post-war period happened to be women. They described these university intellectual experiences with McKinnon as among the most important in their lives. Mary Midgley, The Owl of Minerva: A Memoir (New York & London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 116-117:

"In the autumn of 1940 Iris and I were moved from our boring and cautious essay tutor to be taught philosophy for the rest of our time by that remarkable character Donald McKinnon. This was an enormous stroke of luck, without which I might well have drifted away from academic philosophy altogether. McKinnon is a kind of Oxford legend because of his eccentricity, but he was an amazingly good teacher. This was entirely a matter of his direct response in tutorials, not of his lectures or his writing. It was when he shared a question with a student that he drew on his enormous powers of intellectual digging." ("The Allegory of the Cave" and "Master and Commander.")

Not every Oxford tutor and lecturer wished to teach a difficult subject like philosophy to "ladies." Many of the older "dons" were still displeased by the presence of women on campus during the twenties and thirties, even the forties. Donald McKinnon relished the prospect of tutorials with students he regarded (correctly) as among the finest at the university. As a result, Mr. McKinnon earned the distinction of having taught several of the best philosophical intellects of the century, women who have made outstanding contributions to philosophy, while also making a fine comment himself on developments in twentieth century ethical theory. D.M. McKinnon, A Study of Ethical Theory (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1957), pp. 61-121. (Yes, I have read works by all of these persons.)

Mrs. Foot felt lonely at Oxford until, during a period of illness, she was nursed back to health by Iris Murdoch who became a close friend for life. The loss of Iris Murdoch's first love, Frank Thompson, in the war is the unexplored and life-altering event in Murdoch's life that fits the pattern shared with so many of the greatest thinkers in the Western tradition. Ben-Ami Sharfstein, The Philosophers: Their Lives and the Nature of Their Thought (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), at pp. 380-395.

I believe that the best tribute to any philosopher is what philosophers in other parts of the world would describe as a "dialectic," debate or discussion with a thinker's expressed views. This is my way of saying goodbye to Philippa Foot. I will focus on Mrs. Foot's essay "Reasons for Action and Desires." Peter Conradi, Iris Murdoch: A Life (New York & London: W.W. Norton, 2001), at pp. 127-128.

"A Streetcar Named Desire."

Professor Foot's essay appeared as a review of Michael Woods, "Reasons for Actions and Desires," in Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society, Supplemental Volume (1972), no page number is given. Woods, like Philippa Foot, wishes to argue against the view that all reasons for action are reducible to "desires."

Mrs. Foot concludes that Mr. Woods' arguments for rejecting this classical empiricist position that is usually associated with utilitarianism are inadequate even as she agrees with his substantive position.

Mr. Woods is closer to the truth than Mrs. Foot realizes when he insists that some actions are motivated by more than desires because they reflect aspects of our natures that have nothing to do with desires (or happiness narrowly understood) since our actions are or must often be concerned with human "flourishing."

Mrs. Foot is not a hedonist nor does she define "happiness" as "the maximizing of desires." She is more of an Aristotelean and Bradleyean (teleologist) who regards happiness as concerned with "the full development of our human powers." This general philosophical position is shared with Elizabeth Anscombe and many other philosophers.

"Full development" frequently has little to do with "happiness" in vulgar terms. As Americans say, "it ain't a barrel of laughs." ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")

What this means should become clearer from what follows.

"Happiness" -- as defined by Aristotle and Aquinas -- amounts to something like "human flourishing" or "self-realization" (F.H. Bradley), as I have noted, and has little to do with the maximizing of desires in the utilitarian tradition. Happiness is not about material possessions, necessarily, beyond the minimum required for human life nor is it, primarily, a result of satisfying strictly material desires or maximizing pleasures. Aristotle has been called, "the first socialist." ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me'" and "'The Constant Gardener': A Movie Review.")

"Eudaimonism teaches that the supreme help a man gives to others," David L. Norton writes, "subsists in his integrity and self-responsibility, and cannot be predicated upon the ruin of these. Thus our preliminary social excursion returns us to stand once again before an intractable personal integrity that constitutes the core of prescriptive eudaimonism."

Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), at pp. 14-15. (Communitarian socialism derived from idealism.)

The position that both of these philosophers, Foot and Wood, correctly reject has become conventional wisdom in America -- probably, also in Britain -- as one result of the triumph of social science thinking over what were once called the humanities.

With the completion of a university degree in any of the traditional areas of the humanities or social sciences, law and psychology very much included, a young person today develops an attitude that is known in Europe as a "hermeneutic of suspicion." ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "Nihilists in Disneyworld.")

Love is really a desire for sex. Religious devotion is concealed will to power or hypocrisy. Politics is the hunger for power among politicians. At the bottom of all of our motivations to action -- post-Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche -- is desire or will to power, nothing more. Interestingly, the discussion between scholars and the place for this debate today is among psychologists who usually display a level of ignorance of the classical literature dealing with this controversy that would have been shocking in an unusually stupid undergraduate only a generation ago. Adam Phillips is a rare exception on this point: "On What We Need," in Equals (New York: Perseus, 2007), at pp. 118-143 and Andre Compte-Spontville, "Love," in A Short Treatise on the Virtues: The Uses of Philosophy in Everyday Life (London: Vintage, 2001), pp. 222-290.

The concept of "fidelity" in love is a complex one in Christian and non-Christian thinking within the teleological tradition for a thinker -- like Ms. Anscombe -- who regarded her affection and closeness to Wittgenstein as a kind of non-marital love.

"Prudential reasons seem to provide the most obvious counter-examples to the thesis that all reasons for action depend on the agent's desires. By 'prudential reasons' I mean those having to do with the agent's interests. [emphasis added] There are of course problems about the limits of this class, but these need not concern us here. It will be enough to take some uncontroversial example of a prudential reason." (Foot, p. 149.)

Mrs Foot offers the example of a man who knows he will go hungry tomorrow unless he shops for food today. Under normal circumstances it would be inadequate or absurd to speak of a "desire" not to go hungry tomorrow. Temporal factors slide into the discussion. One may speak of an "interest" in good health and welfare or beliefs concerning the most likely steps necessary to bring about "optimum conditions" at such time as predictable desires arise. Desire and, indeed, interests are concepts twisted and turned to make views concerning what we "ought" to desire fit such ostensibly scientific and rational theories that claim not to be concerned with "oughts."

Much of the philosophical work of the twentieth century, especially in the UK, develops as philosophers struggle to escape the straightjacket of the fact/value distinction and corresponding ontological divide. This escape is something Iris Murdoch managed to achieve in the fifties. Iris Murdoch, "Fact and Value," in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (London: Penguin, 1992), at pp. 25-57, then Iris Murdoch, "The Idea of Perfection," in The Sovereignty of Good (New York & London: Ark, 1980), at pp. 1-46.

Ideas defended in these works by Ms. Murdoch received their first articulation in works written during the fifties and sixties, such as Iris Murdoch's famous essay on Sartre which was the first in England dealing with this thinker's works.

Elizabeth Anscombe also rejected the fact/value distinction from a Thomistic direction and in development of Wittgenstein's late views in his Philosophical Investigations. 

Discussions in terms of facts or arguments concerning values may be seen, in Wittgenstein's terms, as compatible or overlapping "language games." (Again: "A Philosophical Investigation of Ludwig Wittgenstein.")

All forms of behaviorism are inadequate. Human flourishing is a meaningful term only in light of an understanding of human nature that makes flourishing universal for all persons as distinct from a matter of desire for any individual. The good of humanity is not and cannot be "all relative."

What constitutes human flourishing or realization is an "objective" matter instantiated, to some degree, in every human life because it is the realization of our "natures" as persons:

"What we want here is a use of 'desire' which indicates a motivational direction and nothing more. ... Can wanting create a reason for acting? It seems that it cannot." (Foot, p. 149.)

We end by attributing a desire to the agent to act in a manner X when (and only when) the agent acts in a manner X. This seems a tiny bit circular. Unlike hampsters or squirrels, persons have "reason" and not only "desires" as that great philosopher William Shakespeare has taught us. Hence, we may desire without acting.

Furthermore, we may take actions we deem necessary and good even when we do not desire either the outcome or the action. However, where the consequences of actions are "reasonably foreseeable" we must be prepared to accept and deal with the likely moral implications of what we say and do. ("What is it like to be censored in America?" and "Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")

Unless the words "desire" and "interest" are elongated, like used chewing gum, to lose all of their normal meanings and flavors these realities of the human condition are inadequately accounted for in any excessively thin view of persons' motivational options that are reducible to mere behavior.

Desire = action. Every action is only the expression of a desire. The key terms in the foregoing paragraphs being "human condition" and "persons."

I am about to summarize a very Catholic understanding of these philosophical issues which is explicable in strictly secular terms that are shared with Jews and Muslims as well as ethical atheists. I appreciate the hostility to this insistence on human dignity, but I fail to understand the hatred of all that elevates humanity that has become so popular with so-called "post-modernists." Perhaps that hatred is on display in the attacks against these writings.

The phrases "human condition" and "human nature" are forbidden in contemporary academic discussions of these matters. We are animals with biological "desires" and needs, nothing more. In fact, I suggest that we are very special animals with biological needs and desires to be sure -- this is a point granted by Mrs. Foot -- but also with spiritual needs and aesthetic aspirations and, thus, a powerful directedness towards both beauty and goodness. We want both sex and eros. Indeed, these things (beauty and goodness) may be identical realizations of our human nature.

Compare Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry (New York & London: Routledge, 2001), at pp. 19-69 with Charles Larmore, The Autonomy of Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), at pp. 69-129. (A self-proclaimed anti-Kantian whose sub-rosa ideas of human nature seem to come from the Greeks and who is much less of an anti-Kantian than he realizes.)

Elizabeth Schellekens, a gifted young British philosopher and another of those annoyingly brilliant English women that are as common in the UK as the famous "rain in Spain that stays mainly on the plane" anticipates everything that I would say on this subject and several things that I would not have thought to say in a recent book entitled: Aesthetics & Morality (London: Continuum, 2007), at pp. 45-95. (I hate when women do that.)

A classic examination of the human nature controversy is Mary Midgley, Beast and Man (New York & London: Routledge, 1995), at pp. 42-49. ("Aristotelean and Kantian Beasts.")

We do not desire suffering, but we may welcome suffering as the price of remaining human, for example, by loving someone despite the pain involved in that love. We may not seek or want pain, even if we recognize that human dignity may require that we endure and live with pain, for the sake of others, with some forebearance and strength. The word "desire" will not do in this context. I revise this essay today, after defacements and attempts to destroy the work (I think) because it is good, recalling the sadness and strength of a man I knew as an adolescent who experienced what I am enduring now. That man's response to evil was pity. ("Stephen Hawking's Free Will is Determined" and "Pieta.")

Moral suffering and spiritual agony may be conducive to full human development, as persons, in mysterious ways that we do not fully understand, as is commitment to struggle. As Shakespeare has also taught us in King Lear life probably will require all of us to "take upon us the mystery of things." ("William Shakespeare's Black Prince.")

It is in this sense of abdicating or violating his nature that a wicked or immoral man is "irrational." This is a point missed by Professor Foot in her otherwise shrewd analysis. This profound wisdom is part of the mystery of the crucifix and other religious symbols, such as the Star of David at the Holocaust Museum placed near barbed wire from the camps. ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")

This insight that a wicked person surrenders his or her humanity is, partly, also derived from the Greeks. The idea is constitutive of the Jewish heritage of every person born into our Western civilization:

" ... the judaization of culture is culture's passing through the prism of moral-self-questioning. It can be so construed by virtue of two criteria proposed by the late Steven S. Schwartzchild: first, 'the primacy of Practical Reason,' the idea that human beings are moral agents before they are cognitive subjects [Aristotle, Maimonedes, Aquinas] and that logic, epistemology, and metaphysics are therefore the instruments of ethics; and second, the transcendence of the rational, the hypothesis that the ideal cannot be realized in the world of phenomena and 'that everything in the world is fallible and subject to critique.' ..."

Religious insight says that it is reason which discloses unavoidable mysteries (death, evil) and the need to struggle, eternally, for comprehension of all that may, NECESSARILY, be incomprehensible in ultimate terms.

Persons must endure a tragic component in life, according to Miguel Unamuno and Martin Buber, because our languages (including the arts) always mean more than they say.

We feel more than we understand.

We do much more than what we desire to do usually with sinister and unintended effects:

" ... for Steiner tragedy is concerned with the blind working of fate alien to the Judaic sense of the world. By contrast, 'the Judaic spirit [exemplified in Job] is vehement in its conviction that the order of the universe and of man's estate is accessible to reason.'" Edith Wyshogrod, "The Mind of a Critical Moralist," in Nathan A. Scott, Jr. & Ronald A. Sharp, eds., Reading George Steiner (Baltimore & London: John Hopkins University Press, 1994), at pp. 154-155. George Steiner, "Our Homeland the Text," in No Passion Spent: Essays 1978-1995 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1996), at pp. 306-307. ("The sensibility of the Jew is, par excellance, the medium of the bitter struggle between life and thought ...")

Can there be a struggle between life and thought if all action is reducible to desires?

Everything I do is a matter of what I want regardless of my nature, as a person, under such theories of desire. Thus, I have no need to "struggle" against my impulses, since such a struggle would also be reducible to my desires, making the theory ultimately incoherent. For a defense of reason as motivating actions, apart from desires, see Thomas Nagel's classic The Possibility of Altruism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), at pp. 79-143. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow.")

Like it or not, Jewishness is central to Christianity and all Western models of transcendence (psychoanalysis is only one such model) as well as ethics. Irrational is tantamount to inhuman in terms of moral awareness. If a person were to witness the slow dismerberment of a child and then discussed the event dispassionately or clinically -- especially if the child were his own offspring -- we would regard that behavior as evil or irrational in the extreme.

Any individual displaying such heartless behavior would be regarded, rightly, as seriously disturbed due to his or her absence of emotional coloring or sense of moral "location."

We would say that such a callous person fails to "appreciate" all that is happening.

In today's newspaper we find an account of David Tarloff whose "reason" for hacking to death a psychologist on the Upper East side is that he desired to be provided with a deluxe residence in prison. I am sure that the person seeking to destroy my writings has a similar means-and-ends kind of rationale for his or her actions. Here we see a "desire" and selection of means that are highly likely to achieve the desired result or ends. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow.")

Discussion of ends or the "goodness" of desires is placed beyond consideration by would-be scientific types as "subjective" and therefore not amenable to quantification or scientific discussion. Mr. Tarloff's actions were, arguably, entirely rational given his objectives from this Humean perspective. John Eligion, "In a Schizophrenic's Trial, Both Sides Agree," in The New York Times, October 18, 2010, at p. A31. ("Robot bombs?")

I am reminded by Mr. Tarloff's shrewdness of Britain's publishers who are every bit as clever as this distinguished New Yorker, Mr. Tarloff. I am very interested in Howard Jacobson's Booker Prize-winning novel, The Finkler Question (London: Bloomsbury, 2010). British publishers -- seeking to capitalize on the notoriety received by the novel -- have failed to provide sufficient copies of the book to many Manhattan bookstores where the novel has, mostly, sold out. More brilliantly, these astute business people have failed to provide copies of any of the authors' previous novels to Barnes & Noble bookstores. This is the roar of the British lion in 2010. (I finally managed to purchase the book in a single Barnes & Noble bookstore in exchange for $15.00 and my immortal soul.)

Again, a pure instrumental analysis in behaviorist terms of Mr. Tarloff's interesting project would lead to the conclusion that he acted "rationally" on the basis of his desires. David Hume would be compelled to agree based on his view that reason says nothing about what we should desire. For Hume, we are told, reason can only be concerned with means to desired ends because reason is the "slave of the passions." ("David Hume's Philosophical Romance.")

Immanuel Kant and other philosophers with a fondness for the quaint notion of transcendence and objective features of human nature ("transcendental ego") would object that the "ends" chosen by Mr. Tarloff are in violation of his full humanity and, hence, irrational as well as evil. Interpretive rationality examines both means and ends for cogency in terms of a proper or "natural" human life, or flourishing. Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), at pp. 280-281. (This is the Afterword added to the 1959 original of this classic study of intentionality and see my essay "Stuart Hampshire and Iris Murdoch on Freedom of Mind.")

Rational human agency serves as a constraint on what may be accounted appropriate ends for persons.

Seeking to destroy the creative works of others would not be considered a moral end for a rational subject quite apart from whether the persons responsible for such evil can "get away with it." I am not a "means" to your political or other "ends." Neither are my family members "means" to your "ends." (Again: "Why I am not an ethical relativist.")

I think the Kantian tradition is right on this issue. Mrs Foot roughly agrees based on the Aristotlean and Thomistic traditions within Christianity.

Kantian Critical theory leads to acceptance of instrumental rationality in the practical sphere of politics or social life and interpretive rationality primarily in the aesthetic/spiritual spheres of human life because both are concerned with valid aspects of human-being-in-the-world-with-others. Please see one of the greatest essays in philosophy that I have ever read: Iris Murdoch, "On God and Good," in Existentialists and Mystics (London: Penguin, 1999), at pp. 337-362. ("William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.")

"We readily accept private affection [love] as giving reasons for action without the least hint of self-interest; why should a more extended fellow-feeling not do the same? If a man has that basic sense of identification with others that makes him care whether or not they live wretched lives," -- for example, care that others not be made to suffer by being deprived (pointlessly) of the presence of loved-ones in their lives -- "has he not the best possible reason for charitable action? And would it not be misrepresentation to speak of this as a charity dependent on the feelings and inclinations of the moment, since both public and private affections endure through periods of coldness, and lack of inclination never destroys the reason to act?" (Foot, p. 155.)

"Tea and Sympathy."

Mrs. Foot rightly acknowledged the difficulty of resolving the mysterious connection between reasons and actions. There were hints in her writings originating in those magical tutorials, I suspect, under the watchful eye of Professor McKinnon and the spell of F.H. Bradley, when she suggested that our capacity for identification with the other, care and concern as well as other "prudential' considerations -- "tea and sympathy" for those who suffer more than we do -- had something to do with explaining how it is that we can act for good reasons despite our desires and inclinations.

What leads us to pity and hate evil conduct is precisely this immediate sense that the evil person has suffered a terrible loss of humanity or feeling. Something hideous has come to resemble the ordinary and seemingly pleasant person we thought we knew. Jeffrey Dahmer is a good example of the phenomenon that I describe because Mr. Dahmer's bland unconcern with the effects of his actions on other persons was entirely sincere. The ultimate challenge for the Christian or just ethical person is to "love one's way through the darkness in the world." (Cornel West.)

This demand for love means that we must feel what Mr. Dahmer will not feel for Mr. Dahmer's sake and for the sake of his victims.

We must be good persons in order to do good in the world.

Ethics in this tradition of the so-called "virtues" is not about rules, or even principles as it is for Kant, but about character.

Mrs. Foot's life unfolded at a time when these value words had a powerful meaning in people's lives. They seem to matter much less today. (See the films "Atonement" and "Enigma.")

I once heard a famous British novelist -- who was not so famous then -- respond to a question concerning his placement of characters in a World War II setting. He said: "Things were more important then." There were consequences to every action and every second was freighted with meaning and value because it could well be one's last moment on earth. Yet it was also a time when few people -- despite the enormity of the sacrifice for an entire generation of young men and women -- questioned the need for this sacrifice or the importance of the task at hand.

Please see Robert Harris, Enigma (New York: Ivy Books, 1995) and Ian McEwan, Atonement (New York & London: Anchor, 2001).

What many of these amazing people who resisted Hitler (especially when it looked hopeless) and their equally amazing American counterparts did not appreciate at the time -- although Iris Murdoch did come to this insight -- is that the evil they fought against and defeated then will always be with us.

9/11 was a reminder of this truth of the omnipresence of evil for everybody in this city.

The bombings in the London underground railway system is another reminder of this sad truth.

I experience something like the equivalent of those "bombings" at these blogs every day. The goal for the persons damaging these writings and me, also for the terrorists killing innocent civilians anywhere, is to intimidate law-abiding persons into accepting their orders.

I doubt that such a tactic will work in Britain or America or Israel or anywhere that people value their independence and dignity.

I also seriously doubt that anyone will intimidate or prevent me from writing to the best of my ability from some location in the city.

Sadly, criminal censors of free speech may be able to count corrupt N.J. officials among their "enablers." ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")

The experience of evil has a wonderfully cleansing aspect for survivors. When facing evil, we learn what matters. We discover things about ourselves. We appreciate what it means to love and live with dignity. Finally, we learn all that we can and will do without necessarily desiring our actions, but because we recognize that they are morally demanded of us or that there may be no other person who can perform the needed tasks, when life itself is on the line, as it was for so many persons on 9/11.

As an example of the courage and dignity that I admire, I include Guillermo Farinas and Mumia Abu-Jamal, Liu Xiaobo and Angela Davis or Noam Chomsky in America.

This admiration has nothing to do with whether I agree with the opinions of any one of these persons. (For the opposite of what is admirable, please see: "American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles.")

Despite the value found in this moral lesson, and the actions that we take every day because of what we have learned few of us will "desire" the experience of having to make difficult or ultimate choices between desperate options.

We look at our children and at all of those persons we love and do what must be done.

This is only one lesson that I have learned from Philippa Foot and a few other distinguished philosophers of the twentieth century.

A Night at the Opera.

This essay is for M.S. & I.G.M. ...

E tu m'amavi per le mie sventure
ed io t'amavo per la tua pieta.

"Tea & Sympathy" 108-110 Greenwich Avenue, New York, NY info@teaandsympathynewyork.com (Please visit "Live Opera Heaven" in Manhattan. They're on-line.)
John W. Freeman, The Metropolitan Opera: Stories of the Great Operas (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984), Foreword by James Levine.

Overture.

My "bizarre" interest in Opera began when I was very young, poor, a "minority group member" (whatever that is) and unaware of anyone among my peers with similar interests.

My fondness for people singing loudly in Italian and other foreign languages was enough for me to be regarded as "weird." In addition, of course, there was my reading of many books -- not just in school, but even at home -- and my lack of interest in most of the occupations and passtimes that fascinated my contemporaries, notably, criminality.

Added to this strangeness was a fondness for dance and art house cinema, philosophy and science. I guess I was -- and I still am -- "weird."

I continue to be very interested in Opera and books, strangely unapologetic about either passion. Although I certainly have not gained in any "practical" way from these interests. In other words, I haven't turned these interests into money.

My education also hasn't helped me much socially, come to think of it. So why do I recommend education to young people?

I don't know how to explain why you should care about literature, ideas, science, books or the arts. I can only tell you that, if you don't, then you are choosing a kind of spiritual poverty which can worsen material deprivation or become a kind of emotional destitution, in itself, even when a person is surrounded by great monetary riches and luxury.

I have seen very wealthy and powerful people whose inner lives are nonexistent. I have even found myself pitying them. Their suffering is only made worse by their failure to understand its causes or the remedies that are close at hand. Zachary Wolfe of the Times may be an example of irreversible imbecility despite being fictitious.

What is Opera? Why is it beautiful? What are my favorite Operas? Is this art form still "relevant" today?

I will attempt to answer these questions not as a scholar of the art form or as a performer, only as an audience member, one who applauds and shouts "Bravo!"

I think that Opera is magnificent. Opera is a very beautiful art form in which some of the most fragile and rare aesthetic experiences are still available for everyone to enjoy.

I do not know for how long we will be able to make this claim. It appears that great voices are disappearing from the Operatic stage -- especially dramatic tenors -- but we must continue to hope that so beautiful an art form will survive.

In this age of recordings, even the poor or middle class persons (like me) may delight in some of the very greatest performances of all time. These performances were only available to monarchs and aristocrats not so long ago. They could not be preserved for posterity.

Today, the performances of our best stage artists are preserved forever and made available to all who are interested. Nothing compares with live theater, of course, but tape is second best.

I will answer my final question first: This art form, Opera -- like all authentic artistic expressions -- is and always will be "relevant" for human beings.

The more interesting question today is how long human beings capable of enjoying any real art will continue to exist. Donald Trump is unlikely to attend Opera performances. Perhaps we are entering an age of "cyborgs." But until we arrive at a fully "posthuman" world, I suppose that we may always expect some persons to become passionate Opera-lovers.

A few people will even indulge in the occasional improvised concert in the shower, as I just did moments ago, ending with a dramatic rendition of "Vesti La Giuba," from Pagliacci.

My rendition of this aria required several bows to an imaginary audience made up entirely of attractive women even as I wore a fashionable towel draped around my waist while waving with a white handkerchief held in my left hand, like Pavarotti ... until I realized that my towel had slipped. Making certain not to turn my "back" on the audience, I picked up my fallen towel, with all of the dignity that I could muster.

Will my audience appreciate the gift of my voice?

I also recite great Shakesperean speeches in the shower, often bringing myself to the point of tears -- even when I don't get shampoo in my eyes: I am Othello, Hamlet, Lear ... until the hot water runs out.

I am taking my daughter to London today. Not really. You see, we have decided to pretend to visit the UK -- since we can't afford to do so in the "real" world -- by having a genuine English tea at Manhattan's "Tea and Sympathy." We will bring our English books, speak with English accents (better than Gwyneth's!), all day long, and agree to vote only for Labor candidates in the upcoming elections. (They spell it "Labour" in that funny English way.)

Next week we're going to Germany. Before she returns to school from her winter break, I have agreed to take her to Paris and Rome. We have to find a French place and a good Italian restaurant, preferably in the Village, selecting our favorite writers from those countries to accompany us. My daughter is reading Tolstoy at the moment, so Russia is next. We have discovered several good Cuban restaurants, including one near Columbia University, whose authenticity we doubt -- since I do not remember "bagel with lox and cream cheese" in Havana.

My daughter now refers to me as "Ivan Ivanovich." I call her "Princess Annoyance-and-Spolied-Rottenness" -- the First Czarina and Empress of the Inwood section of Manhattan. As a matter of fact, "Ivan Ivanovich" sounds like a great Opera title, something by Mussorgsky maybe. Literal minded half-wits should note that my child (unlike myself) is not "spoiled."

It has been suggested that my life has its Operatic quality and moments. I take a slow bow, accepting the tribute to which I am entitled, sharing a rose with my partners on stage and acknowledging -- with becoming modesty -- the orchestra, as I head off to London with a casual toss of a long white scarf over my shoulder even as I clutch my towel. (I just remembered that I am wearing my formal bow tie to complete the outfit and I won't say exactly where I am wearing that bow tie.)

I must protect my voice. In fact, my family members insist that I protect that golden voice by refraining entirely from singing. Their concern is touching. However, I cannot deprive my public of one of the few heroic tenor voices in the world today.

I am a dramatic tenor, highly dramatic. Oh, I just found a bent nail. That's good luck!

Act I.

The word "Opera" means "Work." In other words, an "Opera" is an artistic "work" combining drama with singing and music. Curiously, I am often called "a piece of work."

I am now drawing on my limited fund of Operatic knowledge. Opera is usually traced to the seventeenth century. Monteverdi (1547-1643) is often described as the first Operatic composer. I suspect that we will find earlier performances uniting music and drama in some fashion, probably in the medieval morality plays or songs of wandering minstrels. Yes, I know about Gilbert and Sullivan.

The Mantuan composer's invention was made possible by the advances of Renaissance theater. Monteverdi was not born in Mantua, but he was associated with that city as an artist. More recently, we can thank the Mobil corporation and PBS for a great deal of Opera. Incidentally, Shakespeare provides many composers with material -- including, especially, the greatest composer for the Operatic stage, in my opinion, Giuseppe Verdi.

Italy is the essential country for students of Opera and music, since the first music conservatories were created in Italy (in the eighteenth century) and musical notation is still in Italian. As with the history of painting, Italy leads the way in musical drama.

Italian philosophy is a neglected topic in the English-speaking world that I will discuss, as a student, in a future essay. Among my favorite Italian philosophers are Benedetto Croce and Umberto Eco today. Others I have already discussed include Antonio Gramsci, Cesare Pavese, even Thomas Aquinas and Antonio Negri display surprising parallels.

Italian-Americans are deservedly proud of their artistic heritage, but often they do not know much about Italian philosophy and science. I highly recommend Michael Gregorio's fun and instructive novel, Critique of Criminal Reason (New York: St. Martin's, 2006). (Immanuel Kant is a detective in search of a murder suspect making use of the latest scientific discoveries by Italian inventors of criminology in the eighteenth century.)

I will mention ten Operas that you should know at least at the level of "bluffer's knowledge" -- that is, if you wish to be regarded as an educated person. I will suggest a few recordings, when appropriate, that you ought to own -- placing them, discreetly, on your coffee table when women visit your home after a date.

Like Woody Allen, I once purchased a hundred yard dash medal for display on such occasions. Finally, I will say a little more about the Opera that is, in my opinion, the greatest Operatic work ever written: Verdi's Otello. (I will refer to the character in the Italian Opera as "Otello" and Shakespeare's original is always "Othello.")

Do not allow anyone to intimidate you with their alleged superior knowledge of Opera. The world -- and even the MET -- is filled with "Opera bluffers," who often have no clue of what they are talking about. The only way to know about Opera is to love the art form and listen to great performances. One anecdote may suffice to illustrate this point concerning "bluffing."

In the memoirs of Gatti-Gazzaza -- who was the first great impressario at the MET -- he describes an evening's special performance for the New York glitterati early in the twentieth century. The tenor hired to sing Flotow's Marta was ill. No one could be found to sing the role and the house was sold out. The Maestro ran into a tenor friend in a restaurant as the singer was enjoying his massive dinner. Gatti explained the emergency offering the shocked tenor twice his usual fee to sing that evening.

For three times the standard fee, the tenor (admittted) that he would have sung the performance naked while standing on his head -- as, indeed, would I.

The tenor explained that he only knew the aria "M'Apari" from Marta. Gatti was unperturbed: "Great, just sing that single aria every time you don't know what's going on."

This is like asking an actor to speak the "to be or not to be" speech in Hamlet during the entire play, every time the prince is required to say something. Needless to say, the tenor did exactly what he was told and received four curtain calls after the performance.

I am not "approving" of, or "endorsing," this deception. I can neither endorse nor condemn this deception, at this time, subject to further information at some future time, unless there isn't any -- further information, that is, as opposed to time -- since I hope there will be future time for all of us, for some more than others.

I am "deploying" a picaresque anecdote to suggest that life itself can be Operatic. In this story, life is Opera as farce; all too often, life is Opera as tragedy -- tragedy whose pains can be alleviated by the catharsis of art and laughter.

I am clearing my throat and vocalizing. The aria will now begin.

Act II.

The ten Operas you should know well enough to discuss at a cocktail party (don't say anything about that word "cocktail"!), will probably be different for each Opera lover. I am sure that some of these works will be on everyone's list. Here they are presented in no particular order:

1. Mozart, Don Giovanni.

2. Puccini, La Boheme.

3. Puccini, Turandot.

4. Verdi, La Traviata and/or Aida (preferably sung by Leontyne Price)

5. Wagner, Tristan und Iseult.

6. Beethoven, Fidelio.

7. Verdi, Otello. (Greatest Opera ever written!)

8. Wagner, Complete Ring Cycle.

9. Verdi, La Forza del Destino.

10. Puccini, Manon Lescaut.

O.K., I have to add five more because I can't just leave it at ten:

11. Verdi, Il Trovatore.

12. Mozart, Die Zauberflote. (Make a mental note to supply the two little dots over the "o" or Germans will get pissed off.)

13. Puccini, Tosca or Madame Butterfly -- You decide, I can't.

14. Mascagni, Cavalleria Rusticana/Leoncavallo, Pagliacci. Ditto.

15. Giordano, Andrea Chenier.

As for recordings, I think any of the following are worth the big money -- if you can find them: Callas, Di Stefano, Gobbi Tosca; Del Monaco, Tebaldi, Protti and Domingo, Scotto, Milnes recordings of Otello are completely different yet equally good; Pavarotti, Sutherland, Milnes in Rigoletto; Carreras, Ricciarelli, Bruson (?) in Don Carlo and Pavarotti or Carreras with Ricciarelli in Un Ballo in Maschera; Corelli, Nilsson, Merill Turandot. The usual suspects are always worth the extra effort: Price, Tucker, Warren Il Trovatore and the "black-and-white" Price/Domingo recording of duets is already a classic. The Jonas Kaufman and Kristina Opalais Puccini recordings are right up there with the best of them. Ramon Vargas has one of the best tenor voices in the world today and he is probably the best "Rudolfo" in La Boheme at the moment.

See if you think of anything unique about the Domingo/Price recording of the love duet from Act I, Otello: "Gia, nelle note densa ..." (Remember the accent over the first "a," which I can't supply here, or Italian speakers will be upset!)

Also, the Domingo/Price Trovatore has not been surpassed -- and won't be for some time. It is allegedly available in a pirated recording. For one image of the Opera gods, see: http://grecja.home.pl/galeria/callas5.jpg

Opera is an attempt to enlist all art forms in the service of ultimate human emotional experiences represented on stage in a single "work" -- love, eros, conflicts in loyalty, murder, death and most other human crises are depicted powerfully in Opera.

Music is made to encompass all of these themes, and so is poetry (in the form of amazing librettos), drama (some Opera singers have been great actors, as evidenced by Dame Judy Dench's comments on the Callas/Gobbi "conflagration" on stage at Covent Garden in the sixties).

I think Domingo is in that tiny group of great singers, musicians, actors. Again: Kaufman, Opalais, Fleming, and a few others are also great.

Dance is also an important component in many Operas, which often contain small ballets -- as in Ponchielli's masterpiece "Dance of the Hours" in La Gioconda -- also costumes and fashions designed for particular productions require the contributions of fashion designers and other artists. Sets must be built, direction on stage is needed, lighting. In short, all of the magic of theater is essential to this art form.

Great Operatic performances are almost a miracle -- and an expensive one! -- which is always a unique and non-duplicable experience that has a lot to do with luck.

There is something about live experience in theater and Opera which no film or movie captures. Cinema -- even filmed Opera, as cinema -- is simply a different art form from live theater or Opera, which is more immediate and direct, personal for each recipient of the experience, also fleeting and elusive, mysterious.

The experience of a great Operatic performance is a passionate love affair between audience and performers that lasts two-and-one-half hours, maybe a little more.

For some people -- George Clooney perhaps! -- this may be (or once was) longer than their usual love affairs.

A great Operatic/dramatic performance is always unique. Even if a performance is filmed. Once a performance is complete, it can never be experienced again by those who "shared" it -- not even by seeing a film of the event.

Every audience contributes to the experience of a great Operatic or theatrical performance, knowingly or not, even by such gestures as an intake of breath or applause.

When something magical is happening on stage, there is a feeling of electricity in the theater, as audience members become a "community" attending a semi-religious event, tapping into collective archetypal forces, images and emotions in a communal catharsis and explosion.

The audience member is one more character in the Opera, another instrument for which the composer has written music, including revealing silences. I am not surprised that ancient Greek theater was aligned with religious festivals and ceremonies. It is also clear why Beckett and Pinter have been described as "Operatic" dramatists whose silences are always pregnant with meaning.

I will now attempt to give a small sense of an experience of genius on stage in a single performance that I attended which (I know) will stay with me for the rest of my life.

By way of comparison, see http://www.gmmy.com/tenors/delmonaco/othello.JPG and accounts of the experience of Del Monaco's Otello. See Dyneley Hussey, Verdi (New York: Collier, 1962).

I have enjoyed friendships with several professional tenors discussing singers and Opera for hours with these ladies and gentlemen along with highly knowing audience members. Among the best tenors and friends from years gone by, I include Carlos Montanes (a beautiful Rigoletto at the MET was recorded, I believe) and Guillermo Prieto, a wonderful lyrical-spinto tenor who sang dramatic roles -- including "Otello" in what was then Yugoslavia -- for many years.

Act III.

A. Background.

As I recall, the performance I am about to describe took place on a Saturday evening in 1979. I invited my sister to accompany me. Orchestra tickets had cost me almost six months' wages. I was not suicidal enough to ask a young woman I did not know -- not from my neighborhood! -- to go to the Opera.

"What's that? Opera? Are you outta your mind?"

I never answer such questions from a charming female interlocutor. It is always best to plead the Fifth Amendment and ask for a lawyer when questioned by any woman.

My sister kindly agreed to go with me -- for a small fee -- and brought a book, in case things got dull. She didn't need it. The Opera was Verdi's Otello, sung by Placido Domingo ("Otello"); Sherill Milnes ("Iago"), one of the best or maybe the best baritone I have ever heard; Gilda Cruz-Romo ("Desdemona"), a fine, big-voiced Mexican soprano filled-in, superbly, for Diva Renata Scotto.

Ms. Scotto is a great Puccini soprano, incidentally, and also a magnificent thespian. Ms. Scotto will always be the definitive "Madame Butterfly."

Otello is a musical drama in four acts, music by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901); the text, inspired by Shakespeare's masterpiece, was written by Arrigo Boito -- whose librettos are brilliant works in themselves -- that drew less on Shakespeare, than on Romantic interpretations of the Bard in the translations of Giulio Carcano and Victor Hugo (1802-1885).

This Opera offers a reading of Shakespeare not as the Renaissance poet we know in the English-speaking world, but more as a suffering Romantic artist in the vision of the nineteenth century's Latin world.

Victor Hugo is another Verdi favorite, several of whose novels I read early in my life. Verdi's personal emotional drama finds echoes in Hugo's life and novels, especially (in my opinion) The Hunchback of Notre Dame and L'Homme Quis Ris ("The Laughing Man").

This most intense and masculine Operatic drama reveals swirling passions that are vital, even today, especially in Latin culture. I have yet to know a man -- especially a Latin man -- who is not deeply moved by this work, even when he is not musical or interested in the arts. Clearly, something powerful and universal is going on in this Opera.

The first performance of this work was in La Scala, February 5, 1887. Otello was first heard in New York at the Academy of Music, April 16, 1888. The experience of such a drama is only enhanced by the respectfulness of audience members wearing a nice suit, approaching the theater with a sense of reverence and awe for what is about to be brought to life on stage.

The beauty of the surroundings at New York's Lincoln Center, modelled on the Piazza Navona in Rome, the splendor and luxury in the plush red seats and glittering, star-like chandeliers that rise slowly -- like cherubim -- when the performance is about to begin adds to the feeling of anticipation. All of these elements are part of the total experience of Opera.

A composer (like Verdi) knows this and is well aware of how to make the most effective use of his effects in order to deliver a powerful emotional wallup to the audience -- Otello does exactly that.

Otello is a tragedy of self-doubt, loss of love, disintegration of identity, displaying on stage, in public, male anxieties and fears concerning self-worth, along with the acid-like effects of social stigma, racism, violence, poverty and also the heroism of self-giving in love. This drama is about a man's spiritual death, more than the physical death which follows and is incidental to it.

Verdi is both Otello and Desdemona, as Shakespeare is Hamlet, Ophelia, and all of his characters.

Verdi has placed on stage all of the pain of growing up poor, unrecognized, doubted, insulted by self-styled "social superiors." Verdi understood slavery -- which he passionately opposed -- as an Italian nationalist and patriot ("Aida"), yearning to expel the Austrians from the Italian penninsula.

Verdi represents, metaphorically, in this Opera his personal drama of romantic love for a woman who was a celebrated artist when Verdi was only a starving young musician.

Giuseppina Strepponi became Verdi's second wife after living with the composer for decades. Braving social stigma and insults together, the couple endured many slights at the hands of rich and powerful foreigners and aristocrats, experiences which are also there, in the music. So is evil, envy, betrayal of trust, balanced by innocence and goodness, "in" the music.

This Opera is one of the glories of Western civilization.

Comparisons to various filmed versions of Shakespeare's tragedy will help in appreciating this Opera. I like Olivier's performance as "Othello" (because of his beautiful voice and command of the text), though there are some problems. The same may be said for Orson Wells, who provided Franco Zefirelli with his idea for film locations in Cyprus. I also admired Ian McKellen's more recent "Iago." Lawrence Fishburne is a perfect cinematic interpreter of this classic role, whose performances will only ripen with the passing of the years. Morgan Freeman would be magnificent in the role. Anthony Hopkins was terrific in a BBC production I loved as a college student. James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer created a Broadway legend in this play. I think Samuel L. Jackson would play Othello as a warrior unable to abandon battlefield suspicions. Imogen Stubbs is meltingly beautiful and heart-breaking as Desdemona and is the proud owner of one of the most gorgeous voices in the English theater today. Ms. Stubbs' recording of "Ophelia" opposite Simon Russell Beale as "Hamlet" (first delivered as a BBC radio play) is not to be missed. Who knew "Lucy Steele" was so nice? (See the film and read the novel of "Sense and Sensibility.")

I believe that the finest stage interpreter of this great tragic character who is more timely in the twentieth century -- a character who is only equalled by Hamlet and Lear -- must be Paul Robeson, who endured many torments similar to those experienced by Othello.

To say that Shakespeare's "Othello" or Verdi's "Otello" are about jealousy or "misoginy" is like saying that War and Peace is about Russia. Both play and Opera are about life.

B. Performance and Performances.

A storm explodes on stage as the curtain rises. Otello's entrance is on a high note and killer verse, where breath control and musical intelligence are challenged, immediately, so that some tenors have been unable to continue after the First Act. Verdi eliminates Shakespeare's introductory sections dealing with Venetian hostility and hinted racism in response to Otello's love for Desdemona. ("What? The Duke is in his council, at this hour? ...")

Verdi trusts "interpreters" to emphazise musical hints concerning these tensions in the course of their performances. Domingo certainly does this hinting at racism. The Spanish-born tenor was a man possessed on the evening that I especially remember, exceeding all other performances (including his own) in this role. I suspect that there were family members and "friends" in the audience that night.

Otello's entrance ("Esultate!") signals the most triumphant moment for the character. Every step he will take after this point will be doomed, each being a further descent into utter destruction, eased by the serpentine Iago, whose "motiveless malignity" has puzzled critics and audiences for centuries.

Evil is a mystery. Evil is not subject to rational comprehension. Evil is depicted (both by Shakespeare and Verdi) with full respect for ambiguity and mystery.

I can attest to that enigma of evil (among other reasons) from the experience of hackers altering this text, for the sake of destroying it and no other purpose that I can see.

Much more familiar is the evil of sadists delighting in inflicting pain through forced separation from loved-ones, slander, destruction of relationships, and worse. No rational explanation -- certainly not resentment at Cassio's promotion -- justifies Iago's hatred and (I think) envy of Otello.

Iago desires not Otello, but Otello's talents and gifts. Iago's second act "Credo" is one of the moments when this Opera's music achieves a bottomless profundity. At such moments, this score can only be compared with the best of Beethoven or Wagner.

Iago's monologue is a celebration of nihilism that only became possible in the nineteenth century, as Christianity waned and Darwin's humbling discoveries concerning human origins would initiate a new era for Western civilization.

Iago's "Credo" would become the song of Himmler or Eichmann in the twentieth century. Iago's words are the outpourings of an emptiness filled by resentment and hatred -- they might have been scripted by theorists of totalitarianism in the hideous century to come that Verdi foresaw with great clarity.

It is frightening to consider that the worldview expressed in Iago's Credo may find its echo in the anti-religiousness of, say, Friedrich Nietzsche -- or in the self-indulgence of Martin Heidegger -- both of which "ideologies" (narcissism and nihilism) have become banal in our day. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow" and "Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")

The pieces for this chess game in which Otello's simplicity -- despite his courage -- never had a chance are carefully aligned.

Cassio is a young, naive member of Desdemona's class and race. Hence, he is Otello's reminder of self-doubt and insecurity, racism, insults and wounds.

Cassio's role is understood by Iago, not by Otello.

Desdemona is a personification of goodness, who (unusually in the nineteenth century!) is also eros, confidently and unselfconsciously sexual. Desdemona is both sexually desirable and desiring. Desdemona is both Bizet's "Carmen" and "Michaela" in one woman.

No other nineteenth century composer -- with the possible exception of Puccini -- saw women in so full-rounded and rich a manner, as complex and equal human beings. Violetta in La Traviata could only have been created by Verdi. Verdi experienced a very limited erotic life, probably far less active than Giuseppina's, and never (apart from epistolary flirtations) really wanted any other woman in his life during her entire existence.

Verdi indicates the beauty and goodness of the shared passion and mutual adoration of these two characters in one of the greatest duets ever written for tenor and soprano that closes Act One.

Otello and Desdemona reveal subconscious fears and their essences as well as foreshadowing doom at this instant of mutual vulnerability and surrender. In English, at the cost of the rich poetry of the Italian verse, notice the words here:

Otello:

"Now in the dark night
every noise is silenced,
My beating heart
is lulled in this embrace and stilled.
Let war thunder and the world be engulfed
if after infinite wrath comes this infinite love!"

Most importantly:

Otello:

"Let death come! And in the ecstasy
of this embrace
may the supreme moment take me."

This is Romanticism's celebration and unification of eros and thanatos -- love and death -- inherited by Freud, for example, from his favorite German poets and the ancient Greeks (who obsessed nineteenth century Germans), notably Holderlin and Novalis, then Nietzsche on the German side. Also, the shadow of Schopenhauer falls on Freud's pages.

Dionysious becomes Don Juan in Otello's crucial moment of passion. "Lucia di Lammermoor" is more steeped in Keats, Shelley and Byron by way of Sir Walter Scott's novel, but the themes of the Romantics are also very much present in Donizetti's masterpiece. ("What you will ...")

For Verdi, the key insight is derived from a poetic, visual (Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and "Bachus" were also way ahead of Freud), and musical direction, not from philosophy. This is ultimate masculine wish- and fantasy-imagery. After all, can you think of a better reception after a hard day (don't say it!) defeating the Turkish fleet?

There she is: blond, beautiful, curvy, and in love with you -- in a silky nightgown no less, probably from the nineteenth century equivalent of "Victoria's Secret." And what does she say? Get this:

Desdemona:

"My proud warrior!"

I can't remember the last time a beautiful blond in a sheer nightgown said that to me.

Like Woody Allen, I might be tempted to respond: "Are you talking to me? I was going to get a sandwich, but I can definitely stay for a while ..."

Desdemona:

"-- How much suffering,
how many sad nights and how much hope
have led us to these sweet embraces.
Oh, how sweet it is to murmur together:
do you remember?"

It is with this love that the doorway to memory is opened for both characters. The acceptance of painful remembered conditions of slavery -- literal (his case), figurative (her case) -- is made possible giving each of them a final sense of peace and fulfillment.

Each character has seen not only themselves "in" other, but the other's pain and torments experienced in the imprisonment and solitude of their similar early lives.

Each of these two characters knows -- and shares -- the other's nature and history.

There is an exchange of missing fragments of soul in this duet -- strength and worldliness for her (from him), gentleness and serenity for him (from her) -- and it is that exchange that allows for their only possible mutual achievement of identity.

By destroying this union both of their lives and psyches will be shattered, resulting in a physical destruction that is merely redundant when it finally arrives. This is high tragedy with a measure of hope offered in compensation for the pain endured and witnessed.

Verdi -- like Shakespeare -- must be merciless and cruel to his creatures.

Why do such different people love each other?

Otello:

"And you loved me for the dangers
I had passed
And I loved you that you did pity them."

Notice the echo of this line, which is underlined for the benefit of the audience:

Desdemona:

"And you loved me for the dangers
I had passed
And I loved you that you did pity them."

Equality in recognition and in the "dangers" each has passed is not incidental. Repetition is reinforcement, reassurance. Otello's physical courage and military heroism is matched only by Desdemona's passion and capacity for self-giving in love. These two characters are twin-aspects of the composer's psyche -- Verdi is on the side of his love -- that is, Verdi's judgment (like Shakespeare's) falls on all, except Desdemona.

This Opera's culmination is the instant Faust yearned for, what Mephistopheles could not provide, the moment that one might wish to "linger forever," an eternal now. "A kiss ... a final kiss."

Even in this garden of earthly bliss, there is a shadow of evil and destruction, together with the vision of what must come in this imperfect world -- even to lovers -- if never to their love:

Otello:

"Such is my soul's joy that I am afraid.
I fear that such another divine moment
will never more be vouchsafed me
in the unknown future of my fate."

What follows in the remainder of the Opera is only the confirmation of this foreboding: the destruction of this beautiful love is the death of both Otello and Desdemona.

The characters' love is the fragile crystal -- a unicorn figurine for Tennessee Williams, a Golden Bowl for Henry James -- which shatters, destroying their universe, leaving rubble and debris where once there was happiness and beauty.

The Second Act's crescendos are the insinuation of suspicion and doubt by means of the use of Shakespeare's brilliant device and symbol, a handkerchief -- which is always white in my experience -- designating the virginal purity of the couple's love, that is about to be stolen and tarnished.

Arias and duets are "bookended" in this work: the First Act love duet is shadowed by the suspicion duet in the Third Act; Otello's lamentation aria is balanced by Desdemona's humiliation aria -- which is a small Opera in itself.

The baritone and tenor duet at the end of Act Two is Iago's greatest moment of triumph, for he has won Otello back to the hatred in which Iago lives and battlefield rage. This is masculine rage winning over feminine grace, something Verdi sees as dangerous and evil, which arrives with Fascism in twentieth century Italy and elsewhere. This malignant tendency to militarism and violence is always with us. This is something for Americans to think about today. ("America's Love of Violence.")

Desdemona's unwillingness to suspect malice is her undoing. Emilia's worldliness and guile is a mechanism of survival for embryonic feminists in male-dominated societies.

Shakespeare's "Emilia" warms the hearts of man-haters everywhere, even pleasing those of us who are sympathetic to feminism without hating masculinity or men.

Most of these ideas are bound to be stolen by dissertation writers in "feminist studies." Whatever!

Otello's great aria -- possibly the most revealing and compelling aria ever written -- comes after the tenor has sung the equivalent of two complete Operas. I do not envy any tenor attempting this role.

Domingo has mastered the art of painting with the voice, shading darkness in deep blues and grays in the lower register, then shifting in lyrical passages into pastel colors, adding poignancy in the upper sections of his voice, which is burnished with a brass-horn quality and the biggest tessiture (middle register) of any tenor that I have ever heard.

Few voices these days fill the MET as his voice did -- and still does.

A recent Adriana Lecouvrer sung by Domingo with Maria Guleghina and Olga Borodina was spectacular, with the tenor sounding more fresh than some of the young tenors at the MET.

Domingo is a consummate vocal magician, using the acoustics at the MET to great advantage. Otello is a bravura moment in Opera that has earned Domingo recognition as one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century.

Otello's spiritual death arrives in Act Three, long before the final events in Act Four:

Otello:

"God! Thou might have tried me with
afflictions of poverty, of shame;
made of my brave triumphal trophies
a heap of rubble and a lie ...
And I would have born the cruel cross
of suffering and of disgrace
with unruffled brow and have
been resigned to the will of heaven.
But, O grief, O anguish! Torn from me
is the mirage
wherein I blithely lull my soul!"

A world without goodness and beauty -- where love is an illusion -- is not one in which Otello can live.

Given the life of violence and loss that he has experienced this is not surprising. For Otello, Iago's nihilism is unlivable. Nihilism is unlivable for all sane and healthy persons. ("Out of the Past.")

Influences on Domingo's interpretation include the obvious: Domingo sung the role of Cassio, as a very young man, when Mario Del Monaco was "Otello" in Mexico City. The lyricism in Domingo's interpretation may be traced to Ramon Vinay, the great Chilean tenor from the forties at the MET, also to Domingo's careful study of recorded versions of the role by the great Giovanni Martinelli and, even earlier, Mr. Lauri-Volpe.

Influences on Domingo's style include Spanish Zarzuela's more open singing, also the great Giuseppe Di Stefano's passionate phrasing and Franco Corelli's stentorian quality, though neither of those two Italian tenors sang the role of "Otello."

Di Stefano's late recording of Dio mi potevi is the best recording of that single aria that I have ever heard, even though the role came too late in Di Stefano's career to count in his repertoire.

Bergonzi and Di Stefano must not be judged by late efforts to cope with this role.

Otello:

"... now you [Christ] must cover your holy face
with the horrible mask of hell!"

Otello is in hell. He is beyond human compassion or mercy. This is a condition afflicting millions in our world. It explains many horrors that we live with, including what happens to young men living with violence, rage, hatred, racism, poverty, insults on a daily basis in many places in America.

This seemingly esoteric art form, Opera, is not so "weird" or distant from our realities after all. Like all great art, this work examines and comments, profoundly, on the human condition. Love between men and women. War. Betrayal. Power. Hatred. Compassion. Faith and its absence. All of these are themes in Otello.

Is Opera relevant today? I think so. I also believe that it is important to educate young people to appreciate such works, as their artistic inheritance, in order to provide outlets and cathartic experiences for many of us, who really need them. Boy, do we need them. At this point in my life, there are still persons questioning my intelligence and writing ability, while others alter, deface, even seek to destroy my work with impunity. ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")

The alternative to despair or self-destructive violence is creativity and love. I will not allow this venom of hatred to poison my life any more than it already has.

Cinema allows many people who cannot afford the hefty cost of Opera tickets -- I cannot afford them these days -- to experience such art.

I suggest that you rent Zefirelli's film version of this Opera and then Lawrence Fishburne's Othello. Then see something totally (or seemingly) different, like the film O.

What relationships and themes do you find in these works? Now see Equilibrium. Why are feelings dangerous in the society depicted in Equilibrium? Was the wisdom of the mythical society's banishment of feelings in Equilibrium vindicated or the opposite? Why or why not?

Refer to any sources that you like. Essays should be double-spaced and neatly typed. No chewing gum on the pages, please.

Finally, Otello's "Niun mi tema ..." (after Desdemona's sublime "Ave Maria") conveys all the weariness and painful wisdom of a life destroyed and denied by evil.

I can relate to that.

Desdemona's vindication of human love, even as a response to violence, is the restoration of a most Christian affirmation with human dignity. This man and woman on stage, this night, were destroyed by the poisoning of their love, through envy and hatred.

Otello sings "anima, mia ..." so that it is his own soul that he has killed. Biographical "issues" for Verdi are suggested in this passage, in his own youthful insecurities and in his feelings at the hostile reactions by others to the woman that he loved.

Verdi's love triumphs in the end. Desdemona, in my opinion, is also a "winner" because of her willingness to love no matter what, at any cost, knowing perfectly well what that cost would be.

I think I can also relate to Desdemona's gift for loving. A person "can be destroyed, but not defeated" -- to quote Ernest Hemingway. Otello's and Desdemona's love is restored and is triumphant in death.

Comparisons are available to the hunchback's great final aria in Rigoletto.

Curtain Call.

Otello is a masterpiece by a composer who should be likened to Beethoven, Wagner, Mozart and a few of the great French and Russian masters, who is (I think) the finest composer for the Operatic stage.

Otello was way ahead of its time in viewing women, as equals, struggling against forms of oppression -- Desdemona's "humiliation aria" merits a full essay, as I say -- symbolizing the human capacity to create and preserve beauty and passion, as forms of strength, in a hostile, indifferent, often cruel world.

Verdi has placed his "femininity" in tension with his "masculinity" in this work -- opting for his creative, "feminine" talents over rage and resentments that he must have felt, which might have destroyed others (and which certainly hurt him deeply), so as to conclude with hope and optimism. Yes, optimism about the human condition.

Final suggestion: compare A Streetcar Named Desire with this greatest musical drama. In death, Otello's and Desdemona's love is restored providing all of us with a kind of redemption. ("Master and Commander" then "The Soldier and the Ballerina.")

"Un altro baccio ..."