Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 7 Number 2, August 2006
___________________________________________________________________
Landy,
Joshua Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust,
OUP, 2004, pp288, ISBN: 0195169395,
£32.99 Hardback
Reviewed
by
The
Forward Company
It
would be a futile exercise to begin this review by labouring the point of how
the discourse, debate, and criticism surrounding Proust’s In Search of
Lost Time has become somewhat entrenched and stale.
And this is the very reason why Joshua Landy’s exploration of the grand
text is so timely.
The
backdrop for the deeper examination of the three elements in his title is a very
simple, yet very insightful, premise; Proust did not write an autobiography.
There.
What
he did do, in fact, was construct a very clever piece of fiction in which he
could posit various satellite points directing our attention to various
philosophical ideas. And where
Marcel has been previously misinterpreted as Proust himself, Proust gives us
Marcel as a tool through which to explore these concepts.
At
no point in the book do we have reason to question Landy’s intention.
The main elements of the title (Self, Deception, and Knowledge) are dealt
with explicitly in turn by using significant scenes from the tome.
The passage in which Marcel exorcises his creative sensibilities for the
first time - steeples of Martinville – are, as Landy argues Proust’s wink to
Nietzsche’s ‘perspectivism’. This,
for me, is the pivotal part of this new debate for without some grasp of this
concept of perspective we are unable to really grasp Proust’s intention at
all. During his creative endeavour,
Marcel tells us how any description he attempts of this scene depends solely on
where he is standing in relation to his subject.
Through Marcel, therefore, Proust hints to his readers that, by default,
any observations, perceptions, understandings, or misunderstandings of the text
he has authored are entirely bound by our own perspective.
The
arguments Landy poses around perspective lend themselves further to his salient
points. Without perspective there
is no conduit by which to discover one’s self and, although self-deception is
inevitable through such subjectivity, a certain form and degree of knowledge can
be reached. A theory of knowledge
then ensues and further reinforces the main premise where a convergence of the
epistemiological, the ontological, and the axiological yields different kinds of
truth about the ‘self’.
By
analysing another passage from In Search of Lost Time, Odette’s
face, Landy establishes that the ‘true self’ is ‘revealed’ through
language. Proust demonstrates the
novel’s efficacy here by creating a new philosophical system by which to guide
his readers. Not only then does Landy help us realise that Proust is asking us
to take a look at our own ‘selves’ but that it is the book itself – its
structure, its style, its narrative – that shows us the techniques we need to
achieve this. Marcel himself speaks
oftentimes about the import of imagination, and how a true life cannot
‘effectively observe itself’ except through artistic creation.
Landy shows us how Proust the author creates Marcel the character as
sometimes blissfully unaware of himself in order to demonstrate how his own
creative pursuits offer him some kind of enlightment.
Here
the ever-revolving debates around philosophy and literature are dealt with
succinctly and Landy’s fresh exploration points to supporting a more rigorous
acceptance of Proust’s work as a work of philosophy as well as literature.
The two are inextricably linked and it is the style and techniques of the
latter that lends ease of access to the former.
As
an introduction to In Search of Lost Time Landy’s book is clear,
concise with a fluent and witty style. Landy
guides us through the salient points and does an awful lot of the work for us,
giving us a headstart before actually chomping our way through this magnanimous
text of 6 volumes. As an academic
text it is supportive in our reading and provides even more guidance through
works of criticism to date and sailing past references to Nietzsche, Plato, and
Schopenhauer with ease. With this
foundation Landy directs us straight to his key concepts; ideas of the self and
how this is largely dictated by perception, how this acceptance of perspective
inevitably leads to deception and, knowledge of some sort.
Refreshing,
also, is Landy’s straightforward text devoid of narcissism; yes, he has found
something vital that he wishes to share with you, but the genius isn’t his. It
was already put there by Proust, we just missed it.
For me this is encouraging. It makes me believe more in Landy’s premise
compared to other critical works and breeds a certain confidence in the autonomy
of the reader of La Recherche. This
is a creative work, there is no right or wrong, it’s about you the reader, how
you relate to Marcel and engage with his perspective. It’s about constructed realities, identities, the beauty of
fiction and how art can throw a light on those parts of philosophy that have
failed.
More
importantly it made me, as a reader, want to revisit In Search of Lost
Time and reconsider it in light of this new discovery for, as Landy
suggests, the title itself is misleading. It
is not about the past and so why search for anything lost in it?
The lessons the novel teaches us are insightful and catalytic so would it
be out of place for this humble reviewer to propose another, more fitting,
title? Landy’s message, for me, is clear; perhaps it should actually be
entitled In Search of Lost Self.