Review of Apophatic Literary Criticism. Notes of a Non-philologist

Apophatic Literary Criticism. Notes of a Non-philologist’ by Marianna Dudareva demonstrates Russian spirit and reflects the immense variety of characters and plots that influence people and manifest the creative power of literature. The author introduces a number of writers, from Sergei Yesenin to Vladimir Korolenko, with unique literary styles and a common apophatic approach to reality. The term apophatic comes from the Greek word to deny and initially referred to religious studies where it served both as a concept and a method. Apophatic theology attempted to approach God by negations rather than affirmations of what God is. M. Dudareva’s work showcases how literature studies instrumentalize the apophatic method of philosophy. This review complements the study with a reflection on the topic of death and its inextricable connection with life. Literature speaks of life and dwells on the struggle for life, that is also key to philosophical thinking. Enough to mention Arthur Schopenhauer and his idea of the will to live. In contrast to philosophy, literature uses a vivid, colorful, and copious language, while philosophy is concerned with universal principles. Some distinguished authors managed to bridge this gap. For instance, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Sartre created works of both literary and philosophical nature. The same can be traced in the short stories by B. Zaytsev and A. Grin, analyzed in the book. B. Zaytsev writes about death approaching us first through others, this idea is also found in V. Jankélévitch’s work Death. Death is never ours for it is always we or our death, but when we see it around it causes anxiety and fear. In Avdot’ya-smert’ (Avdot’ya-Death) the main character says a prayer to be relieved of her mother and son, whom she considers a burden. Once death enters their home it never stops, it gets closer, and at the end of the story it takes Avdot’ya too. In Grin’s Fighting Death, death struck Lorkh falls asleep and herein dreaming is not a harbinger of the darkness of eternal sleep. On the contrary, Lorkh wakes up willful and hopeful, he fights for his life and succeeds. These stories vibrantly illustrate the victory of life over death and death over life as the result of exercising one’s free will. Color in literature is another topic touched upon by the author. M. Dudareva refers to Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre to speak about contrasts, and R. Steiner to underline the importance of black in creating an image where color range matches the emotional range.

Nikolai Berdyaev – from Will to Culture Towards Will to Live

Nikolai Berdyaev was a philosopher who treated the “objectivity of creative work” with disparagement. This article focuses on his attitude to culture as a “mediocre”, “intermediary” affair, and as something unworthy of particular attention respectively. Berdyaev describes the Russian people as always discontented with culture exactly because of its “mediocrity”. The author points out the duality between lived reality and culture as inalienably inherent to Russian spirituality informing great creative works, which, however, are not culture, insofar as they are aiming at the religious transformation of life.

The (Un)Willingness to Keep Living at Very Advanced Ages

A long life is a general desire that will be reached by more and more people, particularly in developed countries. But the delay of mortality raises important questions about quality of life in the later years. Centenarians have received attention from different disciplines, particularly from demography and genetics, but a psychological approach on whether life at age 100 is perceived as worth living is still very limited. This study explores centenarians’ will to live and associated factors in a sample of 121 centenarians (mean age 101 years; SD 1.63 years; 84.3% female), who answered to a questionnaire comprising sociodemographic characteristics, health status, social functioning, and well-being as well as open questions on their will to live and end-of-life issues. Of the total sample, 31.4% expressed willingness to live longer, 30.6% did not, and 38% presented no clear positioning. From the qualitative thematic analysis, annoyance, uselessness, loss of meaning, disconnection, and loneliness were the most common justifications for being reluctant to live longer. Positive valuation of life and good self-rated health, followed by having a confidant and reduced pain frequency, were the reasons for being willing to live longer. From the quantitative analysis, associated factors of will to live include pain frequency, self-rated health, having a friend confidant and valuation of life. This study provides researchers suggestions for further investigation and highlight the importance of inquiring and understanding very old people’s values and views on their will to live, future wishes, and meaning in life.

Mental Health of Holocaust Survivors and Other Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Israel

Holocaust survivors could be especially vulnerable to the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic due to their early life traumas. Thus, the current study examines the effects of the pandemic on the mental health of Holocaust survivors in Israel, compared to adults who did not experience the Holocaust. We collected quantitative data from 305 adults aged 75+ (38% Holocaust survivors) in Israel during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results indicate that Holocaust survivors were worried to a greater extent from COVID-19 and reported greater depression which became worse during the pandemic. On the other hand, despite these differences, the two groups were similar in their will to live. In conclusion, Holocaust survivors seem to be more vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, strengthening the vulnerability hypothesis, while also showing resilience in their will to live. Policy makers and practitioners should pay special attention to this particularly vulnerable population during these difficult times.

Das Verhältnis von Subjektivität und Zeit bei Kant und Schopenhauer

This paper focuses on Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s models of self-consciousness and their specific relation to time. It aims to show that genuine philosophical theories can explain the idiosyncratic relation between ourselves and the world without relying on pure metaphysical speculations or strictly empirical and phenomenally oriented conceptions, as many contemporary proponents of analytic philosophy entail. The first groundbreaking doctrine in this regard is Kant’s transcendental theory of apperception, which unfolds a new theoretical dimension of thinking, grounding the logical unity of thought in the pure, originally synthetic unity of the subject itself. In order to constitute a structural order within the appearing phenomenal world, Kant conceptualizes a theory of self-affection in the second edition of the Critique of pure reason, positing a dynamic relation between the spontaneously acting intellect and the purely receptive inner sense of time as a result of productive transcendental imagination. The problematic relation between self-reliance and empirical consciousness that Kant did not resolve completely led to various subsequent transformations of Kant’s transcendental principles, one of which boasts Schopenhauer as a prominent but rarely considered representative. Schopenhauer’s systematic approach consists in a modified version of Kant’s transcendental idealism, which ties the Kantian subject of logical and transcendental unity to an intuitive corporeal individual that can only conceptualize itself as an original, willing subject. The Schopenhauerian subject unfolds its empirical character in accordance with its own inner impulses and motivations, which manifest themselves in time but can only be interpreted as a phenomenal representation of a higher, metaphysical unity, which Schopenhauer calls the will as a thing in itself. Schopenhauer reaches his final metaphysical conclusion via a problematic analogy, positing another perspective on the corporeal nature of the individual which, by means of abstraction, can be extended to the whole phenomenal world. Therefore, Schopenhauer interprets the underlying (intelligible) character of the subject and the phenomenal world as a whole as a timeless, omnipresent will to live which can be temporally experienced within the nature of our own subjectivity.

The Will to Live: a Study of Samuel Beckett’s Molloy

The article explores Book One of Beckett’s Trilogy (Molloy) in the context of the author’s explicit rejection of Freud’s rather speculative idea of death drives. In highlighting this rejection Beckett also demonstrates his attempt at incorporating, within his own work, Schopenhauer’s concept of the ‘Will’. Indeed, Beckett modifies and adapts Schopenhauer’s ideas in the creation of his own aesthetic. In particular, this can be seen through the author’s adoption of Schopenhauer’s music analogy. Schopenhauer clearly equates music with his idea of the Will in that melody (in its purest form) is essentially a pattern formed out of sound and, consequently, without the need of visual representation. In a similar way, Beckett seeks to get beyond representation within his own art in order to explore the indelible trace or pattern of human existence. It is this ongoing process which explains the extreme representational reductionism of the later prose and drama.