Earlier this evening, I was watching the documentary “Weapons of the Spirit” by Pierre Sauvage, which explores the manner in which the small Protestant town of Le Chambon sur Lignon, France saved thousands of Jews during World War II. During Germany’s occupation of France, this small French village, with only about 5000 people living there at that time, saved approximately 5000 Jews by housing, feeding, and/or (sometimes) educating them, along with forging necessarily legal documents in order to seek safety elsewhere. Pastor Andre Trocme of the Le Chambon sur Lignon church strongly encouraged that the villagers help in any way they could in protecting the fleeing Jews for the time that they spent in the village, despite constant threats of expulsion, incarceration, or extermination by the Nazi regime. Nevertheless, the documentary emphasized the fact that the efforts of these villagers were not part of a known and communicated village-wide effort; but rather that the overwhelming majority of the villagers thought it their duty to protect these Jews, although it was never explicitly named a village-wide effort.
This documentary prompted me to ruminate on the writings of Unamuno and what they meant in judging the action of Le Chambon sur Lignon. I find that many of the philosophical theories of philosophers that I have studied – although brilliant, thought provoking, and influential in their time – are not very practical when applied to one’s everyday living. The theories of philosophers such as Immanuel Kant or John Stuart Mills (I find) are rather cumbersome, inefficient, and ineffective when systematically applied to one’s every action.
It is from this angle from which I came in judging the practicality of Unamuno’s existential theory as applied to the action of that small French town during the tumultuous Second World War. Does it truly matter WHY the villagers safeguarded the Jews, so long as they were protected from imminent death and given the chance to exist elsewhere in the world after Le Chambon sur Lignon? If life (by which I mean mere physical existence as well as the quality of life) is being protected and cherished by a few strong individuals in a time of rampant demonic extermination of lives, does it really matter what influences have provoked these actions, just as long as people are saved in the process? In my interpretation of Unamuno, according to his “The Tragic Sense of Life,” the answer to this question is “yes”. That which is “good,” although seemingly (and perhaps incorrectly) blatant in the example of Le Chambon sur Lignon, is not an absolute notion determined by dogma, but rather decided and created by the individual.
Unamuno states that moral proof is acting in such a way “that is your own judgment and in the judgment of others you may deserve eternity…be irreplaceable…[and] not deserve death” (159). However, many of the villagers, when interviewed for this documentary, said that they acted in that way not to be immortalized, romanticized, or become heroes, but rather because it simply felt like the natural and right thing to do. How would Unamuno respond to this? Would the philosopher say that because they were not acting in such a way that was influenced by the desire to be “irreplaceable” or deserving of eternal life, their actions would thus not be accredited to them as “good” deeds? However, no matter their intentions at the time, their actions, upon reflection, were irreplaceable, heroic, and selfless. Thus, one could argue that their deeds were deserving of eternal life, although they did not express that the sole reason for their deeds was a passionate desire to obtain eternal life and happiness. Nevertheless, couldn't one argue, as Unamuno does briefly in the essay, that the villagers of Le Chambon sur Lignon lived “in the midst of a society imbued with Christian principles, surrounded by institutions and social reactions produced by Christianity, so that a belief in the immortality of the soul runs deep in their own souls…neither seen nor heard, but watering the roots of their deeds and their motives” (160)? But how can an individual or, for that matter Miguel de Unamuno, distinguish the true motives of deeds, if some can be extremely inconspicuous, “run[ning] deep in their own souls like a subterranean river” (160)?
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2 comments:
I'm in love with Unamuno, btw, so forgive me if I'm unabashedly supporting his theories. I think one of the main points of The Tragic Sense of Life was in the end when Unamuno hints at the pursuit of happiness as the ultimate end. It felt "natural" as you said for those villagers to help shelter the Jews. It was appealing, I think to their innate sense of right, which Unamuno claims will always be what we base our values off of, to save those people. Those "supreme desires" of attaining their happiness (or comfort, even, in performing what was "natural") are exactly what Unamuno designates as the goals we strive toward. Thus, their deep rooted desire for immortality is manifested by their more superficial desire for happiness.
It is nearly impossible to distinguish ones motives for good deeds. For example, perhaps some of the villagers extorted from the Jews things that they found valuable, we'll never know. Also, perhaps some Nazis were committing "Good" deeds, since this is determined by one's self and not the way others view one's actions. Basically, we can not know just how "good" these people's deeds were unless we know their motives behind the actions (which we can't).
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