On Quietism

“Thanks to this history [of persecution], ‘quietism’ has become a pejorative term, reserved for heretics, defeatists and navel-gazers. Nevertheless, it was embraced by a thinker who had a significant influence on Beckett’s personal outlook and literary vision: the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). Although Schopenhauer was an atheist and wrote caustically about religion’s absurdities and horrors, he nevertheless had a great admiration for what he called the ‘saintly souls’ of mystical religion: the ‘pietists, quietists, pious enthusiasts’. While such saints were useless as metaphysicians, they were extremely valuable, Schopenhauer thought, as guides to the highest happiness. He could do without their dogma, but he cherished them as soteriological geniuses... And so, Vladimir, interminably waiting for Mr Godot, needn’t have weighed the odds of salvation quite so anxiously. For the quietist, salvation and damnation, heaven and hell, weal and woe, suffering and its end, are not distant poles, but perhaps two sides of the same coin. As Thomas à Kempis put it, in that phrase that Beckett confessed was made for him: ‘he that can well suffer shall find the most peace’.”

Andy Wimbush, “How Samuel Beckett Sought Salvation in the Midst of Suffering” - https://aeon.co/essays/how-samuel-beckett-sought-salvation-in-the-midst-of-suffering. An interesting reflection on Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in wider context. Saw this play performed some years ago in Edinburgh with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan in the lead rolls. Wimbush’s references to Schopenhauer and wider therapeutic philosophy (Stoics, Sceptics, Epicureans) provides helpful context to Buddhist and Christian thought on such matters. Beckett’s presentation of Vladimir and Estragon’s dialogue always reminds me of Derrida’s reflections in Body of Prayer: “I was hesitating between two ethics of prayer, so to speak. Two definitions of prayer. One has to do with improvisation. The prayer should be, in principle, pure improvisation. A way of inventing on the spot, the address, the addressee, the language, the code, so there shouldn’t be any book, any program, any rule to pray, on the one hand. Speaking of music, in that extent, jazz would be closer to prayer... But we know that in jazz there are rules too… So, although we know that the pure prayer should be improvisation, that is pure innovation, without any book, at the same time, we know that we need a book, the code of gestures, a language, and so on and so forth.” (p. 57-59). “Michal told us about the three possible semantic roots of words for prayer in Hebrew, and I think, of course, that the two last ones - to plea, to request, to sentence, to judge - are really secondary, let’s say. The most essential to me is the first root which means to wait, to hope, because it’s not a way of hoping for this, or looking for that, but hoping for the prayer to happen.” (p. 65). As it happens I’ll be teaching a course on comparative studies of suffering this year that will cover a similar plurality of perspectives.