[lit-ideas] Death as a non-performative
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:55:16 EST
As R. Paul notes, it is possible to conceive a similar argument to Norman
Malcolm's Dreaming on dying.
The source would be Hamlet's suggestion:
to die: to sleep, perchance to _dream_.
Malcolm, a disciple of Witters, was intrigued by Witters's remark,
"Death is not part of life".
"But dreaming is!", he objected. In fact, R. E. M. is a proof that Hamlet
was exaggerating: to die is like _to dream_ but while we dream we are alive
(and move the eyes -- dogs too).
Now, 'dream' cannot be used in the future,
"Tomorrow I will dream of my mother".
It is a non-performative in the future. In the past it is a performative,
"I dreamed that p" (I dreamed that the cat is on the mat).
This representational character of 'dreaming' ("that the cat is on the
mat") is absent, curiously, in the use of the verb 'to die'. "To die that the
cat is on the mat" is hyperbolic. One may _die_ *for* a cup of tea (but not
that he longs fatally for a cup of tea).
The use of 'contextual clues' is important in the pragmatics of dying.
Consider Rupert Brooke,
"If I should die, think only this of me,
that there is forever England"
--- Surely most humans _do_ die. Rupert Brooke, granted, was idolised by
his followers, and perhaps he thought he would be 'timeless' or eternal --
but he wasn't. He was beaten by a mosquito in Italy and died. (Or Greece, or
Turkey).
---- So, the 'explicature' would be:
If I SHOULD DIE before too long,
think only this of me:
that there is forever England.
But NOT otherrwise. I.e. should he NOT die, England is not forever. To
think that some Brits take R. Brooke as a patriotic poet irritates me.
-----
In "Personal Identity", Grice considers:
"I was hit by a ball"
"Surely it's best to understand the "I" in that type of sentences as "My
body"". In other uses, "I" stands for 'psycho-somatic unit' ("She is a bore
(to listen to and to look at)"), sometimes only psychic ("I dreamed I dwelt
in marble halls").
In the case of "die", the argument alla Malcolm combines the subtlety of
Grice's analysis of 'I' as a psychic event of mnemonic units.
"If I (Rupert Brooke) should die
before too long,
think only this of me,
that there is forever England."
Etc.
J. L. Speranza, Bordighera
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