Philosophy in Fiction: Proust and Nietzsche

Proust spends much of In Search of Lost Time focusing on the various and verging-on-ridiculous social structures that surround the narrator. One theory: that all of the time spent on “petty” matters is just extra noise and that the heart of the novel is truly structured around involuntary memory. Such an interpretation may not satisfy the reader, however. The famous episodes of involuntary memory occur primarily at the beginning and end of the novel, leaving the reader few in the middle volumes. If the most important parts of the novel come at the beginning and the end, why write the middle? There must be a greater reason for Proust’s focus on social structures.

The narrator of In Search of Lost Time is constantly pushing the boundaries of the many worlds existing around him. He explains in detail the various personalities, opinions, and social structures of late 19th-century France. It does not seem, however, that he reaches any explicit conclusions regarding "correct" opinions, nor does he shed light on his opinions of the extreme personalities and absurdity of the social dynamics within his various circles. We, as readers, aren't necessarily expected to come to a solid conclusion either; these are conclusions that cannot be met. For example: although Proust decidedly believed that Dreyfus was innocent, he didn't write the novel in a way which necessarily leads the readers to that conclusion. Rather, Proust created characters who have differing opinions on the Dreyfus affair; some characters who come to the correct conclusion, even, come to it in a roundabout, funny, and flawed way – such as a character who leaves the French circle, is bullied into the correct position regarding the Dreyfus Affair by three beautiful women, and then comes around to the "correct" stance.

Proust is not suggesting that this is good – he's suggesting that this is the way it is. This may sound simplistic, but it strikes at Proust’s profound observation of social instability and the ontological essence of the novel. The narrator is incredibly observant of the world around him and takes into account what makes up each different world that is not his (whether he defines them as separate or not). What he does not actively observe is his own world; that is a process done only by his weighing of the extremes against the self. The times when the narrator sees himself most clearly are during moments of resurfaced involuntary memories, times when he feels the most profound sense of longing, sadness, and/or guilt for all the possible time wasted. These moments, it seems, occur when the narrator is most lucid and introspective.

This meta-reading of Proust relates directly to the critic Joshua Landy's interpretation of the novel. Broadly, Landy argues that In Search of Lost Time is not merely a piece of fiction, but a philosophical text; that the novel offers a vast and comprehensive philosophical framework. This framework, Landy claims, is closest to Nietzsche’s philosophy – but, in some ways, Proust’s philosophy goes beyond Nietzsche’s. The novel’s most prominent themes – art, love, time, knowledge – play into a philosophical framework. They are each a part of an illustration, for Proust, of a greater theory about:

minds and their relations with the world, about the illusions they

entertain, the types of fragmentation they experience, the subtle

consistencies they manifest, and (above all) the range of faculties they

deploy.

(Landy 9)

In his examination, Landy outlines various philosophical axioms present in Proust. He posits, for instance, that we only care about subjective knowledge because it has the power to transform our lives. All significant thinking, therefore, depends more on intuition than intellect, as subjective knowledge is gained from our intuition. In the novel, the narrator says that the "objective" facts that intellect helps us arrive at are not “what is most important to our hearts or to our minds” since objective facts do not have access to “the domain of what is for each one of us the sole reality, the domain of his own sensibility” (Time Regained). Therefore, paradoxically, it is “rational not to be too rational” (Landy, 20). The most important of our knowledge comes not from our rationality, but from our instinct. To accentuate this point, Landy quotes The Fugitive:

It is life that, little by little, case by case, enables us to observe that what

is most important to our hearts or to our minds is taught us not by

reasoning but by other powers. And then it is the intelligence itself which,

acknowledging their superiority, abdicates to them through reasoning.

(The Fugitive)

In fact, in certain cases, over-reliance on our intellect keeps us ignorant. Intellect can work just fine for us under “normal circumstances,”such as with determining simple, emotionless things. It is when our intellect is taken over by the more emotional, desire-filled part of our brain that it “bends away from rationalizing and towards reasoning” (Landy, 30). Intellect creates reasons for doing and feeling that which we already would have done.

Landy goes on to offer examples of the perspectival nature of the novel. He says, for instance, that Proust offers contradictory theories of love throughout the novel. At one point, the narrator suggests that love springs from anxiety: “One can feel an attraction toward a particular person. But to release that fount of sorrow, that sense of the irreparable, those agonies which prepare the way for love, there must be the risk of an impossibility” (In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower). But in his attraction to the Duchesse de Guermantes, the narrator is drawn to her warmth, not remoteness:

This smile fell upon me, and at once I fell in love with her, for if it is

sometimes enough to make us love a woman that she should look on us

with contempt, as I supposed Mlle Swann to have done, and that we

should think of her as almost ours already.

(Swanns Way).

Both of the sentiments in these passages read as decidedly Proustian. However, they stand in direct contradiction to one another. Often, when reading Proust, we become confused with the narrator's contradictory thoughts and actions, especially when considering the novel as a whole. What Landy offers is a reconciling of this: he believes that the narrator's contradictions prove that any of the universal theories that are offered to the readers during the course of the novel – love, art, time, knowledge – are, in fact, tentative and subjective.

So, what's the point? Why write a novel that is completely perspectival? The answer to this question, of course, is complex. The "objective" truths that the narrator continually comes across (which we see through their contradictions and counterexamples) are subjective truths that form an extended example through which Proust makes a greater point. Following this framework, Landy sees the whole novel as a sequence of fascinations:

For if Proust’s protagonist is anything to go by, the human adventure is a

matter of repeatedly bumping up, in increasing frustration, against the

variably colored, translucent ‘barrier’ between mind and world, only to

realize that the glass itself—our individual perspective—is far more

interesting than any aspect of external reality, however accurately

grasped, could hope to be.

(Landy, 51)

Readers do not necessarily need to conclude that Proust wrote with this intention, though that is the conclusion that Landy seems to draw. One might speculate that no artist would admit that they are not striking at something fundamental or finding some truth. Such an outlook would be rather grim for an artist to take up.

Or Proust could be making an intentional point about perspectivism. Landy claims that both Nietzsche and Proust are concerned with the concept of a will to ignorance. There exists one level of knowledge wherein we know that we know nothing. Plato claims that this is the deepest level of wisdom. Nietzsche, however, offers an opposite conception of wisdom: thinking that you actually know. This is a type of knowledge that is life-enhancing. The trick it plays keeps us from the trap of perspectivism wherein we do not hold value in anything, in which nothing is truly interesting, in which art is nothing but one's perspective on the world. The will to ignorance is key to a happy life. The only thing which can transcend our individual glass, according to Landy’s reading of Proust, is the creation of art. For the narrator is not just searching for lost time – he's searching for “an enrichment of experience” (Landy 66). This experience, through making art, is defined by style. We each see the world in an individual way. Our 'glass' is colored by something that is unique to us and that coloring of our own life is only portrayed to others through style. For style, Proust says, is:

in no way an embellishment… it is not even a question of technique; it is,

like color with certain painters, a quality of vision, a revelation of a private

universe which each one of us sees and which is not seen by others. The

pleasure an artist gives us is to make us know an additional universe.

(Proust)

Making art, Landy concludes, somehow reconciles the difference in style. Perhaps it is the only way we can find anything, or convince ourselves that we are finding something, universal, fundamental, simply true:

Everywhere he looks … he sees world, which is to say systems that are

both homogeneous and heteronomous, alien to everyday experience

and at the same time perfectly coherent from within. Any manifestation

that strikes him as unusual becomes a sign, a secret communication that

stands in need of decoding, something that would yield a meaning if

only one possessed the interpretive cipher, spoke the local language.

(Landy, 66)