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Nominalism and Modernist Literature | Prof. Erik Tonning

The Thomistic Institute

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Beckett's Over It's an Ethical Rebellion

In this mangled, hauteing speech he recalls his mystical attempt to abandon mind, body, language and all created things to the divine absolute otherness. But we also glimpse the more frightening side of the nominalist, volantrist God whom what is so fervently seeking. Beckett agrees wholeheartedly with Schopenhauer's view that such metaphysical optimism is a really wicked way of thinking. And this I think is why the nomenless God has such tremendous and recurring fascination for Beckett precisely because his cosmic tyranny and arbitrariness can be magnified so that ethical rebellion against him seems emotionally justified.

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