My last post went off track when I realized that Crusoe inadvertently links Christian morality, the Good, with material accumulation, collecting goods, through the loosely cognized term “Use.” While that proved interesting, I would like to return to the moment I meant to focus on yesterday.
The context is the same. Crusoe is pondering Providence, reading the circumstances of his life through Christian morality, when he begins the ironic sermon against Covetousness I touched on yesterday. As Crusoe goes on, however, Use is linked to something even more slippery than the Good and goods, namely thought itself. “Another Reflection,” says Crusoe, “was of great Use to me,” only a moment after he finishes his lecture on Covetousness like this: “All our Discontents about what we want, appear’d to me, to spring from the Want of Thankfulness for what we have” (130). An ascetic reading of these two moments tells us that one should be ever happy because ever thankful for what one has, reflection and its uses. Reflection, then, becomes an itemized good that has Use and, insofar as it is being put to good use, is also the owner’s Good.
Reflection does not necessarily equal reason, rationality or a host of other things. For Crusoe, it seems to me, Reflection is linked with morality if not a moral quality itself. That is, Reflection is taking a God’s Eye view of myself; this is its highest Use and if this God given good is employed in that manner, it is also doing-being Good. And the source of happiness.
The introduction of pleasure into this equation is rather odd. Employing my Reflection, I realize that I should be thankful for what I have including, and perhaps especially, the ability to Reflect itself. If I am thankful, says Crusoe, I am also content. This final move is the oddity, perhaps only because I am collapsing contentment, happiness and pleasure, each of which have their own histories. My terminological sloppiness, however, may be productive here because it allows for the uninstrumental to emerge at the heart of an instrumental equation. In other words, pleasure and happiness are the end points; they cannot, or are not, Useful in the same way that Reflection, or even the Good, is.
This is not simply mental masturbation. As the opening of yesterday’s post indicates, the context––perhaps stakes––of these thoughts lie at the nexus of aesthetics, pleasure, use value, cognition and perhaps, if yesterday’s “good”ness is included, imperialism.
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Unedited
Ever get the feeling that what you have just written is total garbage. Yeah, me too.
