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I believe this quotation from The English Patient to be the key to the moral
important event in one way or another for all of the characters within this
narrative. This ‘moment’ is the point at which we become aware of this ability we
have to rationalize anything. Kip’s ‘moment’ begins when he learns of the bombing
of Japan:
American, French, I don’t care. When you start bombing the brown
races of the world, you’re an Englishman (287).
And Hana’s moment occurs while she sweats and toils over the bodies of the
wounded:
I know death now, David, I know all the smells, I know how to divert
them from agony. When to give the quick jolt of morphine in a major
vein. The saline solution. To make them empty their bowels before
they die. Every damn general should have had my job. Every damn
general. It should have been a prerequisite for any river crossing. I
could never believe in all those services they gave for the dead. Their
vulgar rhetoric. How dare they! How dare they talk like that about a
human being dying (84).
Almsay’s ‘moment’ no doubt came long before the English denied him a jeep to
rescue his love. He had learned to love the desert and its ability to wipe away the
lines of nations. Clearly Madox had been transformed by his ‘moment’ when he shot
himself through the heart during a pro-war mass in his community church.
Caravaggio clearly has passed through this experience as well and always sees his
“Why are you not smarter? It’s only the rich who can’t afford to be
smart. They’re compromised. They got locked years ago into
privilege. They have to protect their belongings. No one is meaner
than the rich. Trust me. But they have to follow the rules of their
shitty civilised world. They declare war, they have honour, and they
can’t leave. But you two. We three. We’re free (123).
upon the moral quandary of war in general. It has an interestingly unique view on
World War II, with not a single reference to the Nazis or war-crimes. Unlike
other novels this one is not concerned with the modern preoccupation of
recollecting history by cursing the loser and acclaiming the winner, it is not
countries, the events are not staged by armies and generals but by people whose
This field of moral narrative is a burgeoning young field, but its roots go
back many centuries. It is a fairly recent phenomena indicative of the modern age
in which moral doctrines are described and delimited in only abstract notions and
concepts. Ondaatje’s novel is a hearkening back to older times when morality was
something contained within a legend or a myth, not dry abstract universal concepts,
meant to justly govern the whole gamut of human interactions. Kant is one such
interpretations of his moral doctrine show that his system is incapable of dealing
containing maxims prohibiting lying. Thus, the Dutch citizen harbouring a Jewish
family in her attic would be required to tell the truth if asked, “are there any Jews
the Jewish family to death, naturally this runs counter intuitive to most of us, but
it is an interesting example of the way universal principles can play havoc on our
‘sense’ of justice.
Our ‘sense’ of justice seems to be a very key element of what moral systems
we adopt, as individuals anyway. Certainly logic must play into this ‘sense’ but
perhaps only to the extent that the doctrine being investigated must be based in
the reality of cause and effect. That is we should not have moral doctrines that
claim 2 + 2 = 5. Nor should we place the value of bundles of sticks above the lives
arguments. Often when logicians are stuck, a proof leads them to absurd
conclusions no matter how often they examine and reexamine the terms and
symbols of the arguments, the best solution is to translate the symbols into plain
language and the solution or the problem becomes obvious. We have an intuitive
intuition and theory by James Rachels in Applied Ethics: A Reader (hereafter AE):
This strong position held by Rawls is not always readily applicable and perhaps for
convenience he tends at times to ‘back off a bit’. The weaker sense of this position
involves a sort of “reflective equilibrium” with the theoretical pronouncements,
whatever that means (AE 114). Rachels point in this discussion is that oft times
theory is plagued with what he calls “Moorean Insulation”. Whereby a set of first-
order beliefs are held to be absolutely true and the starting point of knowledge
(let us call this ‘safe’ philosophy for the sake of brevity). This is a quotation from
Those who do philosophy safe proceed in such a way that their first-
order beliefs are never called into doubt. They begin with the
assumption that they know a great many (first-order) things to be
true, and for them, philosophical thinking involves (only?) A search
for principles and theories that would justify and explain what they
already know. Those who do philosophy with risk, on the other hand,
expose their first-order beliefs to the perils of thought. Everything
is up for grabs. Any belief may have to be rejected, if reasons are
found against it; and one cannot say, in advance, what reasons might
turn up for doubting what beliefs (AE 112).
circle of further and further assumptions that are not justified -- that isn’t much
And here we come back to ‘sense’ again. The moral philosopher must choose
some first principle that seems self-evident but as I have said without any
justification. Take the example of Utilitarians: they have chosen the principle of
action for the maximum happiness and minimum suffering for sentient beings.
Unfortunately for the utilitarians we do appear to have need for, that is, there
appears to exist other self-evident duties -- why chose this one? At this point
What this web of beliefs does for us is allow the intermingling of various moral
principles with moral beliefs that were previously only linked to a competing
moral principles has “ . . . more to do with showing that one’s total set of beliefs
form a consistent and satisfying whole than with proving that one’s ultimate
the novel are not convinced. Everywhere I look I see people experiencing this same
‘moment’. Cynical attitudes are ubiquitous save perhaps on the evening news. What
should happen if this attitude spreads to the bulk of the population as it appears to
be doing (one does not need a war to experience this ‘moment’)? And even if wars
are essential for this transformation of values there are plenty to go around.
The solution, I think, is in the final chapter of this novel where Kip is happily
needs, his desires, that which he truly wants and those things which bother, annoy
and enrage him. By knowing himself he has found a way to live, happily
We obtain this only in life, through contact with the world, and it is
this we speak of when anyone is praised as a person who has
character, . . . although a man is always the same, he does not always
understand himself, but often fails to recognize himself until he has
acquired some degree of real self-knowledge (WWR sect 55 p 305).
Kip has this sort of character, he was picked by the Major and his wife because his
character would allow him to deal with bombs critically. Defusing a bomb is no
meaning self taught but also morally instructive. All of these personas have a
individuals development of their own character that they can achieve a spiritual
and moral self-authority. Nietzsche (you cannot really speak about Nietzsche
without Schopenhauer) has an idea very much like Rachels’ web, it is called the veil
of Maya. This veil contains all of our perceptions, thoughts and concepts, these
are all illusory. Picture a world that is constantly becoming not being. Forces are
the smallest components of objects, not atoms. Beings then are a mere equilibrium
of forces which appear concrete to us but are always changing, ebbing and flowing.
Truth would clearly be a dynamic vector of forces just like all other beings, but
without matter to ground it in corporeal form. Thus, truth is something which you
can attain perhaps but by the time you have grasped it, it has already changed.
world of constant flux. All is flux all is interpretation of the dynamic as something
static.
Nietzsche also said that God is dead, so there is no one to whom we can
appeal for our truths. There are many symbols of the death of God in this novel,
including the death of the ‘Holy Trinity’. This is the nickname for the group
consisting of Lord Suffolk, his wife, and his assistant. They died because a bomb
they tried to defuse turned out to be of a clever design, very difficult to diffuse.
This is a metaphor for the death of God at the hands of rationality (191, 178). The
scarecrow in Hana’s garden is made from a crucifix. Christian morality is here used
for more practical and seemingly more effective purposes. Instead of scaring
people away from sin it is used for scaring crows from eating grain (207). And
finally when Kip hides his phosphorous watch in the cupboard that holds a saint so
Hana does not detect him in the dark. The Saints are as dead and blind as statues
(221).
Rachels but these both amount to the same thing, truth is unattainable. For
Nietzsche this means accepting the ‘moment’ which all of the characters of our
novel have experienced, and using that personal experience to realize, morality is
not absolute. Our norms are not absolute nor do our laws come down from heaven
as eternal truth. To live peacefully and safely with others we must have
regulations and norms of conduct but there is no reason to believe these norms
appeal to the truth, that they are the universal moral values. They are merely
In a world in which all is interpretation, the way you go about interpreting facts,
knowledge and truth are infinitely important. Nietzsche attempts to give the
individual the authority and the strength to undertake this personal interpretive
another have discovered that truth is interpretive, only Kip has made the final step
toward self-knowledge and the empowerment that this discovery can bestow. At
the end of the novel Kip reflects on his own journey of self-knowledge and wonders
This is a world in which we must take personal authority for our actions and
spiritual moral values. We must interpret the world and our past so that it
There is no point in trying to find a rational doctrine that is the truth all that can
be done is to accept the inevitable, live our lives joyfully and without truth. We
must realize ‘we can rationalize’ anything and constantly remain on guard against
this.
Moral philosophy does not work on a global or national scale, it only works on
the level of the personal. Caravaggio would say, this is because the world of
politics is not concerned with morality it is concerned with governance and wealth.
Attempts to universalize moral action do not allow for the multiplicity of human
engagements and interactions. This means, moral doctrines only work on the level
philosophy is intended to be just this as we can see when we look at the title of one
of his books, Ecce Home: How One Becomes What One Is. By reliance upon the
self with a healthy dose of introspection and spiritual self-authority perhaps one
day we can enjoy collectives, in which understanding and consensus rule not truth
and politics.
Bibliography
Ondaatje, Michael., The English Patient, Vintage Books Canada Edition 1993,
Toronto.
Nietzsche, Friedrich., The Will To Power, Ed. W. Kaufmann, Trans. W. Kaufmann &
R.J. Hollingdale, Vintage Books Edition 1968, New York.
Nietzsche, Friedrich., The Gay Science, Trans. W. Kaufmann, Vintage Books Edition
1974, New York.
Nietzsche, Friedrich., Ecce Homo, Trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Penguin Books 1992,
England.
Nietzsche, Friedrich., Beyond Good and Evil, Trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Penguin Books
1990, England.