Applied Philosophy

Jersey Girl, 2004, directed by Kevin Smith, starring Ben Affleik and Raquel Castro.

The Trotsky, 2009,  directed by Jacob Tierney, starring Jay Baruchel, Jessica Paré and Ricky Mabe.

The best characters in literature are those that get transformed. Shakespeare presented one of the best and moving transformations, from Prince Harry to King Henry V, in his trilogy: Henry IV Part One, Henry IV Part Two and Henry V.

Kevin Smith tried to do the same in Jersey Girl by transforming a Public Relations guy, a person who lives by lying to the general public, to a spirited and dedicated public servant, but where Shakespeare was successful Kevin Smith fails: when it was time to present the beliefs of the character through a speech Kevin Smith has nothing to say.

Smith fails to deliver a modern day St. Crispin’s Day Speech because he does not believe in public works the way Shakespeare believed in English nationalism.

In Hollywood anything could be forgiven except believing in something and the failure of Smith was the failure of conviction:

An extended cut was shown at Kevin Smith’s private film festival Vulgarthon in 2005 (and was shown again at the 2006 festival). Cut scenes that featured in the extended version included a much longer extension of the Jennifer Lopez section of the movie that fleshed out the characters more, Ben Affleck’s full speech in the city hall, a longer ending, and some music changes.

—Jersey Girl, Wikipedia [my emphasis]

Either Smith failed to write a moving speech or hesitated when it was time to deliver the final cut.

Slavoj Žižek wrote a book, On Belief, which discussed the need to believe in something to change the world, he presents Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, as an  example of someone acting on his belief even though Žižek personally does not agree with the beliefs. The interested reader can read the book and evalute the arguments for himself, but I like the short judgement given by Hegel: Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion (see Weekly Lesson (2)).

Jacob Tierney,another writer-director, fails to deliver a transforming character, his protagonist has passionate beliefs  from the first until the last frame of the film. Tierney does deliver the speech, the School Sucks Speech, but prefers to let a secondary character delivers it and then have him add that he doesn’t really believe in it, but he will put deeds before beliefs.

Modern artists are unable to observe society and can only express solipsist views, I suspect that Tierney hesitated to let the protagonist of his film, i.e. his avatar, express his views in a compelling speech, but by doing so he gave the best expression for the students’ “revolt” of the sixties: young students following ideas they do not really believe in without any adult leadership, except for a few fellow travellers cheering from a safe distant. This lack of belief, of passion, explains why the students used to take exams in the morning and riot in the evening; they also put deeds before beliefs and one does not sacrifice his future for deeds alone.

This lack of belief is present in every artistic expression of modern society, from the cheapest action film to the historical epic, it seems that there are no more Bolsheviks in modern Western society.

“For [the English] appear to constitute that people in Europe which, limited to the understanding of actuality, is destined, like the class of shopkeepers and workmen in the State, to live always immersed in matter, and to have actuality but not reason as object.” 

-Hegel’s History of Philosophy, Bacon.

“It is not so much from as through slavery that man acquired freedom.”

-Attributed to Hegel’s History of Philosophy.

“Truth may be ascertained by several methods, each of which however is no more than a form. Experience is the first of these methods. But the method is only a form: it has no intrinsic value of its own. For in experience everything depends upon the mind we bring to bear upon actuality. A great mind is great in its experience; and in the motley play of phenomena at once perceives the point of real significance.”

-Hegel’s Shorter Logic, §24n [my emphasis]

“Applied mathematics is generally not an immanent science, precisely because it involves the application of pure mathematics to a given material and its determinations as derived from experience.”

-Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, §202 [my emphasis]

“From the history of nature and human society that the laws of dialectics are abstracted. For they are nothing but the most general laws of these two aspects of historical development, as well as of thought itself. And indeed they can be reduced in the main to three:

• The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa;
• The law of the interpenetration of opposites;
• The law of the negation of the negation.

All three are developed by Hegel in his idealist fashion as mere laws of thought.”

-Engels’ Dialectics of Nature.

“Freedom is just thought itself; he who casts thought aside and speaks of freedom knows not what he is talking of. The unity of thought with itself is freedom, the free will. …It is only as having the power of thinking that the will is free.”

-Hegel’s History of Philosophy, French Philosophy.

“We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and   if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it   we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.”

-Hegel’s Philosophy of History, §26

“Experimental physics will present the rational science of Nature – as history will present the science of human affairs and actions – in an external picture, which mirrors the philosophic notion.”

-Hegel’s Shorter Logic, §16 [my emphasis]