ROGER SHATTUCK
441
One knows the kind of human being who has fallen in love with the motto,
tout
,omprendre ,'est tout pardonner.
It is weak . . .
It
is the philosophy of disappoint–
ment that wraps itself so humanely in pity and looks sweet.
(The Will to Power,
81)
As a young man Marcel Proust twice filled out a questionnaire that
included the following item: "For what faults do you have the greatest
indulgence?" At age twelve Proust answered: "For the private life of
geniuses." At age seventeen: "For those I understand." In Robert Musil's
immense novel
The Man Without Qualities,
the character Moosbrugger,
rapist and murderer, becomes the darling of intellectuals who admire his
forthright testimony and find reasons to exculpate his behavior. Moos–
brugger begins to look like a wily jovial version of Meursault. Thomas
Mann sets the scene for the inside narrative of
Death in Venice
by alerting
us to its moral content. After a long period of doubt and antisocial think–
ing, Aschenbach has returned "from every moral skepticism" to a more
balanced view of individual responsibility. This change is described as
"the counter move to the laxity of the sympathetic principle, that to un–
derstand all is to forgive all."
Every one of these authors recognizes the empathy-sincerity plea:
anyone in the same situation would do the same thing. Proust seems to
welcome it. Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Musil, and Mann resist it. One can–
not easily find the origin of this willingness to abdicate moral judgement,
which seems to have grown throughout the twentieth century. In the
West, relativism received impetus from the Enlightenment challenge to
Christian morality.
It
was then that Lessing and Goethe calmly and cava–
lierly offered a new model of Faust. The personage formerly condemned
to Hell, after a lengthily documented life of presumed "striving" that
causes many deaths and much grief and destruction, now floats comforta–
bly up to Heaven at God's express command. The Lord, especially in the
Prologue in Heaven, seems to "understand" Faust all too well and to for–
give
him
in advance.
A discussion of the lures and perils of relativism could send us on a
lengthy journey. Let me return, instead, to the generic proverb in order
to examine its terms and its structure.
Tout comprendre ,'est tout pardonner.
To understand is to forgive.
