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فەلسەفەی شاراوەی ڕۆبنسن کرۆزۆ — Transcript

by فەلسەفەی ئەمرۆمان · 2,887 words · 344 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:03As children, most of us knew Robinson Crusoe
0:07as a simple adventure story, in books or cartoons:
0:11a sailor is shipwrecked
0:14and left alone on a deserted island.
0:18But when a thinker as great as Karl Marx
0:21comments ironically on this story in Capital,
0:25you realise something much larger lies behind this island.
0:31When Daniel Defoe wrote this novel in 1719,
0:36he was not telling a story merely to pass the time.
0:38Instead, within each event,
0:41he placed a philosophical symbol to show
0:44how the modern Western individual was born,
0:47and learned to control nature and conquer the world.
0:52Let us begin with the story's very first page.
0:55The story begins in England in 1651.
1:00Robinson is nineteen and dreams
1:03of going to sea and becoming rich.
1:06His wise old father calls him to his room
1:10and tearfully begs him not to leave home. He tells him:
1:14The happiest life is the “middle station of life”:
1:18neither so poor that you must grovel for a crust of bread,
1:22nor so rich and powerful that pride and greed blind you.
1:27In the novel's philosophical structure, England is Eden,
1:32and his father represents God's law.
1:36When Robinson ignores his father and runs away,
1:40he commits what he later calls “my original sin”.
1:45From the outset, the story is built
1:49on two ancient biblical tales: the rebellious son
1:53who defies his father, and Job,
1:56who must endure suffering and harsh trials to be reformed.
2:01On the very first day Robinson boards a ship,
2:05a terrifying storm nearly sinks it.
2:09When they barely escape, the captain tells him:
2:14“My boy, this storm is a clear message from heaven.
2:18Unless you return to your father's home, you will never prosper.”
2:22But Robinson, stubborn and proud,
2:26is ashamed to return, and immediately boards another ship.
2:30Robinson heads for the African coast.
2:34He takes children's toys,
2:36beads and cheap glassware,
2:39trading them to the trusting local people for raw gold dust.
2:44Back in London, he makes a great deal of money.
2:47Instead of stopping, he says: since this voyage was profitable,
2:52I must quickly make another to double my profits!
2:57Robinson enters the endless cycle that Karl Marx
3:01calls the law of capitalism: turn money into goods,
3:06sell the goods for more money,
3:09then repeat the process,
3:12because your sole purpose is to accumulate wealth.
3:16But here is Defoe's hidden irony:
3:19all the money Robinson earns on those dangerous voyages
3:23only brings him to the same “middle station of life”
3:27his father had offered him effortlessly at home!
3:32On his next voyage, North African pirates
3:36attack his ship, and Robinson is enslaved for two years.
3:41One day, his master sends him fishing
3:44in a small boat carrying guns and provisions,
3:47accompanied by an enslaved boy named Xury.
3:51Robinson seizes the opportunity and escapes with Xury.
3:54Together, they face hunger and fear of wild beasts on Africa's coast,
3:59until, out at sea, a Portuguese ship
4:02bound for Brazil saves them from death.
4:06The Portuguese captain is a very kind man. He says:
4:10“I saved you out of humanity. I want nothing from you.”
4:15But look at Robinson, himself enslaved only days earlier,
4:19who knows the bitterness of losing freedom. What does he do?
4:23He sells Xury, his fellow escapee, to the captain for sixty silver pieces!
4:28Merely to ease his conscience,
4:31he stipulates that, if Xury becomes a Christian,
4:34he must be freed after ten years of unpaid labour.
4:38This incident reveals Robinson Crusoe's true nature.
4:43Robinson is the coldest, most unfeeling character in literary history:
4:47the perfect embodiment of “economic man”.
4:50There is no room in his mind for affection or loyalty.
4:54He sees everyone around him merely as tools
4:57and resources for making a profit.
5:00We see this when Robinson reaches Brazil and buys a sugar plantation.
5:05Because he is in a Catholic country,
5:08he immediately conceals his Protestant faith and outwardly becomes Catholic.
5:13For him, whichever religion brings money is the true religion!
5:17Later, he writes that he deeply regrets selling Xury.
5:22Not because his conscience troubles him for betraying his friend,
5:26but because, he says, “I wish I had not sold Xury.
5:29Now, on this plantation, I desperately need someone
5:33to work for me for nothing, so I can make more money!”
5:37Then the Brazilian plantation owners offer him a ship
5:41to sail secretly to Africa and bring back enslaved people.
5:45They promise him a share without any investment of his own.
5:48Delighted at obtaining “labour without capital”,
5:52Robinson's eyes light up. On 30 September
5:561659, he boards the ship.
5:59But here divine providence strikes him:
6:02a great storm wrecks the ship, and all his companions drown.
6:07The man who set out to rob others of their freedom
6:10is cast ashore alone on a deserted island.
6:13When Robinson opens his eyes on the island,
6:16he is utterly alone. Notice something strange:
6:20women and family have no presence throughout this novel.
6:25Why? For two thousand years before this book,
6:28philosophers regarded the family as society's smallest unit,
6:32because without family and reproduction, humanity dies out.
6:36But the new philosophy of the Enlightenment, especially that
6:40of the English philosopher John Locke, said society rests not on family,
6:44but on the lone, independent individual in the “state of nature”.
6:48Defoe places Robinson on this island to show that one rational man
6:53can constitute a complete society by himself.
6:56Robinson's island life condenses the entire history
7:00of human civilisation's development into one person:
7:04on the first night, like a forest animal,
7:07he climbs a tree in fear and sleeps on a branch.
7:10Days later, like a Stone Age man, he finds a cave.
7:15From hunting and gathering fruit,
7:17he gradually advances to farming,
7:20then domesticating wild goats,
7:22discovering the secrets of fire, making clay pots,
7:26grinding grain and baking bread,
7:28until he builds a fortress, and summer and winter homes!
7:32But how can Robinson subdue this wild nature all by himself?
7:37He relies on two powers. The first is
7:40the wrecked ship, which the waves have carried in
7:43and stranded on sand near the shore. Before it breaks apart,
7:47Robinson visits it twelve times on a wooden raft,
7:51bringing off everything inside: a carpenter's tool chest,
7:54iron, saws, axes, guns, gunpowder,
7:58a compass and a Bible. Philosophically,
8:01the ship symbolises “Western civilisation's scientific and rational legacy”.
8:06Robinson does not start from scratch.
8:08With Europe's accumulated weapons, knowledge and tools,
8:12he brings the island's nature under his control.
8:15His second power is self-restraint and strict discipline. For instance,
8:19he salvages forty gallons of wine and spirits from the ship.
8:24Anyone else in such loneliness and despair
8:27would turn to drink.
8:29But Robinson is so restrained and calculating,
8:33he uses it only as medicine, a drop at a time.
8:36When he is rescued after twenty-eight years on the island,
8:40most of the alcohol is still there, just as before!
8:43Consider the gulf between Robinson's mind and a poetic sensibility:
8:48in twenty-eight years on a tropical island,
8:51Robinson never once describes the beauty of a sunset
8:55or the sea's waves! Instead,
8:59he devotes page after page to explaining how,
9:02after dozens of failed attempts, he managed to fire a clay pot
9:06so that he could cook soup in it.
9:11Beauty has no place in his world;
9:13only usefulness and work exist.
9:16Just once, his calculating mind betrays him:
9:20one day he decides to cut down the island's largest tree
9:24and hollow it out to make a huge canoe.
9:28He spends five whole years carving this tree, day and night.
9:32But when he finishes after five years,
9:35he finds the canoe so heavy that no lever or mechanical force
9:40can move it even a centimetre towards the water!
9:44These five wasted years,
9:46in the story's historical symbolism, represent
9:49“the age of gigantic monuments in the ancient world”,
9:53such as Egypt's pyramids, where immense human labour
9:57went into an immovable project with no practical use.
10:03On his last trip to the wreck,
10:06Robinson finds some knives in the captain's drawer,
10:09and thirty-six pounds in gold and silver coins.
10:13He looks at the gold and says theatrically:
10:16“Useless stuff! What good are you here?
10:20One of these knives is worth more than all this gold.
10:23Stay where you are, and go to the bottom of the sea!”
10:27But in the very next sentence, he writes: “On second thoughts,
10:31I wrapped up the gold and took it with me!”
10:35Even on a deserted island, the capitalist
10:38cannot bring himself to give up money. However,
10:42since money buys nothing on the island,
10:45Robinson starts a ledger, valuing
10:48every chair, table and basket
10:52by the hours and days of labour that went into it.
10:55This is John Locke's “labour theory of value” put into practice:
10:59when people mix their labour with nature,
11:04they create real value and private property.
11:08But the strangest part is Robinson's relationship with God.
11:13One day, he shakes an old bag of chicken feed outside his cave,
11:18and weeks later sees green barley and rice shoots
11:22sprouting from the ground. Some time later,
11:26an earthquake shakes the island, and Robinson contracts
11:29a deadly fever. To treat himself,
11:33he soaks tobacco leaves in rum and drinks it.
11:37In his fever, he has a terrifying dream: a fiery man
11:40descends from the clouds with a spear,
11:44to kill him because he has not yet repented of his sins.
11:48When he recovers, he begins reading the Bible.
11:51But look at the kind of God Robinson worships:
11:56in the old religious stories,
11:58God appeared through heavenly light or an angel.
12:02Robinson Crusoe's God, however, is very
12:06practical and worldly, like a “heavenly foreman”
12:09watching over the workshop from above.
12:12When he wants to show Robinson a miracle,
12:15he reveals himself through “sprouting barley and rice, and domesticated goats”!
12:21More astonishing still is the moment when Robinson tries
12:24to understand divine providence, and why
12:28he has met this fate. Instead of spiritual reflection,
12:31he takes out his ledger and uses “double-entry bookkeeping”!
12:36He divides the page into two columns:
12:39on the left he writes “Evil”
12:41— debts — and on the right, “Good”
12:45— profits. Under Evil, he writes:
12:48I have been cast onto a deserted island without hope.
12:52Opposite, under Good, he writes:
12:55But I am alive, not drowned like all my shipmates.
12:59Under Evil, he writes:
13:01I am cut off from all humanity. Opposite, he writes:
13:06But I alone was singled out from the whole crew
13:10to be saved from death. Under Evil, he writes:
13:13I have no clothes to cover myself.
13:16Opposite, he writes: But I am in a hot climate,
13:20where, even if I had clothes, I could not wear them!
13:24Finally, Robinson draws a line beneath the two columns,
13:28does his sums, and concludes that God
13:32owes him nothing in this deal, and the accounts show a profit!
13:37Even the island's geography reflects Robinson's mind:
13:41he builds his doorless fortress on its flat, bare side,
13:45where everything can be seen and controlled.
13:50But when he goes to the other side, a green valley
13:54full of forests and wild fruit, he feels a secret pleasure
13:57and guilt, and quickly returns to his fortress.
14:01That lush green side symbolises uncontrolled feelings and desires
14:06that the calculating man fears. In his fortress,
14:10he catches a young parrot and teaches it “Poor Robinson Crusoe”.
14:15For a mechanical mind like his,
14:17talking to a parrot entirely replaces human companionship.
14:22Fifteen years pass like this.
14:25Robinson is now the island's absolute king. Then, one day at noon,
14:29as he walks along the sandy shore,
14:32he suddenly freezes: there in the sand
14:36is the footprint of a single bare human foot.
14:38You would expect a man who has lived alone for fifteen years
14:42to cry out with joy at another human presence.
14:45But Robinson almost goes mad with fear!
14:49At first he thinks it is the Devil's trick.
14:51Then, realising another person has set foot on his island,
14:55he runs back into his fortress,
14:57sets seven loaded guns in the holes in its walls,
15:01and hides in fear for two whole years. Philosophically,
15:06in an instant, this footprint shatters Robinson's peaceful world
15:11and turns it into a battlefield. While he was alone,
15:14there was only one mind and one property owner on the island.
15:18But the presence of “the other” threatens his kingdom:
15:22they must either be destroyed or enslaved.
15:25In the twenty-fourth year, the footprints turn out to belong to
15:29cannibals who come by canoe to the shore to eat their captives.
15:34Here is the second great pillar of Enlightenment philosophy and European colonialism:
15:40how did Europeans view peoples outside Europe?
15:43In this novel, all non-European people fall into two groups:
15:48“the bad savage” and “the good savage”.
15:51The “bad savages” are cannibals
15:54who refuse European authority and Christianity.
15:57Their only fate is to be killed.
16:00But when Robinson shoots the cannibals and rescues one
16:03of their captives, the “good savage” appears.
16:08Look at what happens in the first five minutes. First,
16:12the rescued young man immediately drops to his knees,
16:15bows his head, and places Robinson's foot on his own neck,
16:19as if swearing to be his slave for ever!
16:23This precisely enacts the political theory of the age, especially Locke's:
16:27if you spare a prisoner of war and grant him his life,
16:31he becomes your lawful slave in exchange for that life.
16:36In the European colonial imagination, the “good savage”
16:39is someone who volunteers to become your servant,
16:43so you can profit from him. Second,
16:47Robinson does not even ask the young man's real name.
16:50Having saved him on a Friday, he names him Friday.
16:55Because he has no human feeling within him,
16:58he could just as coldly have called him “Tree”,
17:02“Shovel”, or “Number One”! Third,
17:06the first English words he teaches him are “Master”
17:11— explaining that this is Robinson's name — along with “Yes”
17:15and “No”. But there is one exceptional scene
17:19where a simple question from Friday punctures Robinson's pride.
17:24As Robinson teaches him Christianity and explains
17:27God's unlimited power and the Devil's tricks,
17:31Friday asks in his broken English:
17:34“If God is so much stronger and greater than the Devil,
17:37why has he not killed the Devil already, so he can do no more evil?”
17:42Robinson does not want to look flustered in front of his servant,
17:47so at first he pretends not to have heard!
17:50When Friday repeats the question,
17:53Robinson evades it and changes the subject,
17:56because he has no rational answer.
17:59Later, Robinson and Friday rescue two more captives
18:03from the cannibals: Friday's pagan father,
18:07and a Spanish Catholic sailor.
18:10Now there are four people on the island, and Robinson proudly
18:14writes in his journal: “My island is now inhabited.
18:18The entire country was my private property,
18:21and I was their king and absolute legislator.”
18:25Strangely, in this tiny kingdom, Robinson grants
18:28“religious freedom” to them all:
18:31he and Friday are Protestant, the Spaniard Catholic,
18:35and Friday's father pagan. Why is he so tolerant?
18:40Because, in John Locke's philosophy and Robinson's commercial mindset,
18:44so long as they all obey the law and the fields yield barley and rice,
18:48sectarian hostility has no economic benefit!
18:52At last, after twenty-eight years and two months,
18:55an English ship arrives at the island
18:57whose sailors have mutinied against their captain.
19:00Robinson captures the mutineers with a clever trick,
19:04restores the ship to its captain,
19:06leaves the mutineers as workers on his island
19:09to run his colony for him,
19:12and returns to Europe with Friday.
19:16Back in London, the ending of Job's story is repeated,
19:21but in wholly capitalist terms:
19:24God rewards his twenty-eight years of trials: he discovers
19:28his Brazilian plantations and property have been honestly managed,
19:32and “compound interest” has made Robinson one of the richest men!
19:38But nothing reveals this character's profound coldness
19:41as clearly as the novel's ending.
19:44On the book's final page, in just one brief sentence,
19:48Robinson writes: “In the meantime I married,
19:52had three children, two sons and a daughter,
19:55and then my wife died...” In the very next line, he says
19:59he went back to sea for adventure and trade!
20:03He does not even tell us his wife's name.
20:06In his world, emotion and family are a mere footnote.
20:10More astonishing still
20:12is Friday's death in the second part of his voyages.
20:16Friday, his only companion and faithful servant
20:19for twenty-five years, is suddenly killed.
20:23Robinson mentions it in a short paragraph, without
20:27shedding a single tear or mourning him.
20:31He moves on coldly, as if saying: “Well,
20:35Friday's dead. Let's have lunch and get on with business!”
20:40When the great nineteenth-century novelist Charles Dickens
20:44read this scene, he was shocked and astonished. He said:
20:48“This man was your sole friend and devoted servant for twenty-five years,
20:52yet he dies and everyone goes off to lunch?
20:56Had I written Friday's death,
20:58I would have given it twenty whole pages, and left not one dry eye
21:03in the house!” Why did Daniel Defoe leave out the tears?
21:07Because in 1719,
21:10emotion and Romanticism had not yet been born. Robinson Crusoe
21:15was an X-ray of the modern mind at the moment of its birth:
21:19a calculating, far-sighted, merciless man,
21:22who tamed nature with tools and science,
21:25settled his accounts with God in a ledger of debts and profits,
21:29turned other people into stepping stones to his wealth,
21:32and a deserted island into a small empire.

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