The unbearable lightness of acts

Valeria Wagner

pp. 73-85

in: Andrew Hadfield, Dominic Rainsford, Tim Woods (eds), The ethics in literature, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Abstract

Let me begin with a few words on the reference in the title of this paper to that of Milan Kundera's novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a title which has become a rather current expression of existential malaise. The expression is certainly not unequivocal, but it is often used to formulate the discrepancy between the weight our culture gives to the fact of being alive, and the fundamental arbitrariness of its happening: being (alive) is unmotivated and hazardous.¹ In this sense its "lightness' is an image for its ungroundedness: Being is not sustainable, it "floats' in the air and cannot be borne — it is unbearable. This, I think, makes perfect sense insofar as Being is an abstraction: we cannot just BE, we must be something, somewhere, doing something. Unqualified Being is simply too abstract to be borne, and there should be, in principle, nothing unbearable about that: why should anyone want to just BE, anyway? The question, however, should be taken seriously, because it is only insofar as Being is asked to have weight that it may seem unbearably light. And Being is appealed to consistently, at least in Western tradition, whenever reasons and motivations fail to account for, unfold into, or "control" actions. It is in this kind of situation that Being is asked to provide a ground and measure capable of justifying or sustaining acts, that it fails to do so, and that it appears, as a result, as unendurably inconsistent.

Cited authors

Kundera Milan