Voltaire's 

"Story of a Good Brahmin"

[For the text of the story, go here.]

(1)  A "perennial question" that this story prompts the reader to ask is:  "What (for you) is the good life?"  Needless to say, this involves a thick packet of specific issues, among which are

• What would make you happy?
• Is happiness the same as "pleasantness"?
• Is happiness the proper end of life after all?  Does life have some other end?

Do you have some thoughts already to hand on these questions?  How sure are you, honestly, about your answers?

(3)  What makes the Brahmin in this story a sympathetic character -- worthy of our respect?

(4)  Is the Brahmin here "off track" in any significant respect?  For example:

• Is he asking the wrong sort of questions?  (If the kind of questions he is frustrated at being unable to answer are inherently unanswerable, are there other kinds of questions he should be busying himself with?  If so, why?  Would their solution make him [one?] happy?)
• Is he doing the wrong sort of thing with his life?  (That is:  would he be happier if he led a life of action rather than contemplation?  If so, what sort of action?  Should he be playing "a different role in the world"?  Should he be "trying to change" the world as it is?  Should he be trying to "preserve" something important that is threatened?)

(5)  How satisfied do you think Voltaire would be with such a response to the Brahmin, or to the narrator, as this:  "Well, he's looking in the wrong place for answers.  All he needs to do is read the Koran!"  OR:  "If he were to become a Christian, all his problems would be taken care of!"

(6)  Would you describe yourself as someone who would choose ignorance over knowledge if the knowledge in question was painful?  Of course, your answer might be different depending on what particular sort of painful knowledge is at stake. 

• Would you rather know, or not know, that your spouse is cheating on you?
• Would you rather know, or not know, that agents of your government, are, under orders from higher governmental authority, engaging in terrorist activities?
• Would you rather know, or not know, that a certain former Secretary of State of your country was deeply involved in eliminating a constitutionalist general opposed to a military coup in a foreign country against a democratically elected government there?
• Would you rather know, or not know, that your father is involved in serious criminal activity?
• Would you rather know, or not know, that your brother is at the moment considering hiring a hit-man to eliminate a dangerous witness?

Of course, one way to deflect the thrust of such questions would be to say, "Well, of course I'd rather 'not know" in the sense that you can't know something that is not the case, and I'd rather that X not be the case in order that I could not "know" that it was."
 
 To address the thrust of the questions, we have to understand them this way:  would you rather know that X is the case, if it were, rather than to remain ignorant of it?

Now ask:

• Does it make sense, to you, to immerse yourself in vicarious experiences that are unpleasant?  For example:

• Can there be a non-perverse gratification in experiencing a film that ends unhappily for the characters with whom we identify?
• Can it be enjoyable, on some paradoxical (but not "sick") level, to read short stories (at least well-written ones) that are about unhappy, stressful, even miserable situations?  That is:  do such stories enable us to know certain things it is important to know, even though these things are important?  And can the process of coming to know them, or even just the fact of knowing them, be somehow "satisfying"?
   

  Suggestions are welcome.  Please send your comments to lyman@ksu.edu .

   Contents copyright © 2000 by Lyman A. Baker.

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