I'm reading Moby Dick for the second time and found this lecture the other night. This is the best lecture I've ever listened to online and it's making reading the book such a deeper experience. I love how Dreyfus, as if following Melville's theme, doesn't lecture as if he wholly understands the book but rather revels in the spiritual glimpses, meanings and moods Melville offers throughout the novel. Rarely, if ever, have I come across a lecture of a novel that is as transcendent as the novel.
8 1/2 hours on Moby Dick?! Perhaps the best thing I’ve ever come across on the internet. Saved this to my “Religion” playlist. Wow. I’m 3:49:00 in and, man, is this fantastic! Many thanks!
I am on chapter 90 of Moby Dick. I have been reading the book for well over a year. I’m always stopping and googling words from the text that I don’t know the meaning of or googling names or places. It’s been an incredible journey and I’m glad to finally have found this lecture. 🙂
wonderous, Dreyfus is awakening to the immense depth of the text, I had approached it all wrong so many years ago due to the limited scope I engaged it with. fantastic teacher, humble and insightful
I don’t think you approached it wrong since it contains so much meaning on all levels. Dreyfus peeled back another layer for you. I’ve read this book 5 times and each time reveal something new. It gets better with age😊
thanks for the upload, i first listened to these lectures years ago and they are some of the best and most thought provoking experiences i've had. dreyfus was such a gifted man.
For anyone who’s interested in Professor Dreyfus, there is an interview on UA-cam that he did with B. Magee on Heidegger in the 70s or 80s, and he had this brilliant mustache (and explained Heidegger, as always, eloquently and accessibly).
Goddamn. The clarity of the paradox of trying to define the essence of the undefinable is so impressive. And it’s more impressive that he comes close at times. At least that’s my interpretation.
Dreyfus is astoundingly good. He got me interested in deconstructing text with Brothers Karamazov so I checked into this. His work on BK clocks in at 10:20 hrs. and is worth it! It's also on UA-cam.
31:08 Melville says that in all great bodies of water we see the same fleeting apparition that Narcissus saw in his reflection on the water - "the ungraspable phantom of life" and when Narcissus tried grasping for it he fell into the water and drowned. Moby Dick is the phantom in the water and Ahab is Narcissus vainly grasping for it until he too is drowned.
I wish I could come to just a fraction of the conclusions he comes too. You think you have decent reading comprehension but then you hear a genius give a lecture like this and it puts you into perspective.
Just wanted to say that Dreyfus is an absolute delight, and a genius. You can feel the passion in his teaching, all the while being so incredibly humble and open to his students at the same time, even apologising when he feels like he is unclear. Very beautiful. I have many questions now on indifference, Melville's relation to the heterogeneous and rationality (since these are quintessential topics for Heidegger, and Melville's intensely interesting stance on polytheism that seems to try to avoid (already at that time!) the nostalgia for myth that we postmodernist subjects are so susceptible to in the current time.
1:13:00 in my reading the important detail is that this is ishmael's understanding of queequeg's perspective. Queequeg is closed off because he's so used to Christians evangelizing to him, and he thinks ishmael has bought in to evangelism. And the joke of it is they each would call the other a pagan.
WHAT A RESOURCE!!! Thank you for uploading this and all of Dr. Dreyfus' lectures. I'm a couple hours deep in this and that damn window just never stops
I think that I need to find earlier lectures in this series. It may be a semantic thing, but I'm not so sure Ishmael is a polytheist in the sense that he believes in multiple gods. He acknowledges the sacred from any culture he encounters, and he is driven by moods in a somewhat fatal way, but the colors and moods all find unity in the dumb blank meaningful white. I think one more significance of the name "Ishmael" is that Ishmael is the progenitor of the third Abrahamic monotheistic religion. Maybe what Melville meant by wicked is that rather than polytheism, he thought he'd spawned a heterodox Abrahamic religion. Similar to Ba'hai, his religion would be monotheistic, but would understand all religions to be valid approaches to understand god, so long as they obey the "greater covenant". I'd agree that Melville holds some forms of Christianity in contempt, but I'm not convinced that he felt he'd totally abandoned it. Dreyfuss says there isn't a nihilist character, but isn't Pip after falling overboard a nihilist? After experiencing the big dumb blank full of meaning, he is unable to attach importance to anyone, anything, or any idea. This contrasts with Ishmael who assigns importance to everyone, everything, and every idea. It also contrasts with Starbuck placing importance on his sensible world, and Ahab placing importance only on the meaning of the big dumb blank. In the passage about the loss of Ahab's leg, I don't think there's so much a confusion between indifference and malice- the ultimate malice toward Ahab would be indifference. Because Ahab is too egotistical to believe the universe doesn't care about him in particular, when presented with evidence for that to be the case, that evidence reaches his mind as evidence that the universe hates him so much that it will pretend not to care as it unmans and hobbles him. Perhaps confusion is a good word, but I think dissonance is a better one. Ahab cannot believe evidence he has seen and must interpret it to flatter his own ego. But it can't be base revenge in his personal story that he's chasing, so he tells the story of his dissonance to make his vengeance pursuit appear to have metaphysical meaning- inducing dissonance into those observing him. There's something motivated or willful as the wave of dissonance passes from the event to his telling of it. One thing I find interesting but possibly accidental about Ahab is that his injury places him in constant contact with the whale. The sperm whale sonar is a clicking or impact sound, as his peg would make on the deck. The avatar for the universe therefore knows exactly where he is as he moves about the ship, it could run and ensure Ahab never finds it- if it could be bothered to pay attention to the tapping of his peg. The other implication to me is that if Ahab could sit and converse with the whale, he would feel mocked as its only vocalization is more of the sound of his peg on the deck of his ship. One thought the second lecture inspired for me is that the whale is a microcosm of the sea, with both being canvases on which to hang representation of the unrepresentable, which Melville takes to be something like god(s). Ahab is pursuing the microcosm of meaning through the macrocosm of meaning. In the pursuit of a definite object of meaning, he's missing the fact that he is surrounded by the meaning of his life at all times. He is the only one with this particular affliction, with numerous other characters and foils finding meaning in their existence in the macrocosmic sea. Yet all the other characters are carried down to the depths by Ahab's quest. This is both a parable for the religious search for meaning, and for the way Americans would be pulled to the depths by its upper classes' seeking adherence to a particular meaning of "America". I'll come back and update this comment as I move through the lecture.
I'm re-reading Moby-Dick, and I find myself thinking more secularly about the fatalism of moods. I think the religious interpretation is valid, but Hegelian dialectics are coming more to my mind. Rather than a single continuous self which directs thought, Ishmael is a bundle of concepts which reacts to the world he experiences by growing the bundle. He calls his various concepts "moods". The mood that sends him to sea is self indulgent, anti-social, and longs for the end of the bundle of concepts due to its inability to find reasons for growth. My proposition is that this is the concept that believes itself to be sui generis. It comes to the fore when the bundle of concepts lacks stimulation of novel experience and cannot find recognition in the surrounding population. To be clear, I take this mood of self not to be true self which is directing thought and action. True self is an observer, collecting concepts. The mood of self is just one of these concepts observed by true self. When this mood strikes, Ishmael must place that self to the side by submitting himself to community with men who he considers to be his peers in an environment that stimulates and grows his concepts. In so doing, he chooses the position of slave in the master-slave dialectic between himself and the captain, because he understands that in this position he is able to see himself reflected back from a world he physically moves and is moved by. The masters lack such satisfaction, and in fact lead a lonely existence as they have no peer in whom to find recognition and define themselves. In this lonely state, without peer recognition for years at a time, Ahab develops an obsession with his abstract metaphysical vengeance- his humanity is hobbled by extreme self-reference ultimately leading him to fail to recognize the world around him and ultimately doom his crew. One reason Moby-Dick stands out in American literature is as an early critique of the selfishness of the transcendental movement. I don't know to what extent Melville had access to Hegelian dialectics, but the presence of the interpretation suggests to me a higher interpretation of the mood fatalism. Ishmael is himself a big dumb blank meaning on which we may hang our own interpretations as he is brought on a chase through a big dumb blank meaning to catch a big dumb blank meaning. Rather than feel self assurance or give in to self assurance from our leaders, I think we all best recognize ourselves and others as big dumb blank meanings feeling our way through our own big dumb blank meaning of reality.
Yeah, I listened to the whole thing and think his take is a little off or at least his language is too imprecise. Agnostic would be a much better term than polytheistic. Where Ishmael is the only one to embrace this fundamental human condition--i.e. God can never be fully apprehended or met face to face and hence the worlds traditions embrace this uncertainty with a variety of expression. Ahad hates this condition and wants to break through the human veil and wants an answer from God--very Job-like except that Ahab is the evil version of Job. Both Ahab and the Calvinistic traditions of the day demand a Certainty which Melville fundamentally cannot abide. And he sort of pits these two together in this battle Royale, Ahab vs the whale. Melville goes to such extreme lengths to portray the undefinable, unknowable, "indifferent," and sublime qualities of God, whereas Ahab in his pride and megalomania can only see a deeply personal and malicious affront. I think that you are right in "what Melville meant by wicked". I would be surprised if Melville were going as far as Nietzsche, as Dreyfus claims. Ahab is in a sense a proto Ubermensch but more like a Dostoyevsky version, he fails. If Melville were closer to Nietsche, I don't think Ishmael would have survived, or maybe Ahab would have won. The whole book seems contained within the Judeo/Christian world as it was in America in mid 19th Century. The end of the book is a mashup of Paradise Lost and the Crucifixion -- "Thus Ahab gave up his Spear" (read Spirit echoing Jesus on the cross). Tashtego nails the bird of Heaven to the mast of the ship as it goes down, etc etc. So I see Melville working within that world view and not really setting up anything beyond it. I found these lectures very interesting and stimulating and even clarifying and Professor Dreyfus makes many fascinating points. His philosophical/theological conception however as it applies to the Novel and I think Melville's intention, is flawed in my opinion.
@michaelhoffman9521 that's about where I'm at. I'm very glad this lecture series exists, I haven't seen many long form criticisms of Moby Dick to bounce my ideas against, and I don't know anyone else personally who thinks of it as a bible with layers and threads worth pondering over. It's difficult to call such an illustious academic philosopher wrong, especially when I agree with positioning Moby-Dick as a religious text, but this can't be the end of thought about the book. I had a brief thought about the connection between Ahab and Raskolnikov before. I hadn't gotten to thinking before, but I wonder if Melville had Napoleon on his mind as Dostoyevsky and then Nietzsche did. I'd definitely put Melville more in line with Dostoevsky's side of that divide. Ahab never gets the redemption arc that Raskolnikov does, but I think both are rejections of the Napoleonic archetype before it was articulated as the ubermensch. On the subject of Nihilism, I also don't think Melville would agree with Nietzsche. Yes, everything is fundamentally incomprehensibly white, but there is the intermediary of light which allows us to attach meaning and view objects historically. I think that to Melville, the question of what assigns value and meaning is less important than the fact that value and meaning are assigned. I was at first reluctant to call Ishmael agnostic, because his search for meaning has so many religious tones, and he clearly values ritual and belief. But it seems accurate in the sense that any abstract belief held too tightly can only lead to disaster. I think he would say the same to Nietzsche's nihilism- the rejection of meaning in our lived experience leaves only self reference, which ultimately veers to madness. Thanks for adding more grist to the mill. And also having some critiques of the lecture... I was wondering if I was idiotic or insane for not being awestruck over every line.
@@maxwellschmidt235 Yes, fun to dig in here a little bit. I was looking through the comments for something more than simple praise--so thanks for providing that. I have loved the book for many years and have also thought that it is biblical in structure --more like a compendium of Melvillian musings. Which in general I have found hilarious. Surprised the professor didn't not delve more into Melville's dry wit. He is making fun of everybody in this thing which I think due to the overly elevated language, most people miss. I try to tell friends that plot is almost unimportant to the book. There certainly is very little to it. But the deep, philosophical pearls he just casually throws off, usually at the end of one more chapter on some mundane facet of whaling, I find brilliant. The nihilism thing, yeah, I don't see it in the way Dreyfus does. Pip saw God's foot on the loom, so he knows what its all about and so speaks what to the rest of us is just gibberish. Dreyfus wants to only focus on the "coral insects" and equates that with a sort of random force of creation, hence nihilistic, which does not fit the book to my mind. It feels like Dreyfus is just riffing some of the time, (granted this is not always a bad lecture style) but as with the usage of "polytheistic" he is not being precise in his reading or rigorous enough in mapping out the structure and arguments. I thought he was a Literature guy but was he a philosopher? Ok, yes, a friend of mine just told me took philosophy from him at Cal Berkeley. Anyway, much fun, thanks!
"At the time, people didn't know what to make of it" - could that be the reason why Henry James never commented on it (as far as I know)? Great lecture.
What I like about Melville is he was a loner, traveller, like so many of us. Can a professor who has probably lived a secure stable life....get it. After living in 5 countries so far, more from reasons of history than choice, and three years in an RV.... I totally relate. It's the inner journey that leads the way, not the details, the decorations...about becoming free from your time and society.
I’d say having a working knowledge of the KJV and Shakespeare are far more useful in ‘getting’ Moby Dick than being well travelled. I might be wrong though, Melville could be the progenitor of Eat, Pray, Love
A most brilliant chapter is 40. Written as a play it ends with a race fight. Then a storm hits and they scatter. Layer upon layer of meaning in this gem
I wish I could have attended this lecture. It would have been so much fun. I’ve read the book 5 times and get more insight every time I read it. Would have loved to discuss it with likeminded people.
It is certainly true that often overlooked is the fact that in the first sentence Ishmael merely says "Call me Ishmael," which doesn't necessarily mean that is his name. Yet, further into the book, he self-reflexively refers to himself on several occasions, thus suggesting that his name is in fact, Ishmael.
Yes, true, however would you agree when he refers to himself as Ishmael it seems rather stilted, as if he were trying to reinforce his name is Ishmael. Consider the following: ''I, Ishmael, was one of that crew;...”
3:42:00 3 days and 3 nights Ahab in some sort of fit off of Cape Horn. Dreyfus says he has no idea what that means. Jesus in the tomb 3 days and 3 nights, fulfilling the prophecy of Jonah, who spent 3 days and 3 nights in the belly. Ahab sees himself as the 2nd coming. Later on Mr. Dick is chased for 3 days. The Pequod is a three masted ship, all were broken off the coast of Japan. 3 mates. 3 harpooners.Tons of 3's in this book. The Trinity.
Yea, but what does that mean exactly? Does that indicate Ahab is a divine figure in the ranks of Jonah and Jesus, or is it something else? I would much like to hear of what you think
I think it means ahab sees himself as Devine and godlike. Or he’s good at pretending to be in the eyes of others. He uses natural phenomena (magnetism, behavior of electrical charges) to perform seemingly impossible feats for his crew. I’ll think about your very interesting question and reply further soon.
2:02:12 Regarding Melville's "whiteness." This is a personal interpretation. So there are two Voids, the Black Void and the White Void. Most of us are familiar with The Void. Not long ago, during a dark period of my life, I felt a sense of void in my life. I had lost my faith in Christianity, which left me unable to orient myself in the world. I felt as if I was floating in a black sea in search of land and/or as if I was drifting in deep-space and/or I that I was missing a crucial piece of my being. Aesthetically, this was blackness, darkness, hollowness; the artist HR Geiger comes to mind. This was despair. But more recently, I have encountered a new kind of despair: a blinding white light. It leaves me powerless and somehow on the verge of mania. It says everything is possible, and everything has been done, and everything will be done; I am already dead, but that hardly matters because I have and will live every possible life. (recently I have discovered the meaning of 'ein sof' in Kabbalah which seems to capture/explain what I'm feeling, or, at least, it runs parallel-another pair of sunglasses.) This is, in a backwards kind of a way, another form of despair. Pip's story hits close to home. If this resonates with you, reach out, and we can start a dialogue.
But hail thou goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy, Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight. Excerpt from Il Penseroso -Milton
At the end of Lecture 2 (1:54:01), Dreyfus ponders over Melville's use of the word "palsied" in the passage at the end of Chapter 42, "...pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper...". Here is an earlier use of the word in Chapter 2: "It was a queer sort of place - a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly." Dreyfus says that in the Chapter 42 passage 'palsied' is used in a non-standard way to mean pale, but I'm not so sure that's right. I think it's sensible to interpret "palsied universe" as a 'tremoring universe' -- a universe that is constantly in flux. The use from Chapter 2 might support this interpretation because it seems Melville is saying that the house tremors or wobbles. Does this seem right? Does the passage from Chapter 2 undermine Dreyfus' interpretation?
I have a political interpretation of parts of the book. While I can understand being on a ship and not having a choice about who is the the captain of the ship, what I don't understand is being able to make a choice about who is captain of the ship and choosing Trump, I mean Ahab.
Yeah, there are several layers of meaning, even the search for meaning isn't purely religious and some of it is political. And Trumphab is a striking conflation since 2016 and especially after 2021. The sailors didn't have much choice of captain, but it would have been in their interest to pressure starbuck to declare ahab to be fraudulent so they could just fill their holds and come home. There's a systemic breakdown involved in Ahab's individualism rising to sociopathy and being allowed to circumvent the institutional authority of the owners. I think Nathaniel Philbrick pointed out that Moby Dick was in part a criticism of the transcendentalist movement with its promotion of rugged individualism. One of the ways the novel has grown in stature is in the thread that individualism can't build communities the way shared purpose does. The crew is the fundamental unit at sea, and I think that to some extent, Melville is warning that individuality and pursuits disruptive to shared purpose can just as easily pull down the nation.
Old Ahab could teach us a valuable lesson The one thing he wanted escaped his possession The crew he recruited All died in pursuit of The meaning of life: the impossible question
5:41:03 I do not think Melville is worried about technological definiteness. I think he is pretty sure that no matter how much we think we know, systematize & classify things, we'll always fall short of truly knowing about that thing which is indescribable and unrepresentable. Man can only deceive himself for so long and that is also one of the readings of the ending of Moby Dick. This, Melville's take, is refreshing as well as sombering to read among all the buzz of future technological singularity, scientific progress and what not. He has pretty much prophesized the fate of the West, very much like the fate of the Pequod.
” Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air ; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea“ : The Symphony, Herman Melville ; Moby Dick
@3:47:15 the quotation Professor Dreyfus reads about Moby-Dick eating Ahab's leg like a lawn mower cutting a blade of grass contains an allusion to Othello (which I am surprised he did not notice): in Othello's death speech, he says "In Aleppo once / Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk / Beat a Venetian and traduced the state / I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog / And smote him-thus." Some meditation on this will bring you closer to understanding Ahab's monomania
Just found this after rereading Moby Dick (maybe the 7th or 8th time in my life of 44 years so far). It's my personal substitute for cap and ball. :) I look forward to responding to the video and all the comments.
Really enjoying making my way through this. In lecture 3, Dreyfus argues that Melville is against the kind of pluralism that says all religions are basically the same at their core. But it seems like that is what Ishmael argues for in chapter 18 when talks about the "First Congregational Church."
Melville joined the Unitarian church late in his life, which, even in the late 19th century, was about as liberal a faction of Christianity as you can find -- so yeah, good observation. But maybe we take into account Ahab's radically different sense of what is true, and count that as a (truly) divergent religion?
Ishmael wants to embrace all there is rather than getting stuck where he was “thrown”. One of Queequeg’s savior aspects is that he is not stuck in his own faith. He has tapped into the transcendent Logos, helping Ishmael see that to “imitate Christ” is to go beyond religious practice. Maybe because he has found the transcendent he is able to return to his own faith for stability. (Rousseau’s Savoyard vicar?)
1:12 Evangelical pagan piety , could be that Ishmael is evangelical himself, for pagan religions. Ishmael is seeking or converting to different pagan religions . Ismael is a pantheist who practices each pagan religion he encounters.
Set aside 30 hours for this experience. Personally, i found that this works best if your bowel habits are relatively stable, and you have a table set up just in front of the shitter. Give Moby Dick a shelter, a home on that sacred desk, and look forward to the escapades with every impending act of defecation. Only take your phone with you after completing the book, and take a vow upon yourself to only listen to this lecture. The moment you are seated on the shitter, you have entered a place of holy sanctuary; instagram is sin, facebook a facade, social media the satiations of satan himself. Take your sweet time, have a pen at hand if necessary, and within 60 days, you will have gazed directly into the eyes of this masterpiece.
This is amazing! Thanks for posting! It seems like the way people spoke and wrote back in the day was their main form of entertainment. Sadly and slowly, this was replaced by TV and electronic media and the coming of the mumbling shallow inarticulate couch potato. Or as Neitszche called it. “The last man”.
You know someone’s onto something with Moby Dick when they start talking about Pip. Total openness and acceptance and disillusion, in contrast to Ahab’s delusion, uncompromising monomania and refusal to go gently into that good night. Pip loses his identity while Ahab insists he is forever Ahab, long before he was born and long after he is dead. The joke I would tell about fatalism is that even if we were to blow the world to smithereens with atomic weaponry most abominable, God Almighty would still take credit even for that, to which I bemoan with exasperation, “Can’t he just let us have ONE thing?!”
Help! I suspect that Melville describes aging warriors in Typee that sounds like advanced type 2 dibetes. What do you think? 4 hours 3 minutes audiovox.
The inscrutability of the universe, likened to the chaos bewitched painting, I think is contrary to ahab's devotion to destruction of the whale as singular goal. He is so sure of purpose, yet his is a confused understanding. Time after time he gets warnings but heeds them naught... perhaps the correct understanding of reality is realizing your own analysis is inherently flawed. A blind pursuit of singular purpose can lead to disaster and waste.
Not so. Ahab’s single-minded obsession led to his transformation from a small human family man of the world to the resurrected writer of the story, the orphan of the world, Ismael.
At 1:11 they are ignoring the (as though) So really when hes looking at Quequegs face he's trying to interpret the thought by the expression which really he can't so he's having that thought of himself being a Christian Pagan maybe
Do you have any other Dreyfus lecture series on novels or literature? He mentioned something about "Dante earlier in the course". Wondering if this is part of a larger literary survey course. Out of interest, do you know when these Moby Dick lectures were given? I presume they took place at Berkeley. Many thanks for upload!! Truly great teacher and teachings.
There was a course he taught that basically became his book "All Things Shining" that included a discussion of Melville and Moby Dick, as well as Dante, Kant, Homer, and others. I'm not sure if it's still available, though.
Glad to have come across this as I plan to start a reading of Moby Dick (first read). Do you recommend listening to the lectures before, alongside or after finishing the novel? Many thanks
my take is read the book by yourself. Even on a superficial level, it's a great story. i don't think you will get much from the lecture unless you've read the book. ultimately, what you gain from this book is what you bring to it based on your life experience and understanding. that's why so many people read and re-read this book throughout their life. most important, i hope you ENJOY reading the book. :)
@@asbeautifulasasunset thank you so much for your kind message. Sounds like a good plan to come here after finishing it. I hope you are enjoying whatever you are currently reading :)
I'd read the book first, then get into critical takes. One thing you'll find is that even Dreyfuss doesn't fully understand every passage- leading to some discussions here- so don't get bogged down over each line. There's a lot of microcosm/macrocosm relationships, and multiple layers of meaning running through the book, so let some of your own ideas form, take a look at some of the criticism, then read it again. Just my thoughts to take or leave.
@@maxwellschmidt235 thanks for the suggestions, I think that’s a good approach to come to the critical perspectives after reading. How many times have you read it out of interest?
This is kinda simplistic. Watch the movie 1956, just so you’ll get a slight overview of the book, then read the book. The language in the book is hard to understand at first. Just my opinion.
This is absolutely wonderful! Akin to my literary podcast, Knight Reader! Hear a young mans perspective on Moby Dick, i have value to bring to the literary world!
I really think Moby Dick is the discussion of God, but not a religious God, for one type of person, but a true creator that isn’t prejudice and is for all types of humans and animals. When man becomes to pigeonholed like destroying all the whales which Melville was concerned about, or after Melville died creating a master race etc…that doesn’t work and is bound to fail. He’s saying accept all people and nature.
i imagine this itself is a dynamic fleshing of themes to enjoy and celebrate the book and using other works referentially. i enjoy this way of approaching things, but the time it'd take to develop my awareness of each works and deeply? living the spirit of the west in a way that's more honest, CU1S and actually strong scholarly? would be beautiful tbh. that said, this guy is perfect, to be able to lsiten to him and learn it all on the spot... don't just trust sense intuit, that's a decent starting point, but the smartest thing you could do is appreciate your gifts and MM soul - then go under a long process of learning etc from aplace of dedication and CU1S integrity, lookign for it within this endeavour and even finding specific and nuanced IHCU1S regarding whatever the consciousness that is needed to learn all this, then with enough understanding and living it you can develop your consciousness. it serves as a medium to develop consciousness, then? beautiful. use your imagination too if you like, but don't truly love it all, falling in love w... well. i thin kit's most beautiful to fall in love w western philosophy but to know that, in its glory, it comes from an FP which is emotional or based on a shared personality trait that simply isn't of my people. back to danzig? back to my roots really
Bulkington from Chapter 3: "This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him." Does this not imply that Bulkington left the Pequod before its demise, and somehow lives to sail with Ishmael on another voyage?
Heroic nihilism. It seems to me to be a contradiction. What does heroic mean in a world devoid of meaning? If I try to understand Melville the man, he must have experienced first hand vastly different cultures and religions. What one culture values, another negates. For example, a cow can be slaughtered or a cow can be worshipped. A pair of interlocking Zs in one direction is a venerated symbol of Tibetan Buddhism. A pair of interlocking Zs in another direction is a venerated symbol of Nazism. The extreme of the contradiction of values must have been epitomized in Melville’s living at some point in his own journey in a cannabalistic culture. The world is full of a myriad of different and contradictory cultures. But how can being open to this myriad of cultures and religions be heroic if you fundamentally don’t or can’t believe in them (nihilism)? I could see heroic in the context of affirmation but not openness. I think the beginning of this lecture captures the essence of Moby Dick. The ‘call me Ishmael’ opening phrase is not really an affirmation (I am Ishmael). But rather only an observation ‘call me a seeker’. That’s it. Is it in some sense heroic to be a seeker in this world of nihilism? Whatever your understanding of this lecture series, you cannot deny that this is the Fellini of lectures!
Good points you raise. I had the same question regarding the claim by Nietzsche in The Will to Power that not all nihilism is the same. If nihilism is the idea that there is no value, no meaning only nothingness, then based on what can you say that one form of nihilism is different (better?) than another? Put another way, without Truth, what does sacred mean?
Please see the wiki page *United Kingdom Whaling* for the facts of the matter concerning the line "It is theirs..." which is a reference to apparently when whales were caught and brought to a British port Melville says they automatically became the property of the King of England. But this is simply not the case! At all. It is offensive, prejudiced and anti-British propaganda.
9:19 "Moby Dick has no face, no way right way to draw the way Moby Dick looks because there is no way Moby Dick looks..." If Moby Dick has the face of multiplicity itself, how can you name the indefinable? How can you ever know you there is the category or identity that is Moby Dick? I've never read it, but he is searching for it, the ineffable looking thing until he finally aims his harpoon and strikes Moby Dick. So he, a protestant in America, a free society, is far from the holy land, and the Christian church has become Lutheran, Calvinist, and many other denominations including Catholic. Further, there is a separation of church and state, with many other religions which must all live together respectfully. So how can he be sure of his own tradition since he is far the place and origens of his religious traditions. Despite all that, just like Moby Dick has many faces but there is still such thing as Moby Dick, so, despite there are many names of God, there is one God that he should aim for to live a meaningful life by integrating the chaos and order to become a properly oriented being that honors his freedom by accepting his responsibilities as a father/husband/son/comnunity member/etc. Am I even close? Never read it just heard the first about 20mins of this.
IMO, Sophistic reading on the book, which is thematically anterior to the book itself. I don't think Melville's writing is anti-Christian by any means, yet Melville may have had personal heathenistic views toward the divine (insofar as he considered himself to have personal views at all!) In his letters to Hawthorne, this is clear: Melville penned just as Ahab hunted: Not by the will of the self but as an avatar animated by the winds of the Holy Spirit. One's impression over whether it was the voice of the Christian God who spoke through his quill or the voice of some pagan deity is entirely dependent on the reader's personal thoughts toward the divine (or the thoughts breathed into the reader's head by that same divine force who breathed through Melville's pen). In my mind, my Christian God so moved Melville's hand to paper. I doubt the mind of an island pagan of the 19th century would see the same as I. Yet by the same spirit we are bound, and by this book we find our common ground.
It's blatantly obvious that Melville considered every religious matter trivial apart from the Christian while writing Moby Dick. He's not reconciled to it; he's not a believer; but that is his whetstone of wit.
All religions can be explored as a Christian, and many of the adherents' experiences are genuine. Not an issue. But did Christ rise from the dead? Yes. Subjective waters breaking against the pylons of objective historical fact. And one day you see, thinking that "no one has the ultimate answer" is itself an ultimate answer.
im jittery as to stimuli, neck on a swivel outta fear gone is convicytion oppurely into power i need character and fuelled by fwd mvmt in the assumed SI let that SIO WtLB come as you try your best consciously Its not an anchor , CBM, its a way of getting in touvh w what u liuke n consciousness n lkoving life
Ahoy! Hast seen Moby Dick? Hast seen the white whale? Thou Hast?! Thou hast actually seen Moby Dick? Then thou must report to Captain Rehab right away, 'cause you be trippin.
I'm reading Moby Dick for the second time and found this lecture the other night. This is the best lecture I've ever listened to online and it's making reading the book such a deeper experience. I love how Dreyfus, as if following Melville's theme, doesn't lecture as if he wholly understands the book but rather revels in the spiritual glimpses, meanings and moods Melville offers throughout the novel. Rarely, if ever, have I come across a lecture of a novel that is as transcendent as the novel.
agreed
I love Dreyfus so much. I listen to this at least two times a year and always learn something new
8 1/2 hours on Moby Dick?! Perhaps the best thing I’ve ever come across on the internet. Saved this to my “Religion” playlist. Wow.
I’m 3:49:00 in and, man, is this fantastic! Many thanks!
Dreyfus is a treasure, more so for Melville!
Best lecture I've ever listened to on Moby Dick. Grateful that UA-cam can carry on this wonderful man's work.
I am on chapter 90 of Moby Dick. I have been reading the book for well over a year. I’m always stopping and googling words from the text that I don’t know the meaning of or googling names or places. It’s been an incredible journey and I’m glad to finally have found this lecture. 🙂
wonderous, Dreyfus is awakening to the immense depth of the text, I had approached it all wrong so many years ago due to the limited scope I engaged it with. fantastic teacher, humble and insightful
2:55:54
I don’t think you approached it wrong since it contains so much meaning on all levels. Dreyfus peeled back another layer for you. I’ve read this book 5 times and each time reveal something new. It gets better with age😊
thanks for the upload, i first listened to these lectures years ago and they are some of the best and most thought provoking experiences i've had. dreyfus was such a gifted man.
For anyone who’s interested in Professor Dreyfus, there is an interview on UA-cam that he did with B. Magee on Heidegger in the 70s or 80s, and he had this brilliant mustache (and explained Heidegger, as always, eloquently and accessibly).
Dude I want to compliment you on this excellent channel. This is really a pearl.
Goddamn. The clarity of the paradox of trying to define the essence of the undefinable is so impressive. And it’s more impressive that he comes close at times. At least that’s my interpretation.
Dreyfus is astoundingly good. He got me interested in deconstructing text with Brothers Karamazov so I checked into this. His work on BK clocks in at 10:20 hrs. and is worth it! It's also on UA-cam.
31:08 Melville says that in all great bodies of water we see the same fleeting apparition that Narcissus saw in his reflection on the water - "the ungraspable phantom of life" and when Narcissus tried grasping for it he fell into the water and drowned. Moby Dick is the phantom in the water and Ahab is Narcissus vainly grasping for it until he too is drowned.
Have a thumbs up 👍
5:27:15 my man really starts cooking. Thanks for posting!
I wish I could come to just a fraction of the conclusions he comes too. You think you have decent reading comprehension but then you hear a genius give a lecture like this and it puts you into perspective.
Like he just dropped a line "whiteness is the concrete of color" just a great observation.
Just wanted to say that Dreyfus is an absolute delight, and a genius. You can feel the passion in his teaching, all the while being so incredibly humble and open to his students at the same time, even apologising when he feels like he is unclear. Very beautiful.
I have many questions now on indifference, Melville's relation to the heterogeneous and rationality (since these are quintessential topics for Heidegger, and Melville's intensely interesting stance on polytheism that seems to try to avoid (already at that time!) the nostalgia for myth that we postmodernist subjects are so susceptible to in the current time.
worth more than gold. thanks for the upload.
Thank you Professor Dreyfus ! Your understanding and love for this amazing text shines through.
Cheers Jeff
1:13:00 in my reading the important detail is that this is ishmael's understanding of queequeg's perspective. Queequeg is closed off because he's so used to Christians evangelizing to him, and he thinks ishmael has bought in to evangelism. And the joke of it is they each would call the other a pagan.
WHAT A RESOURCE!!! Thank you for uploading this and all of Dr. Dreyfus' lectures. I'm a couple hours deep in this and that damn window just never stops
I think that I need to find earlier lectures in this series. It may be a semantic thing, but I'm not so sure Ishmael is a polytheist in the sense that he believes in multiple gods. He acknowledges the sacred from any culture he encounters, and he is driven by moods in a somewhat fatal way, but the colors and moods all find unity in the dumb blank meaningful white. I think one more significance of the name "Ishmael" is that Ishmael is the progenitor of the third Abrahamic monotheistic religion. Maybe what Melville meant by wicked is that rather than polytheism, he thought he'd spawned a heterodox Abrahamic religion.
Similar to Ba'hai, his religion would be monotheistic, but would understand all religions to be valid approaches to understand god, so long as they obey the "greater covenant". I'd agree that Melville holds some forms of Christianity in contempt, but I'm not convinced that he felt he'd totally abandoned it.
Dreyfuss says there isn't a nihilist character, but isn't Pip after falling overboard a nihilist? After experiencing the big dumb blank full of meaning, he is unable to attach importance to anyone, anything, or any idea. This contrasts with Ishmael who assigns importance to everyone, everything, and every idea. It also contrasts with Starbuck placing importance on his sensible world, and Ahab placing importance only on the meaning of the big dumb blank.
In the passage about the loss of Ahab's leg, I don't think there's so much a confusion between indifference and malice- the ultimate malice toward Ahab would be indifference. Because Ahab is too egotistical to believe the universe doesn't care about him in particular, when presented with evidence for that to be the case, that evidence reaches his mind as evidence that the universe hates him so much that it will pretend not to care as it unmans and hobbles him.
Perhaps confusion is a good word, but I think dissonance is a better one. Ahab cannot believe evidence he has seen and must interpret it to flatter his own ego. But it can't be base revenge in his personal story that he's chasing, so he tells the story of his dissonance to make his vengeance pursuit appear to have metaphysical meaning- inducing dissonance into those observing him. There's something motivated or willful as the wave of dissonance passes from the event to his telling of it.
One thing I find interesting but possibly accidental about Ahab is that his injury places him in constant contact with the whale. The sperm whale sonar is a clicking or impact sound, as his peg would make on the deck. The avatar for the universe therefore knows exactly where he is as he moves about the ship, it could run and ensure Ahab never finds it- if it could be bothered to pay attention to the tapping of his peg. The other implication to me is that if Ahab could sit and converse with the whale, he would feel mocked as its only vocalization is more of the sound of his peg on the deck of his ship.
One thought the second lecture inspired for me is that the whale is a microcosm of the sea, with both being canvases on which to hang representation of the unrepresentable, which Melville takes to be something like god(s). Ahab is pursuing the microcosm of meaning through the macrocosm of meaning. In the pursuit of a definite object of meaning, he's missing the fact that he is surrounded by the meaning of his life at all times. He is the only one with this particular affliction, with numerous other characters and foils finding meaning in their existence in the macrocosmic sea. Yet all the other characters are carried down to the depths by Ahab's quest. This is both a parable for the religious search for meaning, and for the way Americans would be pulled to the depths by its upper classes' seeking adherence to a particular meaning of "America".
I'll come back and update this comment as I move through the lecture.
I'm re-reading Moby-Dick, and I find myself thinking more secularly about the fatalism of moods. I think the religious interpretation is valid, but Hegelian dialectics are coming more to my mind. Rather than a single continuous self which directs thought, Ishmael is a bundle of concepts which reacts to the world he experiences by growing the bundle. He calls his various concepts "moods".
The mood that sends him to sea is self indulgent, anti-social, and longs for the end of the bundle of concepts due to its inability to find reasons for growth. My proposition is that this is the concept that believes itself to be sui generis. It comes to the fore when the bundle of concepts lacks stimulation of novel experience and cannot find recognition in the surrounding population.
To be clear, I take this mood of self not to be true self which is directing thought and action. True self is an observer, collecting concepts. The mood of self is just one of these concepts observed by true self.
When this mood strikes, Ishmael must place that self to the side by submitting himself to community with men who he considers to be his peers in an environment that stimulates and grows his concepts.
In so doing, he chooses the position of slave in the master-slave dialectic between himself and the captain, because he understands that in this position he is able to see himself reflected back from a world he physically moves and is moved by. The masters lack such satisfaction, and in fact lead a lonely existence as they have no peer in whom to find recognition and define themselves.
In this lonely state, without peer recognition for years at a time, Ahab develops an obsession with his abstract metaphysical vengeance- his humanity is hobbled by extreme self-reference ultimately leading him to fail to recognize the world around him and ultimately doom his crew.
One reason Moby-Dick stands out in American literature is as an early critique of the selfishness of the transcendental movement. I don't know to what extent Melville had access to Hegelian dialectics, but the presence of the interpretation suggests to me a higher interpretation of the mood fatalism. Ishmael is himself a big dumb blank meaning on which we may hang our own interpretations as he is brought on a chase through a big dumb blank meaning to catch a big dumb blank meaning. Rather than feel self assurance or give in to self assurance from our leaders, I think we all best recognize ourselves and others as big dumb blank meanings feeling our way through our own big dumb blank meaning of reality.
Yeah, I listened to the whole thing and think his take is a little off or at least his language is too imprecise. Agnostic would be a much better term than polytheistic. Where Ishmael is the only one to embrace this fundamental human condition--i.e. God can never be fully apprehended or met face to face and hence the worlds traditions embrace this uncertainty with a variety of expression. Ahad hates this condition and wants to break through the human veil and wants an answer from God--very Job-like except that Ahab is the evil version of Job. Both Ahab and the Calvinistic traditions of the day demand a Certainty which Melville fundamentally cannot abide. And he sort of pits these two together in this battle Royale, Ahab vs the whale. Melville goes to such extreme lengths to portray the undefinable, unknowable, "indifferent," and sublime qualities of God, whereas Ahab in his pride and megalomania can only see a deeply personal and malicious affront.
I think that you are right in "what Melville meant by wicked". I would be surprised if Melville were going as far as Nietzsche, as Dreyfus claims. Ahab is in a sense a proto Ubermensch but more like a Dostoyevsky version, he fails. If Melville were closer to Nietsche, I don't think Ishmael would have survived, or maybe Ahab would have won. The whole book seems contained within the Judeo/Christian world as it was in America in mid 19th Century. The end of the book is a mashup of Paradise Lost and the Crucifixion -- "Thus Ahab gave up his Spear" (read Spirit echoing Jesus on the cross). Tashtego nails the bird of Heaven to the mast of the ship as it goes down, etc etc. So I see Melville working within that world view and not really setting up anything beyond it.
I found these lectures very interesting and stimulating and even clarifying and Professor Dreyfus makes many fascinating points. His philosophical/theological conception however as it applies to the Novel and I think Melville's intention, is flawed in my opinion.
@michaelhoffman9521 that's about where I'm at. I'm very glad this lecture series exists, I haven't seen many long form criticisms of Moby Dick to bounce my ideas against, and I don't know anyone else personally who thinks of it as a bible with layers and threads worth pondering over. It's difficult to call such an illustious academic philosopher wrong, especially when I agree with positioning Moby-Dick as a religious text, but this can't be the end of thought about the book.
I had a brief thought about the connection between Ahab and Raskolnikov before. I hadn't gotten to thinking before, but I wonder if Melville had Napoleon on his mind as Dostoyevsky and then Nietzsche did. I'd definitely put Melville more in line with Dostoevsky's side of that divide. Ahab never gets the redemption arc that Raskolnikov does, but I think both are rejections of the Napoleonic archetype before it was articulated as the ubermensch.
On the subject of Nihilism, I also don't think Melville would agree with Nietzsche. Yes, everything is fundamentally incomprehensibly white, but there is the intermediary of light which allows us to attach meaning and view objects historically. I think that to Melville, the question of what assigns value and meaning is less important than the fact that value and meaning are assigned.
I was at first reluctant to call Ishmael agnostic, because his search for meaning has so many religious tones, and he clearly values ritual and belief. But it seems accurate in the sense that any abstract belief held too tightly can only lead to disaster. I think he would say the same to Nietzsche's nihilism- the rejection of meaning in our lived experience leaves only self reference, which ultimately veers to madness.
Thanks for adding more grist to the mill. And also having some critiques of the lecture... I was wondering if I was idiotic or insane for not being awestruck over every line.
@@maxwellschmidt235 Yes, fun to dig in here a little bit. I was looking through the comments for something more than simple praise--so thanks for providing that. I have loved the book for many years and have also thought that it is biblical in structure --more like a compendium of Melvillian musings. Which in general I have found hilarious. Surprised the professor didn't not delve more into Melville's dry wit. He is making fun of everybody in this thing which I think due to the overly elevated language, most people miss. I try to tell friends that plot is almost unimportant to the book. There certainly is very little to it. But the deep, philosophical pearls he just casually throws off, usually at the end of one more chapter on some mundane facet of whaling, I find brilliant.
The nihilism thing, yeah, I don't see it in the way Dreyfus does. Pip saw God's foot on the loom, so he knows what its all about and so speaks what to the rest of us is just gibberish. Dreyfus wants to only focus on the "coral insects" and equates that with a sort of random force of creation, hence nihilistic, which does not fit the book to my mind. It feels like Dreyfus is just riffing some of the time, (granted this is not always a bad lecture style) but as with the usage of "polytheistic" he is not being precise in his reading or rigorous enough in mapping out the structure and arguments. I thought he was a Literature guy but was he a philosopher? Ok, yes, a friend of mine just told me took philosophy from him at Cal Berkeley.
Anyway, much fun, thanks!
Take another adderall buddy. Leave the deconstruction to someone who knows the text lmao
It IS THE great American novel. To have Dreyfus discussing it is double delight!!
"At the time, people didn't know what to make of it" - could that be the reason why Henry James never commented on it (as far as I know)? Great lecture.
Really enjoying this, love all the Nietzschean cross-references too. Going to replay this a few times!
What I like about Melville is he was a loner, traveller, like so many of us. Can a professor who has probably lived a secure stable life....get it. After living in 5 countries so far, more from reasons of history than choice, and three years in an RV.... I totally relate. It's the inner journey that leads the way, not the details, the decorations...about becoming free from your time and society.
I’d say having a working knowledge of the KJV and Shakespeare are far more useful in ‘getting’ Moby Dick than being well travelled. I might be wrong though, Melville could be the progenitor of Eat, Pray, Love
You obviously don't know who Professor Dreyfus is.
A most brilliant chapter is 40. Written as a play it ends with a race fight. Then a storm hits and they scatter. Layer upon layer of meaning in this gem
I wish I could have attended this lecture. It would have been so much fun. I’ve read the book 5 times and get more insight every time I read it. Would have loved to discuss it with likeminded people.
I would have loved to hear him talk about Joyce
Really nice! And you have a really nice collection of videos on your channel!
Btw, lets remember the great performance artist, Laurie Anderson did a whole show based on MD. I still need to see that.
Wha?
It is certainly true that often overlooked is the fact that in the first sentence Ishmael merely says "Call me Ishmael," which doesn't necessarily mean that is his name. Yet, further into the book, he self-reflexively refers to himself on several occasions, thus suggesting that his name is in fact, Ishmael.
Yes, true, however would you agree when he refers to himself as Ishmael it seems rather stilted, as if he were trying to reinforce his name is Ishmael. Consider the following: ''I, Ishmael, was one of that crew;...”
'Call me' could of course be humorous or ironic. Sailors wouldn't necessarily use first names.
That is to say, he wants to be called Ishmael, that is his name. But on a whaling ship he got other commands.
3:42:00 3 days and 3 nights Ahab in some sort of fit off of Cape Horn. Dreyfus says he has no idea what that means. Jesus in the tomb 3 days and 3 nights, fulfilling the prophecy of Jonah, who spent 3 days and 3 nights in the belly. Ahab sees himself as the 2nd coming. Later on Mr. Dick is chased for 3 days. The Pequod is a three masted ship, all were broken off the coast of Japan. 3 mates. 3 harpooners.Tons of 3's in this book. The Trinity.
Don't forget St. Paul's three days.
I’m not smart enough to know if this is correct but I like it.
Yea, but what does that mean exactly? Does that indicate Ahab is a divine figure in the ranks of Jonah and Jesus, or is it something else? I would much like to hear of what you think
I think it means ahab sees himself as Devine and godlike. Or he’s good at pretending to be in the eyes of others. He uses natural phenomena (magnetism, behavior of electrical charges) to perform seemingly impossible feats for his crew.
I’ll think about your very interesting question and reply further soon.
Hotel Gethsemane had checkout at dawn, so three days and two nights. But if you count the Passion, there’s Night Three.
2:02:12
Regarding Melville's "whiteness." This is a personal interpretation. So there are two Voids, the Black Void and the White Void.
Most of us are familiar with The Void. Not long ago, during a dark period of my life, I felt a sense of void in my life. I had lost my faith in Christianity, which left me unable to orient myself in the world. I felt as if I was floating in a black sea in search of land and/or as if I was drifting in deep-space and/or I that I was missing a crucial piece of my being. Aesthetically, this was blackness, darkness, hollowness; the artist HR Geiger comes to mind. This was despair.
But more recently, I have encountered a new kind of despair: a blinding white light. It leaves me powerless and somehow on the verge of mania. It says everything is possible, and everything has been done, and everything will be done; I am already dead, but that hardly matters because I have and will live every possible life. (recently I have discovered the meaning of 'ein sof' in Kabbalah which seems to capture/explain what I'm feeling, or, at least, it runs parallel-another pair of sunglasses.) This is, in a backwards kind of a way, another form of despair.
Pip's story hits close to home.
If this resonates with you, reach out, and we can start a dialogue.
But hail thou goddess, sage and holy,
Hail divinest Melancholy,
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight.
Excerpt from Il Penseroso
-Milton
@Chaim Mendel he's the one lost at sea isn't he?
At the end of Lecture 2 (1:54:01), Dreyfus ponders over Melville's use of the word "palsied" in the passage at the end of Chapter 42, "...pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper...".
Here is an earlier use of the word in Chapter 2: "It was a queer sort of place - a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly."
Dreyfus says that in the Chapter 42 passage 'palsied' is used in a non-standard way to mean pale, but I'm not so sure that's right. I think it's sensible to interpret "palsied universe" as a 'tremoring universe' -- a universe that is constantly in flux. The use from Chapter 2 might support this interpretation because it seems Melville is saying that the house tremors or wobbles.
Does this seem right? Does the passage from Chapter 2 undermine Dreyfus' interpretation?
I agree with your understanding of it
I agree pale is not right. I thought that it meant paralysed, weak, drooping. Like the illness, the palsy.
agree
I have a political interpretation of parts of the book. While I can understand being on a ship and not having a choice about who is the the captain of the ship, what I don't understand is being able to make a choice about who is captain of the ship and choosing Trump, I mean Ahab.
Yeah, there are several layers of meaning, even the search for meaning isn't purely religious and some of it is political. And Trumphab is a striking conflation since 2016 and especially after 2021. The sailors didn't have much choice of captain, but it would have been in their interest to pressure starbuck to declare ahab to be fraudulent so they could just fill their holds and come home. There's a systemic breakdown involved in Ahab's individualism rising to sociopathy and being allowed to circumvent the institutional authority of the owners.
I think Nathaniel Philbrick pointed out that Moby Dick was in part a criticism of the transcendentalist movement with its promotion of rugged individualism. One of the ways the novel has grown in stature is in the thread that individualism can't build communities the way shared purpose does. The crew is the fundamental unit at sea, and I think that to some extent, Melville is warning that individuality and pursuits disruptive to shared purpose can just as easily pull down the nation.
Old Ahab could teach us a valuable lesson
The one thing he wanted escaped his possession
The crew he recruited
All died in pursuit of
The meaning of life: the impossible question
brilliant and inspiring every time i listen to it ... what a treasure
5:41:03 I do not think Melville is worried about technological definiteness.
I think he is pretty sure that no matter how much we think we know, systematize & classify things, we'll always fall short of truly knowing about that thing which is indescribable and unrepresentable. Man can only deceive himself for so long and that is also one of the readings of the ending of Moby Dick.
This, Melville's take, is refreshing as well as sombering to read among all the buzz of future technological singularity, scientific progress and what not.
He has pretty much prophesized the fate of the West, very much like the fate of the Pequod.
” Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air ; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea“ : The Symphony,
Herman Melville ; Moby Dick
@3:47:15 the quotation Professor Dreyfus reads about Moby-Dick eating Ahab's leg like a lawn mower cutting a blade of grass contains an allusion to Othello (which I am surprised he did not notice): in Othello's death speech, he says "In Aleppo once / Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk / Beat a Venetian and traduced the state / I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog /
And smote him-thus." Some meditation on this will bring you closer to understanding Ahab's monomania
I love this channel
Just found this after rereading Moby Dick (maybe the 7th or 8th time in my life of 44 years so far). It's my personal substitute for cap and ball. :)
I look forward to responding to the video and all the comments.
Lol I don't remember Baltington at all! Definately gonna reread with a list of topics to keep in mind.
@@jonathanryals9934 Melville might have called him black once or twice.
Melville was a confused man ?
Profound. Thank you for this.
The howling gale of the infinite... vs the port
Really enjoying making my way through this.
In lecture 3, Dreyfus argues that Melville is against the kind of pluralism that says all religions are basically the same at their core. But it seems like that is what Ishmael argues for in chapter 18 when talks about the "First Congregational Church."
Melville joined the Unitarian church late in his life, which, even in the late 19th century, was about as liberal a faction of Christianity as you can find -- so yeah, good observation. But maybe we take into account Ahab's radically different sense of what is true, and count that as a (truly) divergent religion?
Ishmael wants to embrace all there is rather than getting stuck where he was “thrown”. One of Queequeg’s savior aspects is that he is not stuck in his own faith. He has tapped into the transcendent Logos, helping Ishmael see that to “imitate Christ” is to go beyond religious practice. Maybe because he has found the transcendent he is able to return to his own faith for stability. (Rousseau’s Savoyard vicar?)
Just started reading the book today, Queequeg is based and redpilled, I like him.
My dad told me he took his class on Being and time in Berkeley
1:12 Evangelical pagan piety , could be that Ishmael is evangelical himself, for pagan religions. Ishmael is seeking or converting to different pagan religions . Ismael is a pantheist who practices each pagan religion he encounters.
Set aside 30 hours for this experience.
Personally, i found that this works best if your bowel habits are relatively stable, and you have a table set up just in front of the shitter. Give Moby Dick a shelter, a home on that sacred desk, and look forward to the escapades with every impending act of defecation. Only take your phone with you after completing the book, and take a vow upon yourself to only listen to this lecture. The moment you are seated on the shitter, you have entered a place of holy sanctuary; instagram is sin, facebook a facade, social media the satiations of satan himself.
Take your sweet time, have a pen at hand if necessary, and within 60 days, you will have gazed directly into the eyes of this masterpiece.
Don't read on toilet you will get hemorrhoids. Don't ask how I know this :(
This is amazing! Thanks for posting! It seems like the way people spoke and wrote back in the day was their main form of entertainment. Sadly and slowly, this was replaced by TV and electronic media and the coming of the mumbling shallow inarticulate couch potato. Or as Neitszche called it. “The last man”.
Coral is also a plant that needs the color of the sunlight to survive
You know someone’s onto something with Moby Dick when they start talking about Pip. Total openness and acceptance and disillusion, in contrast to Ahab’s delusion, uncompromising monomania and refusal to go gently into that good night. Pip loses his identity while Ahab insists he is forever Ahab, long before he was born and long after he is dead.
The joke I would tell about fatalism is that even if we were to blow the world to smithereens with atomic weaponry most abominable, God Almighty would still take credit even for that, to which I bemoan with exasperation, “Can’t he just let us have ONE thing?!”
Help! I suspect that Melville describes aging warriors in Typee that sounds like advanced type 2 dibetes. What do you think? 4 hours 3 minutes audiovox.
3:46:30 As a mower a blade of grass in the field...
The inscrutability of the universe, likened to the chaos bewitched painting, I think is contrary to ahab's devotion to destruction of the whale as singular goal. He is so sure of purpose, yet his is a confused understanding. Time after time he gets warnings but heeds them naught... perhaps the correct understanding of reality is realizing your own analysis is inherently flawed. A blind pursuit of singular purpose can lead to disaster and waste.
Not so. Ahab’s single-minded obsession led to his transformation from a small human family man of the world to the resurrected writer of the story, the orphan of the world, Ismael.
All about trying to contain what is not containable.
At 1:11 they are ignoring the (as though)
So really when hes looking at Quequegs face he's trying to interpret the thought by the expression which really he can't so he's having that thought of himself being a Christian Pagan maybe
Sorry 1:11:40 ish
Do you have any other Dreyfus lecture series on novels or literature? He mentioned something about "Dante earlier in the course". Wondering if this is part of a larger literary survey course. Out of interest, do you know when these Moby Dick lectures were given? I presume they took place at Berkeley.
Many thanks for upload!! Truly great teacher and teachings.
Ye Wang Thanks for your help.... Found it !
This channel has uploaded his lectures on The Brothers Karamazov and Dantes Inferno/Devine Comedy
There was a course he taught that basically became his book "All Things Shining" that included a discussion of Melville and Moby Dick, as well as Dante, Kant, Homer, and others. I'm not sure if it's still available, though.
Maybe I missed it, but does Dreyfus mention that Ahab goes blind on the third day? And that Moby Dick’s behaviors are the same as Melville’s moods?
I think all of the characters are part of Melville and therefor represent him, especially Ahab and Ishmael.
5:52:50 sort of like Judge Holden
Glad to have come across this as I plan to start a reading of Moby Dick (first read). Do you recommend listening to the lectures before, alongside or after finishing the novel? Many thanks
my take is read the book by yourself. Even on a superficial level, it's a great story. i don't think you will get much from the lecture unless you've read the book. ultimately, what you gain from this book is what you bring to it based on your life experience and understanding. that's why so many people read and re-read this book throughout their life. most important, i hope you ENJOY reading the book. :)
@@asbeautifulasasunset thank you so much for your kind message. Sounds like a good plan to come here after finishing it. I hope you are enjoying whatever you are currently reading :)
I'd read the book first, then get into critical takes. One thing you'll find is that even Dreyfuss doesn't fully understand every passage- leading to some discussions here- so don't get bogged down over each line. There's a lot of microcosm/macrocosm relationships, and multiple layers of meaning running through the book, so let some of your own ideas form, take a look at some of the criticism, then read it again. Just my thoughts to take or leave.
@@maxwellschmidt235 thanks for the suggestions, I think that’s a good approach to come to the critical perspectives after reading. How many times have you read it out of interest?
This is kinda simplistic. Watch the movie 1956, just so you’ll get a slight overview of the book, then read the book. The language in the book is hard to understand at first.
Just my opinion.
This is absolutely wonderful! Akin to my literary podcast, Knight Reader! Hear a young mans perspective on Moby Dick, i have value to bring to the literary world!
Sounds interesting, why not post it on your channel?
4:21:33 Ahab wants to master certainty
I really think Moby Dick is the discussion of God, but not a religious God, for one type of person, but a true creator that isn’t prejudice and is for all types of humans and animals. When man becomes to pigeonholed like destroying all the whales which Melville was concerned about, or after Melville died creating a master race etc…that doesn’t work and is bound to fail. He’s saying accept all people and nature.
2:11:41 all we have are interpretations
i imagine this itself is a dynamic fleshing of themes to enjoy and celebrate the book and using other works referentially. i enjoy this way of approaching things, but the time it'd take to develop my awareness of each works and deeply? living the spirit of the west in a way that's more honest, CU1S and actually strong scholarly? would be beautiful tbh. that said, this guy is perfect, to be able to lsiten to him and learn it all on the spot... don't just trust sense intuit, that's a decent starting point, but the smartest thing you could do is appreciate your gifts and MM soul - then go under a long process of learning etc from aplace of dedication and CU1S integrity, lookign for it within this endeavour and even finding specific and nuanced IHCU1S regarding whatever the consciousness that is needed to learn all this, then with enough understanding and living it you can develop your consciousness. it serves as a medium to develop consciousness, then? beautiful. use your imagination too if you like, but don't truly love it all, falling in love w... well. i thin kit's most beautiful to fall in love w western philosophy but to know that, in its glory, it comes from an FP which is emotional or based on a shared personality trait that simply isn't of my people. back to danzig? back to my roots really
Random? No. Complex. Not care? Care about humans? Ants? Birds? That's meaningless except to a narcissist. It's far bigger than that.
Drunk Christian vs. Sober Cannibal
This one idea tells all.
Bulkington from Chapter 3: "This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him."
Does this not imply that Bulkington left the Pequod before its demise, and somehow lives to sail with Ishmael on another voyage?
I died when I got tossed off the ship in storm, here lies my stoneless grave
@@bulkington5395 No you didn't, you died when the Pequod sank. You were Ismael's bunkmate with everyone else in the forecastle until that time.
You sabbee me?
I sabbee you
This man sleepee you
You sabbee?
Ugh this dood. I still enjoy it tho.
Heroic nihilism. It seems to me to be a contradiction. What does heroic mean in a world devoid of meaning?
If I try to understand Melville the man, he must have experienced first hand vastly different cultures and religions. What one culture values, another negates. For example, a cow can be slaughtered or a cow can be worshipped. A pair of interlocking Zs in one direction is a venerated symbol of Tibetan Buddhism. A pair of interlocking Zs in another direction is a venerated symbol of Nazism. The extreme of the contradiction of values must have been epitomized in Melville’s living at some point in his own journey in a cannabalistic culture. The world is full of a myriad of different and contradictory cultures.
But how can being open to this myriad of cultures and religions be heroic if you fundamentally don’t or can’t believe in them (nihilism)? I could see heroic in the context of affirmation but not openness.
I think the beginning of this lecture captures the essence of Moby Dick. The ‘call me Ishmael’ opening phrase is not really an affirmation (I am Ishmael). But rather only an observation ‘call me a seeker’. That’s it. Is it in some sense heroic to be a seeker in this world of nihilism?
Whatever your understanding of this lecture series, you cannot deny that this is the Fellini of lectures!
see Heidegger on Plato's transcendent Nihilism maybe of interest also.
Good points you raise. I had the same question regarding the claim by Nietzsche in The Will to Power that not all nihilism is the same. If nihilism is the idea that there is no value, no meaning only nothingness, then based on what can you say that one form of nihilism is different (better?) than another? Put another way, without Truth, what does sacred mean?
"Ishma-El" God listens. What has he heard?
excellent for sleep
Terence McKenna loved Moby Dick!
1:02:57
Please see the wiki page *United Kingdom Whaling* for the facts of the matter concerning the line "It is theirs..." which is a reference to apparently when whales were caught and brought to a British port Melville says they automatically became the property of the King of England. But this is simply not the case! At all. It is offensive, prejudiced and anti-British propaganda.
Is there a transcript? And what edition of Moby dick is he talking about?
Ok
Myteriousness. Yes. Was Melville an accidental mystic?
There's strong arguments he was gnostic
9:19 "Moby Dick has no face, no way right way to draw the way Moby Dick looks because there is no way Moby Dick looks..."
If Moby Dick has the face of multiplicity itself, how can you name the indefinable? How can you ever know you there is the category or identity that is Moby Dick?
I've never read it, but he is searching for it, the ineffable looking thing until he finally aims his harpoon and strikes Moby Dick.
So he, a protestant in America, a free society, is far from the holy land, and the Christian church has become Lutheran, Calvinist, and many other denominations including Catholic. Further, there is a separation of church and state, with many other religions which must all live together respectfully.
So how can he be sure of his own tradition since he is far the place and origens of his religious traditions.
Despite all that, just like Moby Dick has many faces but there is still such thing as Moby Dick, so, despite there are many names of God, there is one God that he should aim for to live a meaningful life by integrating the chaos and order to become a properly oriented being that honors his freedom by accepting his responsibilities as a father/husband/son/comnunity member/etc.
Am I even close? Never read it just heard the first about 20mins of this.
IMO, Sophistic reading on the book, which is thematically anterior to the book itself. I don't think Melville's writing is anti-Christian by any means, yet Melville may have had personal heathenistic views toward the divine (insofar as he considered himself to have personal views at all!)
In his letters to Hawthorne, this is clear: Melville penned just as Ahab hunted: Not by the will of the self but as an avatar animated by the winds of the Holy Spirit. One's impression over whether it was the voice of the Christian God who spoke through his quill or the voice of some pagan deity is entirely dependent on the reader's personal thoughts toward the divine (or the thoughts breathed into the reader's head by that same divine force who breathed through Melville's pen). In my mind, my Christian God so moved Melville's hand to paper. I doubt the mind of an island pagan of the 19th century would see the same as I. Yet by the same spirit we are bound, and by this book we find our common ground.
Calvinism is blasphemy, foolishness and intellectual stupidity.
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It's not true to say, any interpretation, all the way down. The idea of the supreme being, the question of the one, clearly drives the book.
It's blatantly obvious that Melville considered every religious matter trivial apart from the Christian while writing Moby Dick. He's not reconciled to it; he's not a believer; but that is his whetstone of wit.
Dreyfus interprets loosely at times.
2:35:43 whiteness is a spectrum of colors
All religions can be explored as a Christian, and many of the adherents' experiences are genuine. Not an issue. But did Christ rise from the dead? Yes. Subjective waters breaking against the pylons of objective historical fact. And one day you see, thinking that "no one has the ultimate answer" is itself an ultimate answer.
An ultimate answer of nothing whiteness
Men like Dreyfus will no longer exist. His kind has been purposely erased by the last 20 years of academic flimflam. Humanity is all the worse for it
1:41:32 whiteness chapter most important chapter
im jittery as to stimuli, neck on a swivel outta fear
gone is convicytion oppurely into power
i need character
and fuelled by fwd mvmt in the assumed SI
let that SIO WtLB come as you try your best consciously
Its not an anchor , CBM, its a way of getting in touvh w what u liuke n consciousness n lkoving life
Ahoy! Hast seen Moby Dick? Hast seen the white whale? Thou Hast?! Thou hast actually seen Moby Dick? Then thou must report to Captain Rehab right away, 'cause you be trippin.
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