Chapter 39 The ethical value of excitement

Does the "Freeze Feelings" proposal actually freeze emotions? If the abolition of the moral court of the ethical state results in the relative absolutization of individual morality, then the abolition of the socio-political emotional court results in the relative absolutization of individual emotion. What does relativization and absoluteization of individual emotion mean?It's impromptu euphoria: some kind of heightened emotional arousal rises to an unbearable level.This means being absolutely identified with, fully committed to one's own relative and finite present moment, forgetting about the past and the future.

If the future is erased, as well as the past, the second of the present stands in empty space, at the place of life and its chronology, outside and independent of time (which is why one can compare it to for eternity, which itself is the negation of time). (, 84 pages) The present moment becomes eternity, and the relative emotion becomes the absolute emotion.In Kundera's view, the value feeling of "a moment of excitement is more important than the whole life" is the basic value in the value table of Ziroom Ethics.Moments of excitement are not necessarily big mystical moments, but more everyday, mundane, even vulgar.Happiness lies in mediocrity.

In this sense, liberal ethics is anti-romantic ethics.It's not what you're excited about that matters, but the excitement itself.Sabina, half naked and wearing her father's bowler hat, gets excited watching herself masturbate in the mirror; or imagines Thomas wearing the bowler hat and watching herself defecate, gets excited and drags Thomas down on the carpet , an instant orgasmic cry.Happiness emerges from this purely individual everyday feeling. However, excitement cannot be understood in an emotional direction, which would moralize excitement.Kundera gave an example that the rock music of the twentieth century was fanatical but not emotional, it subverted the moralized sentimental theme: it (the moment of rock) is not emotional, it is fanatical, it is the continuation of a moment of excitement: since excitement is a moment snatched from time, a fleeting moment without memory, a moment surrounded by oblivion where the melodic theme has no room to unfold itself... (, p. 234)

Classical emotions always have their own objects—they are emotional for something, and excited for nothing. Because of this, it makes people feel the density of happiness.The life value of excitement lies only in the impromptu state of rapid heartbeat and dim eyesight, which is the most personal state of happiness for a person.Classical emotion is born for it, excitement is born for itself.Any value beyond the individual body does not apply to the exciting present, in which the individual body returns to itself, with no other relationship to worry about, no sad time relationship with the past or future.Despotic moral incrimination judges the present based on the past or future ties, cutting off the connection between the present and the past and the future, and the despotic moral court cannot judge the present.

Life is a continuous and heavy effort, in order not to lose yourself in your own eyes, and to always exist firmly in yourself, in your own state.One has only to step out of one's own moment for a moment, and one touches the realm of death. (, 85 pages) It seems that Kundera did not "freeze emotion" as he advocated, but only redescribed emotion.This re-description is not equal to the amoralization of emotion, rather, excitement is another kind of moralized emotion: the emotional morality of being intoxicated in the present moment, because the excitement of the present moment is what Kundera called euphoria: Every excitement, every instant excitement, is "an inimitable happiness in life, which expresses itself in a fleeting and irresponsible imagination, in the joy of invention and surprise, even horror by an invention joy” (, p. 87).At this moment, there is no judgment, appreciation, reflection, conceptualization or ideological excitement, but I am completely immersed in my own bodily sensations.Mill said that happiness has no a priori reasons, but the realization of individual wishes, no matter what the wishes are.Kundera used narrative ethics to repeat Mill's liberal theory of happiness, and attacked the Marxist theory of human happiness—the so-called "all human" happiness is definitely a fictional happiness that no one can enjoy.In the daily life of the people's democratic society, it is full of such fictional and counterfeit happiness arranged by the state: the happiness of dedicating for the future cause of the country, the nation or mankind.The individual's own happiness is defined as the happiness of the people like a planned economy, and then assigned to the people's career. It is not surprising that a person has never felt excited in his own sexy experience.

The happiness of humanistic liberalism is like consumer goods in a market economy. Individuals can freely choose from supermarkets, and the value of consumer goods is determined by consumers' subjective feelings.Happiness in life is like consumer goods. It is not something that you will no longer have after you use it, but something that you will have after you use it, and you can use it if you like it.Kundera’s excitement is like this kind of thing that has been used once. According to him, excitement is not one-off, not monotonous, and not afraid of repetition; it does not need to create too many words to modify itself, because every time Exciting truth is too rich.Excitement is happiness, repeated excitement is a kind of happiness in itself, and repeated excitement becomes quite necessary and meaningful for the happiness of personal life.The moment of excitement is always fleeting. Only by constantly repeating the excitement can an individual keep himself and his own moment together.If the excitement is only grasped in memory, the excitement becomes a masturbating bliss, and the excitement experienced in this way becomes an abstract present instead of a concrete and warm present.

People know reality only in past time.People don't recognize the way it is in the present moment, the moment it is passing, the moment it is.Yet the present moment does not resemble its recollection.Remembering is not the negation of forgetting.Recalling is a form of forgetting. (, 126 pages) Fictional narrative counteracts the evanescence of the present, making one always feel excited in the present moment rather than in the past.Narrative time not only retains but prolongs the exciting present moment.The important role of the narrative scene in liberal novels is not literary but ethical. It provides a frozen space for keeping fresh in the excited present moment—the present time kept fresh by the cold air created by the narrative language.Goncharov's "The Cliff" used more than 40 pages to describe the present moment when a person sat up from bed to get out of bed; nearly 900 pages to describe 18 hours of life-the exciting present time was not only retained , is also magnified; the narrative of "Reminiscence of the Past" brings a person's excited present time into the dizziness of timeless existence.In the retained excited present time, the individual life is intoxicated with its own existential dizziness.

The vertigo of existence is probably the ultimate state of life in the ethics of freedom in humanism. It is no wonder that Kundera focused on describing the vertigo of existence in his novel narratives. In his novel ethics, he repeatedly mentioned the vertigo of existence— —The present state of the individual’s immediate excitement provided by the narrative of the novel: looking for the lost present, looking for the real melody of a moment, to surprise people and to capture the real desire of the past, thus debunking the reality in the immediate reality Mysterious desire.Immediate reality is constantly escaping from our lives, and our lives are thus the least known things in the world. (, pp. 136-137)

The narrative of the novel becomes a body of free ethics, which restores the reality of the present reality of a person's body, and the truth of a person's existence will only appear in the exciting present time retained by the narrative.Not only that, the muttering narrative of the novel can also cultivate the ethical feeling and quality of freedom, and erase all kinds of clichés thrown on a person's present moment by national politics, traditional religion, and traditional morality-they all have a sinful purpose, Let me forget my own excitement, so that people have never experienced the dizzying climax of life.