By AMANDA DE ALMEIDA ROMÃO*

The meaning of life for Contardo Calligaris

Em The sense of life, Contardo Calligaris, a psychoanalyst whose theoretical contribution is widely recognized, graces us with many provocations: from his discomfort with the classic question in Brazilian greeting, “How are you?”, to Francesco Petrarca’s verses, “a beautiful death in your honorary life”. However, if I include these two examples it is only to show the variety of subjects he addresses, and not to suppose a hierarchy that separates the two phrases at opposite extremes.

This is because, when talking about the meaning of life, Contardo Calligaris does not point to an extraordinary notion, but is interested in everyday life and its common plots, the chances we have of broadening our perceptions and enriching our experiences through culture, yes, but in In short, life that occurs without the imaginary shine of our ideals – narcissistic, political, etc.

This stance, from Hegel to Lukács, appears under the veil of romantic art: a trait of modernity that has as its modus operandi taking objects in their accidentality, no longer expressing the harmony between form and content. However, I will not continue with the authors in exploring the theme, especially I will not decree with Hegel the end of art for this very reason. Let us turn to two central aspects in Contardo Calligaris’ book.

The first refers to the quality of experiences: just as life cannot be measured by a purpose, a telos which would guide all action, experimentation should not be under the aegis of a transcendent value or an obligation of happiness. Experiences are considered better to the extent that they provide an interesting life for the subject, even if they result in discontent and/or pain. In the reviews available on the internet about the book, this aspect is widely covered.

It is worth, however, emphasizing a very clever formula that Contardo heard from his father when he was still a boy: “there are books that are written to fill the holes in the bookshelf, and there are books that are written to preserve the holes in the bookshelf” (CALLIGARIS , 2023, p. 82). In other words: there are books made to flatten the emptiness that constitutes us and there are others, more interesting, that are made so that the emptiness is maintained. Charming formula, , enigma of the sphinx, and also inviting: what would be a book that is on the shelf, objectively fills a space on it, but maintains the void in it?

With this praise for complexity learned by the young Contardo, let's examine in more detail the second intriguing aspect of his book: the radicality of aesthetic life. In an effort to rediscover his family's history through photographs, especially his father's trajectory, the psychoanalyst discovered that he had been an anti-fascist activist since September 1943, was mayor of Mesero in 1945, and was a partisan (no party affiliation). But he didn't know the details of this intense life, since his father wasn't a man who talked so much.

Those photographs, the Breda 37 full of ammunition that he came across as a child and, even so, the absence of a clearly expressed political side on the part of his father, all of this greatly intrigued Contardo Calligaris.

I reproduce excerpts of the dialogue below: “I knew that my father had been anti-fascist, but I didn’t know to what extent. I decided to question him, or better yet, provoke him: “Okay, I know you were anti-fascist, but why? You are not a communist, not even a socialist, you are a liberal (that, at the time, for me, was almost an insult). Why, then, would you have been anti-fascist? In the name of what? (…) He took my question very seriously, silent for a good moment. And finally he gave me an answer that at the time outraged me (…). He responded like this: “It’s because the fascists were very vulgar.” I was petrified, astonished at the idea that he could have taken a stand for a reason that ultimately boiled down to an aesthetic judgment – ​​nothing to do with class struggle, nothing to do with what I would recognize as ideal values, nothing to do with economic interests. Just an aesthetic judgment.” (CALLIGARIS, 2023, p. 100-102).

Just an aesthetic judgment… Just the search to found a moral conduct based on an aesthetic judgment. Going so far as to risk one's life for an aesthetic judgment and, in doing so, dignify earthly life. Without seeking a supersensible principle or political program that would guide action, he begins with his freedom in feeling a deep disgust for the low way of thinking expressed in fascism, for the repudiation that the sight of a fascist causes.

 The behavior of Contardo Calligaris' father seems to educate just like in educational novels (bildungsroman) and, therefore, is able to cross time and communicate with us. The following pages of the book are dedicated to the son's hypotheses about what this vulgarity to which his father referred would be, and which we will not dwell on.

If the radicality of aesthetic life took Contardo Calligaris' mind – and, I confess, it took me too – it is because it is, above all, about denying all the most obvious answers to engaging in an armed struggle and, at this moment, committing oneself fighting so that life is not suffocated by extremist world views. The right to life in its radicality: the right of people to live their daily lives, to draw the lines of their destiny, to affirm life as something that unfolds in us and through us.

It is true that this understanding requires a unique sensitivity and lightness to notice that it lacks nothing. But, confident that Wim Wenders' latest film (perfect days) strengthened this type of sensitivity, the ordinary beauty contained in the prose of life, we can dwell more closely on the topic.

By shifting the question to the aesthetic field, however, we do not expect to disregard the complex political field in question. In this regard, each of us can imagine what we would do if our country was attacked by fascism (in Brazil, given the last government, this is reasonably easy to imagine). This is not to say that political programs are irrelevant, that it is necessary to be non-partisan, nothing like that. It is about the astonishment of realizing that, despite being oblivious to all this, someone could make a serious aesthetic-ethical decision in life – and the opposite would be true, that is, someone who is only taken by the imperatives of the political agenda capable of an aesthetic refinement of this subtlety? That is the question.

If I insist that this stance lacks nothing, it is because there is no need to regret the fact that he was not a communist at a time like that. Founding an aesthetic judgment as a justification is carving out a singular reason to be able to combat the reactive forces of fascism, far from the risk of repeating any slogan, far from being a subject assimilable into a symbol. A somewhat unpopular and therefore interesting stance.

Unfortunately, sustaining this singular position when we talk about groups is difficult. Carefully examining the reasons for doing what one does and calling on everyone to do it for themselves, opening space for divergence, is usually the subject of philosophers and psychotherapists. In politics, most of the time, it operates through the logic of Mass Psychology – Freud's extremely important contribution to the subject.

Then, the fight against vulgarity becomes a fight fought for immanent life (as opposed to transcendent life) and against stupidity. Contardo says that a jerk is someone who wants the other person to enjoy the way he thinks is right. In the case of Italy, through the figure of Mussolini, stupidity took shape through the absolute belief in a “race” and “nation”.

In view of this, here are the invitations that the two generations of Calligaris left us: to inhabit style as a process of individuation of life, not to oppose aesthetics to ethics as if they were irreconcilable areas (and not to presuppose hierarchy in both), and to have the courage to not drowning in dominant ideals in order to create within oneself a body capable of enriching vital experience – in the here and now, with oneself and with others.

*Amanda de Almeida Romão is a master's student in philosophy at the Federal University of São Paulo.

Reference

CALLIGARIS, Contardo. The sense of life. São Paulo: Planeta do Brasil, 2023. [https://amzn.to/4f7Elk9]

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