Page - 32 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02

Marriage and Its Representations | 31www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 23–37 Marriage in Answer to Objections – By a Married Man”, the second section of Stages on Life’s Way, the narrator-spouse notices that his appreciation of his wife’s singing and piano-playing is based not on comparative criteria, but on the subject-wife’s specific particularities (because it is she, Montaigne would say): Although being a husband for eight years, I do not know yet with certainty how my wife presents herself in the eyes of other’s critical view. … It is exactly because my love means everything to me that, to my mind, criticism only leads to nonsense.19 Starting from a desire without a precise object or a desire for women in general, in the aesthetical stage, rational love for one woman determines the achieve- ment of the ethical stage, in the Kierkegaardean meaning of the concept– rep- resented by the married man, who, in short, takes responsibility for his life and becomes aware of his responsibilities toward others, clearly defining his objects of desire and fully experiencing the challenges of reciprocity.20 Influenced by the Danish author and by Gertrude Stein, Cavell reprises Ki- erkegaard’s moral thought, to which he probably had access via his reading of Wittgenstein, as evidenced in an article reprised in his essay The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy. If the relation between Cavell and Wittgenstein centers on the language and the “immediacy of knowledge”, the similarities between Cavell and Kierkegaard on ethics, specifically on mat- rimonial ethics, are more difficult to define. However, Cavell’s admiration for Kierkegaard stresses the similarities between their approaches to marriage. In an article exploring this continuity between the two authors, Ronald L. Hall pro- poses, Cavell has adopted, knowingly or not, a Kierkegaardian way of thinking, especially in what he says about skepticism and about marriage. … His thought is informed at critical junctures by a peculiarly Kierkegaardian dialectic. This peculiar dialectic I will call “the dialectic of paradox”.21 Kierkegaard already had a very specific conception of paradox. In his Philosophi­ cal Fragments, he stated, 19 Kierkegaard 1988, 106–107. My translation. 20 A scene of The Awful Truth reflects, unintentionally and as parody, the affirmation of the husband in Kierkegaard’s text who notes that his wife’s voice is “good enough” for him, meaning external criteria and comparison do not condition his judgment of his wife’s voice. In the movie, the wife, Lucy Warri- ner, a trained singer, sings a song with her suitor, Dan Leeson (Ralph Bellamy), who does not realize that Lucy is a talented singer. This detail reappears later for dramatic purposes (his mother reveals to them that Lucy had a music teacher and that he is the direct cause of Lucy’s divorce). Nevertheless, the singing scene underlines the fact that Dan Leeson, unable to evaluate Lucy’s voice, is not necessarily the appropriate mate for her. He is just able to say that he himself had lessons and is mildly interested in her answers. What starts as an intimate, reciprocal activity – each of them singing, even without talent, just for the other to appreciate – ends in what seems to be, in the case of Dan Leeson, a need for external judgment and appreciation. See Macarthur 2014, 99. 21 Hall 1994, 145.