Jerusalém by Gonçalo M. Tavares
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whose War? What Rationality?

In modern ethical theory, the medieval idea of Just War is still considered a thing worthy of serious consideration. The theory is that the decisions to go to war as well as how to conduct it are subject to rational criteria which can be applied coherently to past and future national conflict.

But of course Just War theory is entirely fatuous for the simple reason that there has never been nor never will be a war that isn't justified by its participants. This is obvious to all but the ethical theorists, who presume that the criteria of rationality they specify might somehow prevent or motivate action. On the contrary, the criteria provided in the theory are used to justify whatever action is taken, giving the framework of argument, as it were, in public debate. As one of Tavares's characters muses, "...every crime is perfectly justifiable when inspired by being sad."

Rationality in other words, that Jerusalem (the reference is to the 137th Psalm) where the human mind is worshipped, is a rather more slippery idea than many of us want to admit. And it is this theme of the fluid, often contradictory character of what we glibly call the rational that is the theme of Tavares's book. Tavares teaches (or taught) epistemology at university. It's not surprising therefore that he uses a technique not dissimilar from that used by Iris Murdoch in her last novel, Jackson's Dilemma, in which characters represent Heideggerian existentialist categories. Tavares personalises philosophical theories of rationality and then watches them collide.

The main character, Theodor, is a prototypical medieval rationalist who believes that there is a coherent order to the universe that is prior to an understanding by human beings. This leads him to a necessary belief in an ordering God, but also into some rather problematic positions.

Theodore is obsessed with both the Holocaust and mental illness as chapters in the long 'history of horror' that is the world. He is aware however that his presumption that these things are rational, that is they lead to an ultimate good, are either blasphemous or indicative of an inherent evil in the universe. He also knows that presuming a rationality to phenomena like the Holocaust is a bad idea since by finding reasons for such a thing, one justifies it. This is the same problem as with Just War theory. The fact that so many otherwise ordinary people participated in the Holocaust proves that human rationality (and indeed God) is not something to be touted but to be feared.

Theodor's wife, Mylia, is a schizophrenic, who like the other patients in the local mental hospital (the physical location of Jerusalem), has her own unique and rather interesting theory of rationality, a Heraclitan theory of becoming which is neatly summarised with regard to eggs: "Eggs, all eggs, contained a kind of concrete, material altruism that Mylia couldn't find in anything else in the world. Eggs appear because they want to disappear. They appear because they want to reappear as something else." God is the cosmos finding itself.

Other characters have other ideas of rationality and divinity. Hinnerk, the war-damaged veteran believes there is no underlying rationality in the world and consequently lives in a state of fearful paranoia. For him words, as the foundation of rationality, are essentially meaningless; there is no God. Mylia's disabled son, Kaas, is unable to use words and therefore has no real idea of what rationality might be. For him God is a malevolent, vengeful mystery who is the source of his disability. Gompertz, the administrator of the mental hospital, is the vulgar pragmatist for whom rationality is merely conventional behaviour; God, we might say, is 'best practice'. Hanna, the prostitute, gives no thought whatsoever to rationality in her unexplainable, Christ-like devotion to the homicidal Hinnerk; she simply believes.

Each of these stances carries with it an associated ethic - moralistic, hedonistic, sacrificial, self-sacrificial, and so on. So ethical crises occur continuously as the characters interact during stressful events. The result is a sort of tour through the mind of Jorge Luis Borges or Henry James. The reader isn't sure whom to trust, with whom to empathise. And I think this is precisely Tavares's point. The rational ain't as rational as it's made out to be, not in war, not in life.

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