To Think : A Philosophical Commentary on Thomas Bernhard's Short Novel Gehen and Novels Alte Meister and Holzfällen
Abstract
This book presents three different yet interrelated interpretations of what it means to think that derive from in-depth reading of Thomas Bernhard's short novel Gehen, and of his novels Alte Meister and Holzfällen. Bernhard never explicitly states what he thinks that thinking but also not-thinking is or is meant to be.
Nor does he develop the 'question of thinking' in a systematic manner. Even though Bernhard does not say much about thinking, we can follow the course of his undirected thought that uses all the facets of thinking - observation, description, and thorough inquiring and interrogating.
The first interpretation demonstrates that truth cannot be gained in full, especially not by continuous inquiring and questioning, although such an attitude might at first appear admirable. It is always possible to ask yet another question.
Bernhard draws our attention to the need to accept the limits of our cognition which is incomprehensive and in no respect infallible. The second interpretation deals with the activities of observing and describing and shows that to observe means just to take in the details of other people's attitudes and thought.
The observer thus bares himself from experiencing the very feeling of thinking. The third and last interpretation deals with two formal aspects of the respective texts: with the narrator of the stories and with Bernhard's treatment of time.
According to this interpretation, nothing is being said about thinking in Bernhard's books - it is necessary to think, not to talk about what it is like to think. To think means to constantly move between the thinking and the not-thinking; in this way, thinking comes out as a specific art.
The character engaged in this art of thinking is not the one who plays its part in the stories. It is no one else but the reader alone.