160 / TEWS

of virtual class consciousness. On the other hand, it "affords the group's members a
satisfaction on the imaginary plane which must and can compensate for the multiple
frustrations caused by the inevitable compromises and inconsistencies that reality
imposes."4' This second function suggests that literary effects might be either pro-
gressive or conservative, but Goldmann does not develop the argument any further.
Nor does he introduce the question of effects in his studies of particular works.
Lowenthal, in contrast, has addressed the issue of the effects of literature in several
specific instances. For example, he sees Hamsun's writings as providing ideological
compensation for the dominated, urging them to "accept life as it is, and that means
the existing relations of domination and subordination."50 Then, when writing of the
reception of Dostoevsky in Germany, he concludes that: "The study of the reception
of works of fiction thus becomes important from a new point of view. It contributes to
the study of those factors which, over and above the mere power apparatus, exercise a
socially conservative and retarding function through their psychological power.
Desires do not disappear entirely, but they must be diverted, and art may help to
transform the instincts."51 Thus Lowenthal indicates that literary works expressing
conservative ideologies may have conservative effects in society at large. It may be
inferred that the converse is true for critical and rebellious works.
Without attempting an evaluation of the particular strengths and weaknesses of
Lowenthal's and Goldmann's analyses, which would require so detailed a discussion of
literary history as to be out of place here, I have tried to locate Lowenthal's work
within the general categories of a literary-sociological framework and to compare it to
Goldmann's. Of course, Goldmann's theoretical contribution is far greater, but
Lowenthal deals with crucial areas neglected or ignored by Goldmann. Lowenthal's
work could gain from Goldmann's rigorous theoretical and methodological reflection,
while Goldmann's work could gain from Lowenthal's breadth and flexibility. Together
they provide a complementary influence on the general development of the sociology
of literature.
49. Goldmann, Cultural Creation, [Link]., p. 77.
50. Literature and the Image of Man, [Link]., p. 218.
51. The Arts in Society, [Link]., p. 137.

COMEDY AND RATIONALITY

by Ferenc Feher and Agnes Heller

The following is a study of the relation between the rational and the comic in
modern comedy in terms of recurring types of human behavior, patterns of rational
attitude and their problems. As all great analysts of the comic have argued, laughter,
the ridiculous, thesatyrical, the ironical, and the like, both in life and in literature, are
inextricably related to rationality. Without indulging in extensive definitions, it is
clear that comic phenomena are generated by "disturbed relations" to certain
historically-given types of rationality. Where there is a comic personality, there is also
rationality. Otherwise, there would be no way to gauge the 'disturbed relation' to
rationality in the artistic world. The question, then, is what type of rationality appears
in the comedy, and how is it constituted? In order to investigate this subject, the
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following analysis will focus on a few classics of the comedy, each of them a symbol for
a period: 1) Shakespeare, because he symbolizes the dynamics of the Renaissance
triggered by new social relations, with its moral "no man's land" on which the past
appears as still vivid nature but not as collective morality. 2) Moliere, because he is the
symbol of bourgeois society confined within the hostile framework of an absolutism
based on estates — a situation which he accepts, while resisting any attempt to impose
what civil society regards as unreason. 3) Beaumarchais and Lessing, because they
symbolize the Enlightenment's rebellious reason: rationality's high hopes and self-
delusions to redeem the world. Finally, 4) Bernard Shaw, because he is the symbol of
satyrical socialist irreverence towards triumphant bourgeois society — a sceptical
rationalist unmasking the degradation of reason by both bourgeois sincerity as well as
its hypocrisy.
I
The status of rationality in Shakespeare's comedies can be best understood if one
considers that he accepted the world of estates far more than Moliere, but only in a
semi-natural form and not as moral authority. For Shakespeare, people in low ranks
are ugly, repulsive, and almost always stupid. As such, they are proper objects of
laughter. This is almost a Greek-Roman streak in Shakespeare: Dogberry and Verges
in Much Ado About Nothing are the best, but not the only examples. If not totally
stupid, those on the lower rungs of hierarchy represent a pedestrian type of rationality
which may work in everyday situations. Since, however, it is ultimately still Dogberry's
and Verges' rationality, it cannot become a moral authority. Had Shakespeare, as a
comic poet, been just the creator of Dogberry and Verges, he would have been simply
a resurrector of the ancient spirit: a recycler of Aristotle and a creator of low
characters. But he also has a deeply individualistic side which recognized the world of
the estates and habits as something inalterably given. But since it was also Dogberry's
and Verges' "nature," he only attributed a relative rationality to it. He sought, and
indeed found, a new and higher principle of rationality: the value-rationality created
by legislative conscience. (Conscience becomes the only source of moral legislation
since mores are either stupid or inhumane and, as such, only relatively rational). This
is one of the reasons for Shakespeare's inimitable ability to embody tragedies and
comedies in one person. Since customary rationality applies only to the masses of the
stupid, the blind and the hopelessly obsolete, it is not binding for higher individuals,
the most resolute of whom go beyond it and become tragic heroes. Many of them
laugh at the world and at their own weaknesses, thus creating order and rationality in
their souls and lives. Consequently, the best of Shakespeare's comic heroes ridicule
Dogberry's logic. In this sense, he is a non-Aristotelian creator of comic and at the
same time intellectually and emotionally superior characters. Shakespeare's sublime
comic figures are the most faultless characters in his works. Precisely because of this,
however, they create a new type of value rationality through legislative conscience.
Their laughter undoubtedly limits their vision. This is an important restriction.
Should they go further towards heated passion, they would turn into tragic heroes
rather than comic figures. Their special legislative source of rationality provides them
with three types of laughter: at Dogberry's level of rational legislation, at the world's
absent or inadequate rational legislation, and at their own inability to legislate. In
Shakespeare, those in the last level are the highest comic types, e.g., Beatrice and
Benedick. Typically, this is the level where women are most represented.
Moliere operates somewhat differently. As Lowenthal put it: "With the exception of
the Misanthrope, there is not a single person in Moliere's plays who claims the right and
162 / TELOS

the responsibility to create the world in the image of his reason as did the figures of
Shakespeare and Cervantes."1 MoliSre accepts the world of estates as an ethical world of
pre-given rationality providing a safe guide for moral conduct. Of course, Moliere does
not uncritically affirm this world. Unlike Shakespeare, who at the peak of the Renais-
sance could not use Aristotle, Moliere, as Lowenthal pointed out, returns to the Stagirite
through Gassendi. The rationale for his "conformism" is Gassendi's principle:
"Experience teaches me." Thus, this is not a "natural" world: it is a world of learning.
Anyone without prior experience or who has not learned from experience will act fool-
ishly. Anyone who advocates acting against experience and on the basis of authority
alone, as Tartuffe does, is dangerous and deserves ridicule. Lowenthal has emphasized
Gassendi's pluralism and tolerance towards diversity of opinions — more than one of
which can be true, rational and desirable. This is the Aristotelian "golden mean" and
explains why Moliere creates only comic characters, and only once, in the Misanthrope,
comes close to articulating a passion sufficiently strong to sustain a tragedy. Whereas
with Shakespeare love either ignores or opposes money, power and the like, in Moliere's
world it is "normal," "rational" and "humane" to seek them since this is what experience
teaches us. Here the source of rational authority is overwhelmingly external,
and conscience can only be corrective. Three problems arise at this point concerning
the relation between comedy and rationality.
The first is the "secret anthropology" of modern comedy which can be located in
modern comedies, from Shakespeare on. There are certain 'borderline'
anthropological positions in the world of the Shakespearean and post-Shakespearean
comedy which inevitably deserve to be ridiculed. One is misanthropy: in Molifire and
others, laughter, even if understanding and not too harsh, involves hating man.
(Jaques in As You Like It, Tellheim in Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm, and Captain
Brassbound in Shaw's play are laughingly criticized for it.) Another is the total and
uncritical conformity to the rules of conduct provided by any given external authority.
Both of these are related to the principle of rationality in comedy and point towards
that "utopian message" inherent in the genre which led Lessing to prefer it to tragedy.
The "utopian message" can be formulated as follows: "Act in a way so that you will
not become excommunicated from the community either by rising above it — which is
dangerous or ridiculous — or through a self-annihilating attitude — which is
counterproductive and irrational. At the same time, avoid becoming a slave of
convention and preserve your critical faculties."
The second problem applies primarily to Moliere. Hobbes provided an interesting
definition of the comic, typical of his age: "Laughter without offense must be at
absurdities and infirmities abstracted from persons."2 This is the classic formulation
of what Sartre called the alienation of analytical reason which dissolves the totality
of an individual into separate qualities in order to subsequently recombine them
in the alienated concept of Man. Moliere clearly does this. His protagonists are
expressions of certain qualities rather than full-fledged personalities. The intention is
humanitarian, but the result is the mutilation of the wholeness of human characters.
Shakespeare is both more and less cruel. His laughing critique hits the person as a
whole, e.g., Malvolio, but he always stops at the unbreakable unity of human
personality. Thus, he represents a stage of rationalism prior to the development of
analytical reason.

1. Leo Lowenthal, Literature and the Image of Man: Studies of the European Drama and
Novel, 1000-1900 (Boston, 1966), p. 125.
2. Quoted in James Feibleman, In Praise of Comedy (New York, 1939), p. 97.
 LOWENTHAL TRIBUTE / 163

The third problem has to do with testing one's "genuine" nature. This is an integral
part of the relation between rationality and comedy — a recurring situation involving
the progression from the unknown to full knowledge. Tests are typical situations in
drama, including tragedy, e.g., Hamlet. But there is a particular type of testing of
people with educational inclinations which is very close to comedy. Typical of this is
the Prospero-Sarastro attitude: a kind of "pedagogical despotism" seeking the enlight-
enment of the unenlightened and resulting in comic effects. But it is comedy's great
contribution to turn testing from pedagogical tyranny into democratic self-education.
This is not a function of the particular writer, but of the genre itself. It happens in
each of the chosen representative writers. With Shakespeare, testing character involves
seeking out the comic figure's hidden virtues and is nearly always educational, while
only rarely ruthless, as, perhaps, in Falstaffs case. In Moliere, this is a practical
postulate of experience: "see with your own eyes!" In Shaw, it is often the sudden
recognition of one's "secret" nature which usually turns out to be the exact opposite of
the apparent one, thus providing the justification and conclusion of the testing
process. But in all cases, comedy as a genre is democratic and rational in that it does
not accept any superior authority to test others: only reciprocal influences and self-
improvement.
The agents of rationality in comedies typifying the Enlightenment's rebellious
reason are anticipated by Moliere's famous maidservants. As plebeian exemplars of
Hegel's master-slave dialectic, they are the agents of world-historical progress. Even if
one rejects any ideologically predestined idea of progress, the connection between
these stages cannot be denied. What is involved here is value rationality, and it
appears on the level of political enthusiasm — even if the particular subject matter is
not directly political. It is a noble type of reason, but not without dangers for artistic
qualities. Its utmost scorn for instrumental rationality as partly expressed by some
protagonists, e.g., Tellheim, or the artwork itself can degenerate into political pro-
paganda and a cheap didactic attitude. Its source of rationality is entirely internal: its
own rebellious conscience which, however, intends to provide general external
legislation in the form of a new collective authority.
As the only legitimate heir to Shakespeare and Molidre, Shaw creates a complex new
situation. Of course, he does not accept as valid any external authority. He considers
convention, the traditional repository of moral rationality, as worthy only of scorn.
Instrumental rationality does not fare any better: only its analysis turns out to be more
complex. It has a relative rationality, i.e., that of crude material interests. Yet,
because of its absolutely hostile, derisive and scornful attitude to any form of value
rationality, or because of the hypocritical forms of pseudo value-rationality, on
a higher level the whole situation turns out to be irrational — even from the hero's
viewpoint. But to make the situation even more intricate, an exaggerated challenge to
traditions and the world in general by Tanner, Captain Brassbound, and Mrs.
Clandon also lapses into the comic. The reason is not Shaw's "reconciliation with
reality," as many critics claim, but his socialist spirit. The challenge to the whole world
is an important moral gesture even if exaggerated and, therefore, comic. But the
world cannot be redeemed by moral gestures. This recognition leads him to a sceptical
rationality which extends to the stage and creates unparalleled comic situations.

II
Regarding the role of the public in creating rationality in comedy, what needs to be
asked concerns what the public knows and at whom it laughs. In Shakespeare, the
164 / TEWS

audience knows practically everything. Characters, however, are somewhat more mys-
terious, but not totally enigmatic. Some mystery regarding characters is inevitable
since Shakespeare deals with the full complexity of a human totality. At the beginning
one senses whether they are "rather good" or "rather bad," and this is important from
Shakespeare's viewpoint. Since external authority is "nature" and not a moral
instance, we create our rationality and morality through legislative conscience. We are
not good or bad for eternity, but only in particular situations. Of course, the public
progresses from the vagueness of the initial situation to a much more determinate
understanding of the comedies when, at the end, some protagonists end up approved
and others disapproved. But this is not a final truth for Shakespeare. He wrote well-
rounded but open comedies.
As for the target of the audience's laughter in Shakespeare, the answer is that it can
laugh at everyone, and accordingly, only those who can be in principle laughed at are
appropriate protagonists in comedies. Despite the fact that comic figures and scenes also
appear in Shakespeare's tragedies, it is clear that neither Claudius not Hamlet can be
ridiculed. It would be blasphemous to ridicule the first because of the gravity of his
crimes, and it would be equally blasphemous to ridicule the second because of his
greatness and readiness to sacrifice. Of course, characters in Shakespeare's comedies
can be laughed at in various ways and on different levels. If equally respectable people
misunderstand each other and become entangled in pointless quarrels, the audience's
laughter is general, since their behavior is not rational. Such laughter expresses a
deep confidence that "normal," rational relations will eventually be re-established.
This is what happens between Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. If
on the other hand, someone is so stupid and hypocritical that nearly everyone — even
on stage — realizes this, laughter will again be general. But this laughter is one of
resignation: no one can hope to restore order and rationality in Dogberry's head.
In Moliere's case, the public is constituted by common sense people. The audience's
reason determines expectations regarding knowledge of events and characters. Men of
experience want to know everything: they do not tolerate vagueness, but believe they
have a simple and irrefutable criterion of truth: experience evaluated by common
sense. Moliere lives up to these expectations and produces comedies in which
everything is clear from the very beginning, both for the protagonists, as well as for the
audience. As Lowenthal writes: "We, the audience have the answers the people on the
stage would have if they knew as much as we, or if they looked at what was happening
as realistically as we do. Moliere gives us the reality, and whenever the protagonists
appear ridiculous it is because they do not or cannot see it."3 Even names reveal
personal characteristics and comic figures consist primarily of one character trait.
This gives Moli&re's comedies that lucid rationality which led Goethe to characterize
Tartuffe as the inimitable masterpiece of transparently clear artistic construction.
Today, the "adult" audience regards much of Moliere's production "juvenile": a
peculiar punishment for a rationalism too confident of itself. One of Moliere's typical
features contributes to this obsolescence. An important type in his comedies spells out
the "theoretical lessons" as the author's mouthpiece: the raisonneur. His presence, as
well as the fact that one is not allowed to laugh at him, creates an air of pomposity alien
to the comedy, in general, comedies cannot sustain an abundance of fixed principles;
the more in it, the less open the artwork. Shakespeare's greatness as a writer of
comedies lies, among other things, in the fact that he had few doctrines in his
comic plays.
3. Lowenthal, [Link]., p. 129.
 LOWENTHAL TRIBUTE / 165

In the comedy of the rebellious reason of the politicized Enlightenment, the writer
and his selected protagonists (Minna in Lessing, Figaro and Susanne in Beaumarchais)
are the educators, whereas the audience is the educated. At the same time, this provides
an answer to the question of how much the audience knows and what it laughs at. Even if
not all Enlightenment comedies assume no knowledge on the part of the audience, they
all take for granted that this knowledge is inadequate and the ignorant need education
through ridicule. One need only recall some of Molidre's titles such as The School
for Husbands or The School for Wives. But Moliere's audience is well-equipped
with the necessary amount of savvy: there are only some exceptions in need of
education. We laugh at these comedies not because we discover such blunderers in
ourselves. On the contrary, we laugh because the feeling of being the rule and seeing
the exception as something other is entertaining. In contrast to this, "cost fan tutte" is
the maxim of Enlightenment comedy. We are all blunderers: we need the comic
education of those very few who have already emancipated themselves from the
detrimental effects of ignorance, prejudice and obsolete conventions. This education
can be aggressive, useful, sane and narrow-minded, as with Figaro, but it can also be
cathartic and emotionally magnanimous, as with Susanne and Minna von Barnhelm.
This pedagogical attitude runs the danger of falling into didactic dryness and
pomposity, so often seen as the main disease of all Enlightenment attitudes. The inner
danger of "pedagogical tyranny" in Enlightenment comedy is largely eliminated by the
reappearance of a Shakespearean feature: the presence of many noble and morally
developed characters who balance each other and prevent any particular one from
becoming a "general educator."
In Shaw, everyone can, in principle, be ridiculed: all protagonists, the public and
even the writer himself. Shaw's famous grimaces reveal an undisciplinable self-irony.
For Shaw, knowledge was not something "natural." Thus, the dilemma of sufficient or
insufficient knowledge of his public cannot be simply solved by "education." At some
level, all of Shaw's protagonists act rationally. Since, however, each person represents
a unique type of rationality, each of them is irrational for others. It is this constant
relativization of reason that educates the audience and provides the most powerful
source of humor in Shaw's plays. The constant transformation of the rational into the
irrational has three consequences. The first is that one type of rationalism constantly
absorbs and subjugates the other. This informs the audience that we are living in a
fluid and dialectical age. The second is that the plays can in principle be continued.
Thus, at the end of Pygmalion he spells out, at least for the reader, what the
predictable outcome of the Eliza-Higgins relation is. This leads to the third
consequence, i.e., the constant interplay of the rational and the irrational generating
the reader as a new audience for Shaw's comedies. Of course, Shaw is fully aware that
plays have to "stand on their own" on stage. But his long drawn out prefaces and his
bracketed remarks in the play or subsequent to its conclusion on stage require private
reading in addition to simply attending theatrical performances. Of course, this
stretches a genre beyond the limits set by conventional wisdom. It is reminiscent of
Tolstoy's or Victor Hugo's long theoretical descriptions of Napoleonic warfare. Even
the reasons for these insertions are similar. Traditional rationalism only needed a
scene on the stage or an episode in a book to make its point which rested on the
obviousness of its own rationality. In all of these cases, however, this procedure
became highly questionable — with Shaw, even more than with Hugo and Tolstoy.
The reason is clear: in this battlefield full of many variations of instrumental and
value rationality there is not one god but many. It is Max Weber's polytheistic world.
166 / TEWS

Consider the following exchange between Stephen and Undershaft in Major Barbara:
STEPHEN (coldly — almost sullenly): "You speak as if there were half a dozen
moralities and religions to choose from, instead of one true morality and one true
religion." UNDERSHAFT: "For me there is only one true morality; but it might not
fit you, as you do not manufacture aerial battleships. There is only one true morality
for every man; but every man has not the same morality."

Ill
Modern comedy has four basic subject matters: love, fixed ideas, money,
convention, and their most intricate combinations. The choice of the subject matter
depends on the type of rationality prevailing in the given comedy. They also are a
function of whether rational authority is internal or external. A crucial feature of this
genre is that practically all other subject matters are ruled out. Thus, should power
filter into comic situations, rather than serve only as their background, they would
immediately cease to be comic — even in stories with "educational aims" such as the
previously mentioned ones.
In Shakespeare, comic strategems dealing with money play practically no role in his
comedies. Money is an appendage to the character's status or strivings. It is a conditio
sine qua non rather than a conscious goal. Full-fledged instrumental rationality is
characteristic of Shakespeare's majestic monsters, or even the minor scheming
scoundrels, rather than of his comic heroes. Thus Falstaff in The Merry Wives of
Windsor, who in the entourage of Prince Henry is money-hungry, in the comedy is
almost exclusively lecherous. Similarly, Petruchio, in The Taming of the Shrew,
makes no bones about his intention to acquire a substantial dowry. Yet, the comic plot
revolves around the "taming of the shrew" and, on stage, passions in motion rather
than the words attached to them are what count. Ridiculing conventions is not one of
Shakespeare's themes. He accepts their existence but does not see them as something
that could impair one's rationality. Fixed ideas have a subordinate role in
Shakespeare's world and there is one common trait in Shakespeare and Molifcre: both
regard credulity as irrational, and therefore comic, and confidence as rational. Thus,
irrational and ridiculous credulity which exposes the protagonist to laughter comes
about either as a result of a belief in one's all-pervasive wisdom or irresistibility.
The real substance of comic situations in Shakespeare is love. As Lowenthal put it,
"While it may be initially irrational, love creates its own situation, which, from the
seemingly absurd moment of its acknowledgment, becomes a productive basis for a
new rationality."4 At the same time, this explains the unequalled freshness of
Shakespeare's comedies. By placing an emotion par excellence at the center of his
comic plots, Shakespeare turns it into a well-gardened oasis which knows no droughts
and which is rejuvenated in every new era of rationality. What is this "new rationality"
that Lowenthal sees stemming from love? It is "living up to love's promise" — an
attitude of value rationality sui generis: a microcosm that can become the model of
one's whole macrocosm.
In one respect, Moliere is undoubtedly the greatest of the great: he is the most
universalist writer of comedies, in that all four of the genre's representative subject
matters appear in his plays in various but unmistakable combinations. Love is an
important but not an exclusive topic in his comedies — not even a dominant one.
In terms of rationality it does not create it, but it is created by it. It is human, and thus
rational, to marry on the basis of love — this is the value rational aspect. Yet, love
4. Ibid., p. 86.
 LOWENTHAL TRIBUTE / 167

should not be "blind," which means that a Juliet who sacrifices everything for love, is
unimaginable in Moliere's world, as would be even Rosalind with her "unusual"
behavior in As You Like It. Similarly, it is reasonable to observe conventions in these
matters. For instance, it is strongly suggested through ridicule not to have a consider-
able age difference between the spouses. Finally, there is an instrumental nuance in
love's rationality: it is good to love and be loved, but all this should happen between
people who have the "means" for a happy married life, most of all, financial means.
Fixed ideas are an inexhaustible source of humor in Moliere. This is because he is a
man of common sense. His ideal is the Aristotelian golden mean and every excess of
passion becomes irrational and, as such, comic. But there is another reason for
treatingfixedideas comically: in his cosmos there are passions which are by their very
nature irrational and, therefore, comic. These are prudishness, misanthropy,
hypochondria and, most of all, jealousy. This is because jealousy is the classic form of
excessive irrational incredulity. None of these passions are intrinsically "perverted,"
unless they become obsessions blocking elementary rational conduct.
Since in Moliere's world money is useful and, in that sense, a value, it is rational and
therefore not comic as a normal means for the "good life." However, it is irrational,
and therefore comic, as treasure. In Moliere, excessive greed can only apply to
accumulated and never to consumed money. Similarly, convention is a value in itself.
The rational, and therefore not comic, relation to it is acceptance, rather than
rejection. There is no instance in Moliere in which the acceptance of conventions would
be irrational and therefore comic. On the other hand, there are at least two instances
of their not being observed which are thus necessarily comic. One is the transgression
of the borders between estates, e.g., Georges Dandin and his comic failure; the other
is trendiness which exaggerates otherwise accepted modes of behavior and renders them
comical, e.g., The Romantic Ladies. All of this confirms what has been claimed about
the interconnections of value and instrumental rationality, as well as the exclusively
external source of authority in Moliere.
In the comedy of the rebellious reason of the politicized Enlightenment, fixed ideas
play a unique role in creating comic effects. This type of comedy is obsessed with a
specific fixed idea: the invincibility of reason, the moral need to unmask unreason,
and the fanatical belief in the coming era of the "triumph of reason." This is Lessing's,
Beaumarchais', Goldoni's and others' personal conviction. Although its intensity varies
from writer to writer, it is unleashed against opponents of this fixed idea and against
those vacillating in their resolution who thus become the main targets of comic bitter-
ness. The compulsion of this fixed idea in Enlightenment comedies is the source of its
frequently didactic nature. In light of its aggressively ideological character, all other
representative themes play a subordinate role. Money is present but either in a
secondary role, e.g., in Bartolo's and Marcellina's efforts against Figaro, or as simple
symbolic expressions of someone's inadequate rational approach to the world which,
as such becomes the source of the comic effect, e.g., Tellheim's pride with regard to
Minna's money. Of course, love is also present but, unlike Shakespeare's inexhaustible
emotionality, it does not create but only represents rationality. This means that
Shakespeare's protagonists become rational in the process of "living up to love's
promise" to the extent that they "learn about each other" and manage to "assimilate to
each other" while retaining their own individuality. Love is literally a task to be
accomplished in our personality and in that of others; it creates rationality since
there is no ready-made rationality in the world, and it is an end in itself. In
Enlightenment comedies there is no ready-made rationality either. In this sense love's
168 / TEWS

effort is to bring rationality into this world through the partners' struggle for their
right to love each other without interference. Even the character of love as labor is
present, e.g., in the relation between Minna and Tellheim. But love's labor is
definitely not an end in itself: only a symbol of something higher. It is the symbol of
the "cause" of value rationality in general, which does not exist yet, but has to be
created as a new external authority. Here, convention appears often, but usually as a
complex metaphor for unreason, e.g., the count Almaviva.
In Shaw's fully developed comic universe the fixed idea as a theme has a highly
dubious status. Here, what once was framed as a criticism against Shaw has to be
turned into a compliment. The young Lukacs, in his early pre-Marxist period, called
the great playwright the clown of historical materialism. According to Lukacs, Shaw
was a reductionist. He reduced all of his protagonists' high level ideas to their material
basis: he translated their sublime words into their dirty financial equivalent. For him,
"men of ideas" are suspicious: all fixed ideas are either forthright lies or self-delusions.
Shaw actually anticipated a trend now in vogue: it is with him that the intelligentsia as
the "manufacturer of ideas" appears in its segregated social role.
Money is undoubtedly one of Shaw's central subjects. Money is behind everything:
good and bad, war and peace, meaning and apparent self-dedication. Money can buy
the politician, ideas, love, science and literally everything. Paradoxically, the
Undershafts of this world unabashedly professing their love for money are treated
more tolerantly than those telling sublime lies about their unselfishness. The reason
why he regards the lower and upper class Tartuffes as more dangerous than the
Undershafts has to do with their self-deception. As long as Vivie (in Mrs. Warren's
Profession) is not confronted with her mother's ethics, she is inextricably caught in the
net of this egoistic world. Although an eminently rational creature, she behaves
with false sentimentality. When, however, they come to a showdown and Mrs. Warren's
ethics reveal their real nature, Vivie attains her freedom and leaves her mother's world
with a triumphant gesture. Of course, this resoluteness is not a necessary outcome, but
is at least a strong possibility.
In Shaw, love as a subject matter is the eulogy and the exaltation of a new type of
women rather than the occasion to depict reciprocal relations: Shaw is sceptical about
marriage, or even functioning love relations. But he revitalizes the latent "feminist
streak" of modern comedy as a genre: he carries on the tradition of Beatrice,
Rosalind, Moliere's maid-servants, Susanne and Minna von Barnhelm. His Candida
and Lady Cicely represent the optimal proportions of reason and emotion in this
society. The closest thing to "eternal womanhood," which is not a cheap romantic
cliche but a rational being, is the positive female protagonist in Shaw's plays.
Finally, not much can be said about convention as a theme in these comedies. It
makes its appearance and is discussed in ironical social chitchat. No one takes it too
seriously. Providing it unveils itself and does not obstruct the full evolution of one's
own rationality by extorting false sentimental gestures from the protagonists, it has lost
its negative poetic value and is artistically relegated to the background. Perhaps there
is one exception where convention does become valuable comic material. This
happens with the protagonist who gets carried away with his "anti-conventional" zeal
and becomes ridiculous precisely as a consequence.

IV
We are now living in Ionesco's world: an epoch characterized by the disintegration
of reason where rationality is no longer relativized but has become the target of
 LOWENTHAL TRIBUTE / 169

general derision. As a result, what comes out of this constellation, i.e., the absurd
drama, is no longer comedy in the ordinary sense of the genre. Our standards do not
apply to it, least of all those of a typical subject matter, since its exclusive source of
comic inspiration is, in a far-reaching conformity with a problematic philosophical
development, semantic self-analysis. Of course, if something is bom that has never
existed, it is no bastard but a legitimate offspring: it is an enrichment of art rather
than a "deviation." Comic art, however, will sooner or later find its way back to the
relation of the rational and the comic in whose terms its greatest masterpieces have
been created.

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