Anaxagoras, ancient Greek philosopher, differentiated mind and matter. Mind, unlike matter, "is mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself"... matter is composite, mind is simple. Ah, the purity and independence of the lonely mind!
Poor Brat Farrar, a lonely soul, without affect, disconnected from the material world, disconnected from himself, a man and a mind alone. But at least he loved his horse! RIP, horse.
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The Neoplatonic, medieval Christian theologian known as "Pseudo-Dionysus" posited that what comes from God - and all things come from God - is therefore good. And so evil is merely an absence of this good. An evil person is good in all ways - except when their will operates in this absence. This so-called evil person suffers from... a deficiency.
Lucky Brat Farrar, given quite an opportunity. His life an absence, his being lacking meaning, deficient in impetus... but he shall be given a purpose, a new being and a new identity. Doesn't hurt that that new identity is filthy rich!
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George Berkeley, Empiricist, provoked his fellow philosophers with a simple formula: "to be is to be perceived" - if something were not perceived, it would not exist. Further, he insisted: we only have differing perceptions of things when we see them from different perspectives. Indeed, this is a no-brainer; but still - such an immaterialist stance for an empiricist!
Poor Brat Farrar, never perceived, never really existing. Poor little Patrick Ashby, his own being ended too early. Can one truly become the other? Can Brat achieve existence by taking on the identity of Patrick? And who then is being perceived - the long-dead Patrick, or the newly alive Brat? Who is the true Brat, who was the true Patrick - are the answers only a matter of perspective?
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Henri Bergson, a Metaphysical philosopher, promoted an absolute path to knowledge: we must "enter" that object to grasp that object as it really is. We must use the way of intuition to have true sympathy; we must think in duration to have a true grasp of reality. We must identify with the object of our scrutiny.
Lucky Brat Farrar, able to grasp the reality of tragic young Patrick Ashby, taken before his time. Brat shall enter this persona and understand him, he will identify so completely with Patrick that he will then recognize the incompleteness within himself. Rare is the lonely man who can start his life anew; rarer still, the man who will use his new life to complete the life of another, to achieve justice, to find grace.
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John Dewey, Pragmatist, decried the "spectator theory of knowledge" in which each idea corresponds to a fixed reality. Not so! cried Dewey. Truth is not static nor eternal; thinking is not a quest for truth. "Thinking" is simply the act of trying to achieve an adjustment between self and environment.
Poor Brat Farrar, torn in two and desperately concealing those tears. To give up this new life and be a good man - and so go back to that loneliness, that emptiness? Or to stay in his disguise, to forever move between truth and lie, to divide his true self from his environment? "Truth" for Brat Farrar is a slippery thing, always changing; but he recognizes it when it appears, and comes to like the feel of it. He shall move from spectator in life to participant: a painful journey. It is hard to be a rogue when one is also a thinker; it is harder still to live falsely when one yearns for truth.
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Edmund Husserl, creator of Phenomenology, believed that to understand existence, we must stand back from it, we must pause and detach and reflect. In that space of detachment, we can understand our own body, our own life, our own subjectivity - and with that understanding can come an empathy with the subjective perspectives of others. Will these shared subjective states, this intersubjectivity, then constitute... objectivity?
Lucky Brat Farrar: as he begins to understand his new world, and to understand the living family of that sweet dead boy... so they begin to see him in turn. He moves from detachment to reflection to empathy. They move from wonder to understanding. Perceptions shift, deepen; subjective perspectives meet and a certain objectivity is found. Shall this latest iteration of Brat Farrar be his final self?
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And lucky reader am I! In this world of sadness and anger, I needed a book where understanding was achieved, where subjective states collide but still come together, overlap, connect, where empathy and objectivity did not cancel each other out, where an empty man became full and a broken family became whole, where a happy ending was reached with compassion, forgiveness, and at long last, honesty.
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