The Doubling of Death
25
meant to make us identify with them even as they make life so readily
identifiable—they are filled with ordinary things that become, somehow,
transformed. They fetishize life itself. Perhaps, this is the source of the terrible
feeling we get: that beneath the facts and the stark realities, there is something
that is, indeed, hidden—and we can never touch it, never know it, never grasp its
significance. But Haneke does not reduce death—or life—to meaninglessness or
to meaningless violence. He simply implies that the meaning is necessarily
unknown. Plato’s artistic account of the death of Socrates gives us a final
epitaph.
Prepared to die, to take the poison, and become a martyr for Athens,
Socrates is philosophizing about the meaning of it all. Like Haneke, Plato (the
creative artist) is giving us something in-between a documentary and a work of
fiction as he writes The Phaedo. The real Socrates (whatever that means) really
drank the hemlock (whatever that means). And the Socrates we meet in Plato’s
dialogues is thus something of a double. Historical and a work of art ;
philosophical and dramatic; man and character. Plato’s camera stays still and
stable, never pointing away from the commonplace that is so fantastical.
Socrates announces: “[T]he one aim of those who practice philosophy in the
proper manner is to practice for dying and death.” Later, taking account of his
final mundane obligations before death, Socrates turns to Crito and tells him “I
owe a cock to Asclepius; don’t forget to pay the debt.” The death of Socrates
and the death of the cock soon both take place—off-screen.
DePaul University
H. Peter Steeves
Notes
!T o be clear, however, it is not imagination that is engaged when one is viewing art.
Phenomenologically, if this were the case, then the object o f consciousness in art would
not be the play, movie, painting, etc. per se but instead would be some imaginary,
projected object beyond direct perception. Rather, in art there is a fundamental act o f
perception, but the way in which perception functions in the sense o f the aesthetic needs
further explication. This is what is at stake when we say that no one needs to call 911 for
Polonius, but one must still feel the horror o f the death as if it were actual. In the theater,
there is a categoriality at work that allows the action to be taken as real and not-real at the
same time.
2See, e.g., Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by Edward Robinson &
John Macquarrie (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962): 2 4 0 - 1 , 2 4 6 -7 .
3Akira Mizuta Lippit, “The Death o f An Animal,” Film Quarterly, v. 56, no. 1 (Fall
2002): 9-22
4Anthony Lane, “Happy Haneke: Michael Haneke and His M ovies,” The New Yorker (5
October 2009): 63.
5Anthony Lane, “Happy Haneke: Michael Haneke and His M ovies,” The New Yorker (5
October 2009): 63.
6Anthony Lane, “Happy Haneke: Michael Haneke and His M ovies,” The New Yorker (5
October 2009): 63.