Parables of Freedom and Necessity: The Rising Levels of Secularization as Manifested in Two Literary Works Abdelwahab M . Elmessiri Epilogue Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘The Frankeleyn’s Tale” and Bertold Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule seem to have very little in common. Chau- cer’s medieval narrative poem tries to follow the norms of its genre and fulfiil the reader’s expectations, whereas Brecht’s modernist experimental play violates many of the rules of drama laid down by Aristotle and other classical critics. It deliberately shocks the reader out of any facile identi- fication with the characters as well as any willing suspension of disbelief. But despite their many obvious differences, this study argues that their similarities are quite relevant and significant. Both works deal with the themes of human freedom, moral responsibility, and ability to transcend. These are among the major themes of literature throughout time-but they have acquired particular poignancy in our modern time with the rise and gradual unfolding of what I term the “Paradigmatic sequence of sec- ularization.” Since the terms “paradigm” and “secularism” are already quite problematic, and to talk of “a paradigmatic sequence of seculariza- tion” is even more so, some kind of clarification and even redefinition is in order. Paradigms When a critic singles out two literary works for comparison, the choice is not guided by some universally established objective rules, but rather dictated by a certain set of assumptions, norms, criteria, biases, and so on. When he/she engages in the critical act itself, pointing out struc- tural and thematic relations (of similarity and dissimilarity), he/she does Abdelwahab M. Elmessiri is professor emeritus at ‘Ayn Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. Elmessiri: Parables of Freedom and Necessity 45 cosmic naturalistic monism, therefore, dominates, and the primacy of the natural over the human is stressed. With this simplification of human nature and its reduction to the level of nature-matter, the world is caught in the web of materialistic hard causality and determinism, of cause inexorably and unambiguously lead- ing to effect, and of stimulus producing response (just as matter somehow miraculously produces mind). Materialistic (cosmic, naturalistic) monism, the reduction of every- thing to one natural law that is immanent in matter, is the epistemolog- ical basis for a process of deconstruction, neutralization, depersonaliza- tion, and desanctification-not only of nature but also of humanity. Reduced to the level of undifferentiated matter, everything in this way becomes more amenable to measurement, quantification, instrumental- ization, utilization, planning, technocratic engineering, programming; in brief, more amenable to a value-free rationalization that sees reality in terms of a narrow and constricted rational material calculus. The human mind itself, within this naturalistic frame of reference, grants sanctity to nothing and itself becomes an agent of naturalization, dehumanization, and deconstruction. It sees the world (both humanity and nature) as ultimately knowable (and controllable and usable). The light of reason, knowing no limits, penetrates everything like a ruthless X-ray, judging everything by an objective and neutral criteria (firmly rooted in the ultimate category of nature-matter). Though it claims to be a value-free process, in reality it is value- loaded, for it results in (or aims at) the control, conquest, and harnessing of all human and natural resources into the service of the individual with the most power. It thus translates everything into terms of what is use- fuVusable or useless/unusable matter. In other words, there is a thinly veiled ethics of self-interest, conquest, and power behind the facade of neutrality. It might be useful to distinguish here between what I term “the human discourse of altruistic lovers” and “the secular discourse of self-centered imperialists.” Within the context of the discourse of lovers, one knows hisher fellow human being from within and grows weaker on account of this knowledge, for in recognizing the other’s full complexity and human- ness one becomes more sympathetic and altruistic and begins to give and forgive. More knowledge begets more love and weakness. But this is the weakness of someone who has recognized hisher full humanity in him- selfherself and in the other and its irreducibility to natural cupidity and stimuli. It is the weakness of someone who has achieved human strength, for instead of submitting (in a reflexive, natural, rational way) to the iron and monistic laws of natural necessity, such an individual freely rises to the generous laws of human complexity. In other words, it is a human strength that results in the primacy and autonomy of the human. Within the context of the discourse of the self-centered imperialists, on the other hand, one knows the other from without and consequently 46 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 13: 1 grows stronger, for he/she then can use this knowledge to manipulate and dominate the other, who is nothing but a useful/usable or useless/unusable object. More knowledge leads to more control and strength. But this is the strength of someone who has shed off hisher humanness completely, who has failed to rise to the level of human laws and instead has become a natural, material, nonhuman individual who has submitted to Darwin’s iron laws of natural and physical necessity. Such an individual manifests natural law. In other words, it is natural strength that results in the subversion and eventual annihilation of the human. This is actually the entire history of secularism: It started off with the declaration of the marginalization (or death) of God and of the centrality of humanity and/or nature. Now, however, it is declaring the decentering and death of humanity (postmodernism) and the imminent death of nature (ecological disaster). The Paradigmatic Sequence of Secularization So far we have talked of a “secularism paradigm” and a “history of secularism,” which implies some kind of tension, if not contradiction. Paradigms are coherent structures that help us classify and comprehend reality and draw cognitive maps thereof. They derive their generalizing and classifying power from their relative independence from concrete history (specific times and places), for they overlook details and skip sequences. To increase their explanatory power without necessarily diminishing their generalizing and classifying power, I have tried to bring them closer to time and place by postulating what I call a “paradigmatic sequence.” Rather then view a paradigm as a timeless mental construct, it could be viewed as a coherent structure, complete only in potentio, that unfolds concretely in time through different historical phases. The dif- ferent traits making up the paradigm are actualized gradually through different aspects and sectors of reality. The secularism paradigm has been unfolding since the Middle Ages. The first social sector to be sec- ularized was the economic: the creation of economic enclaves outside the feudal economy, whose sole purpose was profit and that were unreg- ulated by the Christian concept of fair price. In other words, economic activity became exclusively economic, deriving criteria of validity from itself. This was followed by the secularization of the political sector during the Renaissance: the theory of the state as an end in itself (hence there is a ruison Setut) and its separation from the church and from all moral and human ideals. The secularization of the philosophical outlook in the eigh- teenth century (empiricism, rationalism, and materialism, namely, either the mind or matter referring to itself) was followed by the secularization of the imagination in the nineteenth century (romantic literature and art and Elmessiri: Parables of Freedom and Necessity 47 the rise of the organic metaphor) and by the secularization of dreams and personal conduct in the twentieth century (the democratization of hedonism and the determination to do one’s own thing). The process continues, covering different aspects of one’s life, penetrating deeper and deeper into its farthest recesses till we come to the paradigmatic final moment where all aspects of human activity become autonomous, self-validating, and self-referential, outside the individual’s grip and choice. Consequently all human activities are divorced from humanity and “liberated” from human norms, which leads to the total desanctification of humanity and nature and to the decentering and debunking of humanity, which confronts all aspects of its life as alien to itself. Rebellion is absurd; submission is both realis- tic and rational. The nature-matter paradigm dominates completely, dispelling all illusions of human freedom. The paradigmatic final moment is a hypo- thetical moment, for it is the impossible moment of the total realization of the paradigm. Even though it is hypothetical and impossible, we come very close to it in social Darwinism, child pornography, nuclear tests, the standardization of modem life, and related trends. Probably it was actu- ally realized in Nazi Germany, where one of the most thorough forms of materialistic utilitarian rationalism dominated, where old people and handicapped children were classified rationally as “useless eaters,” where Jews, Gypsies, Polish intellectuals, and others were deemed disposable “human surplus.” Using the paradigmatic sequence of secularization sketched above, a comparison between Chaucer’s narrative poem and Brecht’s play might prove quite revealing. The first was written at the time when the secularization sequence was about to unfold; the second, immediately before the Second World War and after the secularizing sequence had been more or less realized. The narrator of Chaucer’s tale is the “Frankeleyn,” a substantial landowner in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Not being of noble birth, he did not inherit the land he owned; he bought it. In other words, he is basically a “bourgeois” character (like the Miller, the Merchant, and that medieval feminist, the Wife of Bath), but he has aristocratic-agrarian longings. He is part of the new economic order, but his dreams and norms belong to the old. The hero of Brecht’s play, on the other hand, is a transnational imperialist mer- chant who has achieved a high degree of rational self-discipline, who has adapted himself completely to the laws of the market, and who entertains no dreams of nobility and transcendence. The difference between the Frankeleyn’s tale and that of Brecht’s Merchant parallels the difference between the first stages of the secularizing sequence, where only the economic sector was secularized and the individual’s dreams were still private and free, and the final stages of seculariza- tion, where all human activities manifest natural law and submit to nat- ural necessity. 48 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 13:l The Exception and the Rule Underlying Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule is a concept of the human being as an isolated individual motivated and determined exclu- sively by economic self-interest. Reducing everything to the level of economic law, this natural “economic man” is unable to enter into any human relationship. Thus, the play opens with a simple schematic out- line of the opposing forces and of the nature of their conflict, which is almost exclusively economic. It is a play about “one who exploits and two who are exploited” (p. 11 1),6 or, to phrase it differently, about the human individual reduced to the economic and the moral to the mate- rial. Never entering in an internal relationship as lovers, friends, or rela- tives, the characters remain allegorized in terms of economic function and deconstructed in terms of profession. The dramatis personae does not include a single proper name. The faceless, nameless characters are sim- ply tabulated as Merchant, Guide, Coolie, Two Policemen, Innkeeper, Widow, Leader of the Second Caravan, Judge, and Two Colleagues. All act according to type, manifest only their class interest, and never dissent or deviate from them. Self-centered and self-referential “economic man” is unrestrained by any laws external to him; he simply serves his own interest and makes his own rules. But he also lives in a universe ruled by the natural laws of the market, to which he has to submit if he is to survive. In other words, he oscillates between an illusory dualism of self vs. world but eventually is engulfed by a monistic world of natural necessity. His world resembles a Darwinian jungle where “sick men diebut strong men fight,” where only the “fittest” survive, and where “the weak lag behindbut the strong sur- vive” (p. 113). It is a world bereft of all meaning, for the only reality in it is that of senseless competition and the accumulation of power. Inevitably this irresistible rule of the market-jungle, with its ethics of power, is ele- vated to the status of a moral ideal to be followed and revered-“and that is how it should be” (p. 127). The Merchant, a limitless “economic man,” is a truly imperialistic character, both solipsistic and insatiable. As nothing satisfies him, he must be ever conquering a new territory or yet another human being. Never loving or hating, never entering into a human relationship, he is always triumphant over something or someone. He first fires the Guide, then breaks down the Coolie and eventually kills him. Viewing the Coolie as merely a means of production, he mumbles in his anger that he should have taken a “more expensive” one, for the more expensive tools “repay your investment” (p. 112). Nature is treated as nothing more than an object for conquest, for it must be manipulated and used, broken down and ravaged to secure its treasures. In one of his lyrical Darwinian out- bursts, the Merchant links his exploitation of “brother” man to his rape of “mother” nature: Elmessin: Parables of Freedom and Necessity 49 Why should the earth give up its oil, And why should this coolie cany my baggage? To get the oil we have to struggle Both with the earth and with the coolie. (p. 119) This attitude of imperialist mastery reaches its dramatic peak after the Merchant’s conquest of the river, when he, with his revolver pointed at the Coolie’s back, forces the latter to cross the desert and once more breaks into a Darwinian chant: This is how man masters the desert and the rushing river. This is how man masters man. The oil, the oil we need, is his reward. (p. 125) This motif of the subjugation of “brother” man and “mother” nature is all-pervasive and results in a total objectification and com- modification of humanity. But the irony is that in objectifying human- ity and nature, the Merchant turns himself into an object; in instru- mentalizing others, he instrumentalizes himself. He is aware that in a world without human or moral values and populated by limitless, insa- tiable, self-centered, and self-interested egos like himself, it would be stupid not to be constantly on guard. There can be no sleep in a con- tractualized world devoid of trust. This is what Macbeth, to his pro- found sorrow, came to realize after the murder of gracious Duncan. Macbeth, during the agony of his guilt, hears a voice telling him “Sleep no more” (Act 11, Scene 2). But the system of values to which Macbeth subscribes, even as he violates it, envisions humanity in complex terms, as a unique creature with moral burdens, not simply as a rational object with no heart or mind. In Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule, on the other hand, as demon- strated earlier, humanity is mere matter and natural physical strength is the only criterion. Thus, “a strong man asleep is not stronger than a weak man asleep” (p. 128). This simple mathematical, rational, and logical deduction leads to the ultimate form of alienation: the individual’s self- denial of the simplest form of human activity. “Man shouldn’t have to sleep,” says the Merchant. This is no external voice haunting him the way it did Macbeth; it is rather the voice of cool, level-headed, and rational calculation. At this point the circle of conquest is complete, for the Merchant, hav- ing vanquished the Coolie, the desert, and the river, has also conquered himself. He too becomes a mere means of production, a tool completely engulfed in the vertigo of a blind dynamism whose moral or psychologi- cal objectives have never been defined. This is the irony of “economic man”: in his instability he breaks through all limits, denying their very existence, and thus becomes a law unto himself. But then the one who dreams of absolute power and freedom finds himselfherself in a lawless 50 universe without any freedom or inner security, a universe that turns one ultimately into a mere instrument without will or choice-a simple mani- festation of rational, natural economic law. During the trial in Brecht’s play, the Guide sums up the universe he is moving into: “In the system which they createdbumanity is an excep- tion” (p. 141), because what dominates here are monistic, deterministic, and economic laws that deny humanity’s ability of transcendence, its complexity and duality, and the possibility that the individual can be motivated by noneconomic and nonmaterial incentives. A simple human act motivated by love or even by fear-the Coolie’s motives are not clearly noble-has no place in this world. When the Coolie offers the Merchant his flask of water, the latter shoots him for giving water to his enemy. An altruistic act that does not nec- essarily serve one’s own economic self-interest is an irrational “excep- tion” and, in the Merchant’s words, “one must go by the rule, not by the exception” (p. 141). One must go, that is, by the rational economic rule rooted in the uniform natural laws immanent in matter, not by the irra- tional exception that results from human freedom and choice. Even if the Coolie were in reality acting in a human way and, after transcend- ing his class antagonism, gave the water flask to the Merchant, the lat- ter, operating in terms of the natural discourse of imperialists and espousing its ethics of self-interest, power, and conquest, acted in “self- defence,” for from a natural rational point of view “he couldn’t assume it was a flask.” The Coolie, in other words, had no reason to give the Merchant something to drink. The Merchant, let it be remembered, did not belong to the same class as his carrier and therefore had to expect the worst from him: “The accused acted, therefore, in justifiable self- defence-it being a matter of indifference whether he was threatened or must feel himself threatened” (pp. 142-43). The legalistic language concluding the play is called for by the dra- matic context, but it also expresses the world outlook developed in the play. Its precision is that of the language of contractual, objective rela- tionships of a value-free rational utilitarianism, of a Darwinian jungle where the ethics of self-interest and power dominate, a godless universe of self-centered imperialists-yet helpless naturalists-who ravage both humanity and nature and bleed them both to death, and, in so doing, liq- uidate their own humanness. That this world has been reduced to the level of collective rational economic rules and marketplace machinations is quite clear, but this is not the last word. This economic jungle is also framed by the play- wright’s didactic exhortation: Humanity must transcend. In both the prologue and epilogue to this work, Brecht (despite his ideological commitment to materialism) affirms the principle of transcendence, of human beings unconfined by any “natural order,” persistently question- ing, always going beyond established limits. If a rapacious pattern of behavior is established, as it is in this play, the reader is invited to with- The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 13: 1 Elmessin: Parables of Freedom and Necessity 51 draw, to judge, to see the “bloody confusion,” “the rule,” the “ordered disorder,” the “planned caprice,” and the “dehumanized humanity” for what they really are-mere “abuses,” temporary phenomena to be “altered” by a mind that can create order out of disorder, that can tran- scend economic self-interest and Darwinian ethics, and that can rise to higher human laws. But all elements of transcendence in The Exception and the Rule exist outside the dramatic context proper. They appear rather in the didactic frame, the play itself remaining devoid of any dialectic potential that might challenge the ruthless cycle of economic determinism. The Frankeleyn’s Tale In Chaucer’s “The Frankeleyn’s Tale,” we have a surprisingly similar situation-but only up to a point. Even though the world of the “Franke- leyn’s Tale” is highly ceremonious, where passions are implicit and where both good and evil are mostly latent, there are nevertheless some striking though subtle similarities with The Exception and the Rule. Even though there are no “economic men” in this medieval narrative poem, there exists an unmistakable insatiability that pulls the characters into a ruthless power struggle that enslaves them all. The faithful wife, Dorigen, deeply saddened by the departure of her husband Arveragus, indulges in an unbridled and uninhibited sorrow (not unlike the insatiable desire for conquest characteristic of the Merchant in Brecht’s play). She weeps for the absent husband, voicing her indignation at the ships that come and go without him, even protesting against the very divine scheme of nature with its “grisly rokkes blake”’ (“black and grisly rocks”) (1. 131): With her faith shaken, she questions even God’s wisdom: But, Lord, thise grisly feendly rokkes blake, That seemen rather a foul confusiun Of werk than any fair creacioun Of swich a parfit wys God and a stable, Why han ye wroght this werk unresonable? See ye nat, Lord, how mankinde it destroyeth? ... (11. 140-44,148) (But Lord, these fiendish rocks are laid In what would rather seem a foul confusion Of work than the creation and conclusion Of a God so perfect, wise, and stable, Why madest T ~ Q U Thy work masonable? Lord, seest Thou not haw they destroy mankind?) ... 52 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 13: 1 This possessive, narcissistic humanity-centered view of nature is somewhat reminiscent of the Merchant’s economistic, self-centered, utilitarian attitude and his determination to control and possess every- With this challenge to God, there is also an implicit doubt of the pos- sibility of transcendence and a subtle shift in perspective. We leave the world of piety and conjugal love, of loyalty to a higher law, and move to a pagan world replete with earthly paradises: thing. . . . craft of mannes hand so curiously Arrayed hadde this gardin, trewely, That never was ther gardin of swich prys, But if it were the verray paradys. (11. 181-84) (the hand of man with such cunning craft Had decked this garden out in pleach and graft There never was a garden of such price Unless indeed it were in paradise.) This is a world of young lovers in the service of Venus who pray to Apollo, and whose love does not bring peace and harmony but rather caus- es one to languish “as W e dooth in helle” (1.222). The counterpointing of the image of an earthly paradise with a fury in hell is quite significant, recalling in some aspects “economic man’s” dream of complete freedom and his subsequent loss of all freedom in practice. The paradise of natural lawlessness has become the hell of natural necessity and inevitably. When the pagan youth, Aurelius servant of Venus, approaches the impatient Dorigen to express his love, she asks him half-jocularly, but as we know on the basis of her sad soliloquy also half-seriously, to change God‘s plan: I seye, what ye han maad the coost so clene of mkkes that ther nis no stoon y-sene. (1 1.267-68) (when, I say, you clear the coast So clean there’s not a single stone to boast.) If he were to achieve this objective, then she would love him “best of any man.” And in a very solemn tone she adds: “Have heer my trouthe in all that ever I can” (1 1.269-270). Wretched Aurelius, driven by his desii to possess Dorigen, tums to his brother, a scholar who once saw a book about “ma@ naturel” (natural magic) ( 1.3%), the precursor of modem science and the whole ideology of conquest and power. The narrator takes pains at this point in the narrative Elmessiri: Parables of Freedom and Necessity 53 to remind us of the world of piety and harmony, of which we have already lost sight, when he recalls that the Holy Church does not approve of such a practice, which is considered to deal in mere illusions (1.406). Aruelius and his brother go to a magician in Orleans who not only impresses them by his power but also drives a hard bargain: he demands one thousand pounds. From the world of love and then a pagan world of earthly paradises, we have now arrived in the world of power and cash. Once assured of his fees, the magician takes out his astronomical engines of power, the tables of Toledo (1. 57 1 )--a clear reference to Muslim sci- ence-but without its ethical and metaphysical underpinnings. Via calcu- lations and equations, he achieves “this miracle” (1. 57 l), a usage of the term in reference to magic, which is a forerunner of our quasi-religious belief that science will bring about salvation. Aurelius, falling at once at his master’s feet, thanks the Lady Venus-not God-and goes to possess Dorigen. By this point in the narrative, all characters are more or less deprived of their freedom. Dorigen is bound by her vow to Aurelius; Aurelius is indebted to the magician: the magician is demanding his money; and Arveragus, upon his return, finds himself bound by his wife’s vow. This determinism and entrapment in external material circumstances are quite reminiscent of The Exception ofthe Rule. In both cases, insatiability and the desire to achieve control lead to their very opposite: confimemmt with- in the iron laws of necessity. Dorigen, like Aurelius before her, contem- plates suicide, the ultimate sin of self-annihilation, which is ironically reminiscent of the Merchant’s decision not to sleep! What passes through her mind at this moment are scenes of lust and lechery, of violated maid- ens, of self-centered men dominating women: a world of self-centered imperialist conquest and control. Gone is the world of the altruistic lovers, of harmony and mutuality. “The Frankeleyn’s Tale,” like that of The Exception and the Rule, cel- ebrated a different world, a world of altruism in which there is neither con- queror nor conquered, where there are no debts to be paid or credits to be collected. Love binds the knight Arveragus and his lady Dorigen, and even though he is “hir housbonde and hir lord” (1. 13), who has “lordship as men had over hir wyves” (1. 14) “of his free wil” he has decided that: Ne sholde upon him take no maistrye Agany hir wil, ne kythe hir jalousye, But hir obeye and folwe hir wil in a1 As any lovere to his lady shal. (11. 19-22) ([He would not exercise] his authority, Against her will or show jealousy, But would obey in all with simple trust as any lover of a lady must.) 54 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 13: 1 The knight Arveragus had wanted “the name of soveraynettee” only for the dignity of “his degree,” not for any inner satisfaction (1 1. 23-24). Dorigen, in turn, has decided to be his “humble trewe wyf * (1. 29). The narrator then briefly digresses to point out that love and (imperialist) dom- ination (“maistrye”) are two different things: For o thing, sires, saufly dar I seye: That frendes everich other moot obeye, If they wol longe holden companye Love wol nat been contreyned by maistrye; When maistrye comth, the god of love anon Beteth hise wings, and farewell! he is gon! Love is a thing as any spirit free; Wommen of kinde desiren libertee, And nat to ben consteyned as a thral; And so doon men, if I sooth seyen shal. (1 1. 32-42) (For there’s one thing, my lord, it’s safe to say; Lovers must each be ready to obey The other, if they would long keep company. Love will not be constrained by mastery When mastery comes the god of love anon Stretches wings and farewell! he is gone! Love is a thing as any spirit free; Women by nature long for liberty And not to be constrained or made a thrall, And so do men, if I may speak for all.) The calculus of happiness in love is different from the rational math- ematical calculus that dominates the secular world of the market and imperialist conquest. The one who gives more receives more: Loke who that is most paceint in love, He is at his avantage al above. (11.43-44) (Whoever’s the most patient under love Has the advantage and will rise above the other.) This, then, is the world portrayed in the prologue; it provides an alter- native to the rule of determinism and self-interest. But unlike The Excep- tion and the Rule, this moral alternative does not stand out in isolation from Elmessin: Parables of Freedom and Necessity 55 the rest of the drama. On the contrary, it is fully worked out, concretely and dramatically, within the narrative itself. The change comes when an impa- tient Dorigen shakes off her despair and thoughts of suicide, transcends her situation, and decides to tell her husband the whole story. And Arveragus, refusing to surrender to the iron laws of necessity and self-interestk it his ~tura l jealousy or his rational legal title of sovereignty-rises to the higher laws of humanity: “Trouthe is the hyeste thing that man may kepe,” says he, asking his wife to keep her vow, to freely conform to the higher law of morality rather than slavishly submit to the iron law of necessity. The constraining cycle thus is broken and, rather than subjugation to blind necessity, the inner laws of human love are triumphant, for all the charac- ters successfully choose to be free. Aurelius is overwhelmed by this nobil- ity of mind, this “gentillesse,” and in turn decides: That fro his lust yet were him lever abyde Than doon so heigh a cherlish wrecchednesse Agayns franschyse and alle gentillesse! (1 1.794-96) (to forego his passion than to force An act on her of such a churlish kind, And against such nobility of mind.) He not only returns Dorigen to her husband but also makes a vow: “My trouthe woul I kepe, I wol nat lye” (1.842). Thereupon he goes to the magician to relate the story of the new freedom stemming from his inner commitment to human law and his ability to transcend. Roused by pity for Dorigen and her husband, moved by the nobility of his example, and going beyond narrow self-interest, he tells the “philosophre”: . . . right as frely as he sent hir me, As frely sente I hir to him agyn. This a1 and som, there is namore to seyn. (1 1.876-79) (I sent her back as freely then as he Had sent her to me, let her go away. That’s the whole story, there’s no more to say.) The magician is expectedly overwhelmed and, rather than insist on his cash, he recognizes the freedom of being human, of conforming to inner human laws instead of to the laws of external necessity. He also decides to emulate that “gentil dede” by forgiving Aurelius’s debt. The Exception and the Rule ends with an urgent reiteration of the Prologue’s moral exhortation, for the human possibilities conjured up 56 there have been frustrated brutally in the dramatic context itself. “The Frankeleyn’s Tale” ends with harmony restored and reasserted and with the speaker posing a triumphant rhetorical question: “Which was the most free, as thinkest yow?” (1. 894) (Which seemed the finest gentleman to you?” [more literally “most generous”]). He is inviting the readers to share in that freedom of choice resulting from the triumph of the human over the physical and the natural, and the triumph of “gentillesse” over contract and cupidity. It might seem foolhardy to try to identify a literary work with its broader sociohistorical context, but nevertheless a grasp of the relation- ship between the one and the other, no matter how tenuous it might be, enlightens and enriches the work. Chaucer’s world, it seems, is one in which the necessitarianism of our secular modem times, with its denial of the possibility of moral choice and transcendence, was beginning to emerge. There was still available, however, an alternative view of humanity. Thus, harmony might be violated but also restored; freedom might be undermined but also reaffirmed. In the deterministic world of The Exception and the Rule, all human relations are frozen and all humanity is objectified into classes and functionalized into means of production (a world not unlike Nazi Germany) without any possibility of regeneration. Nothing is left for the artist but to preach a humanistic alternative, knowing beforehand that he/she is being unrealistic and visionary, that is, a revolutionary. The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 13: 1 Epilogue The issue of freedom and necessity, as indicated above, is both sig- nificant and relevant to all human beings, but I would argue that it is more so for people in the Third World (the Muslim world included). We stand at the threshold of modernity (more or less like Chaucer himself and his Frankeleyn), and therefore can see it with a kind of detachment. We not only see the sequence of secularization but also its consequences (e.g., alienation, imperialism, economical disaster, and reification). We cannot be as jubilant as the early secularizers of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, who embarked on the project of secular modernity with such splendid innocence and noble naivete. Unlike us, they had not heard of instrumental reason and deconstruction, of Eliot’s disillusioned “The Wasteland” or Beckett’s absurdist Waiting for Godot, of Nietzsche wel- coming nihilism as a permanent guest in our midst, or of Demda wel- coming all of us to a world of gliding signifiers without anything being signified. Unlike us, they had not been through the imperialist pillage of the world, the Holocaust, or Chernobyl. But some of us like to argue that precisely because we stand at the threshold of secular modernity, not completely encapsulated in it the way the West is yet aware of the consequences of modernity, we will have a choice, no matter how limited. This feeling of having a choice, true or illu- Elmessiri: Parables of Freedom and Necessity 57 sory, is what underlies the overdue concern with the moral significance of literary works. A moral stance is impossible without the possibility of a choice. Without it, there is either the nightmare reality of modernism, where heroes are metamorphosed into roaches and decisions are made in the full knowledge that everything is doomed to failure, or the phantas- magoric unreality of postmodernism, where simulacra replaces real objects and things happen for no obvious reason. The parables of freedom and necessity are important for all individuals, at all times, and in all places. But for people in the Third World, they might have more urgency, immediacy, and relevance. Endnotes 1. See my “Paradigms and the Islamization of Knowledge” (Cairo: IIIT-Cairo Office, 1992), Monograph (in Arabic). 2. Another way to approach this same problem from a completely different cul- tural tradition is to analyze the Arabic verb na/ayu, which means “to articulate” or sim- ply “to talk, speak, or utter.” The words man~iq (logic) and nitdq (boundary) are derived from the same root. We notice the presence of two opposite dimensions in the term: one objective (boundary, logic), the other subjective (to utter and speak), with the middle level dimension of reconciliation (to articulate). There is a form of this verb that describes the comparatist’s work: istunkzqu, which means literally “to cause to articulate or utter.” So when we say that the comparatist has istanfuqa the works com- pared, we are actually saying that the texts are uttering their own words and thoughts because the comparatist has caused them to do so. Without himher they are mute. On the other hand, the active comparatist cannot say anything except through the texts: without them he/she is mute. Nothing exists in itself and nothing exists exclusively for us. The comparatist and the texts exist through each other. Although each has his/its inactive autonomy, for the active life they need each other. To put it in different words, the rationale for a comparative study of any two works is something that lies both in the work compared and the comparatist. 3. This argument is not exactly completely new, for it is implicit in the works of many authors. Max Weber, for one, assumes some kind of relatedness, if not synonymity at times, between such terms as “secularize,” “modernize.” “rationalize,” “desanctify,” and “disenchantment.” In other wods, like many other sociologists. he assumes the exis- tence of some kind of unified “secular” world outlook. Samuel Huntington, in his essay ‘The Clash of Civilizations,” quotes various state men& from the works of a number of authors, which implies a comprehensive and corn- plex paradigm of secularism. For instance, there is George Weigel’s statement about “the un-secularization of the world,“ Bernard Lewis’s reference to “our secular present,” and Kamal Ataturk’s attempt to build “a modem, .secular, Western nation state.” See ‘Toward a More Complex and Explanatory paradigm of Secularism,” in John Keane, ed. The Col- hpse of Secularism (forthcoming). 4. The concept of nature in western philosophical discourse is central but quite problematic. The romantic aura that has surrounded it weakens its explanatory and analytical power. Therefore, I suggest that whenever the term nature occurs, it should be read as nature-mutter, and thus naturalistic would be synonymous with material- istic. 5. I distinguish between duality and dualism: Duality implies a relationship or even a dialogue between two elements that, even though unlike each other, still have some traits in common. Therefore they can interact in a meaningful way without merging. Dualism occurs when two element.. of equal status and power are diametrically opposed and thu5 58 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 131 can never experience any kind of interaction. On the other hand, one element can eventu- ally absorb the other, replacing the dualism by a monism. 6. Bertolt Brecht, The Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays, trans. Eric Bentley (New York: Grove Press, 1965). To reduce the number of footnotes, all page numbers will be cited in the body of the essay itself. 7. Walter W. Skeat, ed., Chaucer: Complere Works (London: Oxford University Press, 1%5). 637-48. The first edition was published in 1894. 8. All modernizations are from Nevi11 Coghill, Geofiey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1952), 425-40. ’ I The Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference The Association of Muslim Social Scientists Call for Papers If this year passes as quickly as others have, the Association of Muslim Social Scientists will be 25 years old in October 19%. in shii’ Alkih. This 25th year calls for a grand once-in-a-lifetime silver jubilee conference, for which your participation is solicited more than ever before. As always, the conference will be held during the last weekend of October, from October 25 to 27, 1996 in Hemdon, Virginia. To make the conference more exciting and interesting, this year’s theme is “Islam and Social Change in the Modern World,” with an emphasis on Southeast Asia. The deadline for submission of abstracts (250300 words only) is June 30, 1996. Final papers must be postmarked on or before August 31, 1996. Abstracts of all accepted presentations will be printed and distributed to par- ticipants at €he confemce. The A M S S plans to include completed papers in the proceedings of the conference. Participants are urged to emphasize the scholary standards of a professional convention. The AMSS will incur the boardig and lodging expenses of all pre- senters. There is absolutely no possibility of supporting or subsidizing travel to Washington, DC for nonpresenters. The three best papers by students will be selected for recognition awards and subsequent inclusion in the American Jour- nal of Islamic Social Sciences (MISS). I All correspondence in this regard should be addressed to: Dr. Basheer Nafi \ 555 Grove Street Hemdon, VA 22070 We await your submissions! WaSSaIam.