E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten
Hoffmann Philosophies of Crime Fiction
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-84344-140-3
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-84344-140-3
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Josef Hoffmann was Emeritus Professor of Social Law at the University of Applied Sciences Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He published books on social justice for children and on the human right to enjoy the arts. A lifelong devotee of crime fiction, he wrote numerous articles for magazines and blogs on the subject. Sadly Professor Hoffmann passed away in 2015.
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Crime Fiction’s emergence from the Spirit of Western Philosophy
The definition of crime fiction and which texts it incorporates is highly controversial. Similarly, what constitutes philosophy, and which texts form a part of it, is equally controversial. What is more, there is also debate regarding which texts belong to the early phase of crime fiction and what may be considered the spirit of western philosophy. We are entering uncertain territory, but this should not hinder us in crossing it.
It is agreed that Edgar Allan Poe’s (1809–1849) detective stories, published from 1841 onwards, are an important turning point. Consequently, the early phase of crime fiction must have begun prior to this period in order to come to a climax here. Which stories, then, can be considered as pioneering works of this genre? My approach in addressing this question is a pragmatic one. Probably the most widely read history of crime fiction is Bloody Murder by Julian Symons. In particular, Symons names Voltaire’s Zadig (1747), William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794) and Eugene Francois Vidocq’s Mémoires (1828) as Poe’s immediate predecessors. The first two works are different from the third in that they are obviously popular fiction, while Vidocq’s memoirs resemble a documentary narrative while actually displaying the typical traits of a novel. Vidocq (1775 – 1857), a former criminal and convict, founded the criminal investigation department of Paris in 1810. His book may be viewed as an early work of criminology, which cannot be said of the other two. Another significant difference is the fact that Voltaire (1694 – 1778) and William Godwin (1756 – 1836) were well-known philosophers and developers of theories. Vidocq, on the other hand, was more practical in confronting and investigating crime. For this reason, his work yields few results in our context. Nonetheless, it shows that the beginnings of crime fiction are not only to be found in the spirit of philosophy, but also in the history of crime prevention and the police, as well as in the reporting of the same. Instead, I would like to introduce two writers that Symons may have missed, probably as a result of his lack of familiarity with German literature. Indeed, German crime fiction does not find any mention in Bloody Murder. For one thing, Friedrich von Schiller (1759 – 1805) is missing, who wrote The Criminal from Lost Honour (1785), as well as The Ghost-Seer (1788) and a prologue to the collection Pitaval (1792). Additionally, Schiller also composed philosophical texts alongside his plays and poems. The second absent writer is E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776 – 1822) with his crime story Mademoiselle de Scuderi (1819). Hoffmann was an academic who was familiar with philosophical ideas and writings of his time. His stories influenced Poe’s own writing. Stephen Knight includes Schiller and Hoffmann in his history of crime fiction, but unfortunately he underestimates their influence on the genre. There is no denying that Poe is considered to be the main contributor to the modern crime and detective story. But what does Poe have to do with philosophy? Quite a lot, in my opinion, as I will demonstrate towards the end of this chapter. For now, it is sufficient to mention that Poe did, after all, compose a longer, rich text of nature philosophy in ‘Eureka’ (1848). So, in crime fiction’s Voltaire, Godwin, Schiller and Poe we have already found four philosophers and thus the first sign of the emergence of modern crime fiction from the spirit of philosophy. There is also a second link, with regard to content. The American philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote a very brief introduction to philosophy entitled ‘What Does It All Mean?’ In this and other writings, he addresses typical topics and questions of philosophy: ‘how do we know anything?’, ‘what is truth?’, ‘other minds’, ‘the mind-body problem’, ‘the meaning of words’, ‘free will’, ‘right and wrong’, ‘justice’, ‘death’, and ‘the meaning of life’. Most of these themes can also be found in crime fiction, albeit in a manner quite different to philosophical studies. For now, these are merely two clues. I shall discuss these themes further in order to prove that crime fiction has emerged from the spirit of philosophy.
For now, let us look at Voltaire’s philosophical short novel Zadig; or the Book of Fate. At the centre of this novel we find a crime, the interpretation of clues and the solving of a mystery, and yet this is not a crime novel as such. The different elements of the narrative are joined in a way different from what we would expect in a detective story. Why, then, is it considered to be a precursor of the crime story? Zadig, the story’s hero, displays investigative brilliance when the queen’s dog and the king’s horse both disappear at the same time. Zadig describes the animals to the search party without, he claims, ever having seen them. This leads to him being suspected of stealing them. Because the dog and the horse are found, the suspicions prove to be ill-founded. What remains is the accusation of having lied about seeing nothing. During the trial, Zadig explains in detail how he was able to deduce the animal’s traits by examining their tracks on the forest path. ‘I noticed the track of an animal in the sand,’ he said, ‘and it was easy to see that it was that of a small dog. Long faint streaks upon the little elevations of sand between the footmarks convinced me that it was a bitch with hanging teats, showing that she must have had puppies not many days since. Other scrapings of the sand, which seem to have grazed all the way beside the forepaws, indicated that she had very long ears; and, as the imprint of one foot was always fainter than those of the other three, I judged that the lady dog of our august Queen was, if I may venture to say so, a little lame.’ Similarly, he explains how he was able to describe the horse based on its tracks, without ever having seen the animal himself. As a result, he is freed of any penalty.
From the point of view of the crime story it is apparent that Voltaire gives away a moment of suspense. Firstly, he should have accurately described the tracks found by Zadig, to allow the reader to wonder about the creature that caused them. Then he could have allowed Zadig to present the solution himself. However, Voltaire is not interested in this type of dramatic suspense, but rather in another. The novel carries the significant subtitle ‘or the Book of Fate’. Zadig’s adventures and misfortunes are constructed in such a way that the reader wonders whether a man like Zadig is punished or rewarded by fate for the brilliance, generosity, helpfulness and courage that sets him apart from others. The reader follows with interest the highs and lows of Zadig’s skills and is finally rewarded with a happy ending. Within the frame of this novel, Voltaire presents his doctrine of strict determinism. All things, even human actions, are preordained by the necessity of natural law. There are no coincidences and no free will; only fate reigns. Towards the end of the novel, Voltaire explicitly refers to his view of fate: Zadig meets an angel disguised as a hermit carrying ‘The Book of Fate’. On their journey, they spend the night at the home of a charitable widow who lives with her fourteen-year-old nephew. The next morning, the boy accompanies them to the bridge. There, the hermit throws him into the river, where he drowns. The hermit explains that, if that young man whose neck was broken by providence had lived, he would have killed his aunt a year later and, another year after that, would have murdered Zadig himself. Here Voltaire appears to contradict himself, since the natural chain of events is broken by the actions of a celestial power. Still, the reader should not view the encounter with the angel of fate as real, but as an ironic narrative gesture that only serves to clarify the author’s philosophical message regarding the irreversibility of fate. The angel says, ‘But there is no coincidence, everything is a test or a punishment, a reward or providence.’ Yet if everything in life is preordained so precisely, then dramatic suspense is pointless in which characters try to catch a criminal and have him penalised for his deeds. If fate determines whether a criminal is punished or not, and neither his nor his pursuers’ free will and efforts nor coincidence have influence on the course of the matter, then an essential dramatic moment that characterises crime fiction is missing.
While Voltaire claims that God exists, this God does not have any power to interfere with the rules he created that govern the course of the world. He cannot bring about miracles. Voltaire, a philosopher of the Enlightenment, wrote at a time when the belief in miracles was prevalent. He, however, felt contempt for such beliefs. Even though Zadig can describe the missing animals thanks to his acute skills of observation and deduction and is thus proved innocent in court, some ‘magi insist he is a warlock who must be burnt’. It was certainly common in the eighteenth century for religious explanations to be used instead of scientific observations, and it was the primary aim of prominent philosophers of the Enlightenment to promote reason and to replace religious myths with rational thought. The discovery of a murder victim in a seemingly locked room – a classic murder mystery case – might have led Voltaire’s contemporaries to believe this to be the work of God or the devil, instead of finding a rational, technically possible solution. The modern crime story owes its strictly scientific and rational reasoning of cause and effect to writers of the Enlightenment, like Voltaire and others, who viewed...
