In the Name of Community: Duty in Henrik Ibsen’s The Pillars of Society

Using Immanuel Kant's concepts of duty and community to read Henrik Ibsen's The Pillars of Society (1877), this essay examines the two male social pillars in the play -- one bourgeois and one working class -- who both claim to do their duty to the community, but who turn out to be moral egoists in their complicity with the coerciveness of industrial capitalism. By paralleling a dramatic/ literary text with philosophical reasoning, the essay shows the extent to which an appreciation of Ibsen's dramatic artistry can be empowered by a Kantian moral philosophy, a generic and cross-disciplinary blending that might encourage readers/ audiences to contemplate the true meaning of a citizen's duty, and to call attention to Ibsen's deepening reference to truth and freedom as the ultimate forces to envision the likelihood of a Kantian ＂realm of ends,＂ i.e., an ethical community, in the modern world.

關鍵字

Henrik Ibsen ； The Pillars of Society ； Kantian duty ； community ；＂a realm of ends＂

並列摘要

本文意圖透過伊曼努爾．康德（Immanuel Kant）的責任觀及社群理念來解讀亨利克．易卜生（Henrik Ibsen）劇作《社會支柱》（The Pillars of Society）裡的兩位象徵人物，一位來自中產階級，另一位來自勞工階級。儘管這兩位社會支柱各自宣稱他們的所作所為皆是出於對其所屬社群應負的責任，但實際上，他們卻是道貌岸然，與工業資本主義互相掛勾、共謀利益分贓的利己主義者。藉由將戲劇文本與哲學論述參照對比，本文企圖顯示透過康德的道德哲學觀更能強化與感受易卜生的戲劇藝術張力。而這樣跨界、跨領域的交融，更能激發讀者及觀眾對於公民責任的反思，進而體會易卜生深意點明出真理與自由乃是現代世界邁向如同康德的「目的國度」，亦即倫理社群願景的關鍵驅動力。