A Dramatist of Idea로서의 G.B.Shaw와 그의 "Man and Superman"에 나타난 Life Force 哲學에 對하여 : on Life Force in "Man and Superman" = G. B. Shaw as a Dramatist of Idea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

It is clear that Bernard Shaw was a man of ideas. He was a publicist, a critic, an essayist, a philosopher and, of course, a dramatist. Though he is the greatest dramatist that England has ever produced since Shakespeare, I wrote this thesis in a sense that he stands at the position of philosopher rather than an arsist. His thinking may be related economically to Marx, metaphysically to Goethe and Lamarck, and dramatically to wagner, Ibsen and Nietzsche. Nietzsche's works he regards as the Bible of the modern consciousness. Shaw established a system of his own thought by synthesizing the philosophy of Nietzsche, Bergson and Shopenhauer, and created Life Force. His obvious attacts are levelled against middle-class values and professions; doctors and science, politicians and British democracy. Moreover, he thinks that a civilization cannot progress, cannot remake itself, except through the destruction of old institutions. Actually, Shaw handles his hatred of reality in two distinct ways. As a revolutionary reformer, he registers his revolt against the real by pursuing the ideal in politics (Socialism) and philosophy (Creative Evolution). But, as an artist, he registers this revolt by recreating reality in the ideal form of art. He completed "comedy of idea", based on the inversion of the Victorian conventional " well-made-play", and he lays stress on making a problem play.
In Man and Superman, he thinks that evolution is movement in the direction of knowledge. Art and literature, the brightest sparks yet struck by human genius, represent "the struggle of Life to become divinely conscious of itself instead of blindly strumbling hither and thither in the line of least resistance." His considered philosophy is evolutionary. He believes in the Life Force. , affirming an optimistic recognition of its miraculous nature as it travails to creat a greater humanity, of which certain great men of history are the precursors. Its power is strong in women, who are impelled by it, as Man and Superman shows, to win a husband and bear children. Women are central powers and man's prided intellect often childish in comparison. Shaw's Life Force corresponds to the Living God of the Bible. Shaw believes that men will become gods, and that divinity will consist mainly in full comprehension of self and reality. Evolution, according to Don Juan, in Man and Superman, works toward "higher and higher individuals, the ideal individual being omnipotent, omniscient, infallible, and withal completely, unilludedly self-conscious."
Obviously, John Tanner, the hero in this play, functions not only as a mouthpiece for Shaw's theory of the Life Force, but also as an independent character with foibles of his own. While Octavius, Worshiping women as the living embodiments of the Romantic ideal, is Tanner's butt, Tanner, worshiping life in its perpetual struggle upwards, is Shaw's. The doctrine of the Life Force is another form of Romantic idealization, and one of Shaw's purposes in this play is to show how all ideals are invariably mocked by life. The joke on Tanner, of course is that all the time he is theorizing about the Life Force, he is being ensnared by it, until he is finally enmeshed in that machinary whose cogs and screws he has so accurately described.
Thus Shaw demonstrates how the self-conscious theoretician is caught up, against his will, by an unconscious, irrational force. Tanner's understanding of the transcendent principles of the universe is not defense against their actual workings.
Certainly, Ann Whitefield, who is going to contribute to the execution of the purpose of the universe by winning a husband and breeding descendants, is a bearer of Shaw's Life Force. And, seeing that he cannot remain himself, "one and indivisible," if he submits to the vital force which is thrusting him and Ann together, John Tanner, fighting in order not to be an inducement of Ann's Life Force, as he says, "for my freedom, for my honors, for myself, one and indivisible," before Ann's fierce will to marry him, if Shaw's Superman. In short, in Man and Superman. intersexual affection and marriage are a impulse and an enforcement of Life Force, and it is Shaw's optimistic view and his philosophy that men will become gods by developing this Life Force, which he thinks is maldistributed in universe.