Gabrielle asked:

"Discuss the Nietzschean Approach to the meaning of life in Milan Kundera's novel The Unbearable
Lightness of Being."

Please, I am having trouble with this. What THEMES are evident? How do I CONSTRUCT the
essay? What should I deal with first? How is the Nietzschean approach evident?

How are the themes of nihilism, existentialism and lightness and darkness evident?

Should I even focus on themes? I'm finding this very difficult.

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It will be easy once you have done some reading and there should be enough on the internet: Search
for Nietzsche and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" — but if this is a literature essay, don't read
too much but concentrate on the novel. This would be easier to answer if I knew the subject you are
studying.

Start off by quoting Nietzsche on eternal recurrence which is the MAIN theme. This is what you have
to consider in relation to the meaning in the characters' lives. You can find a full quote at:
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/personal/reading/kundera-unbearable.html.

For one short outline of what Kundera sees as the "meaning of life" have a look at the plot overview
at: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/unberaablelightness/summary.html.

The claim here is that since we cannot return, we can only find meaning by comparing different lives,
like those of Tomas and Sabina — I don't think this is fully correct. For sure, in comparing the lives of
Tomas, Tereza and Sabina, Kundera is showing that the lightness which Tomas represents (which is
really moral lightness or nihilism) is not to be favoured over heaviness and moral responsibility
represented by Tereza. But he goes further and shows that while Tomas comes to accept heaviness
through Tereza, Sabina doesn't come to accept it. Sabina ends up loveless and rootless and this
implies that at the end of her life she wouldn't want to repeat it. Nietzsche's point is that if you think
about the possibility of eternal recurrence, the question arises whether you would go for it or not,
whether you wouldaffirmyour life. If this is a literature essay, have a look in The Cambridge
Dictionary of Philosophyto find out about Nietzsche.

The plot overview claims that meaning has "uncertain existence" because of the lightness/heaviness
dichotomy. But it doesn't make sense to say that meaning has "uncertain existence" because this is
to abstract meaning from people's lives and then we have no idea what meaning can be. Using
novelistic form, and considering the possibility of eternal return, Kundera makes the meaning of life
concrete and particular rather than a general abstraction, which Nietzsche would approve of.

So the main thing is to consider "the meaning of life" in relationship to Nietzsche. You can consider
the theme of nihilism in relation to the behaviour of Tomas. Nihilism was easy for Tomas, it was light,
but he wasn't living fully, with commitment. Life was a game where he had a rule about when he could
see his mistresses and for how long following a recurring pattern that was only a parody of real
meaning. After he met Tereza's he became a person of more integrity and would not withdraw his
published views.

You could consider idealism after nihilism — this is represented by Franz, who gets crushed. Idealism
is very different from the real-world heaviness of Tereza. The meaning of life totally evades Franz —
he is worse off than Tomas and Sabina. He has to adopt the fantasy of Sabina as a guide to what he
should do and lives with a woman to whom he isn't fully committed. Sabina represented a false god
for Franz. For Nietzsche, God — or perhaps any god, such as Sabina in Franz's case — was
becoming meaningless and so there is a need to look at living life more fully (through thinking about
eternal recurrence) and to look at reality — which is seen in the novelistic style Kundera adopts of
looking at his characters from outside.

As far as I know, in limited knowledge of continental philosophy, Nietzsche isn't regarded as an
existentialist. But you could look at Gregory Kimbrell's paper on Existentialism and The Unbearable
Lightness of Being which can be found in the google search suggested above. According to Kimbrell
who draws on Kundera's The Art of the Novel, Kundera adopts Heidegger's description of our
existential situation as being a "spatial, temporal and cultural designation in which human beings are
involved and are presented with a particular set of possibilities for the realization of their individual
selves". But Kimbrell expounds Kundera's existential position in relation to Nietzsche's idea of eternal
recurrence and repetition.

When you have read this answer and the papers on the internet you will find that we are not all saying
the same thing. I think lightness and weight have a different meaning when considered in terms of
nihilism and existentialism. So it is up to you to think about it for yourself.

Rachel Browne

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