Because my beloved is on lecture-tour in South Africa, I sing a different set of lullabies than we would do if she were around to my almost-five-year-old-son before he goes to sleep. I let him choose and he nearly always wants my version of Doris Day's Que sera sera. I picked up the tune from my mom when I was a kid. I adapt the lyrics and improvise the story of his life and connect them to the main events of his day. When I first started doing this, when he was still an infant, I respected the generational structure of the stanzas, but during the last six months my son has encouraged me to focus the lyrics primarily on his life--luckily 'Avi' rhymes well with 'what will be, will be.' By the time I am done he is half-asleep; I wait in the darkness twenty minutes or so before leaving the room (if I don't fall asleep on the rocking chair).
Ordinarily, if I think about it at all, I associate the song with the importance of story-telling and a kind of amor fati. Sometimes my digressions drift, one associated impression too far, toward the very possibility of knowing too much. But last night, I noticed that the lyrics to Que sera sera (also) describe epistemic uncertainty ("the future's not ours to see"). And, not for the first time, yet always a familiar surprise, I recognize that my enduring intellectual commitments pre-date whatever philosophical skill I have developed.
The song seems to express Spinozistic metaphysics: everything is determined, but our finite mind is not capable to grasp the infinite number of causes that determine the future. As Spinoza knew, the road to wisdom is not only to be found by philosophers alone.
Posted by: Mark Behets | 11/01/2014 at 05:09 PM