"The Essential Doesn't Change": Essence Precedes Experience and Cartesian Rationalism in Samuel Beckett' Waiting for Godot

Brigette Le Juez's Beckett Before Beckett (London: Souvenir, 2008) examines Beckett's formative years at Trinity College, Dublin. Though not previously unknown, Le Juez delves deeper into Beckett's early obsession with Descartes. This is significant because much recent criticism has argued that the and the body are intimately intertwined in Beckett's work. Reading Beckett through Descartes not only suggests a new way to view Beckett's handling of and body in opposition to current criticism (which is not the subject of this essay), but since Beckett's oeuvre has been read by many through the lens, this reading seriously questions the existentialist label placed upon Beckett. Jean-Paul Sartre is the poster-child of nihilistic existentialism, and thus linked with Beckett's work. Albert Camus is inextricably tied with the Absurd, and thus, similarly, linked with Beckett's work. Though Sartre and Camus were tied together as existentialists throughout most of the 20th century, recent scholarship has demonstrated that Camus wrote in revolt of nihilistic existentialism. One of the principal reasons for this divide is Camus and Sartre's engagement with reason. Reason, for Sartre, convolutes, in a sense, the truth behind experience (which precedes essence), while for Camus, meaning can only be made through human reason. Peter Royle summarizes the difference of Camus and Sartre is such a way: Camus is a disabused heir of the Enlightenment, while Sartre is an, existential phenomenologist in the grand European philosophical tradition (The Sartre-Camus Controversy: A Literary and Philosophical Critique (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1982): 87). Examining one overlooked passage in Waiting for Godot, I argue that Beckett, likewise, is a disabused heir of the Enlightenment. Ultimately, I argue that in Waiting for Godot essence precedes experience and, thus, Beckett's thought is a version of Cartesian Rationalism, not existentialism. Just before Pozzo and Lucky make their first appearance in the play, Vladimir and Estragon have a brief conversation about character: VLADIMIR: Question of temperament. ESTRAGON: Of character. VLADIMIR: Nothing you can do about it. ESTRAGON: No use struggling. VLADIMIR: One is what one is. ESTRAGON: No use wriggling. VLADIMIR: The essential doesn't change. ESTRAGON: Nothing to be done. (Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot [New York: Grove Press, 1982], 17) It is very important that Beckett chose the words temperament and character to begin this mini-conversation. The definition of temperament as it was first applied to humans (as opposed to compounds, things, etc.), stemmed from the medieval sense of humours: medieval physiology: The combination of the four cardinal humours of the body, by the relative proportion of which the physical and mental constitution were held to be determined (OED). In a sense, humans, then, were born with their own unique combination of the four cardinal humours and their, corresponding, physical and mental constitution did not change. Temperament is closely connected and defined in part as disposition, which is the natural tendency or bent of the mind (OED). …

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