by Chris Horner

Evil also resides in the innocent gaze itself which perceives Evil all around. — Hegel. [1]

I  have always been vaguely irritated by the song ‘Mad World’, by the duo Tears for Fears, without being clear just what I find so unbearable about it. You may not know the song: it was a hit back in 1982, and although it has been covered since, most notably in the soundtrack of Donnie Darko, (2001), it’s hardly current. It is, though, a good example of what Hegel called the ‘Beautiful Soul’ phenomenon in his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). Bear with me: the song itself doesn’t matter as much as the attitude, which is one  you will find everywhere today. There’s a link to the lyrics below [2].

In  “Mad World”  a social world is experienced as repetitive, hollow, and emotionally alienating. Everyday routines appear emptied of meaning, and social interaction is depicted as mechanical rather than genuinely human. The song’s voice is lucid, reflective, and sensitive. The song, aided by its plangent melody, sold  in the millions. Why? We get, and the listener is invited to inhabit, this outlook: the world is drab, crazy, empty. But I, sensitive me, am sadly aware of it all, as I stand there witnessing the melancholy human carnival. This is the stance of the beautiful soul: a consciousness that sees the world’s disorder clearly while refusing engagement with it. It is the world as seen by someone stuck in an adolescent stage of moral development.

The Beautiful Soul has  intense concern for moral purity and inward sincerity. It wishes to preserve the goodness of its intentions while avoiding the risks of  action. For action involves particularity, compromise, and the possibility of failure; to expose oneself to judgment and misrecognition. So, the beautiful soul  recoils from the world, judging it from a position of moral inwardness while refusing to participate. It’s a recognisable stance in contemporary culture, one that is self-pleasuring in its sense of warm melancholic impotence. It does not merely express alienation; it aestheticises the ethical impasse Hegel diagnoses.

Rather than calling for revolt or collective transformation, the song dwells in sadness and resignation. A reflective suffering. The subject knows that something is wrong and stops there, demanding purity from the world and thereby ensuring its own impotence. Read more »