Ethics of Cognitive Distance in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

Abstract

In the past few decades, there has been a flood of investigations into Beckett’s most celebrated play Waiting for Godot. The play has been explored in terms of the way the protagonists endure affliction, and absurdity. These readings, one way or another, have mostly highlighted the protagonists’ fruitless search for human values and meaning. In contrast with these accounts, this paper aims to focus on the interconnection between the concept of cognitive distance and ethics to show how the two protagonists in the play, despite lack of meaning, portray rewarding overtones of ethical relation to the Other. This ethical distance helps them establish not only an ethical relationship with one another, but also an ethical interaction with alterity in general. Drawing on what the philosopher, Emmanuel Lévinas, conceives of the concept of distance in his ethical Same-Other relation, this paper concludes that Beckett’s couple can also be portrayed as figures with a valuable Same-Other relation regardless of predominant anguish and absurdity in their lives.