There’s also the point parallel comments make that public figures private works are often of general interest. The will and desires of the deceased carry weight - but it decreases over time as they are in fact dead. If we found Julius Caesar’s private diary with admonitions to not read it, would we honor that?
>We did think about it for about three seconds - was it a betrayal to my parents, to my father's [wishes]? And we decided, yes, it was a betrayal. But that's what children are for.
Judging by modern morals, Julius Caesar would be guilty of multiple genocidal war crimes. His private diaries would be rather evidence.
"that public figures private works are often of general interest."
This argument is basically, that if only enough people want something, they get the right. Which is not something I am a huge fan about. And Garcia was no Imperator, deciding the fate of millions, but a private writer.
And the argument about dementia, if he would have been so far away in dementia, while making the decision, I do not think his sons would have judged so harshly about themself:
"We did think about it for about three seconds - was it a betrayal to my parents, to my father's [wishes]?
"And we decided, yes, it was a betrayal. But that's what children are for."
I think this is mainly a internal familiy thing if his sons decide to publish and ignore their fathers wish. But I probably won't read it.
And it is a different case with Kafka:
"Before author Franz Kafka died from tuberculosis in 1924, he told friend Max Brod to burn all of his work. However, between 1925 and 1935 Brod published his collection of works including The Trial, The Castle and Amerika."
Because he told his friend Brod before, that he will ask him to destroy his works once he dies - and Brod told him clearly, that if he will do that, he will refuse and publish it anyway. So rather a kafkaesk joke all in all and no betrayal. If Kafka really would have wanted someone destroy his works, he could have asked someone else.
Fine, great, they were once something awesome - but do we really need to rob every future generation of that building or use? It must forever be a memory of distant past?
I think you are being too aggressive in your cause for personal freedom and justice. I mean, I do understand where you are coming from but perhaps saying "I'd really prefer to go, instead of being subjected to people like you" goes a bit too far.
Do you understand that most people, even in a stable state of mind, can't reasonably decide to just "end it there"? Let alone someone with advanced dementia... Maybe one day if society stops putting so much value on empty life and we can peacefully end it when it's time, but that day is likely far away.
As others have pointed out, if his children really thought this was important for his legacy and he only had the destructive wish due to dementia, they could have made the writings available without profiting from that.
Even if he was out of his proper mind, choosing not to publish was the elegant thing to do. They already milked their father for years, now they should earn their own money.
Giving away the novel to a national university for academic discussion would also be more elegant than this.
If they think it's important to release the work, they shouldn't be profiting from it.
Except a national university will almost certainly buy a copy, so your desired academic discussion will be unimpeded.
An argument can be made to the effect that he could not give his full consent given that he probably lost his capacities to make an informed decision.
A moral quandary nonetheless.
The classic legal example is the Rule Against Perpetuities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities), which limits how much control a will or trust instrument can exert over real property. You wouldn't believe the lengths people have historically gone to make sure their notion of "the right thing" happens for many years after they die.
As a sibling commenter said, if you don't want people to truly own your personal property when you die, then you should destroy it. Or consider giving it to someone else.
If I want to use something while I'm alive but don't want others to have/see/use/know about it, what's the best way to handle this? The problem here is that no one knows when they're going to die, or if they'll be lucid enough when they're close to take care of things like that.
I guess for online stuff make sure all means of access are behind passwords that will be lost when you die.
For physical property, seems like a hard problem unless you booby trap your stuff, which is illegal and inconsiderate -- not to mention that it will likely accelerate your own demise.
But that agreement should be a private one, not something that the society should be enforcing. My 2c.
A Google Drive folder which has a sharing policy set to expire in 30 days, is a dead man's switch
You don't need to be technical to use a dead man's switch.
It's not up to me as I'll be dead.
We should keep in mind that our wishes may or may not be respected and plan accordingly. Get rid of journals that can't be read by anyone else, set your browser to forget its history, encrypt the hidden photo gallery.
No clue, but it certainly won’t be up to me. When I’m dead that’ll all be up to the ones left behind. What point is there in satisfying the wishes of someone that’s already dead? They won’t care any more.
I'd say the law is a good reference for that. Some countries legislate inheritance and related topics different from others. Some let the person decide exactly what happens with their inheritance and under which conditions, others have more generic rules to go to the next of kin and don't have the concept of wishes.
Because the concept of honor should transcend death, come on.
Sure, most people would feel terrible about doing that. But you would keep that promise out of respect, not because the dead are hurt by breaking it.
What would human kind have gained from not having read The Metamorphosis or The Trial and so many others?
I made this argument in this thread, but come to think of it there's an opposite argument too:
If honor was worth more, Kafka's works describing life as a hellish landscape of bureucratic indifference, betrayal, control, and alienation, wouldn't have been as descriptive of the state of humanity.
>What would human kind have gained from not having read The Metamorphosis or The Trial and so many others?
If they have gained honor, that would have been worth 1000 Trials and Metamorphosis.
If they haven't, and just read them violating Kafka's request, they'd be the person The Trial and Metamorphosis protested about, just another cog in the machinery of humilliation and degradation.
Nailed it!
Betrayal, control and alienation are exactly what informs Kafka's request. Faith (in his friend, in art) and openness are what inspired his friend not to obey Kafka's wish born out of that alienation and shame.
Bureaucracy never enters into this at all. There is no humiliation, Kafka is considered to be one of the greatest writers ever.
First of all, the request was in a letter. His friend (they were friends for decades) found the letter, it's not like he agreed beforehand. Secondly this friend was a writer himself. No one knows more the embarrassment and shame that can come from looking at one's own art as much as another artist, but this is just inherently the nature of making art, and what are friends for if not to shake us out of that wrong view that we get from our perspective being too close?
Frankly I think you're making lofty claims for their own sake. This is not a matter of "humanity gaining honor", it was a matter of a man believing in his friend's art, and the rest of us benefiting from that "betrayal".
Well, that's why wills exist.
If you decided to split your wealth between your grandchildren when you passed away, should that wish be discarded now because you're dead so who cares?
Because you're (hopefully!) not an asshole of a human being?
If the dying wish of a man costs you nothing to execute, why not? Men are brought into this world regardless of their wishes, can't men at least exit this plane of existence according to their wishes?
That’s not a very good argument in the case in question. The sons made money by publishing the book.
Sure, but this is for the satisfaction and closure of the living, not for the dead. The dead aren’t satisfied, or anything else really.
If you discover a lost manuscript of Shakespeare along with the note: "These papers must be burnt!", would you do it?
I am not arguing in either direction, I am trying to say that things are not so simple and there might be some nuances. Vincent Van Gogh was mentally ill for a long period. Would you destroy his works if you find out that he expressed his wishes in that direction?
Once we kick the bucket yes. Just ask us then, and you'll see that we don't mind. And even if we did, you still get to do it, provided you have access.
Do you think your kids wont, if they find them? Or if you're a public figure, that the world at large wont?
Not to mention that a work of art of a great novelist (as opposed to the private journals of some random person) might be of more benefit to the world than following the instructions in their will.
I doubt the "morbid curiosity of the general public" could ever succeed as a justification on ethical grounds, but as a literature scholar, I can say that there are usually other purposes in view. At some point, the work of an author like García Márquez becomes an important part of the world-wide human record and historians who study that record are not doing so out of morbid anything. In this case, we're trying to understand the evolution of one of the most important authors (and associated literary movements) in the twentieth century.
I've seen these kinds of decisions being made on the scholarly side (opening archives, publishing letters, etc.). I can tell you they aren't made lightly, and one of the ways we tend to adjudicate these dilemmas is by weighing the "privacy and last wishes" of an individual against the desire of the broader culture to understand itself and its history. Sometimes that latter claim isn't strong enough. But sometimes it really is.
> "And we decided, yes, it was a betrayal. But that's what children are for."
Personally, I think only an absolute bastard would agree to what a dying person asked them to do—or not to do, in this case—and then go back on it after they died.
If it is of significance to the living world, then yes, it'll be published. Anne Frank's dairy is an example of that.
Is it the right thing to do? I'll leave the question for an ethicist.
Tell me you've never read Anne Frank's diary, without telling me you've never read Anne Frank's diary.
From Wikipedia’s page on Anne Frank[1]:
> Otto, the only survivor of the Frank family, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that Anne's diary had been saved by his female secretaries, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl. He decided to fulfil his daughter's greatest wish to become a writer. He published her diary in 1947.
Her diary was published because her father had reason to believe it was something she would have approved of. In Márquez’s case we’re talking about going against the author’s expressed wishes. The situations are polar opposites.
Also, 'wanting to be a writer' does not necessarily mean that you would have wanted to have a specifically private piece of writing published.
This, on the other hand, is someone going against explicitly stated wishes. It's not a very comparable situation.
He wanted it destroyed? He could have done it himself.
Don't put weird things in your will. Do them before you die. At least then, you know they got done. And get to see them get done!
All these people who leave things to their granddaughter or whatever, jewelry, the family dingus, just give it now! Enjoy their thanks, see them enjoy it.
Assuming they weren't estranged or anything, they obviously knew their father and understood his wishes better than any of us.
ok, but then there wouldn't really be any Kafka if instructions to destroy writing was reliably carried out.
Replace "novel" with "nude pictures" and the moral side of this becomes much more obvious.
It doesn't matter if he had dementia. It doesn't matter if people appreciate the novel or if his kids feel that "it's important to release it". The novel was his creation and he specifically did not want it released.
Unsurprisingly though, money outweighs his requests.
Though, I doubt the line is always straightforward. There must have been reasons (hopefully not solely profit driven…). For example, Kafka. Granted I read, skimmed really, in an article that while his instructions were to destroy his writings, that he wanted them published.
Of course not, yet no one will donate to my non profit “refill all of the excavated Pompeii cavities” project. There is a sort of arbitrary and hypocritical “dead” vs “even more dead” position that people take with their misgiven concepts of “history”
In any case, it's only a problem for the living. Dead you won't be bothered by it.
There's no need here. Only want.
Once you are dead, you are dead, it's the same as if you never existed in the first place. I completely fail to understand how my wishes are relevant after I no longer exist.
What shame or embarrassment can I feel when I'm dead? Promise me on my death bed my secrets will never be revealed and the second I'm gone, share them and it won't change the peace of mind I had. Likewise the state of my mind at the moment of death is irrelevant because I'll be dead.
It's bizarre to me to see you are so troubled by this. Do you care what happens after your dead? Do you care what's happening on a planet so distant and foreign you do not even know it exists or what it's inhabitants are like? The world after you are dead will be far more foreign to you than such a world that exists today.
In time all humans will be dead. In time all evidence of this planet will be erased. If alien life should come across some rock with Gabriel García Márquez last writing and note saying "do not read" are found should that alien life honor that request? What moral system are you deriving these beliefs from?
I think many here would argue yes
And then after death, the executor has that same right. Twice over, it's their call, not ours. It's more wrong for us to say they are wrong than it is for them to say their fathers will is wrong.
I would go even further and say you have very few to maybe zero rights after death. We do some things out of respect for each other but really I don't see how it can be claimed as any sort of actual right. Once you're gone, whatever's left behind is for other people to do what they will with. It's not yours any more. If you want something not to exist, destroy it yourself or don't create it yourself in the first place. That is probably the limit of anyone's reasonable right to control something. You can ask, and if someone chooses, maybe they comply, but I think you really should only expect to be able to ask, and live with the eventual no as the answer, or even a yes and then failure to deliver.
(Not speaking as a lawyer. I'm sure there are all kinds of legal things that make wills and contracts into legally more binding documents, but that is artificial legal construct, I'm talking about right & wrong & reason. And besides, if one wants to take the legality seriously, then they obviously had the legal right to do this since they did, and so no problem.)
What's so shocking about it? When you are dead, you have no rights or property. It all belongs to whomever you left it to.
If marquez didn't want his work published, he should have destroyed it himself rather than leaving up to someone else. As others have mentioned, kafka did the same thing. Left instructions for his publisher to destroy his works after his death.
> Do we get to look at your personal journals, browser history and hidden photo gallery once you kick the bucket?
Who cares? If you are so paranoid about it, destroy your personal journal while you are alive. Otherwise, whoever gets it after your death can do whatever they want with it.
It isn't their rights. They are dead. It's a very simple concept. The rights belong to whoever gets the property. Also intellectual property rights isn't about respecting artists. It's about protecting corporate rights since most intellectual property is owned by mega-corporations and not the artists who created them.
> but we don't respect the artist's desires about what to do with that property.
Who is 'we'? The only person who has a say in the matter is whoever gets the property after the artist's death.
> but none of it is a natural law: it's a set of somewhat arbitrary legal decisions that we made as a society.
I know. That's my point. But regardless, it doesn't change the fact that the artist is dead and has no rights.
Should the sons have respected marquez's wish? Maybe. But then again, the sons probably knew their father better than you did. And marquez must have left the works to his sons for a reason.
As far as I understood it, he was still working on it. And he did not wanted the sketch to be published.
"But then again, the sons probably knew their father better than you did."
Probably. But I would not rule out the possibility, that they have selfish reasons like fame and money.
I think that really depends on what theory of copyright you have operating in your society, many European societies have a theory of copyright that is about respecting artist's moral rights to own what they have created.
If that was the case, nobody in europe would be reading much of franz kafka's works nor anne frank's diary.
But good try!
I thought it was just about money.
Respect could be shown through the production of fan fiction, that isn't compatible with IP.
I hope so. If the radical "privacy and security" advocates truly had their way, the only "history" left from the current era will be "carefully curated" and thus obviously biased. No one should have the "right to be forgotten".