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Or, perhaps, more to the point, both are Isms. And, of course, so is criticism.Jean-Paul Sartre’s short book Existentialism is a Humanism (1946) sets out the main claims of Sartre’s existentialism, and defends these against some of the criticisms laid against it.
The first claim is of fundamental importance because if there is a God, the God and this God is both omniscient and omnipotent, then case closed. The whole truth just doesn't get more essential than that. On the other hand, if moral and political claims begin with human experience, how then are we to confront the fact that historically and culturally and in terms of our own personal experiences, there have been, are now and always will be countless differences? And, indeed, given that philosophy has been around for many, many centuries now and we are no where near to a consensus regarding any of the most wrenching moral conflagrations, what does that tell us?Sartre makes two basic claims – firstly that God is dead and this has consequences for the way we live; and secondly that all claims about humanity and the world must begin with human experience. Given these two claims, Sartre concludes that ‘existence precedes essence’. What he means by this is that human beings are without any pre-existing purpose or ‘essence’ which is not of their own making.
On the other hand, even in a No God world, all human beings are essentially biological entities. And we all share in common particular necessities that we must obtain and then sustain if we wish to go on living. We must obtain food and water. We must acquire a shelter. We must create a community capable of reproducing and defending itself.If we think about an everyday manufactured object – let’s say a chair – we can see that it has been made with specific qualities in order to carry out a specific purpose: as something for us to sit on. Even before he goes about making it, the manufacturer of the chair already has in mind what he wants the chair to look like, the types of qualities that he wants it to have. This specific set of qualities exists before the chair exists, in the mind of the manufacturer. Sartre thinks that when we talk of human beings having a specific essence, we are making the assumption that we, like the chair, have been made according to a specific set of qualities in order to carry out a specific purpose. In other words, we assume that even before we are born what we are – our essence – already exists in the mind of our supernatural manufacturer, that is, God.
On the contrary, down through the ages there have been any number of entirely secular renditions of God that not only proposed an essential understanding of the world around us but acted on it. You know the ones.But if God is dead, this cannot be true.
Still, again, there are biological parameters: the color of our skin, our gender, our sexual orientation [some say], our innate intelligence and personality traits. In fact, some focus in entirely on this and pontificate their own dogmatic "my way or the highway" assessment of Nature itself.So since he is an atheist, Sartre says that existence precedes essence: unlike the chair, we do not come into existence with a specific set of qualities in order to carry out some or other purpose. Rather, the responsibility falls solely on us as individuals to make our purpose for ourselves. In the absence of a supernatural manufacturer, we make ourselves.
Philosophy Now wrote: ↑Mon Jul 10, 2023 9:27 pm Kate Taylor recalls a ‘humanist’ classic by Jean-Paul Sartre.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/152/Ex ... aul_Sartre
I like the finding out what one values aspect of this. Notice what you do (and want) and you find out what you value. Rather than sitting around and trying to figure out what you should do and should want. Of course, we more or less arise already with values coming from our physical make-up, our culture, media, parents and so on. I can't think of a what one should do, given that one has a lot of values and from different sources. For me, it's a question of finding things/values that suit me. Not easy, but not impossible.This takes us on to Sartre’s moral point: by choosing this or that, we at the same time choose the set of values endorsed by our choices. This is because, for Sartre, we can’t choose something that we don’t think is good, therefore each choice is also an affirmation of the value of what we choose.
Of course, even the existentialists have to assume something that they have no capacity to demonstrate either ontologically, teleologically or deontologically: that, in fact, we do choose of our own volition.But how, without a manufacturer’s blueprint, do we go about making ourselves? For Sartre, the answer to this question is what defines existentialism as a philosophy of action: we live through our freedom of the will to choose.
Same thing. While I share Sartre's subjective assumption that we live in a No God world, as with free will, to claim that God does not exist does not demonstrate that God does not exist. It's just one more intellectual prejudice rooted existentially in dasein. God is one possible explanation for the existence of existence itself. Unless it can be explained how something came into existence out of nothing at all.This brings us to the second of Sartre’s core assertions: that all claims about humanity and the world must begin with human experience.
Indeed. I merely note that historically and culturally the things that we think about in regard to value judgments are ever evolving and changing. Then those like Marx who suggested this revolves largely around political economy.It was René Descartes three hundred years earlier who concluded that the primary thing we cannot doubt is that we are thinking things: ‘I think, therefore I am’. For Sartre, it is this human subjectivity – our lived experience – that underpins his claim that we have the freedom to choose how to act.
Naturally, I would be curious to hear Sartre's reaction to my own considerably more, well, existential understanding of that freedom. For instance, his take on the Benjamin Button Syndrome pertaining to our individual value judgments in a free will world.Sartre says that our lived experience shows us that we are always free to choose to act upon this or that. Think about the next choice that you make: you could stop reading this article, or continue, or get up and get a glass of water; take the dog out; get some ice-cream, and so on. The point is that our lives are always filled with possibilities, and we are free to choose which ones to take.
Again, as a "general description intellectual contraption" this can be embraced by those all up and down the moral and political spectrum. After all, don't both liberals and conservatives "choose this and that"? They both endorse sets of values in alignment with their choices.This takes us on to Sartre’s moral point: by choosing this or that, we at the same time choose the set of values endorsed by our choices. This is because, for Sartre, we can’t choose something that we don’t think is good, therefore each choice is also an affirmation of the value of what we choose.
The same thing, of course. It's just another "world of words" in which freedom and responsibility and the individual and humanity can then be embraced be those on both the left and the right to champion completely conflicting moral narratives and political agendas.This kind of potential pick-and-mixing of values has faced criticisms for being overly individualistic. But for Sartre, our freedom cannot come without responsibility, because all choices have consequences, and his defence against criticisms that existentialism is an extreme individualism is the radical claim that individual choices legislate for humanity as a whole. Sartre believed that in choosing this or that, we at the same time validate that choice for the rest of humanity. In this way, human beings are not only responsible for making themselves, we are also responsible for defining humanity as a whole.
Assuming of course that we do in fact live in a free will world. And Sartre seemed to clearly believe that we did:In a post-God world, only human beings can choose what to make of their existence. Sartre in fact says that we are ‘condemned to be free’. Our freedom is a condemnation because we cannot escape having to choose, nor escape the responsibility that comes from having that capacity. We cannot deny the weighty responsibility that accompanies our freedom to will as we choose.
Unless, of course, you are able to grab existence by the balls and yank it hard enough to do your own bidding. That's how it works in a No God world anyway. Once you accept that God does not exist, you may well come to conclude in turn that in the absence of God all things are permitted. And this gives you permission to grab it by the balls. Then it all comes down to whether or not you can actually accomplish this. And then sustain it. You might come to construe yourself as one of Nietzsche's Übermensch. Choosing to master life rather than to be enslaved by it.Existentialism, as I understand it, is primarily a philosophy of tragedy. It often speaks of tragedy as bound up with existence – that you cannot have one without the other.
Right. Tragedy as construed by the intellectuals. By the philosophers. By the dramatists. Here we can cue those like AJ and his ilk to set us straight on tragedy up in the didactic clouds. Instead, for some of us, bringing it all back down to Earth, the tragedy revolves far more around all of the actual pain and suffering we might endure in the course of simply living our lives. Pain and suffering attached to an essentially meaningless and purposeless existence that can only end in nothingness. Day after day we are confronted with those terrible headlines bursting at the seams with human affliction and travail.Tragedy
Before the rise of German, and in turn French, existentialism, tragedy was considered primarily a poetic and literary style. We can think of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, or Euripides’ Alcestis as well-known examples of tragedy. Centuries later, in Germany, the writings of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Jaspers. elevated tragedy outside of literary expression to a place of philosophical and existential importance.
Sure, if any of them work for you then that need be as far as it goes. That's always been a rather intriguing aspect of the human condition. Something that you believe does not necessarily have to correspond with reality. If you can raise tragedy to the summit of poetic art, or Dionysian revelry or a condition for transcendence, good for you. That has just never worked for me.Arthur Schopenhauer’s magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation raises tragedy to “the summit of poetic art” as it expresses “the terrible side of life”; Nietzsche’s early work The Birth of Tragedy argues strongly for a Dionysian revelry in tragedy; and Jasper’s Tragedy Is Not Enough finds tragedy to be a condition for the experience of transcendence.
Authenticity. It pops up time and again in regard to existentialism.Karl Jaspers was an existentialist philosopher who saw tragedy as a launching pad for authentic faith. What he calls ‘tragic knowledge’ or ‘absolute and radical tragedy,’ is comparable to Sartre’s or Camus’ notions of meaninglessness or absurdity.
There you go: construing an essentially meaningless and purposeless existence -- the absurdity of life -- in opposite ways. I often note myself that one way in which to reconfigure the absurdity of life into something constructive is in recognizing that it is precisely the absence of one or another objectivist font -- God or No God -- that frees you to pursue so many more options in life. You're not tied down -- anchored -- to one or another moral dogma [religious or secular] that binds your options. In other words, that restricts what you may or may not do if you want to gain approval from a community or acquire immortality and salvation.Jaspers’ kind of tragedy is opposed to salvation or redemption, since they are both answers to it. As Jaspers says, tragedy is not enough – implying that we can, and ought to, move beyond the brute tragedy of existence. He says that “the chance of being saved destroys the tragic sense of being trapped without chance of escape.” In contrast, many atheist existentialists see the whole of human existence as tragic.
On the other hand, cue "the gap" and "Rummy's Rule".The fact that Jaspers retains his ideas in the face of the tragic nature of existence shows how he differs from atheist existentialists (e.g. Heidegger, Sartre, Camus). These – myself included – argue that the tragic nature of existence does not have an answer; it is just how existence is.
Sure, as a general description intellectual contraption, if that works for you, fine, it's then deemed to be more "authentic." But what on Earth does "absolute tragedy" mean when, say, confronting those newspaper headlines day in and day out? What you think it means or what I think it means?We cannot escape it, avoid it, or supply a remedy for it. Therefore I argue that the atheist existentialists develop a more authentic form of existentialism, since they accept absolute tragedy and do not seek to dodge its consequences.
Still, the religious existentialist surely recognized that their escape from this forlorn frame of mind revolved entirely around a leap of faith. It's not like they went through their days with anything approaching a sense of certainty that immortality and salvation awaited them. And how could they not wonder about all the other Gods that all the other flocks were leaping to in turn.Sartre says, “when we speak of forlornness, a term Heidegger was fond of, we mean only that God does not exist and that we have to face all the consequences of this”. So Sartre and other atheist existentialists “face all the consequences of this” – while religious existentialists (such as Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Marcel) do not.
Amen to that?They would be uneasy with Sartre’s notion, put forward in his novel Nausea (1938), which carries radical tragedy to its logical conclusion: “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.”
Just a reminder that dread as a concept -- as a philosophical contraption -- is one thing. But actually experiencing it in, say, grim psychological pangs rooted in the realization that your own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless...right up until the time you topple over into the abyss that is oblivion?Dread
Søren Kierkegaard examined the philosophical, psychological, and theological implications of angest (Danish for ‘dread’ or ‘anxiety’) in his famous work The Concept of Dread.
Sure, if you are able to take that leap of faith to the Christian God and twist dread into an entirely different frame of mind, what can I say...if you do manage to accomplish this that need be all it takes to take this dread away...far removed from my own considerably more discomfiting set of No God assumptions. Here, the dread remains, but, come on, with that leap of faith -- and a few YouTube videos? -- it reconfigures into immortality and salvation.Dread, according to Kierkegaard, comes from within the individual (spirit) and from without (as an ‘alien power’). Kierkegaard connects dread with the entrance of sin into human existence, the Fall of Adam and Eve. This brought with it dread, not of something external to the individual, but as dread of one’s own self: “one will encounter the phenomenon that a man seems to become guilty merely for dread of himself.”
...means.Man also finds dread in his longing for release from guilt. Kierkegaard writes, “the expression for such a longing is dread, for in dread the state out of which a man longs to be delivered announces itself…” The central existential paradox regarding dread is that man “cannot flee from dread, for he loves it; really he does not love it, for he flees from it.” With dread, man continues the vicious cycle of: freedom-fall-dread-guilt, freedom-fall-dread-guilt, ad infinitum.
Indeed, given the sheer complexity of human interactions and the many, many ways in which our own personal experiences can be different from others, what can we really know about how others come to think and to feel about such things as God and religion.Kierkegaard’s response to dread (and to most other problems) is faith. He writes:
“The one and only thing which is able to disarm the sophistry of remorse is faith… courage to renounce dread without any dread, which only faith is capable of – not that it annihilates dread, but remaining ever young, it is continually developing itself out of the death throes of dread. Only faith is capable of doing this, for only in faith is the synthesis eternally and every instant possible.”
On the other hand, let's face it, some -- many? most? -- think themselves into making that leap because in a No God world, well, what else is there? Even if you do manage to make the equivalent of a leap of faith to one or another secular Ism, what's the 70 to 80 odd years you're around down here next to "all of eternity"?Dread, like tragedy, should lead you somewhere; and in this case, where you’re led is faith. Kierkegaard thinks that tragedy, paradox, and dread should lead one out of attempts to rationalize and towards a subjective ‘leap of faith’.
Well, dread is still around if only because it is a leap of faith. And that is, in a crucial respect, a leap into the unknown. You have no accumulation of substantive, substantial proof that God does in fact exist. That's what makes it a leap of faith. But how can that not be better than moral nihilism and oblivion?Although Kierkegaard acknowledges that faith does not do away with dread, he thinks that it develops “out of the death throes of dread” and that faith is the courage to “renounce dread without any dread.” But what is renouncing other than conquering and moving beyond? And what if, on the contrary, dread should lead you nowhere?
And what could possibly be more paradoxical and more mysterious than the existence of existence itself? The deeper you delve into it [as, say, Albert Einstein did] the more perplexing it all becomes. And that was before modern science revealed just how truly ineffable -- vast on a simply staggering scale -- the universe is. And before QM and the multiverse.Both Kierkegaard and Gabriel Marcel argue against purely rationalistic answers to existential problems, since rationality cannot completely explain the subjective experiences of paradox and mystery.
Still, in regard to most of what we experience in interacting with others, there clearly appears to be an objective reality. And the only way to make these components -- the laws of nature, mathematical truths, the empirical world around us -- mysterious is to presume one or another metaphysical rupture: sim worlds, dream worlds, solipsism, the matrix.Rationalism also assumes a scientific stance of ‘objectivity’ that tacitly thinks it can gain certainty about the external world and humanity’s relationship to it. Marcel is especially opposed to this. He thinks this kind of ‘scientific’ posture poses all inquiry in the form of problem and answer, and leaves out, or completely ignores, the idea of mystery.
Or, perhaps, the other way around? Mere mortals embrace spiritual denouements like God in order to allow them "in their heads" to move "beyond" and to "transcend" the anxiety -- the trials and the tribulations -- that sooner or later beset all mere mortals given the "human experience" itself. But to go there, in my view, exposes the reason why there are so many, many different paths to immortality and salvation. So, of course, most won't go there. Instead they convince themselves that despite all the competition for souls out there -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions -- their path really is the one true path.Both Kierkegaard and Marcel acknowledge the role anxiety plays in human experience, and yet they both see subjective experience as pointing towards something ‘beyond,’ and ‘transcendent’.
Indeed, in some respects, that's the beauty of the human condition as "for all practical purposes" it is. Language is unable to fully deconstruct or to confute these spiritual/religious paths. There are no definitive arguments that expose them as necessarily irrational. As long as the reality of existence itself is so profoundly problematic and mysterious, religion will always be one possible explanation.They note how language cannot penetrate this realm beyond normal human experience, but they still choose to keep this realm as a possibility.
...simply will not sink in and be accepted by many. In part, of course, because it is a brutally bleak way in which to think about your own existence. And I know this myself because sans "distractions" it is the brutally bleak frame of mind that often confounds me. Again, many here think I'm here only to belittle or to mock religionists. But, in actuality, that part of me is derived more from the profound envy that I feel for those who still are able to be comforted and consoled by religion. I want that again for myself. They have it and I don't. Then my reaction to those like Immanual Cant who dangle the possibility of actual proof that a God, the God does exist but then come off looking like fools when they can't deliver it.Why they choose to do so is beyond comprehension for rationalist atheist existentialists, who would ask, why believe in anything indescribable or beyond comprehension? Why not simply accept human existence on its own terms, as something radically and absolutely tragic, riddled with anxiety and dread, from which there is no escape?
Of course, for most of us, the extent to which we take anxiety and existential angst seriously is derived less from philosophical or spiritual accounts and more from just how devastating actual circumstances are. In fact, one of the main reasons why God and religion are embraced is that sooner or later the devastation can only be dealt with by leaving it in God's hands. And, come on, Sartre was Sartre. He was world-famous, a celebrity philosopher who had tons of resources [and Simone de Beauvoir] to fall back on to help him cope with his own "nausea".So I think both Kierkegaard and Marcel do not take anxiety and existential angst seriously because they think it points beyond itself to a transcendental realm. The contradiction in Marcel’s thought is that although he is against the scientific manner of framing inquiry as problem/answer, he nonetheless retains mystery and transcendence as potential answers to the problems posed by existence. To be consistent, he and Kierkegaard, should have abandoned those elusive phantasms, and carry tragedy and angst to their logical conclusions as Sartre argues.
There are, of course, things that seemingly all of us are powerless regarding. We could not not have been born. That was beyond our control. We are all indoctrinated as children to view the world around us as others do. We are powerless to go through life without access to those things required for subsistence itself. We cannot not go through puberty. We must have access to money in the modern world. We are powerless against the Grim Reaper.Powerlessness
Many existential philosophers have described, sometimes in vivid detail, what it is like to feel powerless. Social and political forces external to you can take away your freedoms and impugn you with guilt, creating a sense of powerlessness.
This basically describes my own mental, emotional and psychological configuration. Going from both God and No God objectivism to the fractured and fragmented moral and spiritual nihilist that "I" am today. And of course, they are especially frightening because how exactly do you go about not being yourself from day to day to day? For those things that disturb you externally you might have options to steer clear of them. But not your very own thoughts and feelings.Psychological forces internal to you can do the same thing. The internal forces are especially frightening because they occur inside you and yet can feel beyond your control. They can inculcate feelings of isolation, fear, and dread, along with a sense of being trapped in your own personality.
Still, how are our own personal reactions to that not going to be profoundly embedded in both our individual circumstances and the manner in which I construe dasein here?A good way to explore the feeling of powerlessness is through the work of those who have examined it in great detail. For me the best exemplars of this are Nietzsche and the novelist Franz Kafka. Friedrich Nietzsche is well acquainted with the forces, both internal and external, and thinks that we ought to harness the power of our desires and affirm ourselves by willing to live with dangerous confidence. Kafka, on the other hand, depicts the individual as powerless, weak, and passive, a victim of forces beyond his control.
"Individual circumstances" (what I understand in Heidegger's works as our "thrownness") play an enormous role in who we are and how we comport ourselves. We do have the ability, though, to modify or change our comportment. Mental reality is not 'mechanistic' (at least not in the same simplistic sense that billiard balls moving against each other are). We have many more options than objects in a 3 Dimensional space do.iambiguous wrote: ↑Fri Aug 11, 2023 4:49 pmStill, how are our own personal reactions to that not going to be profoundly embedded in both our individual circumstances and the manner in which I construe dasein here?A good way to explore the feeling of powerlessness is through the work of those who have examined it in great detail. For me the best exemplars of this are Nietzsche and the novelist Franz Kafka. Friedrich Nietzsche is well acquainted with the forces, both internal and external, and thinks that we ought to harness the power of our desires and affirm ourselves by willing to live with dangerous confidence. Kafka, on the other hand, depicts the individual as powerless, weak, and passive, a victim of forces beyond his control.