Existentialism: What s It All About & Who Cares?

Transcription

1 Existentialism: What s It All About & Who Cares? Patrick Jemmer Swansea Philosophy Café: Wednesday 9 January 2013 How did it start? Modern Existentialism is founded in Hegel s ( ) phenomenological investigations into the nature of consciousness, and through these back to Kant ( ) and Hume ( ); and from there we can trace a path back to the Ancient Greeks who wanted to know What is the good life? which is a deeply Existential question. How can we classify it? Existentialism is not really a single school of philosophical thought, but represents a convincing and plausible methodology for living. As Nietzsche said, it is an approach for people who are brave enough not to prefer a handful of certainty to a cartful of beautiful possibilities (BGE, 10, p. 40). How did it develop? It developed from the thinking of, for example, Schopenhauer ( ), Nietzsche ( ), Jaspers ( ), Heidegger ( ), Merleau-Ponty ( ), Sartre ( ), de Beauvoir ( ), Camus ( ), Beckett ( ). Kierkegaard ( ) and Dostoyevsky ( ) wrote from a religious perspective, and Tillich ( ), Barth ( ) and Marcel ( ) are explicitly theological Existentialists. Film director Bernardo Bertolucci explores many Existential themes in his films; and psychiatrist R D Laing ( ) defines psychosis and schizophrenia in Existential terms. Shakespeare s ( ) drama (particularly in Hamlet and King Lear, for instance), is profoundly Existential. The nature of Existentialism: The mainstream Existentialism espoused in particular by Sartre that we ll discuss here is categorized as anti-idealist, anti-metaphysical, and atheistic. Contingency: Whatever is not necessary is contingent, unnecessary, accidental. This is the fundamental feature of existence in the Cosmos it is absurdly superfluous, a grotesque purposeless accident. Human life is ultimately pointless and absurd. We are doomed to death from the moment of birth into a meaningless Cosmos where any putative Deity is at best a criminally negligent parent, and at worst, non-existent. When human consciousness, even more contingent than the Cosmos itself, apprehends this sickening awareness, it experiences nausea (Sartre, N). Existential truth: Allied to this is the realization that no conscious person is, or ever can be, a fixed thing like a stone or a table; we are all indeterminate and ambiguous beings, in constant process of becoming, flux, and change.

2 Fundamental freedom: What this means, though, is that whatever one s circumstances, one is always individually free in how one acts and responds. By asserting one s individual freedom, one can overcome the programming of social conventions, other people s expectations, religious dogma, morality, guilt, and all other forms of oppression. Behaviour: At the heart of Existentialism is freedom; at the heart of freedom is choice; and at the heart of choice is action. Cox says To be is to do, but by doing a person does not become his being absolutely; his being is rather a constant becoming (SAGFTP, p. 106). Why Existentialism? It offers a way to self-create an honest, worthwhile life by ditching fairytale delusions like the myth of perfectible life and of total fulfilment in a happy-ever-after fantasy. Existence precedes essence (Sartre: EH; quoted in JPSBW, Chapter 2, Existentialism, p. 32): There are no ideal, abstract, metaphysical, given, essences which make anything real or meaningful. There are only particular things, and the consciousness of these particular things. In this sense Sartre s Existentialism is anti-metaphysical or anti-essentialist. Consciousness is a nothingness-in-itself states of mind are embodied, but non-corporeal and not reducible to brain activity; desires, thoughts, expectations represent relationships between a conscious person and the world; consciousness is always about something. Undifferentiated being: In the absence of consciousness there is only undifferentiated being which is a fullness or plenitude but which lacks all properties, features, and characteristics. Consciousness acts as a source of nothingness or negation which differentiates and divides undifferentiated being into distinct phenomena. Consciousness is not just passive: we create our knowledge of the world though a synthetic, interpretative relationship between consciousness and the world. Differentiated being: The richly varied world of phenomena we all inhabit is grounded not positively, but negatively, in the negations, lacks, and absences by which consciousness carves up the world of undifferentiated being into differentiated being. These negativities and differentiations allow sensemaking and purposeful action. Lack: Consciousness relates to the world through a constant attitude of questioning expectation which awaits the discovery of lack or non-being. Things and situations are only understood by what they lack. Think of the example of the acorn this in itself lacks nothing and has no meaning but it lacks and is given meaning by the non-being of the oak-tree which is its not-yet-being but only for a temporalized consciousness able to project forward in time. Temporality: Human consciousness is essentially temporalized it is not in time -- consciousness always lacks the absent future it s constantly fleeing towards (or surpassing, or transcending); the future which promises to give ultimate meaning to present actions, and which tempts us (o fickle mistress!) with fulfilment and oneness; the not-yet (future-past) which falls into the no-longer (pastfuture) as soon as it s reached. There is no present moment. Time exists only for consciousness. Existentialism: Patrick Jemmer Swansea Philosophy Café: 9 January

3 There is only the relentless process of fleeing, transcendence, surpassing. Thus consciousness can never become one with itself, it can only ever march forward relentlessly until it reaches oblivion in the fatal fangs of death. Interpreting the world: Every situation is a fullness of being. However, as a situation for some consciousness, it can be interpreted as presently lacking in terms of that consciousness s desires, hopes, expectations, and intentions. Consciousness always finds lack consciousness can never be fully satisfied. In particular, the lack lies in the constant passage of future-past into past-future. The fundamental Existential problem: At present [consciousness] is not what it is (past) and it is what it is not (future) (Sartre, BN, p. 146): Humans naturally desire to be to have oneness, completion, and fullness rather than constantly to in process of becoming with its striving, lack, and instability. But the future never comes and yesterday is in any case a memory this unfortunately leads to considerable angst regret and despair. Freedom: Despite (and indeed because of) this staggeringly powerful Existential realization that we all, every one, dancing always precipitously close to the yawning maw of Hell, and that we can fall at any time, it s not all bad. We are free exactly because we are not fixed in the present, and genuine alternatives exist in the future. This realization also brings the idea of freedom that we can every single one of us for ourself alone choose and act to make the most of the time we have before You might be a king or a little street sleeper: but sooner or later you ll dance with the Reaper 1 we are nothing but, and everything as, our future possibilities and we must choose we are condemned to be free (Sartre, BN, p. 462). Man s nature is to have no nature (de Beauvoir, quoted in Cox, HTBAE, p. 20); and Human reality is constituted as a being which is what it is not and which is not what it is (Sartre: BN, p.86): Paradoxically, every person first exists, lacking in meaning or purpose and must thereafter strive to make meaning and purpose. A person s essence is to have no essence other than the one that person continually self-invents. Each person s world is the product of his or her attitude towards it. Being-for-itself: In the absence of the Other, each subjective consciousness is a self-conscious or self-reflective being-for-itself which experiences itself as free, and as a temporally transcending, uniquely-judging, self-creating, almost godlike entity. Being-for-others: However, we don t exist as subjects in isolation, but are constantly confronted by Others, who are not simply objects for us, but are subjects in their own right, and whose consciousnesses make us into objects and Others for them. This decentralizes the world of the first subject s values and judgements, and re-orients and re-evaluates it towards the world of the Other, who acts as a drain-hole through which the initial subjectivity flows. The subject becomes painfully aware of herself as an object. Against our will, the Other bests us, traps us, re-moulds us, diminishes 1 As the Grim Reaper himself raps in Bill and Ted s Bogus Journey [Twirls Scythe over his head and ducks so blade doesn't hit it] Heh heh! Get down with your bad self! Existentialism: Patrick Jemmer Swansea Philosophy Café: 9 January

4 our subjectivity into a new objectivity we don t want to acknowledge or own. Since this happens to everyone, we are all beset by anxiety due to what Others think of us, leading to guilt, shame, humiliation, and embarrassment although sometimes to pride as well. Vanity of vanities: Dignity, embarrassment, humiliation, pride, shame nobody feels these emotions all alone they are all Other-related aspects of Self which belong to the subject but which exist over there for the Other, who thus possesses part of the subject s Self. We spend a large part of our lives trying to control our being-for-others by impressing the Other or by making the Other fear, love, or respect us, shouting always into a roaring wind I do exist, I do; I may not be better that you, but I am just as good; after my own fashion And yet Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity (Ecclesiastes 1:2). The struggle for freedom: Every person s freedom is subject to the Other s freedom and transcendence, and that person is transcendence-transcended and made into an unfree object by the Other. Human life is a constantly conflicted power-struggle to assert transcendence and freedom Hell is other people (Sartre, IC, p.223). Mitsein Being-with-Others: Maybe, though, this is a pessimistic and unsustainable overgeneralization arising from Beauvoir s, Camus, and Sartre s own personal experiences. And, what of the caring, protective gaze of the mother towards her child? Sometimes egos are transcended in collective enterprises (involving religion, politics, music, dancing, drugs); however, again, this togetherness is often maintained in solidarity against a them, which can then become destructive. Facticity: We all exist as beings-in-situation we are never free of some situating context, whether this be geographical location, other people, or the constraints of our own bodies. Facticity describes the inherent adversity and resistance of all things and situations, which freedom requires, so that it can always work towards overcoming it freedom/transcendence and facticity give each other meaning and reality The resistance of the thing [facticity] sustains the action of man [freedom] as air sustains the flight of the dove (de Beauvoir, EA, p. 81). Limits to freedom: Some predispositions and responses need consciousness to occur but are not matters of choice for example, sense of humour, sexual preference, panic reaction, insanity. Freedom-anxiety: Our awareness of nearly limitless freedom, and the knowledge that we are nothing in the manner of being it, that all we are is the future-possibilities of free choices, is a source of anxiety. Nothing but our freedom itself stops us from doing destructive, dangerous, or embarrassing things at any time. Bad faith: In order to avoid freedom-anxiety, people act in bad faith they adopt coping strategies to convince themselves and others they are not, in fact, free. Bad faith is the opposite of freedom, it is negative freedom. It is a type of game in which transcendence and facticity are deliberately confused with each other and inverted; in which freedom seeks to suppress and deny itself. Bad faith is not self-deception as consciousness is translucent and does not admit of psychic duality there Existentialism: Patrick Jemmer Swansea Philosophy Café: 9 January

5 is no unconscious The essence of the lie implies in fact that the liar actually is in complete possession of the truth which he is hiding (Sartre, BN, p. 71).Bad faith is a concrete, pragmatic, way of behaving which seeks self-evasion or self-distraction from one s essential freedom through an attempt at choosing not to choose. Bad faith is at the heart of an attitude which is unthinking, lazy, life-denying, and oppressive to true humanity -- and banal instances of bad faith such as I was just doing my job or I was only following orders, very easily build to much worse injustice and violence. Inauthenticity: It is inauthentic to wish to be other than you are, particularly if it is impossible to be what you wish to be. Inauthenticity is characterized by the man who stubbornly continues to flee what he s making of himself (Sartre, WD, p. 112). Authenticity, on the other hand, consists in adopting human reality as one s own (Sartre, WD, p. 113). Authentic people take responsibility so that they avoid simply being buffeted consciousnesses, fixed things, apparently swept along by circumstances beyond their control, and full of excuses. Authentic people either embrace wholeheartedly their being-in-situation, or will to be different, and then actively and constructively strive to change that situation, without regret. Other-related authenticity: Authenticity is also about how we relate to other people ethically. It is authentic to respect and affirm the freedom of others, and not to use them as means to one s own ends. This sometimes means conforming to other s expectations to some extent, as beings existing within a socio-cultural, political, and historical context. Being-in-situation: (Sartre, WD, p. 54) Sartre introduces the example of a waiter who goes about his job in a robotic, hyper-alert fashion, who is extremely attentive, always quickly on hand, fastidiously polite, and eager to please. Is this mechanical waiter inauthentically acting in bad faith through his performance by trying to deny his human conscious transcendence and become his objectified facticity as a waiter-thing? Or perhaps he acts authentically, behaving consciously with ironical intent, throwing himself into his chosen role, playing the performance, not to escape his freedom (since he knows he can never attain identity with the performance), and yet acknowledging that his condition is only ever realized through this play he plays with his condition in order to realize it (Sartre, BN, p. 82). Indeed bad faith involves moaning about your situation but doing nothing either to make the most of it, or to change it. The homosexual: We note that in Sartre s example of the homosexual he is not in any way attacking homosexuality as such but rather the bad faith of those who seek to deny their true nature without seeking either to embrace it or to change it. Sartre s inauthentic homosexual acts in ways which are characterized generally by society as homosexual, but denies that homosexuality is the meaning of his actions. He also denies that these actions are actually the result of deep-seated tendencies, and rather characterizes them as mere eccentricities, as aberrations, as the result of curiosity he plays on the word being seeking to confuse not being what he is with not being what he is not (Sartre, BN, p. 87). Having acted in his particular way, he denies utterly his responsibility for his no-longer facticity (which he now claims is now utterly forgotten in the past) and tries in bad faith to be a pure transcendence (attempting, impossibly, to exist only in the future). Existentialism: Patrick Jemmer Swansea Philosophy Café: 9 January

6 However, sincerity is just as bad, since this means that the homosexual denies his free transcendence and identifies totally with his facticity as a stereotyped homosexual-thing he tries to claim he is forced into his actions by his nature and has no choice at all (notice that this is a radical interpretation of sincerity by Sartre). Or, more subtly, he could declare, ironically indeed, this is the essence of confession Oooh, look at me! I am just such an old poof in order to become the-one-who-admits-to-homosexuality, in order to avoid taking responsibility for his sexuality. Confession aiming at absolution is inauthentic and an act of bad faith. In order to be authentic, the homosexual must strop regretting his sexuality, and begin to own and take responsibility for his actions. Wilful ignorance: Bad faith is wilful ignorance that aims at avoiding responsibility, motivated by fear and anxiety. Ignorance is a kind of knowledge, not a lack of knowledge Ignorance itself as a project is a mode of knowledge since, if I want to ignore Being, it is because I affirm that it is knowable (Sartre, TE, p. 33). A culture of bad faith: Society, and most human endeavours, constantly tries to suppress contingency by imposing meaning and purpose, by naming and categorizing. These endeavours suppose that human existence is inevitable, that consciousness is the result of an immortal essence, that moral values are objective and absolute, and that society reflects this as the only reality. We need only identify totally with the role society gives us, and refrain from thinking philosophically all of these are manifestations of bad faith. However, in truth, things only meaning relative to other things, and it is our ultimately pointless activities which motivate everything. It is crucial that we have a background awareness of contingency, in order that we not try to deny it and so slip into bad faith. However, in order to avoid utter madness we need to devote ourselves to the task in hand of being authentic. Salauds and salmon mousse: The profound bad-faith salauds ( swine or bastards a term Sartre introduces in Childhood of a Leader in the collection The Wall, see JPSBW, Chapter 1 Sartre in the World, p. 13.) are like the middle-class couples in Monty Python s Meaning of Life, who when called by the Grim Reaper at a dinner party, are carried off by poisoned salmon mousse. They make their final progress to Middle-Class Heaven in convoy, each couple in their own Volvo, Rover, and Porsche no car-sharing for these folk! And Middle-Class Heaven is a 5-star hotel in the clouds, where it s perpetual Christmas with lashings of entertainments. Existentialism against Nihilism: The first value and first object of will is: to be its own foundation. This mustn t be understood as an empty psychological desire, but as the transcendental structure of human reality (Sartre, WD, p. 110). Despite the fact that this project of lasting self-foundation is, by definition, impossible, if we attempt to abandon the project of oneness, substantiality, and foundation, we descend instead into a project of Nihilism: we aim to be nothing at all, but this is nevertheless a fixed and determined nothingness-in-itself, and a nihilistic person is thus acting in bad faith. Authenticity is not a state or essence; it is the ever-ongoing process of Existentialism: Patrick Jemmer Swansea Philosophy Café: 9 January

7 embracing freedom, founding oneself, only immediately to move on and be faced with the necessity to embrace freedom, and, once again, re-found oneself. Choice and responsibility: Whatever we do we choose and must take total responsibility for with honesty and courage and effort! Existentialism teaches us that we much learn to accept both uncertainty and hard truths of existence, and to stop blaming others, and the world. This means a particular attitude to life, death, and others which is more honest, dignified, and moral than other ways of living. A person living in bad faith makes the choice to forget or deny a painful experience. However, a person living in good faith, as the author of her own existence, whose aim is to affirm positively her whole life, re-evaluates or re-values the same event. She chooses to identify the event without regret as a learning experience that has allowed her to grow stronger and wiser, to be more what she truly is she chooses to redeem the past and to transform every it was into thus I willed it (Nietzsche, TSZ, p. 161). Life only has the meaning each of us chooses to give it. Existential enlightenment: After a process of profound personal enlightenment one comes to see what actually is rather than what appears to be and comes to live without self-consciousness, misgivings, or regret. The joys of Existentialism: The brave person in good faith, who constantly strives to overcome himself, who confronts his situation, and refuses to wallow in regret, knowing only weakness and defeat, gains nobility and self-respect. We come to tolerate less things like failure, greed, irresponsibility, negligence, self-neglect, and wilful ignorance to do what is actually required, rather than what we throw away as simply our best. A last word from Sartre: I am not authentic. I have halted on the threshold of the promised lands. But at least I point the way to them and others can go there (Sartre, WD, p, 62). The material in this talk is taken largely from (Cox, HTBAE). Existentialism: Patrick Jemmer Swansea Philosophy Café: 9 January

8 References de Beauvoir, S; Frechtman, B (translator) (2000) The Ethics of Ambiguity. New York NY: Citadel. Cox, G (2006) Sartre: A Guide for the Perplexed. London UK: Continuum International. Cox, G (2009) How to be an Existentialist: Or, How to Get Real, Get a Grip, and Stop Making Excuses.. London UK: Continuum International. Sartre, J-P (1975) The Wall. New York NY: New Directions. Sartre, J-P; Gilbert, S (translator) (1990) In Camera and Other Plays In Camera ( No Exit or Behind Closed Doors ). Harmondsworth UK: Penguin. Sartre, J-P; Mairet, P (translator) (1993) Existentialism and Humanism. London UK: Methuen. Sartre, J-P; van den Hoven, A (translator) (1995) Truth and Existence. Chicago IL: University of Chicago. Sartre, J-P; Wood, J (introduction); Baldick, R (translator) (2000) Nausea. London UK: Penguin. Sartre, J-P; Hoare, Q (translator) (2000) War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phoney War London UK: Verso. Sartre, J-P; Priest, S (editor) (2001) John-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings. London UK: Routledge. Sartre, J-P; Barnes, H E (translator) (2003) Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. London UK: Routledge. Nietzsche, F; Hollingdale, R J (translator) (2003) Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. London UK: Penguin. Nietzsche, F; Parkes, G (translator) (2005) Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Oxford UK: Oxford University. Existentialism: Patrick Jemmer Swansea Philosophy Café: 9 January