Existentialism in Review

Before I turn into a squid of anger, I would just like to say that I’m glad I took this class. I got to read existentialist texts first-hand, which is an accomplishment and an honor. I generally enjoy reading because books are like the best kind of conversations, in which the author tries to be confidential and honest, doing the best to convey what he/she really thinks.  Generally.  Other times, the author is stuck on appearances and can’t manage the vulnerability of honesty.  And it gets on my nerves.

It’s rather a pity to end the class by reviewing the intro, as the introduction was the thing that turned me off in the first place. Thinking about Solomon’s introduction just re-irritates me.  Reason being: it’s unhelpful to say that existentialism cannot be defined because it is a "living philosophy," or that it cannot be named because the movement's name was assigned after the fact. It’s unhelpful because everything in the history of the universe is subject to time, 'kay. Therefore, it is already established that things are changing and in that sense “living.” The point of names and definitions is communication.  Without names and definitions, ideas couldn't be discussed.  It's not necessarily oversimplifying or stagnating.  Furthermore, it is given that names are assigned to movements after the fact.  It’s precisely the same thing within Empiricism—not all “empiricists” asserted each and every “empiricist” doctrine. It is understood that individuals who are put in a category are unique by nature.  Calling the movement "empiricism" is a convention of speech and it’s unhelpful to reject that in the case of existentialism. It’s irritating because it’s as if Solomon attempts to elevate existentialism by making it elitist. If existentialism is superior, then the very nature of the subject will thin out unwanted participants. There’s no need to be supercilious about it.

I also still resent that Solomon says seeing the world as it really is requires living in irresolvable confusion and refusing to grasp for things that make the world seem more familiar or firm. It’s that and statements like that which provoke accusations of existentialism having a machismo attitude. There’s nothing strong about rejecting weakness. There’s nothing strong about denying weakness. There’s nothing strong about insulting weakness. The sad part of it is that to make existentialism machismo, one must forget part of existentialism—the part about being oneself. Granted, it’s inconclusive whether one can be authentic or not. But it’s still true that if you are something, you don’t have to go around being “sincere” about it. A strong person doesn’t have to shy away from weakness, talk about how strong they are, and put down others’ weakness. A strong person isn’t insecure or self-conscious in that way. It’s ironic.

More than strength (or whatever you call it: authenticity, logic, realism, truth), the impression I get from existentialism is guardedness. I think a fair amount of existentialism is founded and perpetuated by pain. Solomon said something similar, more or less, that existentialism is posturing to defend oneself against a hostile world. Some existentialist authors gilt their cynicism with heroism. I used to think cynicism was heroic, too. But now I think it’s sad. I acknowledge that machismo mindsets can be circumstantially good. Sometimes an unyielding, prickly attitude is necessary to survive desperate circumstances. Yet when circumstances change, the actual brave thing to do is regain tenderness while retaining fortitude. It’s a courageous thing to rebuild and have hope, resolve things and take a stand, and be wrong and take a stand again. I freely acknowledge the ensuing eye-rolling. But seriously. The time is near for new beginnings. Don’t cling to facades. There’s something better for you.

On Being and Nothingness and Saint Genet

In Being and Nothingness: Patterns of Bad Faith, I was tracking with Sartre’s definitions of bad faith and sincerity until he said that they’re the same thing. This confused me not only because he previously said they’re antithetical, but also because they didn’t seem remotely similar to me. Maybe Sartre is trying to be cure and trying to assert a contradiction for fashion’s sake, but that’s not satisfying. I can’t get past the feeling that there must be an ACTUAL antithesis to the bad faith/sincerity symbiosis, like mindlessness or something. It’s jolly to say that bad faith and sincerity have a yin/yang thing going on, but to say they’re antithetical and the same thing just rubs me the wrong way. I’m confused.

I thought bad faith meant to recognize a decision must be made but refuse to answer yea or nay, reducing oneself to a thing to which events occur versus an active participator in life. I thought that sincerity meant to be 1) for only oneself exactly what 2) one is. Thus it seemed that an instance of bad faith might be when a person insists on transcendence while doing nothing about facticity, and an instance of sincerity might be striving to align oneself with one’s ideals in an action. This is where I lose track, because I can’t really see how sincerity and bad faith are the same thing. I can see how sincerity is contradictory in itself, however.

For an example of sincerity’s contradiction, say I’m a sweet person. Being sincere, I always try to do the considerate thing. Yet by the very act of trying to be considerate, I’m acknowledging that I’m inconsiderate—or at least that I need to be on guard for inconsiderate behavior inside me. If I focus on being sincerely considerate, it’s presumed that’s because I am inconsiderate and need monitoring. Sincerity poses the paradox of simultaneously being and not-being whatever its object is. The act of trying to be oneself changes the self as it is (the self, pre-trying-to-be-oneself—of God, I’m using hyphens. Heidegger, what have you done), thus making a person into a self other than he/she is. But that’s not the same thing as bad faith. The way I took bad faith was as a type of confrontation avoidance, like from Sartre’s example of a person who acknowledges what he “used to be” yet insists that he is “free to recreate himself,” not accepting any fault. I guess it’s too late to field my classmates for ideas, but it would be nice to understand this.

Regarding transcendence, I feel like the way the group presented the definition was rather different from the way Sartre meant it. We didn’t get a ballpark idea of transcendence, let alone a firm grasp on the concept. Let me offer a ballpark idea here: transcendence is when a person dodges responsibility by claiming he/she is beyond reproach, for no real reason except by claiming that Everybody doesn’t understand. The instruments of bad faith that Sartre discussed illustrated this vague, wafty, frustrating way of dodging the need to give a real answer. I think somehow coming back to this idea might have aided our discussion. I should have said something. Alas.

What interested me in the expert from St. Genet is that Sartre brought up suicide at the end, briefly and out of nowhere. Once the child is charged with the heavy weight of a criminal identity, he does not buckle and resort to suicide. He grimly wills to live in spite of his ignoble meaning and molds his experience into something beautiful. Granted. It just startled me that Sartre would think that a child would commit suicide over being labeled a thief. But I guess suicide after bullying is a popularly acclaimed reality. Children kill themselves because of other people quite frequently, and it’s more often than not as a direct result of someone else’s name-calling. Maybe it disconcerted me (for more than the obvious reasons) because it was a different way to draw in the existentialist theme of suicide from our previous authors. I should have expected it but it took me by surprise.

On Existentialism is a Humanism

Last winter I read the full transcript of Existentialism is a Humanism and I must confess I read it with different eyes this time. For whatever reason, Sartre’s philosophy on responsibility didn’t hit me or sink in last year, but it certainly is making an impression on me now.

My objection is that Sartre’s philosophy about absolute personal responsibility is over-simplistic and exclusive. Sartre posits that there are no accidents and that a person creates their passions and emotions. It seemed to me that he meant that everything that happens is my responsibility and fault. Which I resent. My absolute responsibility is not only nonfactual, but impossible.

Sartre’s example was war, in which each person who does not commit suicide or desert effectually chooses the war. That might be the case for some people, but not all people, because there are certainly people who are caught up in events in which they have no choice or discernible influence. For instance, I was not responsible for the financial crisis in 2008 (even though I did not commit suicide or leave the US, in case you were wondering). I acknowledge that it might be said that many people in power chose the crisis, via dereliction of duty or virtue or what have you. But it’s absurd to say that I personally chose the financial crisis or that or that I created a world in which such a thing could happen. Not only am I not, here and now, in any position of power, I was also not any significant player in the crisis’s precipitating events. Sartre’s absolute responsibility does not account for history (or physiology, bizarrely) in any way, which is neglecting a highly important consideration.

I don’t really understand Sartre’s reasons for rejecting physiological influence in emotion. Maybe that’s because of my times, when physiological reactions are considered matters of fact. It sounds to me like Sartre doesn’t include several important distinctions in the process of stimuli, reaction, and choice. Grant me that there are physiological reactions over which we have little control—for instance, jumping when startled. A distinct stage from that stimuli is the psychological reaction, which is probably heavily instinctual, although I would argue that that reaction can be changed with conditioning. In my example, after being startled, the psychological reaction could be the desire to flee, lash out, or gain bearings on the situation. I think it’s really important to account for yet another distinct stage in which a person chooses to react. If I was startled, I could desire to lash out but restrain myself and look around for the danger first. Or I could be startled, desire to flee, and actually take steps back. I guess the problem arises from the second case—if I desire to flee and do run away, Sartre would be mad if I said that I HAD to run because I was scared. In that way, he might say I chose to be scared. I think that’s where my problem would be—it’s inaccurate to say I chose to be sacred. It’s better to say that after being scared, I chose to act on my fear in the mode of fleeing (vs. standing my ground or gaining my bearings). It would be pretty frustrating to deal with a person who says that they aren’t responsible for their negative consequences because of their emotions. Yet I think it’s important to include room for character change and deliberation in the philosophy of responsibility. Seeing as how Sartre has a very different idea about character and human nature, I guess I hit a wall here (just to throw in a few more unaccounted situations in which absolute responsibility/choice doesn’t match: shock, being overwhelmed, making involuntary choice, and sin).

Another troublesome aspect of Sartre’s absolute responsibility is its nonsensical implications regarding abuse. To apply his reasoning, it would be to say that the victim chooses to be abused, because he or she does not commit suicide or run away. This is patently false. The responsibility and choice of abuse lies with the abuser. The victim is not creating a world in which the abuser must be abusive (it’s more likely that the abuser would be abusive no matter who is around or what is being done). To say that the victim chooses abuse is victim blaming, and I don’t care what any fancy, influential, old French man says about it—that’s wrong.

Yet, if I’m picking up on Sartre’s motivation correctly, then I can relate to his insistence on responsibility. There are cases in which people play stupid and pretend that they don’t believe in what they’re doing, and it sucks. Yesterday I was confronted with the obligation to be compassionate towards someone who wronged me, supposedly because she was incapacitated. I was completely unwilling to let her off the responsibility of her actions, for any reason more or less. I wanted to hold her to her status as a human being with rational faculties who is capable of making choices and is responsible for them (as an adult no less! With education and resources and experience, how can she not be responsible??). Unfortunately, regardless of my unwillingness, I still do accept my obligation to be compassionate to her. Thus my objection to Sartre applies to two levels—other people and me. Even though I want her to be held accountable, I recognize that there are actually extenuating circumstances in this case that mitigate her responsibility. And even though I want to be justified in hating her because of what she’s done to me, I recognize that my hurt wouldn’t validate my hate, which is a case of a person choosing as they will not.

On Being and Time

Heidegger isn’t as unpleasant as I anticipated. I admit he is mostly unintelligible, but he does have his moments of clarity. I think I like his unintelligible style; it lets me more easily come to my own opinions about what he's saying. What really strikes me is the elegance of his ideas in Being and Time. The impression I got from Heidegger’s description of the world is a transforming yet undiminished and non-growing world. I think Nietzsche is angling at a similar idea when he talks about the eternal world in The Will to Power. Except that Heidegger's way of saying it is prettier and less condescending. Just sayin’, Nietzch.

What makes Heidegger’s philosophy pretty is the transience of virtue (am I allowed to talk about virtue in Heidegger? Let’s say yes—it’s my commentary and I’m interpreting him). I got this picture of a roving mass of roiling. A mound of brownness, leveling and turning, perpetually buzzing at a lazy pace. Every so often, a lighter spot may be seen. The mass just bunches at a further end to reveal a place in which a tiny spec--the individual--starts to brighten. For a glimmering moment, the individual has an explicit grasp on his or her identity. But as soon as that shine is realized, the mass has already commenced re-bunching, shrouding the individual and effectively removing the shine, returning everything to brown. Maybe that’s a weird picture. Anyway, the romance of the idea comes from the brittle, diminishing character of Da-sein in the midst of das Man. Da-sein is the single good thing in the world, but it’s nearly impossible to achieve, and definitely impossible to sustain. The most tragic thing is the anonymity of it. Most don’t recognize the possibility to even begin to realize Da-sein, and even when an individual does begin to realize it, thrownness takes over and it's forgotten, lost in the eddy back to tranquilization. Geeze. Someone needs to make a movie with these themes. It would be amazing. I’d watch it.

An aspect of Heidegger's philosophy that I feel was inaccurately interpreted in class was the “others.” I felt like a hostility and manipulation was read into the others and it wasn’t right. I think Heidegger is very specific in that he says “others” does NOT mean “everybody else but me,” but those whom I neglect to distinguish myself from. An example could be when I’m with my family, or in class, just not thinking about social status or being self-conscious. Just any time I’m unconsciously in a group, anytime I’m standing in a group and NOT going, “I don’t belong with these yahoos.” I feel like the sense of manipulation and hostility read into the others was an inaccurate reading. Not that I get to talk about interpretations, me with my roving mound of das Man and shimmering moments. I just stand by my conviction that there isn’t virtue in being condescending to others, not even being condescending to the herd.

An aspect of Heidegger's philosophy I don't understand is his meaning of "care." The impression I get is that he means “care” in the sense of “participating,” almost. Heidegger specifies that care doesn’t mean worry, but being-in-the-world. He more or less says that “being together” with things is “taking care.” In contemporary language, I think that means care is “being present,” or attending to what’s going on.

An aspect of Heidegger's philosophy I find interesting is the alienation inherent to entanglement. He says that alienation drives the authentic self to self-dissection, in which the self tries out different characterizations and types. Furthermore, he mysteriously says that self-dissection is a legitimate way to be, even if it’s unauthentic. I wonder what he means by that. It could mean that Heidegger merely acknowledges that a person doesn’t pop out of existence when he or she becomes authentic. Or it could mean that he doesn’t place values on authenticity and inauthenticity, as was claimed in class. All in all, I enjoyed reading Heidegger, too, and I might look for more of his work to read.

On The Tragic Sense of Life

We covered a lot of diverse material in class and I’ve decided to concentrate on one work, Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life.  Unamuno is a philosopher I hadn't heard of before, so I’m glad Solomon included him in the text.  I liked his intensity.  Sometimes it’s just nice to know someone give a flying fart about something, you know?  I also amused myself by imagining Unamuno's text spoken with a heavy Spanish accent. 

I can relate to his “up-yours” mentality towards fate.  That aggression can be the saving grace of a troubled life.  Perhaps it seems wild and over the top, but I think Unamuno’s radical mindset was his way of staying sane through hard times.  Like we covered, he lived through many wars and sinister governments.  He professed a radical mindset yet reportedly lived a relatively stable, normal life with a dash of clergy, leadership, and academics thrown in.  It seems contradictory to profess radicalism and live normally, but considering his surroundings, he probably needed those fierce ideas in able to survive and be normal.  It’s difficult to hold his fierce ideas against him.

In an objective sense, though, I can see how the contradiction is unhelpful.  Life isn’t always troubled.  Unamuno fought against the unjust reward of annihilation, but fate is not always coldly just or falsely just.  Sometimes it’s actually just, so what then of one’s fighting spirit?  Is it okay to fight and strive in a time of peace?  Is it really okay to be aggressive and willful against others when they’re not trying to control you?  I’m not so sure.  That would be my problem with Unamuno’s philosophy.  I would want a philosophy that’s comprehensive, for bad times and good times. 

Unamuno proposes that only fanatics base their conduct on dogma and immutable foundations.  This is understood to be a bad thing because foundations crack and tremble, therefore one should have no dogma and no foundation.  I think I can see where Unamuno's going with this, but I still think he's inaccurate and wrong on two counts.  One, uncritically basing life on rote beliefs isn’t fanaticism, it’s apathy.  Fanaticism means devotion, deeply subscribing to something—how can you deeply subscribe to something into which you don’t delve?  The blind faith to which we refer colloquially is not legitimate faith.  Two, a cracking and trembling foundation isn’t reason to do away with foundations.  Sure, it’s possible for ill-laid foundations to ruin the houses built upon them, but houses cannot stand without foundations.  Plus, many houses stand upon good foundations.  A cracking and trembling foundation means that something about the building process went wrong, perhaps in planning or execution.  It doesn’t follow that foundations should be rejected. 

Something else Unamuno said is that damnable disbelief lives is in a man’s heart, not his head.  I think this must be rather close to the truth, which is both comforting and disconcerting.  On the one hand, I’m glad Unamuno made the distinction, allowing it to be said that God doesn’t hate questioners.  It insults God to say that he wants mindless drones for his mindless drone army.  That doesn’t involve faith or trust of any kind.  God is smart, smart enough to make smart people, and he’s got enough personality to make personal beings.  It’s simply untrue that God would require men to sell their minds and repress their doubts in order to be with him.  That’s not trust, that’s fear.  God’s not like that.  On the other hand, it’s jarring to think that the problem of disbelief lies within the heart.  What is more unchangeable than a heart?  Information can change a mind, but what input can change a heart?  I think that even if it's nearly impossible, such a thing exists.  

On The Underground Man and The Grand Inquisitor

Dostoevsky states in The Underground Man, that man’s worst defect is perpetual immorality because it is irrational.  This could be interpreted to mean that man would be perfect if only he’d stop being irrational and immoral.  But I think a more meaningful interpretation is that man’s stumbling block is himself.  Our own nature is our living strength and fatal flaw, simultaneously. 

Parallels between Nietzsche and Dostoevsky strike me as odd because I can’t relate to Nietzsche, but I resonate strongly with Dostoevsky.  If I were at a party with them, I’d probably exchange awkward pleasantries with Nietzsche, then go stalk Dostoevsky all night long.  Something they have in common is that they speak through angsty, rebellious, prophetic protagonists in their writings.  Yet Nietzsche seems unintelligible and abrasive while Dostoevsky seems engaging and insightful.  Another commonality is that they both address a strong/weak, master/slave dynamic in their writings.  Most likely it is the manner in which they interpret these themes that affects my reception of them.  Whatever difficult, bitter topic they cover, their personalities impact their ideas.  Nietzsche clearly despises others, but Dostoevsky appreciates the irony and forgives.  It’s hard to relate to someone who’s cruel and easy to relate to someone who laughs.   I wonder what Nietzsche would think of Dostoevsky.  How would he peg him?  Maybe he would seek to explain his ideas and gain a peer relationship.  Or maybe he’d reject Dostoevsky as part of the herd.

Taking a theological detour in The Grand Inquisitor; the Cardinal said that to ask for a miracle is to lose faith in God, but to reject a miracle is to reject God.  That’s bad theology.  I realize Jesus quoted a section in the Bible where we’re instructed not to test God, but there are at least two sections where we’re invited to test God.  One is in Isaiah, when a king is on the brink of a war he can’t win.  He’s told to ask for some wondrous sign of God’s faithfulness (Isaiah 7:11) but he doesn’t ask, because he doesn’t trust God to carry him through the war.  That conclusion might seem like inference, but it’s evidenced by the king going to a neighboring ruler to ask for help instead.  The second place we’re invited to test God is in Psalms when the songwriter says to taste and see that the Lord is good.  The songwriter wants us to tell for ourselves and not take his word for it.  In general, testing is not opposite to faith (Romans 12:1-2, 1 Thessalonians 5:21).  My apologies, I keep coming back to theology in my commentaries—I just believe emphatically that if scripture is going to be mentioned and interpreted, then it should be interpreted accurately.       

Returning to a broader aspect of philosophy, I wanted to address the ethics of the Cardinal’s justification for the Catholic church’s rituals and regulations.  In short, he is not justified.  From an existentialist point of view, he’s unjustified because he’s usurping the individual responsibility of each “weak” congregant by smothering his or her ability to choose.  It’s a burden for every person.  Giving the burden to another person doesn’t absolve an individual of responsibility, it just changes the question to, “why did you trust this person?”  Every person does need a master.  Even non-religious people take their identities from a preferred, shared guiding mark or type (ex. ethnic, sport, interest affiliations).  Every person is a follower/subscriber, even if they don’t call themselves a slave.  Everyone seeks a master, but each person chooses their master freely.  The need for a master is precisely why the Cardinal was wrong to set himself up as the benefactor of the weak masses.  As a believing man, he should have known that every Christian ought to choose Christ as master (the whole “Lord” thing, and all).  It was poor caretaking to take over Christ’s place in the congregants’ hearts and to neglect to strengthen them in order to make that choice.  It was wrong for him to do that. 

On The Will to Power and other Nietzschean Essays

As odd as it is, I want to read more Nietzsche.  I found several interesting excerpts when I was researching for my group’s presentation, which made me want to further investigate his work. The excerpts are inflammatory and confusing; they make me feel like I don’t understand Nietzsche at all even after reading every selection in our text.  I want to pin Nietzsche down and figure him out.  What I found in The Will to Power suggests that he would approve of genocide, as he calls the will to power: “the great cultivating idea: the races that cannot bear it stand condemned; those who find it the greatest benefit are chosen to rule… I want to teach the idea that gives many the right to erase themselves…” section 1053 & 1056.  Yet Nietzsche also specified that those who suspect him of Darwinism are educated morons (Ecce Homo, 41).  He’s not simple, which is irritating as a logician but intriguing as an artist.  In Ecce Homo Nietzsche talks about finding the Overman in the Machiavellian Prince, which I understand to be controversial even though I don’t remember the details of Machiavelli’s propositions.  It’s tantalizing because Nietzsche’s meaning of the Overman wasn’t laid out in the text selections.  I want to read more so I can iron out the apparent inconsistencies and see how Nietzsche defines his terms. 

Another thing I'm stuck on is why Nietzsche hates God and religion.  I know there are legitimate reasons to hate God and religion, but I don’t understand Nietzsche’s reasons or even his concept of God.  In the “Error of Freewill” in Twilight of the Idols, he says that if “we deny God, we deny the responsibility that originates from God: and thereby we redeem the world.”  First of all, I have a problem with the idea that if I deny something then it will go away.  Secondly, if negation or denial did work for some things, I think God would be too big and powerful to be subject to our negation.  Aside from that, Nietzsche’s statement has all sorts of interesting implications.  He says that the world needs us to redeem ourselves from our responsibility.  He seems to say that responsibility condemns us and we have the power to save ourselves by denying God.  This confused me at first because I was thinking of redemption, responsibility, and God in the Christian way—a personal God, self-indictment by trespassing laws, the need for a savior.  But then I remembered that Nietzsche doesn’t talk about God as a personal being.  He sees God as a figment of our consciousness.  There is no real trespassing, the only self-indictment is breaking our own self-made rules. So we’re condemning ourselves with a figment of our self-created morality and we can knock it off if we so choose, thereby redeeming ourselves.    

But if responsibility and redemption really are that arbitrary, I don’t see why I can’t just as easily deny Nietzsche as Nietzsche can deny God.  He says that I need to reconcile to the idea of eternal recurrence by accepting the will to power, but I’m able to deny that idea as well as that method of acceptance.  If the universe is a circle, then the things that make him determinist are the same things that make me libertarian.  Essentially, realizing the eternal recurrence “means” nothing—Nietzsche cannot indicate an alternative.  The moralists HAVE TO try to force their custom on others, the noblemen HAVE TO resist descending into the rabble, the utilitarians HAVE TO cling to their figment of God.  I assume that if Nietzsche tells me something about how the world works, then there is a purpose in his telling.  But I don’t see a change to make or “should” to follow.   I don’t see the point in revealing this underworld, the ring of eternal recurrence.  Why should I will to power?  If the universe really is a circle of non-progressing mutation, so what?  More reading!