Existentialism and its Forerunners PDF

Study Section 1.4: Existentialism and its forerunners  Study Outcomes After completion of this study unit, you should be able to: Understand the significance of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as forerunners to existentialism; Explain what existentialism is by giving an account...

Study Section 1.4: Existentialism and its forerunners  Study Outcomes After completion of this study unit, you should be able to: Understand the significance of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as forerunners to existentialism; Explain what existentialism is by giving an account of the majorn concerns and themes; and Describe the main views of important thinkers associated with this school of thought, specifically Sartre and De Beauvoir. Meaningful Questions in Existentialism  Historical Background to Existentialism From 19th Century onwards: The Western world is situated squarely within the secular age → A decline in traditional value systems and beliefs (especially religion). The issue of freedom (and what it meant to be free) was at the forefront of human concern. Within this global political climate, the following questions are highlighted: What are human beings capable of? How should society be structured to best accommodate human freedom? What is the essence of human existence? What is the meaning of human life in this strange new world that differs so much from our human history?  Fragmented Existence and Culture ❖ Humanity is confronted with a fragmented existence: The Enlightenment and Romantic movements had given humanity individualism, but what were we supposed to do with this newfound freedom? The optimism of The Enlightenment was fading… ❖ In the secular age, the meaning of life is no longer given (by a supreme authority, e.g. religion) → New meaning must now be made! If meaning was up to individuals, how does one assume such a responsibility? ❖ The emergence of “Metaphysical pessimism” (AJ Ayer) and the question/problem of NIHILISM (meaninglessness) → If there is no inherent meaning to life, does that imply that all meaning is dead?  Existentialism as a Movement ❖ Existentialism, as a philosophical, literary, artistic, and political movement would address the problems facing the world in an increasingly secular age. ❖ General definition → Existentialism = The philosophy of human existence. Specifically, philosophical reflection on the nature of human existence. It may also be called “Philosophy of Life [Lebensphilosophie]”. ❖ Quintessential existentialist thought unfolded mostly in Paris after WW2. ❖ Some important existentialist thinkers: Søren Kierkegaard; Friedrich Nietzsche; Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers; Martin Buber; Gabriel Marcel; Simone de Beauvoir; Albert Camus; Jean-Paul Sartre. ❖ Existentialism = Sometimes Leftist; usually iconoclastic/subversive; typically individualistic. ❖ Not necessarily pessimistic, despite many critical claims! Often optimistic and inspiring.  Common Themes in Non-Theistic Existentialism 1. ANTI-ESSENTIALISM (non-essentialism): There is no predefined human “essence”. → especially not animal rationale (Enlightenment legacy). Human existence is inherently ambiguous in that it humans are unlike other beings → What kinds of beings are we? 2. Radical individual FREEDOM (Enlightenment legacy). 3. RESPONSIBILITY (individual, social, political). 4. Finitude (limited lifespan) and contingency (there are no ultimate or necessary answers to life). 5. Life’s Meaning and/or Meaninglessness [the threat of Nihilism & Absurdism → the inherent meaninglessness and sometimes senselessness of existence]. 6. Humanity & its World: Relationship between human individuals and the world is one of meaning(s). 7. Disillusionment & alienation → fragmentation of culture and human identity.  According to David E. Cooper in “Existentialism as a Philosophical Movement”. ▪ The human predicament that inspires the very enterprise of philosophy; ▪ The distinctive character of human existence that distinguishes it from all other types of existence; ▪ The intimacy of the relationship between human beings and their world; ▪ The radical character of individual human freedom; ▪ The tone that a life led in appreciation of this freedom must possess; ▪ The structure of interpersonal relation consonant with this radical, existential freedom. Existentialist Forerunners: Kierkegaard  Existentialist Forerunners: Kierkegaard The authentic individual is someone that is “willing to be one’s own self.” Authenticity requires a passionate, “personality defining” (personligheds definerende) decision or commitment that binds together and unifies the fragmented and disjointed moments of our life into a focused and coherent whole. The “unifying power” of commitment is embodied in, what Kierkegaard calls, an attitude of “earnestness” (alvor), a sober recognition that existence is a serious affair, not just a hedonistic affair. For Kierkegaard, the subjective truth of the individual is higher than the universal truths of morality. And this means there may be times in our lives where we must suspend our obligation to the ethical sphere and accept the terrible fact that it may be more important to be authentic (to be true to oneself) than it is to be moral (to do what is right.) The individual must be unique and rise above the rabble of the crowd. Existentialist Forerunners: Nietzsche  The Trans-valuation of all Values  TRANS-VALUATION (or revaluation) means not only changing our values, but changing the very way in which we attribute value and meaning to life and the world.  Movement from LIFE-NEGATION to LIFE-AFFIRMATION! → How do we AFFIRM life on its own terms? Including all of life’s vicissitudes, both joys and sorrows.  The DEATH OF GOD → it foreshadows the possibility of trans-valuation. Previously dominant (extrinsic, transcendental) signifiers of meaning must be undermined before this world can be affirmed on its own terms.  NB! Remember: WE have killed god! (not Nietzsche) → The Enlightenment, Reason, Science, the manner in which human beings have practised their faith. The blood, so to speak, is on our hands.  Yet, the death of god does not amount to an unmitigated ATHEISM → But why not?  Atheism remains REACTIVE NIHILISM. It is only by becoming ACTIVE that we OVERCOME the nihilistic impulse → Nihilism must ultimately negate itself → Affirmation is born from a double negation. → Thus, the ÜBERMENSCH may be born.  THE ÜBERMENSCH [OVERMAN] The ÜBERMENSCH is the ultimate figure of existential affirmation. The ÜBERMENSCH is a being (entity) of becoming; an overcoming of humanity; a self-transcendence; active rather than reactive; embodiment of positive (affirmative) will to power (overcoming the negative). Interpretations differ: some say the Übermensch is a figurative construct representative of trans-valuation and the overcoming of nihilism, some interpret the Übermensch more literally as a being of immense existential strength and fortitude. One thing we may conclude: the Übermensch is not yet in existence. We must first complete and overcome nihilism and then constantly overcome it through ACTIVE AFFIRMATION.  Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) Jean-Paul Sartre lived a very public life, and serves as a paradigm of the engagé intellectual. He wrote novels, plays, biography and criticism as well as philosophy, but through all of them his philosophical and political commitments. His philosophical works include: Being and Nothingness (1943) Existentialism is a Humanism (1946). Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960). He was a political activist (thus the arrests and refusal of noble prize. ) Considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bQsZxDQgzU * Human existence is fundamentally FREE. * Human freedom is a RADICAL FREEDOM → it is unhindered by spiritual or physical predetermination. There is no human “essence”. * Even in extreme circumstances, you always have a choice. * You, as a conscious human being, can and must choose the meaning of life for yourself. Furthermore, you are always responsible for the meaning you give to the world and existence. * Yet, human freedom is also burdensome, weighty; filled with an existential gravity → a “condemnation of freedom” → “You cannot choose not to choose”! (Sartre) * Freedom is inextricably tied to RESPONSIBILITY (in a relation of direct proportionality) → the more freedom you possess the more responsibility you need to assume.  “Existence precedes essence” because you are (exist as) human before you are a person, personality or individual in particular. Human beings do not possess an inherent human nature. Human beings are what they make of themselves!  Atheism and radical human freedom → God may or may not exist; but whether God exists or not, we are still free and responsible for our actions, our choices, and the meaning(s) we give them.  Throughout the history of Western philosophy and theology, it seems as if human individuals needed their essence predefined and pre-determined by external means: Plato and Aristotle → Man is a rational animal (animal rationale) Medieval Philosophy & Theology → Man is a flawed, fallen creature; a sinner. Modern Philosophy (Descartes to Hegel) → Man is the rational being: autonomous, dignified, cultured, moral. Late modern to postmodern philosophy → A human being’s essence is his/her own making!  FREEDOM implies choice → Choosing implies ACTION → Actions imply consequences → Thus freedom implies taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions.  Reciprocity of values/meaning & human action → Through your activity in the world (your actions, your words, your thoughts) you create your own VALUES. You ascribe your own MEANING to existence and the world by enacting those values in-the- world.  Meanings/values may precede or succeed upon action. Either way, they imply each other: To be is to do and to value → To do (to act) is to give meaning to being.  This is what true COMMITMENT means → to enact your radical freedom and transform the world into one of meaning and value through your very existence. (Note the optimistic, not pessimistic tone of this message) → “Commitment is an act, not a word.”  When you deny your fundamental freedom and try to essentialise yourself, you are in “BAD FAITH” with your existence. “We are our choices.” “Man is condemned to be free... because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” “Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.” “Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.” “We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.” Simone de Beauvoir  The Second Sex ❖Why don’t woman rebel? ❖“Why is that women do not dispute male sovereignty”? ❖They accept the “fact” of their passivity, weakness, and need for male protection ❖Beauvoir explains that women’s failure to rebel is because they lack resources, and prefer the value of the bond to the reciprocities of equality → economic-social-structural issues. ❖Women for realistic, practical, and existentially unethical reasons are content with their status as the other. They are “contented”.  Beauvoir as existential phenomenologist In the Second Sex, Beauvoir’s central concerns were ethical and political. She understood that the endurance of patriarchy relied on a unique intertwining of political and existential structures that implicated women and men intimately, socially, and politically. By incorporating Sartre’s concept of bad faith and Merleau-Ponty’s idea of ambiguity Beauvoir could satisfy her desire for the birth of the independent woman.  Ambiguity, Bad Faith, the Look of the Other With Beauvoir ambiguity and bad faith travel together. They are intimate companions. Beauvoir dissects the ways in which the dynamics of the struggle for freedom, the look, can become reified such that certain people come to “legitimately” occupy the position of the subject, while others are “legitimately” objectified as the Other. The subject-object dichotomy is the ground of an oppressive politics that renders it’s oppression invisible reifying the flows of anonymous perceptual structures  Back to the riddle of rebellion Beauvoir ask the question why some women experience their subjectivity as a resource for resistance and others not. For at least part of her answer is women’s isolation from each other. “Women do not authentically assume a subjective attitude” they have gained only what men have been willing to grant → “the whole of feminist history has been man-made” Is there a solution to this existential phenomenological situation?  Existentialism’s Influence ▪ Liberation struggles, racial identity discourses (Fanon), gender theory (Simone de Beauvoir). ▪ Modernist Poetry. ▪ Theatre of the Absurd: Samuel Beckett; Harold Pinter; Edward Albee; Eugene O’Neill. ▪ French New Wave Cinema (e.g. Jean-Luc Godard). ▪ Music → Sartre loved jazz (it did not follow conventional codes of music). ▪ Art → Abstract Expressionism (e.g. Jackson Pollock) ▪ Reconceptualisation in Psychoanalysis → focusing on human being and the meaning of human life (e.g. Viktor Frankl’s “logotherapy”).  Assessment 2: Paragraph Question Write a short paragraph of no more than around 100 words in which you address the following questions: What is German Idealism? Also, provide examples of philosophers in this area. What is Phenomenology and how is it different from the philosophy that preceded it? THANK YOU