Existentialism

SEP Existentialism

Existentialism is not well defined, no unifying doctrines but overlapping ideas that bind the movement.

01 Key Concepts

01.01 Nihilism

• Arose out of an increasing secular and scientific worldview.

01.02 Engagement vs Detachment

• How do we engage the world and give meaning to our existence.

01.03 Existence Precedes Essence

• We are not a thing with a given nature/essence in advance, but we are always in the process of creating who we are as life unfolds.

01.04 Freedom

• We differ from other beings in that we are self-conscious and exist FOR ourselves.

02 Subjective Truth

Detached rational thought is the western norm. Existentialism says we shouldn’t just try to grasp reality behind perceptions, but the first-person experience of existing and day to day experiences is also important. Person first perspective (Kierkegaard) instead of an eternal universal one (Hegel).

And subjective truth cannot be reasoned about or explained logically; it emerges out of the situated commitments, affects, and needs of the individual. For this reason, it does not disclose timeless and objective truths; it discloses “a truth which is true for me” (1835 [1959, 44]). For Kierkegaard, to live this truth invariably results in feelings of anxiety and confusion because it is objectively uncertain; it has no rational justification, and no one else can understand or relate to it. It is an ineffable truth that is felt rather than known. In this sense, the existing individual “discovers something that thought cannot think” (Kierkegaard 1844 [1936, 29]).

03 Perspectivism

Nietzsche emphasizes that truths are grounded in sociohistorical situations. People tend to forget how truths are invented. Appearance and reality are the same. There is a protective nature in objective truth in that it protects us from meaninglessness.

04 Being in the World

Heidegger. Dasein referring to one’s way of being. Rejects that there is an inner and outer kind of world. Rejects true reality or smthn. We are already caught up or existing in the world. Lived and not known. Object-body and lived-body.

04.01 Facticity

Givenness or how we were made to exist.

04.02 Transcendence

Being able to relate to ones self to change factictious behavior (smoking, alcohol, etc.).

Half monkey half god.

Freedom to define one’s nature and existence. Anxiety around having a dizzying array of options of meaning and existence and being the sole one responsible for it.

We don’t exactly have radical freedom because of society and how we are within it. Often times are being comes somewhat predefined. Simultaneously created and creating ourselves. But following everyone else is inauthentic and a bit of a self deception. It is in bad faith to deny or over-identify with your situation in society.

There are boundary situations that have the power to shake us of our complacency. We should lean into these experiences to grow and become a more authentic self.

05 Authenticity and Morality

The subjective truth may be above universal truths of morality.

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 a pleasure-seeking masquerade. But authenticity cannot be achieved simply by means of renouncing temporal pleasures and doing one’s duty according to some universal moral principle—such as the Ten Commandments or Kant’s Categorical Imperative. This is because, 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.)

Kierkegaard believes Abraham’s sacrifice of his son — something so inherently irrational and immoral and willing to follow his authentic self above society’s standards — is what it means to be authentic. Even fraught with dispair and being individualized, his actions unable to be understood by anyone. But also there is joy in this absurdity of religious existence. He is a knight of faith.

06 Nietzsche’s Approach

06.01 Morality Systems

Nietzsche. Slave morality as Christianity and master morality as the ability to create their own self-directed meaning. Those who are able to overcome slavish values of tradition and walk a path of self-creation is an ubermensch (think Walter White). Gives style to life.

The overman affirms every aspect of his life. Strengths, weaknesses, every truth such as the simple, bitter, immoral, ugly, etc.

06.02 Key Nietzschean Concepts

Amor fati Have a love of one’s fate.

Eternal Recurrence if we live life over and over for eternity, how would we like to act.

(Though to this end, authenticity is unapologetically elitist and anti-democratic)

Camus says this way of being is a way of rebellion To live full of spirit.

This is not at all what I thought Nietzsche was about.

07 Heidegger on Authenticity

Dasein Existence. Being realized as a human being.

Heidegger considers conforming as “falling” or being inauthentic.

Everyone is the other, and no one is himself.

I feel like there is a strong connection between authenticity and relationships. So hard for public figures to be authentic.

Heidegger calls authenticity “resoluteness”.

It sounds like most of these philosophers are talking about the same thing.

Resoluteness is not becoming rigid in any one identity (over-identifying), but allowing ones identity to die at any moment. Not a fully realized object or thing. To live for oneself.

You need to constantly be in self-recovery of your corrupted way of being.

08 Existentialist Perspectives

Beauvoir explains: “The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed.”

Authenticity is not about who you are, it is about what you do.

The point of authenticity, then, is not to be concerned with who I am—because, at bottom, I am nothing. It is to be concerned with what I do. As Sartre writes, “Authenticity reveals that the only meaningful project is that of doing (not that of being)” (1948 [1992, 475]).

Rejection of objective moral order. Satre states that ethics can be for you to help realize your authenticity and authenticity of others.

Satre “Hell is — other people” in the sense that human relations are a conflict between each other where you assert your freedom and subjectivity onto others and them onto you.

But instead of doing this, you can authentically express being-for-others. Simultaneously acknowledging and nurturing another’s freedom while resisting the need to manipulate.

• Authentic being-for-others is a moral stance. (is it a normative ethical theory??)

  As a moral stance, authentic being-for-others is a form of reciprocity that involves “the mutual recognition of two freedoms […] [where] neither would give up transcendence [and] neither would be mutilated” (1949 [1952, 667]). In this way authenticity and morality belong together, whereby we have a shared obligation to liberate or free each other so that we can create ourselves and take responsibility for the life we lead. Therefore, as Beauvoir puts it, “to will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision” (1947 [1948, 24]).

  Here, we see the development of an ethical maxim: to act in such a way as to will the realization of your own freedom and the realization of freedom for others.

09 Definitional Approaches

Extensional definition

Intensional definition

10 Ethics of Recognition

Dostoevsky, indictment of terrible individualism which he sees as endemic to modernity. Freedom and self-affirmation have become highest values which leads to loneliness and despair rather than self-actualization. Only when we see the other as dependent and vulnerable that we can recognize ourselves, adopting an attitude of humility and self-sacrifice and breaking the bonds of egoistic striving.

Buber claims we often relate to others in an “I-It” relation, where we see others as instrumental for your own use. Sometimes this illusion of control can collapse and form an “I-You” relation.

11 Ethics of Engagement

I’m realizing when the existentialist talks about “freedom” they mean “the freedom to be as you are, living and acting authentically with your subjective truth”

Beauvoir: Socioeconomic and political structures can restrict the human capacity for freedom and transcendence. Makes a point to note these structures are not immutable.

12 Contemporary Relevance

Existentialism and ethics has allowed philosophers new abilities to tackle concrete problems in the world.

Hermeneutics epistemology around interpretation, especially pertaining to the bible.

Existentialist medicine and more.