Existentialism: Historical Background
Meaning and its locale
Authenticity
1.1. Introduction
“When I consider the brief span of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and behind it, the small space that I fill, or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces which I know not, and which know not me, I am afraid, and wonder to see myself here rather than there; for there is no reason why I should be here rather than there, now, rather than then.”
– Pascal, Thoughts of Pascal
“Rarely has the existential question been put more simply or beautifully. In this passage we see, first, the profound realization of the contingency of human life, which existentialists call “thrownness.” Second, we see Pascal facing unflinchingly the question of being there or more accurately, being where? Third, we see the realization that one cannot take refuge in some superficial explanation of time and space, which Pascal, scientist that he was, could well know and lastly, the deep shaking anxiety arising from this stark awareness of existence in such a universe.”
– May, R. Existence: Origins of the Existential Movement
1.2. Definition
“Existentialism is not a comprehensive philosophy, or way of life, but an endeavour to grasp reality... existentialism is immersed in and arises directly out of Western man’s anxiety, estrangement, and conflicts. Like psychoanalysis, existentialism seeks to... utilize these very conflicts... as avenues to the more profound self-understanding of Western man.”
– May, R. Existence: Origins of the Existential Movement
“In many ways [existentialism] is the unique and specific portrayal of the psychological predicament of contemporary Western man....”
– May, R. Existence: Origins of the Existential Movement
“We can see more clearly the significance of the term [existentialism] if we recall that traditionally in Western thought “existence” has been set over against “essence.” Essence refers to the greenness of this stick of wood, let us say, and its density, weight, and other characteristics which give it substance.
By and large Western thought since the Renaissance has been concerned with essence. Traditional science seeks to discover such essences or substances; it assumes an essentialist metaphysics. But it can only do this by abstraction. The existence of the given individual thing has to be left out of the picture.”
May, R. Existence: Origins of the Existential Movement.
"Existentialism is not a school of thought nor reducible to any set of tenets. The three writers who appear invariably on every list of 'existentialists' - Jaspers, Heidegger, and Sartre - are not in agreement on essentials. Such alleged precursors as Pascal and Kierkegaard differed from all three men by being dedicated Christians; and Pascal was a Catholic of sorts, while Kierkegaard was a Protestant's Protestant.
If, as is often done, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky are included in the fold, we must make room for an impassioned anti-Christian and an even more fanatical Greek-Orthodox Russian imperialist. By the time we consider adding RiIke, Kafka, Ortega, and Camus, it becomes plain that one essential feature shared by all these men is their perfervid individualism.The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life - that is the heart of existentialism"
Walter Kaufmann
Rejection of the “rational man”: man as thinking (or even sensing) subject - substitution, the individual in motion:
the division of object and subject
the object as abstract entity
the subject as compartmentalized efficient industrial man
– the division of science and ethics
– the relation between outer and inner fragmentation (Freud)
» the slavery of the self (as a substitute (?) for the slavery of others)?
» the division of labour
» the reduction of reason to technique
The concept of alienation
The created object exists in opposition to the creator
– the father vs the son (mythologically speaking)
– dogma vs spirit
– the dead hero vs the live individual
– history vs the present
untruth is alienation (motivated by cowardice)
The vitality of the subjective (value vs objective fact?)
Truth is not a thing, it is a relationship -- a manner of being, not a manner of conception.
– we cannot be content to view truth disinterestedly, “objectively.”
Truth as freedom (for Kierkegaard; for Nietzsche, truth enhances life)
Truth in terms of relationship to the fact and commitment (demonstrated in action)
– Can one live it?: All truths are bloody truths to me. (Nietzsche)
Central tenet: life as experienced.
exemplar: statistical death vs real death
“Truth exists only as the individual himself produces it in action.”
“Away from Speculation, away from the System, and back to reality.”
– Kierkegaard.
2.0. Prophets of The Dawning Age
Outline
– The Inevitability of Nihilism
– The Insufficiency of Reason
– The Necessity of Difficulty
– The Crowd as the Lie
– The Individual as Truth
– Influence on Freud
– Conclusion
2.1. The Inevitability of Nihilism: Friedrich Nietzsche
2.1. The Inevitability of Nihilism: Friedrich Nietzsche
“Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness - that means cynically and with innocence. What I relate is the history of the next two centuries.
I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. . . Our whole European culture is moving for some time now, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade, as toward a catastrophe: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.
He that speaks here has, conversely, done nothing so far but to reflect: as a philosopher and solitary by instinct who has found his advantage in standing aside, outside.
Why has the advent of nihilism become necessary?
Because the values we have had hitherto thus draw their final consequence; because nihilism represents the ultimate logical conclusion of our great values and ideals-because we must experience nihilism before we can find out what value these "values" really had.
We require, at some time, new values. Nihilism stands at the door: whence comes this uncanniest of all guests?
Point of departure: it is an error to consider "social distress" or "physiological degeneration," or corruption of all things, as the cause of nihilism. Ours is the most honest and compassionate age.
Distress, whether psychic, physical, or intellectual, need not at all produce nihilism (that is, the radical rejection of value, meaning, and desirability).
Such distress always permits a variety of interpretations.
Rather: it is in one particular interpretation, the Christian moral one, that nihilism is rooted.
The end of Christianity-at the hands of its own morality (which cannot be replaced), which turns against the Christian God: the sense of truthfulness, highly developed by Christianity, is nauseated by the falseness and mendaciousness of all Christian interpretations of the world and of history; rebound from "God is the truth" to the fanatical faith "All is false"; an active Buddhism.
Skepticism regarding morality is what is decisive. The end of the moral interpretation of the world, which no longer has any sanction after it has tried to escape into some beyond, leads to nihilism. "All lacks meaning."
(The untenability of one interpretation of the world, upon which a tremendous amount of energy has been lavished, awakens the suspicion that all interpretations of the world are false.)”
– Nietzsche, The Will to Power
2.2. The Insufficiency of Reason: Fyodor Dostoevsky
2.2. The Insufficiency of Reason: Fyodor Dostoevsky
In short, one may say anything about the history of the world - anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can't say is that it's rational. The very word sticks in one's throat.
And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world.
2.2. The Insufficiency of Reason: Fyodor Dostoevsky
And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one.
Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with such strange qualities?
Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick.
He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element.
It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself-as though that were so necessary - that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.
And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point.
And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!
He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object-that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key!
If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated, chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point!
I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!
It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be by cannibalism!
And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don't know?
You will scream at me (that is, if you condescend to do so) that no one is touching my free will, that all they are concerned with is that my will should of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own normal interests, with the laws of nature and arithmetic.
Good Heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two make four?
Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant that!”
– Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground
2.3. The Necessity of Difficulty: Soren Kierkegaard
“It is now about four years ago that I got the notion of wanting to try my luck as an author. I remember it quite clearly; it was on a Sunday, yes, that's it, a Sunday afternoon. I was seated as usual, out-of-doors at the cafe in the Frederiksberg Garden . . .
I had been a student for half a score of years. Although never lazy, all my activity nevertheless was like a glittering inactivity, a kind of occupation for which I still have a great partiality, and for which perhaps I even have a little genius.
I read much, spent the remainder of the day idling and thinking, or thinking and idling, but that was all it came to... So there I sat and smoked my cigar until I lapsed into thought.
Among other thoughts I remember these: "You are going on," I said to myself, "to become an old man, without being anything, and without really undertaking to do any-thing.
On the other hand, wherever you look about you, in literature and in life, you see the celebrated names and figures, the precious and much heralded men who are coming into prominence and are much talked about, the many benefactors of the age who know how to benefit mankind by making life easier and easier, some by railways, others by omnibuses and steamboats, others by the telegraph, others by easily apprehended compendiums and short recitals of everything worth knowing,
and finally the true benefactors of the age who make spiritual existence in virtue of thought easier and easier, yet more and more significant. And what are you doing?"
Here my soliloquy was interrupted, for my cigar was smoked out and a new one had to be lit. So I smoked again, and then suddenly this thought flashed through my mind:
"You must do something, but inasmuch as with your limited capacities it will be impossible to make anything easier than it has become, you must, with the same humanitarian enthusiasm as the others, undertake to make something harder."
This notion pleased me immensely, and at the same time it flattered me to think that I, like the rest of them, would be loved and esteemed by the whole community.
For when all combine in every way to make everything easier, there remains only one possible danger, namely, that the ease becomes so great that it becomes altogether too great; then there is only one want left, though it is not yet a felt want, when people will want difficulty.
Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, and moved by a genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I conceived it as my task to create difficulties everywhere.”
– Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript
2.4. The Crowd as the Lie: Soren Kierkegaard
“There is a view of life which conceives that where the crowd is, there also is the truth, and that in truth itself there is need of having the crowd on its side.
There is another view of life which conceives that wherever there is a crowd there is untruth, so that (to consider for a moment the extreme case), even if every individual, each for himself in private, were to be in possession of the truth, yet in case they were all to get together in a crowd - a crowd to which any sort of decisive significance is attributed, a voting, noisy, audible crowd - untruth would at once be in evidence.
For a "crowd" is the untruth. In a godly sense it is true, eternally, Christianity, as St. Paul says, that "only one attains the goal"- which is not meant in a comparative sense, for comparison takes others into account.
It means that every man can be that one, God helping him therein - but only one attains the goal.
And again this means that every man should be chary about having to do with "the others," and essentially should talk only with God and with himself - for only one attains the goal.
And again this means that man, or to be a man, is akin to deity.
In a worldly and temporal sense, it will be said by the man of bustle, sociability, and amicableness, "How unreasonable that only one attains the goal; for it is far more likely that many, by the strength of united effort, should attain the goal; and when we are many success is more certain and it is easier for each man severally."
True enough, it is far more likely; and it is true also with respect to all earthly and material goods. If it is allowed to have its way, this becomes the only true point of view, for it does away with God and eternity and with man's kinship with deity.
It does away with it or transforms it into a fable, and puts in its place the modern (or, we might rather say, the old pagan) notion that to be a man is to belong to a race endowed with reason, to belong to it as a specimen, so that the race or species is higher than the in dividual, which is to say that there are no more individuals but only specimens.
But eternity which arches over and high above the temporal, tranquil as the starry vault at night, and God in heaven who in the bliss of that sublime tranquillity holds in survey, without the least sense of dizziness at such a height, those countless multitudes of men and knows each single individual by name - He, the Great Examiner, says that only one attains the goal.”
– Kierkegaard, That Individual: Two Notes Concerning My Work as an Author
2.5. The Individual as Truth: Friedrich Nietzsche
“A traveler who had seen many countries and peoples and several continents was asked what human traits he had found everywhere; and he answered: men are inclined to laziness.
Some will feel that he might have said with greater justice: they are all timorous. They hide behind customs and opinions.
At bottom, every human being knows very well that he is in this world just once, as something unique, and that no accident, however strange, will throw together a second time into a unity such a curious and diffuse plurality: he knows it, but hides it like a bad conscience-why?
From fear of his neighbor who insists on convention and veils himself with it.
But what is it that compels the individual human being to fear his neighbor, to think and act herd-fashion, and not to be glad of himself?
A sense of shame, perhaps, in a few rare cases. In the vast majority it is the desire for comfort, inertia-in short, that inclination to laziness of which the traveler spoke.
He is right: men are even lazier than they are timorous, and what they fear most is the troubles with which any unconditional honesty and nudity would burden them.
Only artists hate this slovenly life in borrowed manners and loosely fitting opinions and unveil the secret, everybody's bad conscience, the principle that every human being is a unique wonder; they dare to show us the human being as he is, down to the last muscle, himself and himself alone - even more, that in this rigorous consistency of his uniqueness he is beautiful and worth contemplating, as novel and incredible as every work of nature, and by no means dull.
When a great thinker despises men, it is their laziness that he despises: for it is on account of this that they have the appearance of factory products and seem indifferent and unworthy of companionship or instruction.
The human being who does not wish to belong to the mass must merely cease being comfortable with himself; let him follow his conscience which shouts at him:
"Be yourself! What you are at present doing, opining, and desiring, that is not really you.”
– Nietzsche, Untimely Meditation on Schopenhauer as Educator
Authenticity
Kierkegaard: antipathy to the mass man
– the inauthentic subject has become his own object: the pathology of self-consciousness
Nietzsche: will to power
– Man’s task is simple: he should cease letting his “existence” be a thoughtless accident.... In the Gay Science, Nietzsche hits on a fomulation which brings out the essential paradox of any distinction between self and true self: “What does your conscience say? - You shall become who you are.”
» Kaufman, Walter.
3.0. Conclusion: Part One
And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced -that only the normal and the positive-in other words, only what is conducive to welfare-is for the advantage of man? h not reason in error as regards advantage?
Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.
3.0. Conclusion: Part One
There is no need to appeal to universal history to prove that; only ask yourself, if you are a man and have lived at all. As far as my personal opinion is concerned, to care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred.
Whether it's good or bad, it is sometiines very pleasant, too, to smash things. I hold no brief for suffering nor for well-being either. I am standing for . . . my caprice, and for its being guaranteed to me when necessary.
Suffering would be out of place in vaudevilles, for instance; I know that.
In the “Palace of Crystal" it is unthinkable; suffering means doubt, negation, and what would be the good of a "palace of crystal" if there could be any doubt about it? And yet I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is, destruction and chaos.
Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. Though I did lay it down at the beginning that consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction.
– Dostoevski, F. (1864). Translated by Walter Kaufmann
Utopia: the crystal palace
3.0. Conclusion: Part Two
“We are now in a position to see the crucial significance of the existential psychotherapy movement. It is precisely the movement that protests against the tendency to identify psychotherapy with technical reason.
We have seen that Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, as well as the representatives of the existential cultural movement following them, not only contributed far-reaching and penetrating psychological insights, which in themselves form a significant contribution to anyone seeking scientifically to understand modern psychological problems, but also did something else - they placed these insights on an ontological basis, namely, the study of man as the being who has these particular problems.
3.0. Conclusion: Part Two
They believed that it was absolutely necessary that this be done, and they feared that the subordination of reason to technical problems would ultimately mean the making of man over in the image of the machine.
– May, Origins.
