EXISTENTIALISM

Introduction to Philosophy – Existentialism

Some Notable Existential Philosophers

Proto-Existentialists
Friedrich Nietzsche
Soren Kierkegaard “Either/Or” “Fear & Trembling”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky ‘Notes from Underground”
Martin Heidegger “Being & Time”

Existentialists
Jean-Paul Sartre “Being & Nothingness” “No Exit”
Albert Camus “The Myth of Sisyphus” “The Stranger”
Simone de Beauvior

OUTLINES

Absurdity of Life

Absence of God, not necessarily the non-existence of God (it’s a kind of Nietzschean atheism)
Angst/Dread (the fact that we do not matter really bothers us)
Alienation from the world, others

“Condemned to be Free”

The Necessity of Choice
The Importance of Choice
The Subjectivity of Choice
Freedom is both a blessing and a curse
“The Myth of Sisyphus”

“Existence Precedes Essence”

Humans have no nature, no essence (neither good nor bad, no original sin, no static essence)
You make yourself, that is, you create yourself with every choice you make
Your essence/nature is determined by your choices- but freedom means you can always change
You are ultimately responsible for your actions, your life, your values
You are accountable only to yourself

Self-Deception/Bad Faith

In order to cope with the absurdity of our existence, we deceive ourselves
We want to be meaningful; we want to matter; we want significance
Significance (bad faith) via
-association with religion, groups, the accomplishments of others
-accepting some essence/nature
In order to cope with the subjective nature of our existence, we contrive an identity/essence
-date yourself


Existence precedes essence

-There is no such thing as human nature
1. Everybody’s good (humanism) education makes people good, Socrates
2. Everybody’s bad (religion) God makes people good

-You make yourself (your own nature thru choices)
Every moment you choose, you make yourself, create yourself
-You are responsible for what you do
-Your choices really, really matter
-judge yourself

NOTES

Self-Deception, Bad Faith (in order to cope with the absurdity of life)

1. We spend a lot of energy, effort and time deceiving ourselves into thinking we matter. We live in a near-constant state of self-deception. It makes us feel better. Unfortunately, it’s like taking an aspirin every morning to numb the pain of a terminal illness. Kierkegaard described human existence in the title of one of his most famous books, “Fear & Trembling and Sickness unto Death.” The fact that we exist is our terminal illness, and bad faith numbs our pain in the face of the Absurd.
2. We always have faith in something. The nature of faith is such that we cannot prove or demonstrate it, hence the fact that we must believe it by faith. Bad Faith, then, is faith in an inauthentic self, a contrived or crafted identity.
3. In our all-consuming desire for meaning, significance and purpose we carefully craft a series of personal identities.
4. We gain significance through deception. We deceive others into accepting our crafted inauthentic identities. When others appear to accept this identity, it makes it easier for us to accept it. We believe in ourselves through others, by deceiving ourselves through others. For example, if one of my students tells me, “Professor Arnold, you are the most erudite and brilliant lecturer that I have ever heard.” In the face of my own absurd existence, I love to hear compliments. Suddenly, I am significant. Additionally, I hope that because she said that aloud, the rest of the class will believe it too. But my feelings of significance are fleeting. I begin to wonder if she really meant it. Maybe she was just trying to butter me up for a better grade. Maybe as the words, “…erudite and brilliant lecturer…” escaped her lips, she was thinking, “What a schmuck! Does this guy ever shut up? What a blow-hard. Professor Arnold really enjoys the sound of his own voice.” And what if everyone agrees with her? You see how important others’ perceptions of us are? And how precarious and ultimately mysterious they are? We desperately want others to perceive us in a certain way, but we can never be certain of their perceptions. Our own feelings of significance or insignificance are as fleeting, mysterious and unreliable as the opinions of others. This is why Sartre said, “Hell is other people.” In his play “No Exit” a man dies and finds himself in a room with two women. He doesn’t know where he is or why he is here. As the play progresses, he is continually faced with the challenge of interacting with the women, trying to figure out who they are and worrying about what they must think of him. One hates him and the other is infatuated. He cannot leave the room, cannot leave their presence. There is no privacy, only the constant presence of the two women watching him, judging him, constantly forming perceptions of him. At the end of the play he discovers that he is in hell, and will spend eternity in this room with these women. Hence, “Hell is other people.” Sartre thinks that we wouldn’t feel the urgent desire to craft identities if not for other people. However, other people are a necessary evil. We gain significance through others, and we love and hate them for it. We need others, but ultimately we hate the way we behave around them. We act in bad faith in order to gain significance through others; and yet, we are ashamed of our deception and never fully satisfied with others’ approval.
5. How exactly do we craft our identities? In bad faith we associate or disassociate ourselves from outside sources, and ultimately our own choices.
- We associate ourselves to: Love/marriage – In realizing that we do not matter, what better way to gain significance than ‘mattering’ to someone else. When we’re in love we can say, “To at least one other person in this world, I matter.” Our everyday language often betrays our underlying existential feelings about the world. What do we call a lover or a spouse? We use the word, ‘significant other’. How appropriate. Simply by having a significant other, we gain significance through the other. For to be loved is to be significant, of only to one other person. The belief that another person thinks we matter, that they love us in a completely unique and special way, is a powerful form of bad faith. Love is so prevalent because it is such an effective aspirin for the existential condition. And it only takes one other person to feel this way. This is how desperate we are for significance. But, in the still quiet moment when my lover turns to me and looks me in the eyes and says, “I love you,”- can I really be certain that she telling the truth? Perhaps, like that student who praised my intellect, she is really thinking, “I’m going to sleep with your friend tomorrow,” or even “I do care about you, but I don’t really love you. I’ve settled.” Now, this is not a form of cynicism towards love. The question of whether true love exists or not is ultimately an irrelevant question, like the question of God’s existence. Whether or not true love exists does nothing to change the existential fact that I can never know when it does. My lover may truly love me. But I will never know. I have been condemned to love, and be loved, with uncertainty. We believe in bad faith that we are loved by another, that we matter most to someone else. But in the end, it remains bad faith and a form of self-deception.
- So, belief in the love of a significant other is ultimately a form of bad faith. Not something you’re going to write inside a Valentine’s Day or Wedding Anniversary card! But what if I told you that there was a person who would love you unconditionally. In fact, you could know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this person was going to love you no matter what. God, religion, gangs, sports teams
- We disassociate ourselves from: mistakes, bad choices, unappealing associations
6. We deceive ourselves into believing we have a stable nature
- Good nature (humanism) education makes us better, Socrates, we do not take credit for the mistakes we make
- Bad nature (religion) God makes us better, Jesus, we do not take credit for the good deeds we’ve done

Authentic vs. Inauthentic

1. Being authentic (or authentic being) means realizing and acting like your choices really matter. Your choices matter because they have very real, concrete consequences. Your choices cause real change. Your personal choices matter because your choices are personal. Not only do they determine what happens to you, but more importantly, they determine who you are. You make yourself with every choice you make.
2. When we realize that our choices are the only aspect of our existence that matter, we’ll take them more seriously. There is an awareness of existential urgency which accompanies the realization that our choices are all that matter. The ephemeral nature of the present moment imbues our immediate choices with absolute urgency and ultimate power. Authentic significance exists only in your present choice.
3. When we accept that our choices are all that matter, we’ll begin to accept full responsibility for them. Ever notice how we like to take responsibility for their choices that bring about good consequences? And similarly, ever notice how we always blame outside sources when one of our choices brings about less than perfect consequences? In bad faith we blame our choices on other sources, such as a good or bad nature, good or bad luck, ethical codes or philosophies, even finding scientific excuses like biological instinct or genetics. Being authentic means taking full responsibility for your choices. You are all alone with your choices. You alone bear responsibility for your choices. This responsibility is a blessing because it is your only means of authentic significance; however, it is a burden because you cannot blame someone or something else when you are unhappy with the consequences.
4. Nobody wants to be told, “You don’t matter!” Tell me anything but that. Call me a ‘son of a bitch’ but don’t ever call me ‘meaningless’. Confronted with the absurdity of our existence and our own meaninglessness we make a mad scramble to ‘matter’. More than anything we want to know that there is a ‘Big Picture’ and somehow we fit into that Big Picture. Even if we’re just a miniscule dot in the Big Picture, at least we’re a part of the Big Picture. At least then, we matter. Most of us live our lives obsessed with ‘mattering’. We’ll take significance any way we can get it. We’ll do anything to ‘matter’. We’ll deceive others and ourselves in order to matter. We’ll believe anything. In bad faith we get so obsessed with ‘mattering’ in the big picture that we stop ‘mattering’ in the here and now.
5. A student of mine once commented, “Existentialism gives me nothing to look forward to in life.” I responded, “You say, ‘look forward’. Your choice of words reveals two things: your desire for significance and your tendency towards bad faith. The existentialist would say, “Stop looking forward. That’s your problem. Stop looking forwards or backwards for significance and meaning. That’s bad faith. Your past choices have been made, they’re done. And your future choices are completely unknown. In fact, you may never get a chance to make any future choices. There will be plenty of time to make future choices in future moments. Your present choices are of paramount importance, because they are the only concrete aspect of your existence.
6. Another student of mine asked, “Does this mean existentialism is an ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die,’ sort of philosophy?” This is a common misunderstanding. Existentialism allows for delayed gratification and learning from your mistakes. It means you never do anything you do not authentically choose to do. For example, if you attend college classes because your mother demands it, then you are suffering through the class in bad faith. However, if you suffer through a boring college class in order to get a college degree so that you can get a better job that you will enjoy, then you are making an authentic choice.
7. In his essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Albert Camus adds an existential spin to the story. Remember, Sisyphus was condemned to shove a stone up a hill for all eternity. Each time he reached the top of the hill the stone rolls back down and he must start all over again. We are like Sisyphus in that we are condemned to make choice after choice, only to discover that another series of choices awaits us in every moment of life. However, Camus imagines that with each shove of the stone Sisyphus whispers, “This is my stone!” This declaration gives Sisyphus his only means of significance. He may be condemned to shove the stone, but the stone belongs to him, and with each shove he asserts his significance. All he really possesses and wields power over is the stone. Similarly, all we really possess and wield power over is our choices. Our individual choices, made each moment of our existence, give us significance. Every choice we make is a shove of our stone, and with each shove we assert the only significance we truly possess in an absurd universe.

Recommended Reading: “Existentialism is a Humanism” and “No Exit” by Sartre and “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus