1. Key Themes of
Existentialism
Although
a highly diverse tradition of thought, seven themes can be identified that
provide some sense of overall unity. Here, these themes will be briefly
introduced; they can then provide us with an intellectual framework within
which to discuss exemplary figures within the history of existentialism.
a. Philosophy as a Way of Life
Philosophy
should not be thought of primarily either as an attempt to investigate and
understand the self or the world, or as a special occupation that concerns only
a few. Rather, philosophy must be thought of as fully integrated within life.
To be sure, there may need to be professional philosophers, who develop an
elaborate set of methods and concepts (Sartre makes this point frequently) but
life can be lived philosophically without a technical knowledge of
philosophy. Existentialist thinkers
tended to identify two historical antecedents for this notion. First, the
ancient Greeks, and particularly the figure of Socrates but also the Stoics and
Epicureans. Socrates was not only non-professional, but in his pursuit of the
good life he tended to eschew the formation of a 'system' or 'theory', and his
teachings took place often in public spaces. In this, the existentialists were
hardly unusual. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the rapid expansion of
industrialisation and advance in technology were often seen in terms of an
alienation of the human from nature or from a properly natural way of living
(for example, thinkers of German and English romanticism).
The
second influence on thinking of philosophy as a way of life was German Idealism
after Kant. Partly as a response to the 18th century Enlightenment, and under
the influence of the Neoplatonists, Schelling and Hegel both thought of
philosophy as an activity that is an integral part of the history of human
beings, rather than outside of life and the world, looking on. Later in the
19th century, Marx famously criticised previous philosophy by saying that the
point of philosophy is not to know things – even to know things about activity
– but to change them. The concept of
philosophy as a way of life manifests itself in existentialist thought in a
number of ways. Let us give several examples, to which we will return in the sections
that follow. First, the existentialists often undertook a critique of modern
life in terms of the specialisation of both manual and intellectual labour.
Specialisation included philosophy. One consequence of this is that many
existentialist thinkers experimented with different styles or genres of writing
in order to escape the effects of this specialisation. Second, a notion that we
can call 'immanence': philosophy studies life from the inside. For Kierkegaard,
for example, the fundamental truths of my existence are not representations –
not, that is, ideas, propositions or symbols the meaning of which can be
separated from their origin. Rather, the truths of existence are immediately
lived, felt and acted. Likewise, for Nietzsche and Heidegger, it is essential
to recognise that the philosopher investigating human existence is, him or
herself, an existing human. Third, the nature of life itself is a perennial
existentialist concern and, more famously (in Heidegger and in Camus), also the
significance of death.
b. Anxiety and Authenticity
A
key idea here is that human existence is in some way 'on its own'; anxiety (or
anguish) is the recognition of this fact. Anxiety here has two important
implications. First, most generally, many existentialists tended to stress the
significance of emotions or feelings, in so far as they were presumed to have a
less culturally or intellectually mediated relation to one's individual and
separate existence. This idea is found in Kierkegaard, as we mentioned above, and
in Heidegger's discussion of 'mood'; it is also one reason why existentialism
had an influence on psychology. Second, anxiety also stands for a form of
existence that is recognition of being on its own. What is meant by 'being on
its own' varies among philosophers. For example, it might mean the irrelevance
(or even negative influence) of rational thought, moral values, or empirical
evidence, when it comes to making fundamental decisions concerning one's
existence. As we shall see, Kierkegaard sees Hegel's account of religion in
terms of the history of absolute spirit as an exemplary confusion of faith and
reason. Alternatively, it might be a more specifically theological claim: the
existence of a transcendent deity is not relevant to (or is positively detrimental
to) such decisions (a view broadly shared by Nietzsche and Sartre). Finally,
being on its own might signify the uniqueness of human existence, and thus the
fact that it cannot understand itself in terms of other kinds of existence
(Heidegger and Sartre).
Related
to anxiety is the concept of authenticity, which is let us say the
existentialist spin on the Greek notion of 'the good life'. As we shall see,
the authentic being would be able to recognise and affirm the nature of
existence (we shall shortly specify some of the aspects of this, such as
absurdity and freedom). Not, though, recognise the nature of existence as an
intellectual fact, disengaged from life; but rather, the authentic being lives
in accordance with this nature. The notion of authenticity is sometimes seen as
connected to individualism. This is only reinforced by the contrast with a
theme we will discuss below, that of the 'crowd'. Certainly, if authenticity
involves 'being on one's own', then there would seem to be some kind of value
in celebrating and sustaining one's difference and independence from others.
However, many existentialists see individualism as a historical and cultural
trend (for example Nietzsche), or dubious political value (Camus), rather than
a necessary component of authentic existence. Individualism tends to obscure
the particular types of collectivity that various existentialists deem
important.
For
many existentialists, the conditions of the modern world make authenticity
especially difficult. For example, many existentialists would join other
philosophers (such as the Frankfurt School) in condemning an instrumentalist
conception of reason and value. The utilitarianism of Mill measured moral value
and justice also in terms of the consequences of actions. Later liberalism
would seek to absorb nearly all functions of political and social life under
the heading of economic performance. Evaluating solely in terms of the
measurable outcomes of production was seen as reinforcing the secularisation of
the institutions of political, social or economic life; and reinforcing also
the abandonment of any broader sense of the spiritual dimension (such an idea
is found acutely in Emerson, and is akin to the concerns of Kierkegaard).
Existentialists such as Martin Heidegger, Hanna Arendt or Gabriel Marcel viewed
these social movements in terms of a narrowing of the possibilities of human
thought to the instrumental or technological. This narrowing involved thinking
of the world in terms of resources, and thinking of all human action as a
making, or indeed as a machine-like 'function'.
c. Freedom
The
next key theme is freedom. Freedom can usefully be linked to the concept of
anguish, because my freedom is in part defined by the isolation of my decisions
from any determination by a deity, or by previously existent values or
knowledge. Many existentialists identified the 19th and 20th centuries as
experiencing a crisis of values. This might be traced back to familiar reasons
such as an increasingly secular society, or the rise of scientific or
philosophical movements that questioned traditional accounts of value (for
example Marxism or Darwinism), or the shattering experience of two world wars
and the phenomenon of mass genocide. It is important to note, however, that for
existentialism these historical conditions do not create the problem of anguish
in the face of freedom, but merely cast it into higher relief. Likewise,
freedom entails something like responsibility, for myself and for my actions.
Given that my situation is one of being on its own – recognised in anxiety –
then both my freedom and my responsibility are absolute. The isolation that we
discussed above means that there is nothing else that acts through me, or that
shoulders my responsibility. Likewise, unless human existence is to be
understood as arbitrarily changing moment to moment, this freedom and
responsibility must stretch across time. Thus, when I exist as an authentically
free being, I assume responsibility for my whole life, for a ‘project’ or a
‘commitment’. We should note here that many of the existentialists take on a
broadly Kantian notion of freedom: freedom as autonomy. This means that
freedom, rather than being randomness or arbitrariness, consists in the binding
of oneself to a law, but a law that is given by the self in recognition of its
responsibilities. This borrowing from Kant, however, is heavily qualified by
the next theme.
d. Situatedness
The
next common theme we shall call ‘situatedness’. Although my freedom is
absolute, it always takes place in a particular context. My body and its
characteristics, my circumstances in a historical world, and my past, all weigh
upon freedom. This is what makes freedom meaningful. Suppose I tried to exist
as free, while pretending to be in abstraction from the situation. In that case
I will have no idea what possibilities are open to me and what choices need to
be made, here and now. In such a case, my freedom will be naïve or illusory.
This concrete notion of freedom has its philosophical genesis in Hegel, and is
generally contrasted to the pure rational freedom described by Kant.
Situatedness is related to a notion we discussed above under the heading of
philosophy as a way of life: the necessity of viewing or understanding life and
existence from the ‘inside’. For
example, many 19th century intellectuals were interested in ancient Greece,
Rome, the Medieval period, or the orient, as alternative models of a less
spoiled, more integrated form of life. Nietzsche, to be sure, shared these
interests, but he did so not uncritically: because the human condition is
characterised by being historically situated, it cannot simply turn back the
clock or decide all at once to be other than it is (Sartre especially shares
this view). Heidegger expresses a related point in this way: human existence
cannot be abstracted from its world because being-in-the-world is part of the
ontological structure of that existence. Many existentialists take my
concretely individual body, and the specific type of life that my body lives, as
a primary fact about me (for example, Nietzsche, Scheler or Merleau-Ponty). I
must also be situated socially: each of my acts says something about how I view
others but, reciprocally, each of their acts is a view about what I am. My
freedom is always situated with respect to the judgements of others. This
particular notion comes from Hegel’s analysis of ‘recognition’, and is found
especially in Sartre, de Beauvoir and Jaspers. Situatedness in general also has
an important philosophical antecedent in Marx: economic and political
conditions are not contingent features with respect to universal human nature,
but condition that nature from the ground up.
e. Existence
Although,
of course, existentialism takes its name from the philosophical theme of
'existence', this does not entail that there is homogeneity in the manner
existence is to be understood. One point on which there is agreement, though,
is that the existence with which we should be concerned here is not just any
existent thing, but human existence. There is thus an important difference
between distinctively human existence and anything else, and human existence is
not to be understood on the model of things, that is, as objects of knowledge.
One might think that this is an old idea, rooted in Plato's distinction between
matter and soul, or Descartes' between extended and thinking things. But these
distinctions appear to be just differences between two types of things.
Descartes in particular, however, is often criticised by the existentialists
for subsuming both under the heading 'substance', and thus treating what is
distinctive in human existence as indeed a thing or object, albeit one with
different properties. (Whether the existentialist characterisation of Plato or
Descartes is accurate is a different question.) The existentialists thus
countered the Platonic or Cartesian conception with a model that resembles more
the Aristotelian as developed in the Nichomachean Ethics. The latter idea
arrives in existentialist thought filtered through Leibniz and Spinoza and the
notion of a striving for existence. Equally important is the elevation of the
practical above the theoretical in German Idealists. Particularly in Kant, who
stressed the primacy of the 'practical', and then in Fichte and early
Schelling, we find the notion that human existence is action. Accordingly, in
Nietzsche and Sartre we find the notion that the human being is all and only
what that being does. My existence consists of forever bringing myself into
being – and, correlatively, fleeing from the dead, inert thing that is the
totality of my past actions. Although my acts are free, I am not free not to
act; thus existence is characterised also by 'exigency' (Marcel). For many
existentialists, authentic existence involves a certain tension be recognised
and lived through, but not resolved: this tension might be between the animal
and the rational (important in Nietzsche) or between facticity and transcendence
(Sartre and de Beauvoir).
In
the 19th and 20th centuries, the human sciences (such as psychology, sociology
or economics) were coming to be recognised as powerful and legitimate sciences.
To some extend at least their assumptions and methods seemed to be borrowed
from the natural sciences. While philosophers such as Dilthey and later Gadamer
were concerned to show that the human sciences had to have a distinctive
method, the existentialists were inclined to go further. The free, situated
human being is not an object of knowledge in the sense the human always exists
as the possibility of transcending any knowledge of it. There is a clear
relation between such an idea and the notion of the 'transcendence of the
other' found in the ethical phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas.
f. Irrationality/Absurdity
Among
the most famous ideas associated with existentialism is that of 'absurdity'.
Human existence might be described as 'absurd' in one of the following senses.
First, many existentialists argued that nature as a whole has no design, no
reason for existing. Although the natural world can apparently be understood by
physical science or metaphysics, this might be better thought of as
'description' than either understanding or explanation. Thus, the achievements
of the natural sciences also empty nature of value and meaning. Unlike a
created cosmos, for example, we cannot expect the scientifically described
cosmos to answer our questions concerning value or meaning. Moreover, such
description comes at the cost of a profound falsification of nature: namely,
the positing of ideal entities such as 'laws of nature', or the conflation of
all reality under a single model of being. Human beings can and should become
profoundly aware of this lack of reason and the impossibility of an immanent
understanding of it. Camus, for example, argues that the basic scene of human
existence is its confrontation with this mute irrationality. A second meaning of the absurd is this: my
freedom will not only be undetermined by knowledge or reason, but from the
point of view of the latter my freedom will even appear absurd. Absurdity is
thus closely related to the theme of 'being on its own', which we discussed
above under the heading of anxiety. Even if I choose to follow a law that I
have given myself, my choice of law will appear absurd, and likewise will my
continuously reaffirmed choice to follow it. Third, human existence as action
is doomed to always destroy itself. A free action, once done, is no longer
free; it has become an aspect of the world, a thing. The absurdity of human
existence then seems to lie in the fact that in becoming myself (a free
existence) I must be what I am not (a thing).
If I do not face up to this absurdity, and choose to be or pretend to be
thing-like, I exist inauthentically (the terms in this formulation are
Sartre's).
g. The Crowd
Existentialism
generally also carries a social or political dimension. Insofar as he or she is
authentic, the freedom of the human being will show a certain 'resolution' or
'commitment', and this will involve also the being – and particularly the
authentic being – of others. For example, Nietzsche thus speaks of his (or
Zarathustra's) work in aiding the transformation of the human, and there is
also in Nietzsche a striking analysis of the concept of friendship; for
Heidegger, there must be an authentic mode of being-with others, although he
does not develop this idea at length; the social and political aspect of
authentic commitment is much more clear in Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus.
That
is the positive side of the social or political dimension. However, leading up
to this positive side, there is a description of the typical forms that
inauthentic social or political existence takes. Many existentialists employ
terms such as 'crowd', 'horde' (Scheler) or the 'masses' (José Ortega y
Gasset). Nietzsche's deliberately provocative expression, 'the herd', portrays
the bulk of humanity not only as animal, but as docile and domesticated
animals. Notice that these are all collective terms: inauthenticity manifests
itself as de-individuated or faceless. Instead of being formed authentically in
freedom and anxiety, values are just accepted from others because ‘that is what
everybody does’. These terms often carry a definite historical resonance,
embodying a critique of specifically modern modes of human existence. All of
the following might be seen as either causes or symptoms of a world that is
'fallen' or 'broken' (Marcel): the technology of mass communication (Nietzsche
is particularly scathing about newspapers and journalists; in Two Ages,
Kierkegaard says something very similar), empty religious observances, the
specialisation of labour and social roles, urbanisation and industrialisation.
The theme of the crowd poses a question also to the positive social or
political dimension of existentialism: how could a collective form of existence
ever be anything other than inauthentic? The 19th and 20th century presented a
number of mass political ideologies which might be seen as posing a
particularly challenging environment for authentic and free existence. For
example, nationalism came in for criticism particularly by Nietzsche. Socialism
and communism: after WWII, Sartre was certainly a communist, but even then
unafraid to criticise both the French communist party and the Soviet Union for
rigid or inadequately revolutionary thinking. Democracy: Aristotle in book 5 of
his Politics distinguishes between democracy and ochlocracy, which latter
essentially means rule by those incapable of ruling even themselves. Many
existentialists would identify the latter with the American and especially
French concept of 'democracy'. Nietzsche and Ortega y Gasset both espoused a
broadly aristocratic criterion for social and political leadership.
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