This
paper is a book review and a synopsis of, “Existentialism for Dummies,” written
by Christopher Panza and Gregory Gale. It
is also a partial essay on Existentialism. The author strongly recommends the aforementioned
book.
The
book is available at Amazon here.
This is Part Two of a Series.
Part One can be found here.
Part Two
Our
unique way of existing in the world
What is the meaning of
human existence? What makes human
existence unique? What is the meaning of
existence? There are things that we may
call beings, such as common objects: pencil, stove, sink, car, road, rock,
book, etc. These are objects or beings
existing in the world around us. When we
move to the question of existence, the mode of language shifts slightly from “a
being” to “being” or “existence.” It is
one thing to be. It is another thing to
question everything – i.e., everything in the universe and in our minds – and
ask as Heidegger asked, “Why does all this exist rather than there just being
nothing?” Not only are we asking why do
we exist as humans, but why does anything
exist at all. It seems that Heidegger
was the first to investigate this aspect of philosophy with seriousness.
How do we investigate
existence? Science is not the answer,
since science only looks at things as objects – from the outside. A human being is not an object that can be
observed from the outside after which one can write a coherent theory on this
sample or multiple samples of humans.
Again, man has interiority, or, intentionality, that is unavailable for
access by any scientific instrumentation.
Technologists may invent amazing machines to perform brain scans, but
they will never be able to understand how you experience a red apple. This experience is not available to anyone or
anything exterior from a person.
Engagement
The human method of
existence according to some existentialists, such as Martin Heidegger, involves
being engaged with the world. Humans
must exist within a social context and must live life through engagement with projects and goals. Animals
may have goals of survival, but it is not likely they have projects. The social world and the physical world
provide humans with tools and equipment to engage in the world. Our lives are oriented socially and toward
activity through projects, goals, tools, and equipment.
Space
Another aspect of
existence is Space. As expected, this
concept is not the scientific sense of the term involving meters, centimeters
and square kilometers. It is the space
of engaging with the world within your existential situation. Where or how are we situated? How are we acting with reference to our
social situation, our goals, or our equipment?
Some concerns are closer to you.
Other concerns are foreign to you.
How far are you away from West Indian cooking recipes? How close are you to the politics of your
local library’s elections for Director of Procurement? How close are you to your work and your
goals? How close are you to the concerns
of your family and friends? So, the
space of our existential situation is a way of describing the connection and
intensity with regard to the particulars existing within our situation.
Meaning
Existentialists claim
that humans can live without many things; however, humans cannot live without
meaning. Men will give their lives in
charging a military position, if they know that their mission or cause has
meaning to them. However, our lives, as
we are given, have no inherent meaning; we must create our own. Creating meaning in our lives is not an easy
task since the old systems are no longer able to give us confidence in their
efficacy; we must start almost from scratch.
Perhaps we can use pieces of
the old systems, but we must create meaning ourselves for ourselves.
Since we are engaged
in goals and projects, we need tools.
The essence of the pursuit of something implies that we will use things
available to us as tools or instruments to pursue our values. Sometimes tools are readily available to
us. At other times, we must search for
them.
Heidegger explains
that, in living in this world, it is necessary to come into contact with other
beings like ourselves. We are using
tools to pursue our projects. Some of
these tools we create, and other tools are created by others. In the first years of our lives we are
completely dependent upon others for our survival. As we become more competent, we develop the
ability to create our own tools, make more choices, and interact with others in
trading one value for another.
However, in our
interaction with others, we risk becoming inauthentic if we simply accept the
social values and social trends around us.
To go along to get along puts us at risk to pursuing the values of
others, possibly to the detriment of our own.
To be authentic, we pursue our values, and we must be honest with
ourselves in what we are doing, and not passively accept the values of the
social situation we find ourselves in.
Sometimes this is not easy; but, being authentic is always a
struggle. It is especially a struggle if
our values are much different from those within our social situation.
Passion
in our lives
Existentialists
suggest that we need passion in our lives.
In the pursuit of our values, we must increase our risk, accept the
struggles and fights accompanying such pursuits, and engage in life with a
large dose of zeal. We are to be engaged
with the people and the things around us.
Our tools to pursue our projects, the people with which we interact in
life and our work are all potential objects of our passions. It is not exactly what you do that concerns existentialists; it is how you do it. Life is to be worked with, fought with,
wrestled with, and engaged. It is to
take your life seriously and to seriously live your life. This passion is focused and intense. It is focused upon being a Subject that
chooses how it interacts, instead of a passive object to be acted upon.
Finding Something
Worth Dying For
We should find a cause
in our lives that expresses our values, and expresses our lives. We should find a cause such that it is worth
dying for; one must find a reason to live such that one stakes one’s life upon
it. Living otherwise is
undignified. Choosing this cause will
undoubtedly include some measure of mystery and risk, since we are not
guaranteed success or failure. We cannot
predict how things will turn out after we make certain decisions. Since life has a large element of absurdity,
some of the consequences may be strange and senseless, thus mysterious.
Engagement to Live
in Truth
Existentialists make
the bold claim that when a person engages with life in a passionate way as we
have heretofore described, this person exists in the Truth. Typically, when
we loosely speak of truth, we mean objective truth. However, existentialists are more interested
in subjective truth. Instead of something externally discovered,
it is something that we appropriate and make our own. This does not mean that we ignore objective
truth. It just means that when
determining how to live our lives, we must know it subjectively. Subjective truth implies how we are involved
and engaged with the world. When we
speak of objective truth, we know about the properties of an external
object. When we speak of subjective
truth, we speak of how we subjectively know something, how we are connected to
something with meaning – what does this mean to me? The objective truth says that this table is
made of wood. The subjective truth may
claim that this table is a symbol of the strength of my family when I can
remember them gathered around the table each night for dinner. One can be put to a scientific test with
instrumentation; the other is inaccessible to the scientific method from a
physical perspective.
One paradox that
Kierkegaard notices is that the more one pursues the objective truth of the
object of our passions, the less passionate we become about it. Thus, the passionate pursuit of our truth
value involves some uncertainty about its objectivity. This is another aspect of Existentialism that
illustrates that risk and uncertainty are important aspects of the pursuit of
our goals with passion.
In shifting to a
subjective view of the Truth, one can find a Truth that is yours and yours
alone. An objective Truth belongs to
all, a subjective Truth may or may not.
In uncovering Truth
that is yours and yours alone, it is important to understand that crowds of
people do not find this type of Truth.
Since subjective Truth is yours and yours alone, you must look for it
apart from the crowds. You must find
this Truth within yourself. This can be scary for those accustomed to
seeking consensus from others, but living according to one’s values requires us
to make the effort.
Modern Temptation
Toward the Easy Life
Modern life is
dull. It drains us of passion. We are
encouraged to pursue the easy life. We
look for ways to distract ourselves from facing existential questions and
engaging existence around us. This is
the age of mediocrity where we are encouraged to pursue the average, or pursue
a bourgeois life of well-being with a minimization of risk. Simulation of engagement is another aspect of
this: how many people play video games to simulate passionate and dangerous
situations? We want the feeling of
danger without the real danger. People
want to attend protests, but they do not want to risk arrest, jail or death; feeling like one makes a difference
instead of actually making a difference.
Often people get together and write up revolutionary documents, publish
them, and then go home feeling as
though they made a difference. Often,
playing it safe in our modern age seems like the smart move.
Media as an
Instrument of Untruth
Kierkegaard attacked
the media. He saw the crowd as a threat
to subjective Truth. However, with printing,
one gets wide distribution of the voice of the crowd or the “public.” Media tempts us to get involved on issues and
subjects about which we know very little, and about which we would care little
otherwise. Often media issues are very
far removed from issues that are concrete to us and “close to home” to the
point where we neglect many things “at hand” in our lives for things far away
and often irrelevant to us. The media
also gives the crowd an appearance of strength, and even Truth, which makes it
extremely dangerous. It is easy to deal
with others’ issues since it does not involve any risk; it illustrates another
case of moderns not confronting the issues in front of their own lives. The press invites us to spend time and effort
on fake issues, and in the meantime, the minutes of our lives slip away on
unimportant things at the expense of our values. Also we are spread so thin among a variety of
issues to the point where we cannot focus a sufficient amount of time on a
single issue so that we know the issue competently; this produces superficiality
about subjects about which we know little, and upon which we are tempted to
pontificate.
