“The rebels weapon is the proof of his humanity. This
irrepressible violence is man re-creating himself” (wretched of the earth)
Existentialism as an agent for political change – via
existentialism principles established by Nietzsche, Heidegger – a call to arms
from Satre and the explicit embracing of violence by Franz Fanon.
Key figures in development of existentialism;
Nietzsche;
God is dead – the end of certainty – and we are faced with a
crisis – we need something new to sustain us.
This crisis is fantastic according to Nietzsche – It means
freedom. It gives us the freedom to find value for ourselves (transvaluation of
all values):
“At last, the horizon seems open once more, our ships can at
last put out to sea in face of every danger; every hazard is again permitted to
the discerner; the sea, our sea, again lies open before us; perhaps never
before did such an “open sea” exist” (Gay Science)
For Nietzsche human nature is not universal – our natures
are different and it therefore follows that different people can find and
follow different conceptions of excellence and of different moralities. (Opposing
position of natural rights (Locke) and creates space for Fanon's violence).
The Ubermensch – overcomes what has so far defined us as
human. The Overman renounces all of this, carving out his place in the world
according to his own will. Will to power – defining himself by the choices he
makes.
Choice is crucial to the existentialist point of view.
Heidegger;
Being and Time – highly influential (Satres Being and
Nothingness) book is about existence. He is interested in what it means to
exist and consequently the problems of human life.
But before we can investigate the nature of being as such we
must first question the nature of being which causes the questions to be asked.
The first question to ask is “what is human” – what is the
basic beginning of existence. And that is a creature he called Dasein – Dasein
is in each of us.
He thought that human beings were Dasien but also other
forms such as aliens could also be Dasein.
Heidegger is largely an attack on Descartes, he had no time for the
Cartesians. Descartes came up with Cartesian dualism - he argued that there
were two things in the universe, the mind and body, spirit and physicality. He believed that these
things were completely different and that the world is made up of these two things.
Heidegger disagrees, he believes this theory to be an utter disaster. He believed that the biggest
problem with Cartesian dualism is if these two things are completely
different then how do they interact?
But if we are stuck in our minds and there’s a very real
question which plagued Descartes and virtually all philosophers after him – how
do we get out of our minds to know the world in itself?
Sceptics like David Hume doubted that we could ever know the
world as it is.
In place of consciousness and subjectivity Heidegger simply
talks about Dasein – he is looking for the essential structure of Dasein.
Being in the world – but not to be understood as a spatial
relationship – it denotes a certain type of engagement. “I’m journalism – one
defines me in terms of my engagement with journalism”
Heidegger believed that dualism is absurd – for Dasein to exist it must exist
in the world – there is no Dasein without the world- Socrates and Christian
philosopher are mistaken.
It is simply us and our interaction with the world.
Imagine that you had a complicated machine, and if you had
three settings, one empiricism, the second idealism and the third existentialism. If you were to put someone in
the machine and look at the different outputs each setting would have it would result with empiricism showing you the being of that person, all the details of that human, weight, height, features etc. If you were to look at the second setting of idealism it would show you the soul of that person and finally the third setting, existentialism would show you all the
decisions made by that person – the one thing to define this person would be his/hers next decision, the choice that they make.
We are defined by our decisions and our choices.
Heidegger states that when we normally speak of ourselves we don’t speak about
our authentic selves at all – true self – being ones own person. The influence by
Nietzsche has a long argument against slave morality (bad faith).
Das man self – the inauthentic self – what he has in mind is
a sort of social construal of the self. The Das Man self is inauthentic because
it is simply a social self, it is not one owns self at all.
Existence – this dosent just mean taking a place in the
world, it has to do with possibilities and choices. This is to be contrasted
with what Heidegger calls Facticity (which Satre will borrow)
Facticity are those parts of ourselves which are simply given
– we are thrown into the world. We
are born at a certain time at a certain place of certain parents and we don’t
have much choice about any of this. It is just blind luck. Consider the madness
of nationality; we could have been born anywhere, grown up anywhere, it is not our choice.
Our Dasien is very much wedded to where we happen to be
thrown in life.
Facticity – “throwness”- we are born with a blank slate but
already have a past. (Moral luck) For the existentialist the future is the most
important dimension. We are creatures of the “possible”.
Transcendence – is my reaction to facticity – our
possibility, which may not be realised. I am defined by my choices – I
re-create myself – I am not defined by my past. (Crucial to Fanon – path to
escape the role of victim).
We are defined by our engagement with the world. There is no
rightness or wrongness, it is your reaction to your facticity, and if you are
dominated by your facticity then you are living an inauthentic life.
Aristotle believed that some people were naturally slaves,
they were inferior, lesser, they were defining their classes by their past. Heidegger says this is irrelevant, whether it’s your gender, age, race or class – we do
not need to be victims of the past.
Satre;
Key idea: existence precedes essence – we create our own
purpose.
E.g., Simone de Beauvoir – “one is not born a woman, but one
becomes one”
The absurd – there is no guiding spirit, no teleological
driving force – stuff happens, good and bad without reason and so life is in
some way ridiculous and absurd.
Existentialists argue that we bring purpose; we transform
ourselves and the world by bringing in purpose. We create our own universe.
Heidegger’s existentialism was right wing (Nazi) – Satre’s
was left wing.
The life of a person is not determined in advance, by God or
moral laws says Satre; the only thing I cannot escape is the need to choose.
You might not like the choices you have to make but you cannot escape them, you
must make a choice. But the possibility of recreating oneself is frightening –
people will try to avoid this freedom. This is “bad faith”.
Being-in-itself, being-for-itself.
Satre is clearly influenced by Heidegger.
The alternative is to take responsibility for your actions
and be defined by your choices “all the barriers, all the railings, collapse,
annihilated by the consciousness of my liberty. It is I who maintain values in
being” (Think of Nietzsche’s open sea)
Humanity for Satre is:
Abandonment – God is dead (Nietzsche), God does not guide
our actions, there is no divine set of rules to follow –we are alone and there
is no one/nothing to guide us on how to act.
Anguish – Humans are fundamentally free “condemned to be
free” the responsibility of being free is enormous and we have no excuses, we
are responsible for everything that we are. We cannot choose our past but we
choose how we feel and act to every situation.
Despair – This is the realisation of that the world may
prevent us from getting what we want, but we still choose how we react to the
setback, we are the totality of what we actually do.
-Choice between his mother and joining the Free French.
-Abandonment, Anguish, Despair.
-The choice? “You are free, therefore choose.”
Bad faith;
Most people think that being a soldier, police officer,
student, engineer, confers certain obligations on you, for example, students
are expected to attend lectures, pass exams, etc. But Satre might accuse you of
bad faith – the denial that you are radically free, when they think their past
determines their future.
Sartre thinks such people are making a metaphysical mistake
– turning themselves into inert objects, rather than free beings, beings
condemned to making free choices.
Example;
Café waiter – the waiter is acting out a role, in doing that
he is denying that he is free to otherwise, in that way he is like a mechanical
robot. The waiter is trying to represent himself as determined in his actions.
Gay man – whether we can say that the man is gay in the same
way as we can say that the wall is white or the grass is green, Do we define
ourselves as our past or not? – Sartre thinks there’s a paradox – his central
metaphysical claim the human subject is not self-identical, which leads him to accept
these contradictions that one is a homosexual but is also not a homosexual because
he thinks this is the nature of us as human beings and that this is how we contrast
with tables, walls and stones, which are fully self-identical.
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
I am large, I contain multitudes” Walt Whitman.
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