Time Seller

Existentialism

One of the most obvious existentialist figures in pop culture is Spider-man.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen,

            If you’re a Marvel fan, you’ll notice that throughout the years, Peter Parker has been shown reading books by Camus and Sartre, renown existentialists that I’ll be talking about in a minute. Before we get into a more thorough discussion of existentialism per se, the reason I say Spider-man is an existentialist is because of his Weltanschauung, his worldview. His idealism, while not absolute and perfect all the time, clashes with the ugly, absurd realities of the world. Of course, Spider-man isn’t the only popular existential hero. Batman’s an existentialist too. They are essentially dark, misunderstood individuals true to themselves and they stick to their codes, even though their authenticity isn’t appreciated by the rest of the world.

            Yet another existentialist figure is Rorschach, not the psychologist, but the character from the graphic novel Watchmen. He is another example of an atheistic existentialist: he chooses to live by his own code, a choice that he has imposed on himself. When Rorschach tells his psychiatrist about his motivation to become a “costumed adventurer”, he offers numerous existential observations, including the absurdity of existence and how the world has no meaning save what we choose to impose.

As he says it, “This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us.” And his solution to this absurdity is to scrawl his “own destiny on this morally blank world”. Compare this to Albert Camus’ description of The Absurd: “In the face of an absurd universe—one lacking transcendent, factory-installed meanings—we are compelled to create our own.”

            To distill existentialism into a single sentence, I would say that it is basically a philosophical ideology that is concerned with individual freedom, existence and choice.

The main ‘point’ of this philosophy is that every person must be responsible for their actions; everyone has total freedom, and the realization of that total freedom causes “anxiety”. Also, there are two main directions of existentialism: religious existentialism and atheistic existentialism. It is rather important to make a distinction between these two, because they differ in many crucial ways. Of course, atheists don’t generally like that term (a few of them argue that instead of them being called atheists, people with religions should be called theists. Which, in fact, makes me an agnostic theist Catholic. But I digress.)

            Existentialism is a movement that emerged in the twentieth-century, spearheaded by figures such as Heidegger, Sartre and Camus, but the movement was foreshadowed by nineteenth-century philosophers; most notably Kierkergaard and Nietzsche. Due to the fact that almost all of them refused to label themselves as existentialists, there are many differences between the various thinkers.   

            In existentialism, there is an emphasis on the need for individuals to find their ways in life, and this is done by making choices. Each choice a person makes influences the choices he will have in the future. It is at this point where the key split between religious and humanist (or atheist) existentialists occurs. Kierkergaard, for example, said that one choice a person could make was to align his life fully with faith, and he strongly recommended this choice. Nietzsche, on the other hand, proclaimed that “God is dead” and endorsed a pagan ideal. This approach solidifies the fundamental proposition of existentialism, in that there is no God, and there is no Purpose.

            These two separate ideas of existentialism helped shaped the modern world as we know it. The influence of existentialism was especially prominent after the Second World War, and it permeated such works as Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Albert Camus’ The Outsider, which is also sometimes translated as The Stranger. Another prominent author influenced by existentialism is Dostoevsky, his most famous novel being Crime and Punishment. While Metamorphosis emphasizes the absurdity of the world, the other two works explore existential crimes and the reactions of the public to such acts. All three are fascinating reads.

            And so, to summarize, existentialism is essentially a reliance on the individual to depend on no one but himself, and the insistence that this self-reliance should not be altered even in the face of public opinion.

Ladies and gentlemen,

            Let us now take a somewhat more chronological look at the development of existentialism to see the progress of ideas throughout the years.

            Friedrich Nietzsche greatly influenced the existentialist movement of the 20^th century. However, while he believed that the individual was especially important, he also believed that individuality was indefinable, since any attempt at definition would place limits on it. His focus was similar to Kierkergaard’s, in that he attempted to focus on human experience as opposed to the more detached objective truths of math and science. This represented the beginning of the evolving Zeitgeist towards an emphasis on the individual.

Another major existentialist, Martin Heidegger, used the term ‘da-sein’ or “being there” to describe an interesting aspect of his philosophy: he basically says that we must be open to the possibility that we may have to create our own meanings for life, in order to achieve an “authentic” existence. Also, however “authentic” this existence is, all existences are, by nature, temporary.

However, existence is everything to Heidegger. Nothing lies outside, before, or beyond existence, and existence takes place in time. The fact that we exist in time means that we are continuously in a state of flux; we are constantly changing. There is no reason or explanation for this existence, at least until we decided individually what reasons or explanations we believe in. There is no Purpose to our lives per se, that Purpose is whatever we make it to be.

In line with that, Heidegger also equates knowledge to experience. According to him, it is impossible to have an experience without knowing something about it, and it is equally impossible to know something without experiencing that knowledge.

Jean-Paul Sartre took the ideas of Heidegger and Husserl into a new direction by pointing out that reality was, in essence, inherently absurd. He coined the slogan “existence precedes essence”, which, to simplify, means that we should be less concerned with what TYPE of things things are and more concerned with the fact that they simply ARE.

Sartre’s idea of the absurd life inspired many works of literature and art, and in fact he was offered a Nobel Prize, which he turned down. His most famous saying is, of course, “We are condemned to be free”. This because rather than simply ‘being’, we are also conscious of being. This is a problem because we get lost in our freedom to come up with possible meanings for our existence. If we could just ‘be’ without being conscious of our existence, much like a stone, we would be much better off. To summarize it, we do NOT have a Purpose in life, but as conscious beings, we are doomed to be compelled to find a Purpose. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what Sartre calls absurd.

Let us take a look at a couple of major issues in philosophy and see how existentialists approach these topics. In terms of existential ontology, we are whatever we can become, and that being comes about by our actions. Everything is connected, as Charlie from the TV show Life would say.

As soon as we become aware of ourselves, and ask for a Purpose to our lives, we step into absurdity. Sartre and Camus claim that it is possible to escape this absurdity by being absurd ourselves. As for truth, our view of the world is enough for it to become a self-reliant and self-existent truth, which is the only form of truth possible. What we do with this truth depends on our moral code, which is, after all, determined by ourselves. An ethical act, however, is one which we carry out as if in our act, the entire mankind would be represented. Of course, this is a simplistic approach to ethics, but existentialism isn’t very concerned with that branch of philosophy.

And, of course, choice is the most important part of existentialism. We always have a choice, whether the choices are minor or terrifyingly huge decisions, we will always have to choose between the blue pill and the red pill throughout our lives. Predetermination does not exist. We make our choices without knowing which the right choice was, and these choices lead to us defining ourselves.  

And now, before I end this speech, I would like to talk about existentialism in something much more current - the newspaper cartoon strip Calvin and Hobbes. Both the characters names’ are taken from philosophers with slightly varying viewpoints on life. The important thing to be considered here, though, is the strip’s philosophical approach itself. Calvin, wise beyond his years, realizes that he is trapped in a world of continuous chain reactions. This is blatantly expressed in numerous strips, particularly when Calvin and Hobbes are on a wagon speeding down a hill, and Calvin comments how an arbitrary choice along the way leads to them careening off the edge of the cliff. They somehow survive each crash in the strip’s history.

Another existentialist idea that this chain reaction brings up is how we are forced to make blind decisions, where each choice leads to an unknowable future. The true philosophy behind the comic duo, though, is summed up in this line: “Live and don’t learn, that’s us.” Calvin’s attitude towards the events in his life demonstrates one of the ways we can accept the absurdity of randomness. By ignoring the morals in everything he does, his reasoning becomes powerless and his experiences pointless. This apathetic approach to this life may seem repugnant to us, but hey, it does have its merits. Try to mull on that one.

            Perhaps the most explicit existentialist aspect of Calvin and Hobbes is Calvin’s struggle between conformity and existentialism, similar to the struggles faced by the superheroes I mentioned at the beginning of this speech. Calvin is constantly fighting a battle between his desires and choices and those of an outside force, whether that be from his teacher or his parents. His rebelliousness portrays the individual as being trapped into fulfilling the wills of society, which may not necessarily be what he wants. Sure, he makes desperate choices, but they only serve to portray the absurdity of conformity and the lengths one must take to escape it. And while he rebels in his hilariously sarcastic and sardonic way, he shows us the ruthlessness of nature, the meaningless of existence and the way to fight irrational attacks on the individual. In short, Calvin is the quintessential Existentialist man.

An important thing to bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, is that existentialism essentially devalues the importance of social influences on the individual’s actions, which severely limits it as an all-encompassing moral framework for life. It is perhaps best to regard existentialism as a possible way to live one’s life, while bearing in mind that it is not, in fact, absolute. This is of course acknowledged by existentialists themselves. Nothing is absolute, they say, not even the fact that we are existentialists. There is another way to explain this aversion to being identified. Calling someone an Existentialist imposes an essence on them, and tells them what they are. This violates their autonomy and freedom to choose who they are. This is intolerable.

In summary then, ladies and gentlemen, your life has no meaning. You have all the choices in the world ahead of you, and the ones that you make will define who you are. Also, if you want to see an interesting take on existentialism, head over to this website: http://garfieldwithoutgarfield.net. And remember, no one is an existentialist. Thank you.

Wayne