Existentialism, UU’s and the Ethics of Personal
Responsibility
Parenthetically, with
reference to existentialism, I should point out that many years ago I used to
teach university courses in French Literature, and of course we covered existentialism
as an integral part of the post WWII period. This entailed about three weeks of
lectures; and for my talk today I have selected from them a few major concepts
that I believe will be of particular interest to UU’s. Indeed, our topic today is: Existentialism, UU’s and the Ethics of
Personal Responsibility.
I have no doubt that most of you
are familiar with the word, Existentialism, and some of you have probably even
studied it in detail. However, given that there are various schools of
Existentialism, including Roman Catholic, agnostic and atheistic; my approach
today will be to highlight a few points that they have in common.
I shall start with a brief
overview and history, then introduce some key terms, and finally, offer for
your consideration some of my own observations and give some practical examples
of how I think existentialism may be at work in our everyday lives.
Let’s begin with a quotation:
“It is not our abilities that show what we really are, but our choices.” No, it
wasn’t Dostoyevsky; it was Dumbledore, Master of the Hogwarts School in Harry
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets [film] [1](repeat
the quote)
To the extent that you
believe Dumbledore, it is fair to say your are an existentialist. We shall return later to this idea of choice
and the central role it plays in Existentialism and, I believe, in virtually everything
we do.
Because of the diversity of
positions associated with existentialism, the term is impossible to define
precisely. Loosely defined, it is a philosophical movement or tendency,
emphasizing individual existence, freedom, and choice, that influenced many
diverse writers in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Webster’s New World says, for instance:
“The
doctrine that existence takes precedence over essence and holding that man is
totally free and responsible for his acts.
This responsibility is the source of dread and anguish that encompass
mankind.”
Before getting into some of
the specifics, such as “existence precedes essence” and some of the other
concepts, it might be nice to look at a little history of these ideas.
Existentialism as a distinct
philosophical and literary movement belongs to the 19th and 20th centuries, but
elements of existentialism can be found in the thought (and life) of Socrates,
in the Bible, and in the work of various pre-modern philosophers and writers.
The first to anticipate the
major concerns of modern existentialism was the 17th-century French philosopher
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). Pascal rejected the rigorous rationalism of his
contemporary René Descartes, asserting, in his Pensées (1670), that a
systematic philosophy that presumes to explain God and humanity is a form of
pride. Like later existentialist writers, he saw human life in terms of
paradoxes: The human self, which combines mind and body, is itself a paradox
and contradiction. A sample of his
thought:
"When I consider the short
duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little
space I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of
which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished
at being here rather than there, why now rather than then."
As we shall see, his “fear” becomes codified later by
other writers into the concept of dread or angst.
Which brings us to the 19th Century and Kierkegaard (1813-1855),
generally regarded as the founder of modern existentialism. I’ll give you just
one quote to give you the flavor:
I stick my finger into
existence---It smells of nothing. Where am I? What is this thing called the
world? Who is it who has lured me into the thing, and now leaves me here? How
did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? --Søren Kierkegaard
In his own particular way, he reacted against the
systematic absolute idealism of the 19th-century German philosopher G. W. F.
Hegel (1770-1831), who claimed to have worked out a total rational
understanding of humanity and history. Kierkegaard, contrary to Hegel, stressed
the ambiguity and absurdity of the human situation. The individual's response
to this situation must be to live a totally committed life, and this commitment
can only be understood by the individual who has made it. The individual
therefore must always be prepared to defy the norms of society for the sake of
the higher authority of a personally valid way of life.
This goes against most philosophers since Plato
(428-347 BCE), who have held that the highest ethical good is the same for
everyone; insofar as one approaches moral perfection, one resembles other
morally perfect individuals. Indeed, Søren Kierkegaard, who was, incidentally, the
first writer to call himself existential, reacted against this tradition by
insisting that the highest good for the individual is to find his or her own
unique vocation. As he wrote in his journal, “I must find a truth that is true
for me . . . the idea for which I can live or die.” Other existentialist
writers have echoed Kierkegaard's belief that one must choose one's own way
without the aid of universal, objective standards.
Alas, as Kierkegaard developed in his writings,
particularly The Concept of Anxiety (angst), and Sickness unto Death,
the recognition of this lonely, individual freedom and responsibility fills one
with a feeling of deep dread or angst, mainly because you have no reassuring
standard against which to judge your choices.
An idea subsequent existentialist writers, particularly Sartre
(1905-1980), have expanded on at length.
Today, it has kind of permeated even the general
culture. For example, Jon Stewart,
comedian and host of The Daily Show, was asked recently by Charlie Rose what
Jon felt when he looked at the current political situation, the War and so
forth. Jon, for once being straight said: “It fills me with existential angst.”[2]
Besides accepting the
proposition that no objective, rational basis can be found for moral decisions,
Nietzsche (1844-1900) further contended that the individual must decide, even, which
situations are to count as moral situations
Thus, humanity's primary
distinction, in the view of most existentialists, is the freedom to choose. Sometimes
summed up: WE ARE CONDEMNED TO BE FREE.
Extrapolating out from the
freedom to choose, Sartre in his monumental work, Being and Nothingness, states
that “Existence precedes essence.” He means, and existentialists have generally
held, that that human beings do not have a fixed nature, or essence, as other
animals and plants do; each human being makes choices that create his or her
own nature.
As you are no doubt
thinking, there are certain “humanist” overtones to Existentialism. That is
certainly true; in fact Sartre wrote an essay entitled “Existentialism is a
humanism”.
In any event, for the
Existentialists choice is central to human existence, and it is inescapable;
even the refusal to choose is a choice. Freedom of choice entails commitment
and responsibility. Because individuals are free to choose their own path,
existentialists have argued, they must accept the risk and responsibility of
following their commitment wherever it leads.
Let me point out that this
idea is not developed as a rational argument with all the a priori’s and
a posteriori’s that might go with it. Like the character Alyosha in
Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, they suggest: “We must love life more than the meaning of it.”
Existentialists do not get
involved very deeply in such classical controversies as “does free will exist”
nor do they take on the Skinnerians, who would suggest that your choices are
illusions, your behavior is basically determined by previous events that shaped
you; nor would they get involved today in quantum arguments like the “butterfly
effect”: you know, a butterfly flaps its wings in Tibet and eventually a
hurricane strikes half way round the world. Even if such things are true, and
they may well be, Existentialists are interested in what we experience
inside. We feel and we know that we
make choices, and we are responsible for the consequences.
Of course not all choices
are “existential,” only the important choices: moral and political and social. Sartre would give an example like this: During WWII, you’re in the French Resistance
in German-Occupied France. You and your colleagues recently blew up a German
supply train. Now the Germans announce
that if any more trains are blown up in the area, they will execute ten of the
local villagers, selected at random, for each German soldier who is killed.
Now, you know that in a few
days another train is coming. If you destroy
it, you will save lives of those fighting the Germans and help win the war. It
is your sworn duty to do so. Unfortunately, your mother, father, and your
children live in the nearby villages. What do you do? How can you choose between duty and love and family, etc? Let’s
say you have a book on ethics, or maybe a sacred book that gives you rules for
living. You read the book, and you find a passage that suggests: blow up the
train. Well, the next question is: do I follow the book?
Who can weigh this choice by
making, say, a list of pros and cons and use a calculator or rational arguments
of greater good and so forth? Even if
the local villagers were not related to you, there is still the cost in human
lives of ten-to-one for you to consider, against the backdrop of weakening the
total German effort, and so forth. There are ostensibly valid arguments on both
sides. Whatever you do, somebody will say you should have done otherwise. That
is why this is an Existential choice.
You see, whether you follow
the book or not is a choice. Many
people will say, well I was following the book—I’m not really responsible, this
behavior is part of my religion or whatever, and I must follow it. That is a moral
form of what psychologists would call “projection” and is in essence a delusion.
To let others (or a book) make your choices for you is also your choice. Of course, after the War, Sartre’s scathing
example was of those German criminals who said: “I was just following orders.” Existentialists would say, I made my choice, I am responsible, I
will live with the consequences.
Now, this idea is not
universally accepted, as you can see everyday in the media. Say, some day you’re walking through a
parking lot talking to a friend, not paying attention to where you’re
going. You trip over a bright, yellow
speed bump, fall and break your wrist. What
to do? Do you rush to the doctor
telling him how stupid you were, or rush to a lawyer and sue the pants off Wal-Mart
because they didn’t have blinking lights and warning bells inside that bump?
Your choice shows, as Dumbledore said, what kind of person you are. Sartre expands this idea with other
important concepts like being “authentic” or acting in good faith or bad faith
or of a being “in itself” or “for itself,” and so forth. There is not time to
go into those now, but during the talk back we can if there is interest.
For now, I would like to
point out simply that if you are
creating your nature by your choices, this process is ongoing. One
result is that you cannot judge what kind of a person someone is (his nature)
until his story is over—that is after he/she dies.
You’ll recall we mentioned
Saint Augustine (354-430) earlier. As you may know, in his youth he was a
sinner, but he changed; he became a Saint. Interestingly, at one point he even
says, that if you are not happy with your character, you must “transcend
yourself” Specifically: “Go back into
yourself; the truth dwells in the inner man; and if you discover that your
nature is mutable, transcend yourself also. . .".[3]
Now this in no way makes
Saint Augustine an existentialist, but it is clear from this and other statements
that he prefigured it. Of course, from
his day till now, and especially in the 18th Century, the “nature”
of man was often debated. Rousseau
claimed that people were born good, but were subsequently corrupted by
society. The Church, backed by the
state, believing that human nature was
corrupt from birth and required Baptism and grace to become good, condemned and
burnt all of Rousseau books they could find and would have put him in jail or
worse if they could have found him.
So, the Existentialists, by
suggesting that our nature is what we make it by our choices, have liberated us
(if you believe them) from the Original Sin stigma and from the debate about
our nature itself. Alas, the price for this freedom to create you real self is
angst; or social rejection perhaps; clearly not everyone is willing to pay
it.
If you agree with Dumbledore,
you are what you choose to be. Your
choices lead to your actions which create your nature in on-going fashion. That
is clearly the case for Saint Augustine. Just as it is clearly one message, I believe,
of a meaningful modern film, The Shawshank Redemption, where the Morgan
Freeman character, whom the parole board finally lets out of prison after so
many decades, was definitely not the same man who came in. He even suggests so at his last hearing as
he tells the Board: “I can’t find him; I don’t know where he went.”
I am not suggesting that Existentialism
as a philosophy has caught on with the masses. This special concept of “choosing” is there in subtle ways,
however. In the movie Star Wars, for example, the whole psychological
drama, underneath the special effects and the laser battles, is to convince
Luke Skywalker to make the same choice as Darth Vader, like Valdemort did in
the Harry Potter series: go over and use his gifts to support the “dark
side”. Let me give you a more subtle example
about our choices and our character that I’m sure you’ll recognize.
“. . . for what is a man?
What has he got? If not himself then he has naught, to say the things he truly
feels and not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took the blows
and did it my way. “My Way”[4]
Now, I ask you, what would the Medieval Church have
thought of that song, or say, George III or anybody in the Age of Enlightenment
even? Clearly, this is post-existentialist.
So the next time you hear Frank Sinatra sing it, maybe it will seem just
a little different.
There is, of course, a
paradox in the idea of being condemned to be free. But that is our true
situation. Examining it more closely,
Albert Camus (1913-1960) stressed the idea of the absurd, which we will now
turn to.
Albert Camus, a Nobel Prize
winner, died in 1960; and until his dying breath he always claimed that he was
not an existentialist. Alas, he is
usually included with them as a kindred spirit.
His concept of the absurd
stems in part from the angst and the nausea of Kierkegaard and Sartre in facing
an indifferent and illogical world. The horrors of the two World Wars really
brought this home for the Existentialists[5].
Camus talks about this felling that creeps over you suddenly one day: you have been living a humdrum life of
habit, going to work, coming home, eating, etc. without really thinking about
it. Then, Bam! You ask yourself:
“What’s it all for? Where’s it
going?” Echoing Pascal, we feel like The
Stranger (a title of one of Camus’ novels), like we don’t belong. And of course, time eats us up, destroys our
efforts, capped by the ultimate, inevitable finality of death.
It’s kind of like you spent a
couple of years building your dream house, and the day you get it finished, it
crumbles to the ground—over and over, for everyone. Similarly, someone spends
ten years of hard study becoming a brain surgeon to help mankind. Even if he/she lives many years, death will
come and put an end to what could have been important, ongoing service. It just
seems so unfair and illogical. If you were designing a system, you wouldn’t
design it like that. This is more than
planned obsolescence; it is inherent, inevitable annihilation and
self-destruction. There are myriad
examples of the contingent nature of life that we resist intellectually and
emotionally because we want permanence.
Now, when Camus says “absurd”
he does not mean ridiculous. Indeed, he
does not say that humanity is absurd or that the world is absurd; what he is
saying is that humanity in the world lacks a logical, rational purpose—the, confrontation
of the irrational, indifferent character of the world and our deep desire for clarity
and cohesive resolution—that is the absurd.
When some people confront
this reality and futility, they think of suicide. Camus rejects that out of
hand. Others find immortality in a belief in an after-life. In Camus’ view no doubt, belief in an
after-life, salvation, etc., which gives meaning to this life is also, really,
an admission that life is absurd in itself as Camus describes it. So, positing immortality of the soul or
other such ideas seems to resolve the conundrum, take away the absurdity.
Camus says, forget all that,
live with what you know. We exist; the world exists and we are in it. We can’t explain it, we can just describe
it. [This echoes, I believe, the influence of phenomenology on all the
existentialist thinkers—a topic for another paper.] His response, to the recognition of the absurd in our
relationship with the world is three-fold. CHALLENGE (revolt), FEEDOM and
PASSION.
Suicide is wrong, because it
gives in to the absurd. Camus says look
it in the eye, defy it at every turn.
This will free you deep within, because you are lucid, fully aware of
your situation and this leads you to recognize that life is precious and you
want to passionately experience it. Live today, and each precious day
fully. Keep perpetually conscious of
the ultimate futility of life, the absurd, and transcend it with attitude and
action.
One of Camus’ most famous
works is a short essay, I’m sure you’ve heard of: The Myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus, as you know was condemned by the
gods to roll a huge bolder up a mountain for eternity. Once at the top, it would roll back down and
he would have to roll it back up again.
To understand this myth and
the metaphor of our lives that it represents as Camus will develop it, it might
be good to review why Sisyphus was so punished. The exact reason is not mentioned in Homer. There are various other
accounts; follows the most popular and the one it is clear Camus had in mind:
In addition to being the King
of Corinth, Sisyphus was a clever fellow his whole life, he lived by his wits
and cunning, kind of a conman and bit of a rapscallion.
Well one day Death came to
fetch him to take him to the Underworld.
While talking to Death, Sisyphus feigned an interest in a new
contraption Death was carrying, and Death was persuaded to demonstrate its use
on himself. It was a pair of handcuffs.
Sisyphus thereupon locked Death in a closet. From then on nobody could die.
A soldier could be hacked to pieces in battle and appear that night at
the dinner table. Finally the gods, very upset at this outrage, sent Mars to
get Sisyphus.
Anticipating that move,
Sisyphus instructed his wife not to bury his body or perform any of the required
rituals. Once in the underworld his wife’s sacrilegious behavior is discovered,
and Sisyphus convinces the gods to let him return to Earth to punish his
wife. Well, needless to say, he did
nothing of the kind, and he lived to a ripe old age all over again.
So, in effect Sisyphus had
defied Death.
In any event, before Camus’
essay, (1942) most people regarded this as a very negative and tragic story. Some
even justified the punishment because of that famous character flaw: hubris. Camus’
view is different. He envisions Sisyphus as the absurd hero: in his scorn for
the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life—the causes of his grueling
punishment, in which his whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.
This, says Camus, is the price that must be paid for the passions of this
earth.
In short, Camus concludes
that Sisyphus inside himself feels that he has made fate a human matter. He has in a sense transcended his destiny. This
would be an example of Sartre’s “being for itself,” that is, conscious of his
existence and free to form his/her identity. Unlike the rock, a “being in
itself” that just is. Sisyphus’
fate actually belongs to him, as does the rock. The last paragraph reads:
I
leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain!
One always finds one’s burden again.
But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and
raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither
sterile nor futile. Each atom of that
stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a
world. The struggle itself toward the heights
is enough to fill a mans heart. One
must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Clearly, Camus hoped that we
would take comfort in this metaphor. For, Sisyphus has made his choices, took
the blows. He takes the responsibility,
and he is glad.
If you think any of these things
are true, I guess my message is that you are not alone. So if we agree that
life is absurd, it’s nonetheless how you face up to it that counts. That’s the real “existential choice”.
Thank you.
#############
PS: Now, in lieu of the final
hymn, with Catherine’s help, I would like to offer you a special way of looking
at the world that has always appealed to me.
Sing “What a Wonderful World”.
[Presented by Joe Wetzel at the NCUU, Lecanto FL, August 10, 2004]
[1] The book says: “It is our choices Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities”[p. 333.]
[2] Charlie Rose Show, Oct 5, 2004
[3] De vera relig. 39,72: PL 34,154. I should point out that Saint Augustine, like Kierkegaard later, would suggest that one could find a resolution to the dilemma in God. Gabriel Marcel, a Catholic (convert) Existentialist would resolve things along those lines as well. This aspect of Existentialism, how they handle the Original Sin question and so forth, is worthy of a complete essay in itself. For now, I will state simply that any solution to that issue—believe or not believe the Biblical account and so forth-- is also a CHOICE.
[4] “My Way”: lyrics by Paul Anka, 1968; based on a French love song, “Comme d’habitude” by Claude François.
[5] It was not just the millions of deaths and millions of war casualties, basically the destruction of a generation during WWI, but also because it came at a time when the general philosophical consensus was that war was stupid, illogical, and probably would never happen again. That is, stemming partly from the Positivism of the late 19th Century and the fact that the industrial revolution had occurred, progress was to continue and the future was bright. WWI made a mockery of all that, made even more tragic and unbelievable by the fact that the “cause” was vague and that Germany and France were highly “civilized” states, home to Beethoven, Mozart, Bergson, and great minds and culture. To say people were disillusioned is to but begin to understand the horror and dread they all felt deep inside.