Wednesday, December 12, 2012

CONCLUSION


For the past 16ish weeks, we've been discussing some pretty weighty concepts put forth by some borderline manic men. In our final class session, we touched on the majority of these concepts – all but those put forth by arguably the most maniacal of the maniacs, Nietzsche – and took a little time to reflect on the cognitive effects of these concepts. As a result of taking this class, do we generally feel more despair in our everyday undertakings or do we instead feel more empowered and liberated in our lives? Personally, I definitely feel more empowered and liberated. It's really amazing to be a member of the most remarkable species living on the most remarkable rock known to man, and it's something that I've always been appreciative of, but after taking this class I'm super, super grateful for my humanity and the freedom it grants. Yes, bearing absolute responsibility for your actions and the impact that those actions have the remainder of your life can be daunting and terrifying and completely paralyzing at times, but at the end of the day, the ecstasy and empowerment that freedom brings overtakes the fear and is release from that catatonic mindset.

This class has also answered some of the biggest questions I have, questions I think we all have. Well, maybe 'answered' isn't the best term – resolved is better. Namely, banal as it may seem, the ol' Why us? Why here? Why now? A big part of me has always believed that there isn't any true answer, that our existence in our present state is the culmination of infinite coincidence. After taking this class, I hold this belief even closer than before. The biggest difference is that now I know it's okay to think this way. The absence of any profound purpose or true meaning of life doesn't mean that the world is fruitless and our existence is futile. Conversely, I think that to a certain extent, accepting that we cannot know, that we aren't meant to know, that there really isn't anything to know, is exponentially more liberating that knowing the truth. Semi-related side-story: I have a friend who, in a fit of freshman curiosity and stuck-in-the-dorms-during-winter-break-boredom, asked me I wanted to watch her while she tried DMT – you know, to make sure she didn't completely lose her mind. She didn't, but for a good few minutes, she looked right through me and whispered “I don't want to know” over and over again. After she had gotten back into herself, I asked her what she meant by this, and she said something along the lines of she felt like she was about to figure it out. Something was about to impart the meaning of everything to her, and she didn't want to know. I kind of brushed it off at the time, but in retrospect, it makes complete sense. The ambiguity of our existence is major part of what gives life meaning. Because we don't have all the answers (or even a handful, really) we are able to create our own meaning based on what is most important to us.

Our final class left one big question up in the air: What does existentialism mean to you? To me, existentialism means liberation and authenticity and acceptance. Liberation insofar as I have absolute freedom over my actions, and as a result, hold absolute responsibility for the direction of my life. Authenticity is related to the aforementioned liberation, insofar as authenticity refers to a certain candor in light of one's individual circumstances. That is to say, authenticity requires that we recognize that we are beings who are responsible for who we are. Finally, by acceptance I mean accepting the uncertainties of existence. We will never have all the answers we seek – many of our most pressing questions may not even have answers – and that's okay. I think coming to terms with the limitations of our consciousness – how can we ever truly understand consciousness if consciousness is required to consider the ins and outs of consciousness? – is crucial if one hopes to maintain general sanity, and can be a stepping stone towards some heightened state of awareness, strange as that may sound. 


"Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level."
- Ernest Becker

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

SARTRE PT. II


Admittedly, after reading Bad Faith once through, it sailed right over my head. After giving it a second go, it still sailed over my head, but this time the whoosh was softer and slower. It took a minute, but I eventually got a pretty decent grasp on Bad Faith – I think.

On the surface, lying and 'bad faith' seem pretty similar, but Sartre makes a clear (and necessary) distinction between the two. Sartre suggests that lying is – well, pretty much lying in the traditional sense – knowing the truth but refusing to impart it, and instead presenting some other idea which one knows to be false. Slightly similarly, but mostly conversely, Sartre suggests that bad faith is an attempt to flee the anguish of freedom and responsibility through modes of self-deception, in which we deceive ourselves about ourselves. So in a sense, bad faith involves lying, but lying does not necessarily require bad faith. Embedded within these definitions, are a couple of terms that merit definitions of their own. Sartre explicates freedom as a fundamental potentiality unique to humans; freedom is a fundamental facet of humanism, and as humans, we are always free to respond as we see fit to determining tendencies. As posited by Sartre, we are our choices; we cannot not choose, not choosing is still a choice; when faced with inevitable circumstance, we still choose how we are under those circumstances.

Sartre puts forth a couple examples of bad faith in action, one of which involves a woman and her date. The woman ignores the clearly sexual implications of her date's compliments on her physical appearance, and when he reaches for her hand, she lets it rest indifferently in his – “neither consenting or rejecting – a thing”. In doing so, the woman acts as though her hand exists solely in the in-itself, as nothing more than an object in the world. The woman suspends the inevitable moment of choice by taking advantage of her duality as a human – that of a physical being as well as a conscious being separate from the physicality of the world. As such, the woman is acting in bad faith.

In light of the aforementioned, I think it's safe to say that Sartre was radically and entirely opposed to determinism, and instead, embraced our human ability and responsibility to transform and create ourselves indefinitely. The duality of human existence – that of facticity and transcendence – is akin to a duality proposed by Sartre in First Attitudes Towards Others: Love, Language, Masochism.

In the reading, Sartre proposes the concept of the individual and the other, and discusses the various effects he believes each has on its counterpart. An important question that was brought up during discussion, involves both the individual and the other, and the part (if any) each plays in defining its counterpart. This point was kind of polarizing – does the individual define the other, or does the other define the individual? Maybe this is a copout (bad faith?), but I think either side is true to a certain extent. The latter might be true to greater degree, simply because we spend so much of our lives worrying about what others think of us, and adjusting our actions and behaviors in accordance with societal expectations. I don't thinks this is necessarily a bad thing. I think society tends to encourage behaviors that promote the well-being of our species – although there are certainly exceptions to this assumption. On the other side of the coin, somebody brought up a really great point in saying that others perceptions of us are constructed almost entirely by us. That is, we really can't be positive of what others truly think of us without asking and receiving their honest opinion. And even then, how can you be sure that they are being completely honest?