existentialism

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“all the consequences of this”
Kile Jones argues that atheistic existentialism is more compelling than religious existentialism.

Powerlessness

Many existential philosophers have described, sometimes in vivid detail, what it is like to feel powerless. Social and political forces external to you can take away your freedoms and impugn you with guilt, creating a sense of powerlessness.

There are, of course, things that seemingly all of us are powerless regarding. We could not not have been born. That was beyond our control. We are all indoctrinated as children to view the world around us as others do. We are powerless to go through life without access to those things required for subsistence itself. We cannot not go through puberty. We must have access to money in the modern world. We are powerless against the Grim Reaper.

Then this part…

“I recognize that I put structure into my world…There is no ‘real’ world out there, given, intact, full of significance. Consciousness is constituted by random, virtually infinite barrages of experience; these experiences are indistinguishably ‘inner’ and ‘outer’…Structure is put into experience by culture and self, and may also be pulled out again…The experience of nothingness is an experience beyond the limits of reason…it is terrifying. It makes all attempts at speaking of purpose, goals, aims, meaning, importance, conformity, harmony, unity----it makes all such attempts seem doubtful and spurious.”

His solution? The Catholic Church.

Psychological forces internal to you can do the same thing. The internal forces are especially frightening because they occur inside you and yet can feel beyond your control. They can inculcate feelings of isolation, fear, and dread, along with a sense of being trapped in your own personality.

This basically describes my own mental, emotional and psychological configuration. Going from both God and No God objectivism to the fractured and fragmented moral and spiritual nihilist that “I” am today. And of course, they are especially frightening because how exactly do you go about not being yourself from day to day to day? For those things that disturb you externally you might have options to steer clear of them. But not your very own thoughts and feelings.

A good way to explore the feeling of powerlessness is through the work of those who have examined it in great detail. For me the best exemplars of this are Nietzsche and the novelist Franz Kafka. Friedrich Nietzsche is well acquainted with the forces, both internal and external, and thinks that we ought to harness the power of our desires and affirm ourselves by willing to live with dangerous confidence. Kafka, on the other hand, depicts the individual as powerless, weak, and passive, a victim of forces beyond his control.

Still, how are our own personal reactions to that not going to be profoundly embedded in both our individual circumstances and the manner in which I construe dasein here?

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“all the consequences of this”
Kile Jones argues that atheistic existentialism is more compelling than religious existentialism.

The greatness of Nietzsche’s philosophy is that it encourages, uplifts, empowers, and revitalizes. It tells the individual to conquer fear and self-pity by affirming her unique power in the world. He tells us that the “greatness and fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously. Build your cities under Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors, as long as you cannot be rulers and owners, you lovers of knowledge!”

On the other hand, it all comes down to the manner in which one construes this frame of mind in relationship to others. One can become an Uberman and concentrate solely on enhancing his or her own life. Or one can allow this enhancement to revolve in turn around a general disdain for those deemed to be sheep, slaves to conventional mediocrity…last men.

Thus, one rules over them not because one has the might but because one has might derived from being morally and politically superior to the sheep. Then those among us still today who insist that revolves around race or gender or ethnicity or sextual preferences. Then those among us who will take that all the way to the gas chambers.

Nietzsche, who was at once an admirer of Schopenhauer, later rejected Schopenhauer’s idea that one should resign oneself to the cosmic Will. Nietzsche would rather think of the individual as actively engaged in the world, and not, like Schopenhauer or Kafka, as a passive product of circumstances.

Which, of course, is why I have often wondered how Nietzsche might have responded to my own frame of mind…the role that dasein and the Benjamin Button Syndrome play in shaping not only the what we believe but what actual options we have to act on those beliefs.

Kafka, by contrast, shows how powerless humans are in the face of forces beyond their control. His most popular fiction, The Metamorphosis is the story of Gregor Samsa, who awakes to find himself turned into “a monstrous vermin” (usually thought of as a cockroach). He cannot answer his door, he can barely move, and the struggles he endures to get out of bed seem almost endless: “no matter how hard he threw himself onto his right side, he always rocked onto his back again.”

Again, however, from my own frame of mind, all of this depends on whether you emphasize the existential parameters of your life or attempt to intertwine that into one or another of these…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r … traditions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p … ideologies

…One True Paths.

Existentially, each of us as individuals acquire more or less power to live our lives to the fullest. Some of us live lives that are bursting at the seams with fulfilments and accomplishments. Fuck Kafka’s cockroach mentality. That “existential” bullshit. Instead, for those like me, powerlessness revolves more around the futility of acquiring an essential meaning and purpose, around feeling fractured and fragmented, around the grim reality of oblivion itself creeping closer and closer.

Better perhaps to be the cockroach then. Utterly oblivious to what only human beings can grasp about meaning and purpose, about living and dying.

Well, in a free will world anyway.

The Metamorphosis has been thought to represent many different aspects of Kafka’s life and thought; but no matter what one thinks the story is an allegory of, the theme of powerlessness is central. The never-ending struggle of any of Gregor’s projects is illustrative of the torment experienced by those who feel powerless. If placed in Camus’ story The Myth of Sisyphus, Gregor Samsa would spend his whole time struggling to move the boulder, and one can only imagine him unhappy.

So, what in particular are you powerless to change in your own life? What boulders are you forced to grapple with endlessly day after day after day? The bullshit that makes your life other than what you want it to be. But bullshit you can do little or nothing about?

So, is this bullshit more or less circumstantial or more or less philosophical?

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“all the consequences of this”
Kile Jones argues that atheistic existentialism is more compelling than religious existentialism.

Kafka’s protagonists are all similar. In The Trial, Josef K. is hauled off by authorities he does not meet for a crime of which he is not even aware. At the end of his thirty-first year of incarceration, Josef K. is executed. In The Castle, protagonist K. is sent (the story never says by whom) as a land-surveyor to a remote mountain village surrounding a castle. He is sent to and fro, never being able to meet Count Westwest and so begin his task. He ends up in a constant war against the invisible bureaucracy and social norms of the village. He eventually dies there, never knowing what his purpose was, never completing his task, and never coming to terms with the strangeness of the village. Each of these characters are subject to the whims of powers outside of their control. Although they try, they never accomplish any meaningful changes in the lot they were given. As Sartre would say, they “prolong…out of weakness.”

And then there’s my own rendition of this…an essentially meaningless and purposeless existence. An existence in which you are ever and always fractured and fragmented when confronting the world around you morally and politically. And all ending in an equally meaningless and purposeless death…oblivion. On the other hand, in accepting that existential meaning and purpose will have to do, you are able to pursue any number of subjective paths in the interim and dive headfirst into any number of fulfilling and satisfying “distractions”: friendships, sex, love, a career, the arts, sports, food, drink, drugs and on and on and on.

Instead, to the extent you are able to live on your own terms, you “prolong…out of strength”.

Wisdom involves knowing when you can change things and when you cannot.

On the contrary, the moral objectivists among us will insist that wisdom, first and foremost, involves grasping what to change and what to leave alone.

Not sure what that might be? Then, many will advise, take a leap of faith to God…

Reinhold Niebuhr contemplated this and composed his famous ‘Serenity Prayer’, which asks God to “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

With God of course, both the ends and the means are covered. But only if your leap is to the right God. And only if you interpret His Word in the right way. For example, as Immanuel Cant reminds us, being a Christian is not enough, you must be a true Christian.

This prayer contains a kernel of truth. Whether or not we ought to orientate ourselves in a manner similar to Nietzsche or Kafka is a different question. I am of the opinion that even though the world is much as Kafka depicts it, we should still have a Nietzschean orientation. We ought to act as if we can change things, conquer fears, and affirm our lives. As Sartre constantly points out, the responsibility of our lives, our projects, and our personalities, is on ourselves. We are the authors of our own life stories.

Right.

On the other hand, I argue that, as authors, our point of view is derived existentially from dasein…an ever-evolving subjective vantage point predicated on the particular world we are “thrown” into at birth, on our indoctrination as children and on our own unique accumulation of personal experiences. Nietzsche just muddies the waters all the more by yanking God out of it. And Kafka by reminding us of all the variables in our life that are beyond our fully understanding or controlling. In fact, I would imagine him having a far more comprehensive understanding of, among other things, the Benjamin Button Syndrome than the hapless objectivists here.

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“all the consequences of this”
Kile Jones argues that atheistic existentialism is more compelling than religious existentialism.

Absurdity

Absurdity is another important theme in existentialism. Absurdity in the existentialist sense is the contrast between human values, hopes and projects, and a universe which seems mockingly indifferent to them.

Actually, I used to note that given a No God world, I thought human existence was “essentially meaningless and absurd”. Until one day someone asked me what I meant by absurd. Then it dawned on me that I only used it because I often came across it reading about existentialism. Now I’m more partial to “human existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless.”. Again, in a No God universe.

Kierkegaard wrote about it in his Fear and Trembling, The Sickness Unto Death, and in his posthumously collected Journals and Papers. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard praises Abraham because he “believed on the strength of the absurd.”

The strength of the absurd? In relationship to God? What exactly does that mean? Instead, I was always partial to Bob Dylan’s take on it:

God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe said, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God said, "No, "
Abe said, “What?”
God said, “You can do what you want Abe, but
the next time you see me comin’, you better run”
Abe said, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God said, “Out on Highway 61”’

Not much the faithful won’t do if they fear the wrath of God, right? Especially if God actually speaks to them. After all, it’s not like Abraham had access to IC’s YouTube videos.

In his Journals and Papers, Kierkegaard juxtaposes understanding and the absurd: “Faith hopes for this life also, but, note well, by virtue of the absurd, not by virtue of human understanding.” He also thinks that “to see God or to see the miracle is by virtue of the absurd, for understanding must step aside.”

Maybe this makes sense to you, but it’s far beyond what I construed absurdity to be. I was more in Sync with Camus, Meursault and Sisyphus. Your life has no essential meaning or purpose. But up and down you go. Instead, I always focused on all of the many existential distractions there are that life well worth living.

Thus…

Against Kierkegaard, Albert Camus (1913-1960) treats absurdity not just as something opposed to reason, but as a central quality of human existence. In The Stranger, Camus’ protagonist Meursault does not conform to the social system he is born into because he sees life as absurd. Camus says of him that he is “condemned because he does not play the game.”

Okay, up to I point, I get that. But the bottom line for the overwhelming preponderance of us is that in any number of ways we have little choice but to play "society’s game.

For example, when it comes time to pay the bills.

But I don’t see my own life in a Sisyphean sense: “There is but one serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

Fuck that. From my frame of mind, that is reasonable only up in the intellectual clouds.

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“all the consequences of this”
Kile Jones argues that atheistic existentialism is more compelling than religious existentialism.

Many religiously-inclined people have argued that Sartre’s and Camus’ thoughts on meaninglessness and absurdity lead people to immorality, nihilism, and despair.

Indeed, we have some here who have suggested this. But it’s one thing to point it out because some people will go down very dark roads once convinced there will be no Judgment Day. But mere mortals have other incentives not to go there. Even if they don’t believe in God. They may live lives that fulfill them. They may be surrounded by family and friends that provide them with lots and lots of day-to-day existential meaning in their lives. People they seek out the respect and the admiration of. People – children in particular – that depend on them.

And pointing out just how dire the human condition might be without God, doesn’t make this God any more demonstrable. Instead, some will suggest, you may well believe what you do only by and large because you do fear what might unfold without Him.

There are, after all, any number of secular humanist philosophies around that can sustain what is construed [by them] to be a moral foundation for human interactions. And, politically, a community can embrace democracy and the rule of law in order to accommodate conflicting value judgments.

Or, philosophically…

Camus responds to this idea in the ‘Three Interviews’ section of Lyrical and Critical Essays. He’s asked, “Doesn’t a philosophy that insists upon the absurdity of the world run the risk of driving people to despair?” and he responds, “Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.” So a recognition of absurdity can create an impetus for positive social change.

Three points…

1] It’s not necessary at all. I’m reasonably certain that millions go from day to day scarcely giving it a thought. And far, far fewer, philosophically.
2] it generally drives you to a dead end only when as a philosophy of life it becomes entangled in a life that, existentially, is about this close to being flushed down the toilet. Circumstantially, in other words.
3] it can “create an impetus for positive social change”, true. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that this change might not involve interactions which you, yourself, construe to be positive.

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“all the consequences of this”
Kile Jones argues that atheistic existentialism is more compelling than religious existentialism.

My argument is that only atheistic existentialists take existential themes seriously.

Tragedy. Dread. Powerlessness. Absurdity.

Still, for the objectivists among us, it’s not the belief alone that must be taken seriously – that’s understood – but, of far greater importance, that there is but one way in which they can be taken seriously. And just as there are religious fanatics who insist on their own One True Path to God, so too there are existentialists insisting in turn that their narrative reflects the one truly authentic existentialism.

In this case, God or No God.

Existentialists who do make that leap of faith to God are able to subsume all of the trials and the tribulations, all of the pain and the suffering endured on this side of the grave in Salvation itself. Eternal Salvation. So, in however they construe tragedy, dread, powerlessness and absurdity as individuals, the true believers will someday be rid of them all.

Then this part…

They take them seriously because they are taken on their own terms: they do not try to remedy them with faith, mystery, or paradox.

Which, in regard to the mind-boggling conjectures proposed in grappling with the existence of existence itself, still involves considerable leaps of faith, mystery and paradox.

…it is my contention that theistic existentialism is incompatible with what Jaspers calls “absolute and radical tragedy.” Tragedy and absurdity are given, partially understood by the intellect, and deeply felt at the level of the emotions. But in religious existentialism there is always something to which tragedy and absurdity point, whereas I agree with Sartre and Camus that tragedy and absurdity point nowhere. They are not means to an end.

Indeed. And then, over and again, I come back to how utterly fundamental religion is here: God? No God?

If you need to believe 1] that objective morality does exist and 2] that immortality and salvation await those on the One True Path and 3] that this path just happens to be your path then, sure, insist that it’s all about Christianity. Or, on the contrary, one of the many, many others.

In a world bursting at the seams with all manner of “radical tragedy”, yes, it is comforting and consoling to believe that God has His reasons for bringing the tragedy about…and that ultimately, in the end, Paradise awaits you for all the rest of eternity.

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

Or in order to keep the grace full of graceful excuse for interjecting where perhaps not warranted, and it ties in to the Grace begotten which the religious existentialists notice as a gap into which it’s futile to inquire .

The singular apology does not at all times the veritable meaninglessness that objectivity may be tossed, as the reasonable assumptions fail otherwise to perpetuate the need to compensate to absolute meaninglessness of an atheistic nihilism.

So pantheism is by definition an absolute self containment of everything, but then a partial existential containment can only contain the part that is existentially contextual and situational.

Such seems reasonable enough, but such reasoning must be sustained as it comes up, regardless what side this issue is placed on, or if God in the sense of an all in containment of everything inside it’s self has as little meaning as it’s reversely held non pantheistic assumption.

For this reason did religious existentialists came up with the notion, that if god did not exist, He had to be created. Then the narratives stop to advance to extend to the description of how and what God could be represented to mean.

We have come a long way from perceiving God in the method of absolute rejoinder, by supposing an antiThethic Antiochobjective such as envisioned by an ‘evil genious’ with that concept retained to the present time as zither Anti-Christ, so the question we may ask ourselves is has the metaphysical inversion to regress toward more simple, all inclusive absolute generalizations, not undermined by the same directional uncertainty which previously intended to assure stability and the transcendence of a prior image of the Good.

Is that apparent oppositional force, and I am still trying to wrap my mind around Tab’s interjection as it may effect the vision Mary/optical aspect of it ( if I can find it) that opposite effect appears to have produced an axiomatic reflex of trying to re in force that weakening foundation by injecting near identically growing resemblences, seeming to reaffirm the conceptual idea of a pre arranged structural hierarchy within the plenum of all possible signals which have a kind of attraction to premordial signs with which they were originally been connected to, but have split or divided in the process of evolving higher grounded processes.

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“all the consequences of this”
Kile Jones argues that atheistic existentialism is more compelling than religious existentialism.

To take tragedy and absurdity and the other issues seriously is to accept them as legitimate – not to be solved by resorting either to rational answers or to mystery and paradox, but to be pondered and investigated.

And to accept them as legitimate only makes sense to me “for all practical purposes”. You find yourself in a situation where you are unable to embrace a meaning that gives a particularly dire experience any essential justification. No God, no ideological narrative, no philosophical basis by, from, through which to defend your behaviors. The mystery and the paradox are derived instead from the belief that human existence has no ontological, deontological or teleological foundation. It’s all just part of the proverbial “brute facticity” embedded in a “shit happens” universe where very different people have very different reactions to the very same thing.

But how does God’s existence or non-existence factor into this? Does God’s existence or non-existence really make any difference?

That some continue to ask this question in all seriousness truly perplexes me. A God, the God, from my frame of mind, is the only factor when it comes to dealing with the consequences of human behaviors that come into conflict morally, politically, deontologically and spiritually.

With God and morality, the only question is this: does He exist? Is He omniscient and omnipotent? Is He loving, just and merciful? Does He have an explanation for this:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l … _eruptions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t … l_cyclones
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t … ore_deaths
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

God’s existence makes all the difference in the world. In fact, Immanuel Cant and others here noted any number of reasons why it does. Instead, with them [from me] it’s “why your God?” and “where’s actual proof He exists?” and “how could you have become a Christian other than given the manner in which we all come to accumulate moral and political and religious prejudices existentially as the embodiment of dasein.” Then theodicy of course.

Sartre says of some French teachers who tried to set up a secular ethic that, like Laplace, they thought of God as a “useless and costly hypothesis”. He also said, “This, I believe, is the tendency of everything called reformism in France – nothing will be changed if God does not exist.” Against this type of thinking he says “the existentialist, on the contrary, thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him.”

No God, no objective morality. No God, no immortality or salvation. Things however clearly change all the time socially, politically and economically. In France, in virtually every nation on Earth. Especially this day and age. It’s just that by and large the changes still revolve around democracy and the rule of law. What if capitalism wedded to the welfare state is the best of all possible worlds?

Instead, what continues to make the world unstable are the fiercely fanatically objectivists…God or No God. The moral, political, philosophical and/or spiritual authoritarians. The my way or the highway dogmatists.

Them and the forces around the globe that seem intent on sustaining the amoral “show me the money” nihilists intent further on dismantling what’s left of the democracy and rule of law around the globe. Some intent more on installing ever more “populist” and autocratic regimes. Fascists perhaps?

If and when America ever brings to power those who can emulate the governments of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping…?

Talk about dominoes toppling over.

It probably won’t be Trump. We lucked out with him the first time some suggest because he weas simply too incompetent a fascist?

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“all the consequences of this”
Kile Jones argues that atheistic existentialism is more compelling than religious existentialism.

Mary Warnock says the opposite to Sartre [above]: “We may note in passing how little difference it makes to Existentialist theory whether it includes or does not include belief in God. For in practice there is no help to be found in believing in God”. I disagree.

Me too. Big time. If you are genuinely, sincerely, introspectively able to intertwine existentialism and a leap of faith to God, there is a part of you – however turbulently and problematically it might be experienced – that is able to believe in objective morality derived from Commandments and Scripture on this side of the grave and immortality and salvation awaiting you on the other side of it. You are able to believe this and that is really all that is necessary to make it true…for you.

Sartre was right that it makes all the difference if a God exists or not. If He does, there are radical consequences, not only metaphysically, but also existentially, psychologically, and practically; and if he does not there are similar radical consequences, many of which Sartre notes.

That is how I think about God here in turn. Just as those like IC point out, No God and there can be no objective morality. Just particular communities of mere mortals embracing one or another of the many secular moral philosophies we can pick from:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p … ideologies
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s … philosophy

Sure, it’s always possible the community you embrace really does reflect the optimal, most rational assessment of birth, school, work and death. Of the human condition itself embedded “somehow” in the existence of existence itself.

If God exists, it would be strange to think of life as absolutely and radically tragic, because God, it is traditionally thought, gives meaning to existence. So taking tragedy and absurdity seriously requires a belief in the non-existence of God, gods, and an afterlife.

Yep, seems entirely reasonable to me.

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Simone’s Existentialist Ethics
Anja Steinbauer on Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity.

“My life is my work,” Simone de Beauvoir once said. Spoken like a true Existentialist: to her, life and thought were inextricably linked; we are what we do.

Well, when the work one does revolves almost entirely around writing and the words one uses in one’s work pertain almost entirely to philosophy, the first thing that pops into my head is connecting the dots between words and worlds.

There’s how she did this in the Ethics of Ambiguity and how she translated these intellectual contraptions into the interactions of various characters in the novel The Blood of Others. Morality theoretically and morality as a member of the French Resistance doing battle against Hitler’s Nazis.

Existentialism is a philosophy that outlines the conditions of human existence but rejects any conception of human nature…

And, more to the point, it rejects a “for all practical purposes” moral narrative and political agenda said to be applicable to all rational men and women. It’s not just about concepts here but actual lived lives. There is no one size fits all moral philosophy that [to the best of my knowledge] has ever been demonstrated to exist much beyond the fact that many do believe that it does “in their head”.

…a philosophy that affirms human freedom but emphasises that it brings with it not happy empowerment but anguish and despair…

Condemned to be free as it were. The assumption being that “somehow” the human species did manage to acquire free will but that many then seek only to “escape freedom” – the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty – by convincing themselves that they are morally obligated to anchor themselves to one or another One True Path.

To Enlightenment. Even immortality and salvation.

…a philosophy that stresses that humans have choices but expresses little optimism that we will make good use of them or even understand what it would mean to make the right choice.

In other words, the extent to which the objectivists among us simply ignore the points I raise pertaining to “the gap”, “Rummy’s rule”, dasein and the Benjamin Button Syndrome. Instead, they merely assume that as truly Enlightened men and women, the choices they make are necessarily the right ones.

It is on this last point that Simone de Beauvoir most markedly departs from her lifelong partner Jean-Paul Sartre.

As the author notes:

However, de Beauvoir’s stance on this issue of freedom and moral obligation differs from Sartre’s, in that for de Beauvoir, realizing one’s own freedom does not negate others’ ability to do the same; in fact the freedom of others is required for our own freedom to be preserved.

We’ll need a context, of course. Your freedom, my freedom, their freedom…given a particular set of circumstances in which conflicting goods are fiercely contested.

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‘Cool Hand Luke’ (1967): Rugged individualist’s counterculture tale, underpinned by religion.
Paul Mavis

Directed by Stuart Rosenberg, written by ex-con Donn Pearce and Frank R. Pierson, and starring Paul Newman, George Kennedy, Strother Martin, Jo Van Fleet, Joy Harmon, Morgan Woodward, Luke Askew, Clifton James, J.D. Cannon, Lou Antonio, Dennis Hopper, Wayne Rogers, Harry Dean Stanton, Ralph Waite, Anthony Zerbe, and Joe Don Baker, Cool Hand Luke is an aggressive, muscular drama, soaked in crude, powerful symbolism—one that can be enjoyed on many levels: existential exploration of a cruel, meaningless world; Christ returned to Earth, still forsaken by his Father; funny, rowdy prison comedy; and accomplished, slick actioner. Paul Newman gives his best performance as the Christ-like existentialist “Cool Hand” Luke, outrunning bloodhounds and battling the guards while refusing to ever give up—even when he knows that the fight, from the very beginning, was futile.

Try explaining that to Barbara. She was a woman I once worked with. She was a fanatical Objectivist. Spelled with a capital Ayn Rand. From her own fiercely ideological frame of mind, Lukas Jackson was just another loser. They were the bunch of them losers. White trash. And they all got exactly what they deserved.

Me, I first saw the film back in my own objectivist days. First as a Christian and then as a Marxist. But with each subsequent viewing of the video, I was coming closer and closer to seeing him as Sisyphus. There was no ultimate meaning and purpose to human existence, but even on a prison chain gang you could still shake things up. Really shake things up. If only by never giving up. At least until they shot him.

Set in a backwoods Florida chain-gang after the war…Cool Hand Luke opens with the crime that puts decorated war hero Lucas Jackson on a chain gang for a two-spot: cutting the heads off municipal parking meters. Arriving at the rural prison camp with five other “new meat,” Luke already stands out with the Captain, the soft-spoken but sadistic warden, because of the surreal, seemingly nonsensical nature of Luke’s crime—one the Captain readily admits he’s never seen before.

Here it all gets murky. To what extent is Luke self-conscious of how his behaviors are “shaking things up”? Big time in fact. Luke not only goes after the inmates, but the guards and the warden too. But, by his own admission, “I never planned anything in my life.”

Is the gist of him captured here…

Captain: Lucas Jackson.
Luke: Here, Captain.
Captain: Maliciously destroyin’ municipal property while under the influence. What was that?
Luke: Cuttin’ the heads off parkin’ meters, Captain.
Captain: Well, we ain’t never had one of them. Where’d you think that was gonna get you?
Luke: I guess you could say I wasn’t thinkin’, Captain.
Captain: Says here you done real good in the war: Silver Star, Bronze Star, couple Purple Hearts. A sergeant. Little time in stockades. Come out the same way you went in: Buck Private.
Luke: That’s right, Captain. Just passin’ the time.

You’re just not going to get from his ilk the sort of philosophical arguments you’ll get from those here of my ilk. And he either has the argument he’d need here or he’d “just know” how futile such an argument will be unless it comes anchored to the real deal God.

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Paul Newman as the Existential Hero/Anti-Hero Cool Hand Luke
Ed Newman

For a variety of reasons, existentialism became one of the prevailing philosophies of mid-Twentieth century. It’s a philosophical view with fuzzy edges, as writers as varied as Kierkegaard, Sartre and Camus bring differing perspectives to the equation. Nevertheless, at its core there are several common defining features: a sense of personal alienation, that our life situation is absurd, and the sense of calling to live authentically.

You tell me: if you feel personally alienated in a world you are convinced is essentially meaningless and purposeless what on earth does it mean then to live that life “authentically”? Not only that but you are convinced in turn this ultimately absurd existence ends in oblivion…?

What exactly is calling you to choose one set of behaviors rather than another?

One definition refers to modern man’s situation as “a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.”

On the other hand, there can be a world of difference between living a life that is bursting at the seams with any number of fulfilling opportunities/options, or, instead, when others ask you about your life, you attempt to define it into existence for them?

Then back to this part:

“Because we die, life means nothing; because we die, life means everything.”

In other words, you can focus more on the former, be filled with desolation and despair, and end it all. Or you can focus more on the latter and recognize the extent to which human life can have existential meaning.

Or, as a third option, you can focus on all of the pleasurable distractions one can partake of on the journey from the cradle to the grave: food, sex, entertainment, sports, fashion, politics, art, music, games…

The list is practically endless, right? You fulfill the needs [cravings] of the body and refuse to give all of this “intellectual stuff” any real thought at all.

In other words, whatever works for you.

Merriam-Webster offers this definition: “A chiefly 20th century philosophical movement embracing diverse doctrines but centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad.”

Pinned down perhaps by this grim description: “The agony of choice in the face of uncertainty”.

Explored by William Barrett in regard to value judgments as follows…

“For the choice in…human [moral conflicts] is almost never between a good and an evil, where both are plainly marked as such and the choice therefore made in all the certitude of reason; rather it is between rival goods, where one is bound to do some evil either way, and where the the ultimate outcome and even—or most of all—our own motives are unclear to us. The terror of confronting oneself in such a situation is so great that most people panic and try to take cover under any universal rules that will apply, if only to save them from the task of choosing themselves.”

my emphasis

Universal rules?

To wit:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r … traditions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p … ideologies
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s … philosophy

Or perhaps you’ve come up with a brand spanking new path to enlightenment?

Well, if it includes immortality and salvation and you are actually able to demonstrate that it is the one true path, by all means, tell me about it. All I want “here and now” is to be convinced that it might possibly be the real deal.

[iambiguous]

Paul Newman as the Existential Hero/Anti-Hero Cool Hand Luke
Ed Newman

When Cool Hand Luke was released in 1967, Existentialism was a prevailing wind on college campuses and in popular culture. Hence, the film demonstrates, without preaching, the fundamental essence of this worldview.

Historically, existentialism as a philosophy is, in my view, derived from Nietzsche’s conjecture that “God is dead” and as a result of contemplating “what is to be done?” in the wake of the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World war and then the reality of living at time where [re the Cuban Missile Crisis] a nuclear holocaust was seemingly eminent.

Then my own personal fascination with how in a No God universe, one ought to live given a world bursting at the seams with both conflicting goods and contingency, chance and change.

Either existence is prior to essence here or one way or another science, philosophy or theology would provide us with an answer to that question which would render “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty” moot.

Though, sure, if you are convinced of your own answer, by all means, bring it down out of the philosophical clouds and explore it, well, existentially, out in the world plagued with countless moral and political and spiritual conflagrations.

Luke Jackson is a combination existential hero/anti-hero and Christ-figure in this film.

You tell me: youtu.be/k3oMPqUTxCE?si=Goq6P0xaFkfddPP0

Of course, to the extent he is seen as embodying the second coming of Christ…isn’t that the extent to which everything else in the movie [as with everything pertaining to our own lives] comes to revolve around Judgment Day? Ultimately whatever the prisoners and the guards and the captain and you and I did, do, will do…it either results in immortality and salvation or eternal damnation.

As the opening credits roll we see a drunken Luke cutting the tops off of parking meters in the middle of the night, not to rob them but simply out of his sense of boredom, or for whatever meaningless reason.

No, the reason seemed to revolve around living in a small town, someone pissing him off and him getting even with them. At least in his head: “You could say I was settling an old score.”

Of course, like I always point out, given the Benjamin Button Syndrome, he does something seemingly trivial at the time and it results in Godfrey shooting him in the neck. Killing him. That’s how human interactions unfold. We only have so much of a grasp of or control over any number of variables in our life. Then the part where, rooted existentially in dasein, he stops being the war hero and starts in on “destroying municipal property while under the influence of alcohol”.

The rest of the film is about his time in prison. Luke has one quest here, to escape this meaningless existence. I see the overall film as a metaphor for Sartre’s No Exit or Camus’s The Stranger.

Distractions are what I call them. Only, out of prison you have access to so many more of them. After all, there are none to speak of where Luke is heading on the bull gang. So, one by one by one, he creates them. Anything and everything to make what’s left of their lives there more endurable. Luke both entertains them [and himself] and astonishes them as, over and again, he made fools out of the “authorities”.

On the other hand, to what extent did Luke Jackson ponder all of this as the characters in No Exit and The Stranger did?

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

@iambiguous

Paul Newman as the Existential Hero/Anti-Hero Cool Hand Luke
Ed Newman

When Cool Hand Luke was released in 1967, Existentialism was a prevailing wind on college campuses and in popular culture. Hence, the film demonstrates, without preaching, the fundamental essence of this worldview.

Historically, existentialism as a philosophy is, in my view, derived from Nietzsche’s conjecture that “God is dead” and as a result of contemplating “what is to be done?” in the wake of the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World war and then the reality of living at time where [re the Cuban Missile Crisis] a nuclear holocaust was seemingly eminent.

Then my own personal fascination with how in a No God universe, one ought to live given a world bursting at the seams with both conflicting goods and contingency, chance and change.

Either existence is prior to essence here or one way or another science, philosophy or theology would provide us with an answer to that question which would render “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty” moot.

Though, sure, if you are convinced of your own answer, by all means, bring it down out of the philosophical clouds and explore it, well, existentially, out in the world plagued with countless moral and political and spiritual conflagrations.

Luke Jackson is a combination existential hero/anti-hero and Christ-figure in this film.

You tell me: youtu.be/k3oMPqUTxCE?si=Goq6P0xaFkfddPP0

Of course, to the extent he is seen as embodying the second coming of Christ…isn’t that the extent to which everything else in the movie [as with everything pertaining to our own lives] comes to revolve around Judgment Day? Ultimately whatever the prisoners and the guards and the captain and you and I did, do, will do…it either results in immortality and salvation or eternal damnation.

As the opening credits roll we see a drunken Luke cutting the tops off of parking meters in the middle of the night, not to rob them but simply out of his sense of boredom, or for whatever meaningless reason.

No, the reason seemed to revolve around living in a small town, someone pissing him off and him getting even with them. At least in his head: “You could say I was settling an old score.”

Of course, like I always point out, given the Benjamin Button Syndrome, he does something seemingly trivial at the time and it results in Godfrey shooting him in the neck. Killing him. That’s how human interactions unfold. We only have so much of a grasp of or control over any number of variables in our life. Then the part where, rooted existentially in dasein, he stops being the war hero and starts in on “destroying municipal property while under the influence of alcohol”.

The rest of the film is about his time in prison. Luke has one quest here, to escape this meaningless existence. I see the overall film as a metaphor for Sartre’s No Exit or Camus’s The Stranger.

Distractions are what I call them. Only, out of prison you have access to so many more of them. After all, there are none to speak of where Luke is heading on the bull gang. So, one by one by one, he creates them. Anything and everything to make what’s left of their lives there more endurable. Luke both entertains them [and himself] and astonishes them as, over and again, he made fools out of the “authorities”.

On the other hand, to what extent did Luke Jackson ponder all of this as the characters in No Exit and The Stranger did?

If you are referring to ‘The Stranger’ , then yes three thumbs up.

However here you say:

“ Either existence is prior to essence here or one way or another science, philosophy or theology would provide us with an answer to that question which would render “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty” moot.”

But then the last man can be attributed with mmesur with either illusion or delusion. Hence a middle ground of a happy image of an in-between be found so time to ponder , with no time(measurable) left, hence it’s expected that existence and essence will become a sudden source of disillusionment or worse , and become the the re-birth of tragedy .

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

C’est de trop mon ami.

Zoooooottttttttt

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

Ok, asset de temps-, non

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

…and the reason for it cause at times feeling like one of the last men

[iambiguous]

Paul Newman as the Existential Hero/Anti-Hero Cool Hand Luke
Ed Newman

Like all good stories the film is a sequence of scenes which serve to define Luke’s character for the viewer. His “never give up” attitude is demonstrated early in his fight with Dragline. And though his “achievements” win the admiration of his bunkmates or “co-workers” in this hard labor camp, he is non-plussed about all of it…

So, is this “never give up” mentality something he derived from an excursion into existential philosophy? Is his battle with the human condition analogous to Sisyphus and the boulder.

Who knows? He is a fictional character, so you would have to ask the author, Donn Pearce. Did he imagine Luke as the embodiment of a “philosophy of life”?

Or, instead, are his behaviors more applicable to the manner in which I construe dasein here. He lived a particular life and as a result of a particular accumulation of personal experiences this is just how he came to view himself out in the world with others? Something he did not give much thought regarding…as those like Camus and Sartre did in their own works.

In other words, one can imagine someone in a prison bull gang today “in reality” acting as he did. Okay, Mr. Serious Philosopher, deconstruct him.

Also, another crucial point in the film is that everyone has their breaking point. Eventually the Captain and the bosses did break Luke:

Dragline [mimicking Luke]: “Don’t hit me, boss…don’t hit me. I’ll do whatever you say.” You an original, that’s what you are. Them mullet-heads didn’t even know you was fooling.
Luke: Fooling them, huh? You can’t fool them about something like that. They broke me. But they didn’t get my mind right. Not with no sticks. No sir.
Dragline: All that time you were planning on running again.
Luke: I never planned anything in my life.

…as A. Hardt points out in this 2011 forum discussion:

"Through my multiple viewings of Cool Hand Luke, my analysis of the message of the film has switched back and forth between an existentialist one, and one of determinism. The existentialist references are the most common within the film; Luke is constantly discrediting the meaning in his actions. After Captain lists Luke’s significant war achievements, Luke responds by saying, “I was just passing time.” Also, when Dragline consults Luke about the 50 eggs in an hour bet, Luke says about the extremely difficult task, “Yeah well, it would be something to do.”

Back to that again: determinism.

Or, instead, is this just another rendition of the “free will determinism” that some seem to espouse here. The external world is there lining up only as it ever could have, but “internally” you are still in possession of something akin to autonomy?

In other words, from my own frame of mind, to what extent is Luke “constantly discrediting the meaning in his actions” more or less the equivalent of this…

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

[iambiguous]

Paul Newman as the Existential Hero/Anti-Hero Cool Hand Luke
Ed Newman

From these and other examples, it seems that Luke has come to believe that his life is inherently meaningless, and in order to create meaning, he must give himself seemingly impossible tasks to complete to the amazement of those watching. When the chain gang is ordered to pave an entire road in one day, Luke recognizes the meaninglessness of this menial task, and by doing so he is able to accept it and even make the task into a game for the other workers, thereby achieving a form of satisfaction.

Okay, but what does not change is this: that in the end “the ruling class” or “the deep state” or “the powers that be” or “the system” or whatever you want to call those who own and operate our lives still prevail. So, you may well admire how much Luke does accomplish with so little, but how relevant is that to the lives that most of us live?

We create our own existential meaning because, well, what else is there? The bottom line still basically revolves around the reality of class and race and gender…demographics. Also, you either live a fulfilling life basically of your own choosing, or you struggle to survive from paycheck to paycheck…more or less embodying a life that can be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

In other words, so what if life is inherently, essentially meaningless? After all, few of us live our lives philosophically. So, it’s not like we can pin down whether or not Luke is someone to admire [as I did] or [as my friend from work insisted] is someone who is basically “just a loser”.

In my recent watching of Cool Hand Luke I noted once more that in addition to being something of an existential hero/anti-hero, it’s very clear that Luke is also something of a Christ-figure. In one of the reviews at imdb.com the writer points out that director Stuart Rosenberg consciously viewed the character of Luke in this manner, hence the deliberate use of Christian imagery in the film, most strikingly after the egg-eating scene where Luke is lying on the table, hands outstretched. The other prisoners have left his side, amplifying with a slightly long lingering shot the sense of Christ’s abandonment at the Cross.

In fact, toward the end Luke brings God directly into the plot: youtu.be/OmPe77m7aCs?si=Ko9-ihwbTRfcGwML

What to make of it? Well, again, each of us as individuals will take out of it it what we first put into it…our own rooted existentially in dasein “self”.

And if there is no God?

Same thing of course. Only considerably more problematic.

[iambiguous]

Simone’s Existentialist Ethics
Anja Steinbauer on Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity.

Beauvoir’s Existentialism is scattered through her many works, both literary and theoretical, including her classic feminist text The Second Sex. However, it finds it’s clearest and most rigorous form in her relatively underrated book The Ethics of Ambiguity. The title is intriguing and unattractive at the same time: The fact that an Existentialist talks explicitly about ethics (rather than simply stressing our inescapable freedom) is a rare treat, but surely an ethics that bonds itself to ambiguity is hardly promising to propose any useful answers to moral problems?

So, how do I differentiate ambiguous ethics from fractured and fragmented ethics? Well, for one thing, I would never speak of human interactions as either morally authentic or inauthentic. My own moral philosophy is [in my view] considerably more cynical and pessimistic. In fact, the only constructive – if that’s the right word – aspect of my own perspectivist assessment is that at least as a moral nihilist I have access to considerably more options. Or, rather, I did when I was younger.

This is exactly as Beauvoir intended. She accepts Sartre’s Existentialist tenets that there is no human nature and that human freedom is absolute, i.e. that in any situation whatever we always have a choice.

On the other hand, come on, there are any number of contexts we can find ourselves where there are few if any viable options. And while there may not be an essential, objective human nature, existentially actual individual lives can unfold in very, very, very different sets of circumstances producing very, very, very different moral and political narratives producing very, very, very different human behaviors.

So, to what extent did those like Satyr take that into account?

In other words, human life is not on autopilot, nor is there an instruction manual telling us how to make the right decisions.

Tell that to any number of these…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r … traditions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p … ideologies
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s … philosophy

…guys and gals.

This means that there is a good deal of ambiguity, and, in short, Beauvoir tells us to face up to it and live with it. Given this ambiguity there would seem to be very little opportunity for moral theorising.

Tell that to any number of these…

forum.philosophynow.org/viewforum.php?f=8

…guys and gals.

On the other hand…

Not so, objects Beauvoir to this standard Existentialist conclusion. We must not expect absolute solutions and lasting answers: “Man fulfils himself in the transitory or not at all.” But this doesn’t mean that all ways of living, and all courses of action, are equally good. The way forward is to look at the nature of our relationship to other people.

But if there is no essential, objective human nature how would one go about pinning down the nature of human relationships? If, for example, different people have conflicting assessments regarding any particular moral conflagrations and all courses of action are said not to be equally good then which behaviors can be deemed more rather than less rational, more rather than less virtuous?