existentialism

[felix_dakat]

Who is Wilson?

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Colin Wilson was named elsewhere above.

[felix_dakat]

I read Wilson’s “The Outsider” when I was 20. A psychology professor introduced me to existential psychology and that book. Wilson was into self actualization through peak experiences.

Colin Wilson: Existentialism Meets the Occult with Gary Lachman

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Existentialism edited by Robert C. Solomon
John Shand enjoys a collection of essays about existentialism.

Raising this seemingly simple question is perhaps the most significant contribution to philosophy Wilson has made. The correct order of priority in the reasoning has become seductively reversed: you know you’ve found the truth if your view of reality is rotten.

Rotten given what set of circumstances? And if your own spiritual “vision” transcends this what happens when you bump into others who insist that their own conflicting “vision” should be, say, the law of the land?

And while the main components of my own philosophy of life – an essentially meaningless existence, a fractured and fragmented morality, oblivion – are certainly rotten in many grim respects, perhaps I might come upon others here able to convince me that a more constructive spiritual vision really is within reach.

Their own as likely as not, right?

The alternative is not a matter of having a cheery disposition. What Wilson brings out is the way in which, because of the psychological faults to which we are all prone, we are unable to reason half as clearly about the nature of reality as we think we are.

Again, given a particular context, how, as understood by you, might one differentiate Wilson’s spiritual alternative from your own? From my own? When confronting conflicting value judgments. What on Earth does it actually mean to understand human reality fully while, say, following the news?

In Sartre’s case, a grand sweeping metaphysics is built on the peculiarities of his own psychology. Wilson’s claim is that our subjectivity, far from being the dependable provider of a true view of reality, takes us over in a way that we don’t easily recognise, and stands as a barrier to seeing reality as it is.

Got that? Yes? Then, in regard to your own interactions with others from day to day, please note how this allows you to see reality as it is. And how you go about demonstrating to others that they are, what, obligated philosophically, morally, rationally, epistemologically, etc., to see reality the same way?

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Existentialism edited by Robert C. Solomon
John Shand enjoys a collection of essays about existentialism.

Wilson’s challenge is: why should we be so prone to think that a view of the world in which things lack value is the true one? That is to say, a view in which our lives appear futile and ridiculous, a world from which we feel fundamentally alienated.

But it’s not that view at all. Or, rather, it’s not mine. Instead, the moral and political and spiritual objectivists among us are far more likely to insist not only that everything is packed with value but that they know this is the case because they did the packing themselves.

In other words, back to the distinction made between existential values rooted in historically and culturally dasein and essential values said to be applicable to all of us…universally?

The short answer is because it’s easy. To live life with value and purpose is hard work.

Made all the harder because there are so many other objectivists out there insisting their own values and purpose reflect the only access to value and purpose. Wilson had his own “vision” of, what, the best of all possible worlds? Like there weren’t many, many other “visionaries” around to challenge him?

Of course, we all get our glimpses of such a life: when we wake on a spring morning, refreshed after a good night’s sleep, and our dark four-in-the-morning worries evaporate. Now it is those anxieties that seem ridiculous, absurd, and morbid. We look upon the face of a child who has been born to us, and the world is lit up. We may experience this listening to music, or during sex, or on a cliff walk. Yet, after a little while, habit and boredom take over again, and we for some reason think the uplifting epiphanal view was an illusion, and now we’re back to reality.

Over and again: sure, if you are able to think yourself into believing something like this, fine. It’s something that you believe “in your head” “here and now”. It’s comforting and consoling and, given any number of day-to-day human interactions, no one will actually challenge you at all.

But then they do. Just follow “the news” from day to day and discover over and again all of the countless human interactions embraced by “visionaries”/objectivists all up and down the political spectrum. And it’s not “habit or boredom” that wreaks havoc in their lives so much as those who refuse to envision the human condition just as they do.

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The Free Market Existentialist by William Irwin
Alberto Giordano is left unsatisfied at an attempt to wed evolution, capitalism, and existentialism.

Sartre meeting Darwin meeting Nozick? Too many angles, I’d think, at least for the mainstream philosophy student. But William Irwin is not afraid of the conversation of philosophers, and challenges the reader to follow him through a tour de force whose goal is to show us that “capitalism and existentialism are compatible” and hence that “a minimal state with a truly free market would be a worthy option.”

All one need do here, I suppose, is insist the manner in which they understand the meaning of capitalism and existentialism reflects the starting point in any discussion or debate. Rand’s assessment of capitalism or Marx’s? Sartre’s assessment of existentialism, or Kierkegaard’s? Or, shifting the focus to political economy, Sartre’s or Camus’s?

But wait. There’s not just a connection between capitalism and existentialism here; Irwin also shows us “the unexpected connection between existentialism and evolutionary theory.” This is an evolutionary theory that tells us that there are no moral facts – a premise that, in turn, leads to Irwin’s avowal of the minimal state conducive to capitalism.

Sure, that’s one way in which to connect all the dots. One of many. But I don’t believe it is just a coincidence the world changed dramatically with the advent of capitalism, the shift from “we” over to “me”, and the death of God.

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The Free Market Existentialist by William Irwin
Alberto Giordano is left unsatisfied at an attempt to wed evolution, capitalism, and existentialism.

First, existentialism highlights individual responsibility over collective action.

Tell that to existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre who clearly recognized the extent to which any human interactions are governed by the historical evolution of political economy. Who owns and operates “the means of production”? And how successful are they in translating that into political action.

To Irwin it is a philosophy which reacts to “an apparently absurd and meaningless world” by urging individuals to “overcome alienation, oppression and despair through freedom and self-creation.”

Cue [among others] Howard Roark and John Galt. Only their own completely invented interactions with the collectivists in works of fiction would unfold in a world that was anything but absurd and meaningless.

The existentialist, living without higher meaning, recognizing that anguish and despair are common to us all, believes yet in free will. The existentialist individual focuses on her own choices, and struggles ceaselessly to achieve her plans.

Okay, but existentialists [left and right] are no less inclined circumstantially – or compelled biologically? – to propose their own assumptions regarding free will.

Then back to this part:

This is not quite the usual portrait of existentialism, which is why Irwin devotes his second chapter to showing how Sartre’s existential philosophy, among others, may be compatible with his line of argumentation. He does so primarily through his emphasis on individual liberty. A revisionist outlook is offered suggesting that Sartre’s vision of liberty framed in Being and Nothingness (1943) was a hymn to the individual, then deconstructing the links between that conception of freedom and Marxism expressed in Sartre’s later works, such as the Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960). On Irwin’s reading, Sartre underwent a philosophical shift because of a pro-collectivist intellectual fashion spreading widely over Europe during and after the Forties.

Wholly in sync – click – with my own assumption that value judgments are rooted existentially in dasein. And thus, given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge, anyone of us as well might come to change our minds about any number of things.

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The Free Market Existentialist by William Irwin
Alberto Giordano is left unsatisfied at an attempt to wed evolution, capitalism, and existentialism.

Sartre’s evident belief in autonomy and self-reliance does seem much more suited to free market capitalism than to collectivism.

Indeed, and had he not been around at a time when Marxism and Maoism were circling the globe, he might never have taken dialectical materialism and the class struggle into account at all. But that’s generally how it works. You are born and raised at a particular point in history and within a particular community culturally. And that never stops evolving and changing going all the way back to when we lived in caves. It’s objectivists of Ayn Rand’s ilk who, in my view, dupe themselves into believing that capitalism reflects a metaphysical – philosophical – truth about the human condition.

Besides, existentialism correctly understood might force capitalism to get rid of its nasty perversions, such as crass consumerism, greed, and the alienation due to unsatisfactory jobs.

Pick one:
1] correctly understood capitalism
2] correctly understood socialism

In other words, sure, when you have “thought up” the one and only way to rationally grasp the means of production, then those who don’t accept your definitions, your meaning, your political agenda are perforce “incorrect”.

]Capitalism without Consumerism is the promise with which Irwin tempts us in the subtitle of the book, and – good fortune! – existentialism can help “to define ourselves as individuals and to resist being defined by external forces”.

Next up: capitalism without markets? Capitalism without cronies in the government sustaining the Deep State? Capitalism without it’s internal forces?

In addition, in a mass society, the existentialist may be moved by prudence and enlightened self-interest to pursue a kind of “voluntary simplicity” as an antidote to “conspicuous consumption”, just as the author himself is, apparently. Irwin cites prudence and enlightened self-interest as two main drivers for change.

So, what exactly would change in your own life if you accepted a more…enlightened capitalism? Also, historically, the record is quite clear: only when workers organize, take to the streets, and demand a bigger slice of the pie are they likely to get it. Same with people of color and women and homosexuals. The ruling class will hardly ever just “share the wealth” because it’s the right thing to do.

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Existentialism as Punk Philosophy
Stuart Hanscomb argues that existentialism is punk philosophy par excellence.

Whenever I’m asked “So, what exactly is existentialism?” I experience a sinking feeling. It’s a difficult philosophy to explain; efforts typically end up trivializing or obfuscating so much about it that is important, original, and relevant. A number of things account for this, but an important one is that existentialism is a state of mind as much as it is a collection of ideas.

Actually, in my view, existentialism can be difficult to explain because it revolves around the complexities of human existence itself. Aside from those existentialists who take a leap of faith to God, most start with the assumption that – click – “existence is prior to essence”. You create meaning from the particular life you live out in a particular world historically and culturally. In fact, some interpret Sartre’s “Hell is other people” as suggesting that others will often come to objectify us in order to fit us into their own essentialist frame of mind.

As Kierkegaard’s ‘aesthetic’ works, and the novels and plays of Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus demonstrate, the communication of this form of philosophy benefits from being indirect.

It doesn’t direct you to one or another One True Path. And those existentialists of my ilk do not argue that existentialism itself is the One True path.

As for this:

To appreciate its significance you have to be there, in amongst the detailed stories, rolling critiques and inspirational prose: you have to catch a dose of it through its resonance with your own often unarticulated fears and aspirations. Along these lines I am offering a new way in; a hook in the form of an analogy with a movement in pop and rock music. Existentialism, I want to claim, is the punk rock of philosophy.

Punk rock: “rock music marked by extreme and often deliberately offensive expressions of alienation and social discontent.”

On the other hand, just as with existentialism, I’m sure there are different interpretations of what punk rock means.

And the whole point of most essentialist/objectivist dogma is to subsume fears and aspirations – alienation and discontent – in the One True Path. Being able to anchor I to one or another “my way or the highway” sense of certainty. Allowing you then to insist not only that are there essential rights and wrongs but that the only way to embody them is to become “one of us”.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Or ….you could just go the opposite route and completely disassociate yourself from others, including your own self, so that all of your competing desires become a separate self that dissociate from each other. There’s always that.

That is always there.

…or is it?

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Existentialism as Punk Philosophy
Stuart Hanscomb argues that existentialism is punk philosophy par excellence.

Punk rock I’m characterizing as nihilistic, extreme, passionate, liberating, inclusive, amateur, and violent. It had precursors, and it still exists, but Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols and all that they catalysed in the mid-Seventies are its most important moment of impact.

So, how close is this to pinning down punk? And how close is punk to a philosophy of life that will ever be of interest to anyone other than a tiny handful of people?

Sid Vicious…existentialist?

Punk was a wake-up snarl to an atrophied establishment – a “loud raucous ‘No!’” (Garry Mulholland, Fear of Music, 2006). It sought to destroy, and in the ruins left behind it flexed its gnarly uneducated wings and expressed anger and frustration in a crude but deliberate subversion of the previous rock scene.

And look at that “atrophied establishment” today. Donald Trump here, Marine Le Pen there. Ironically creeping closer and closer to the policies that plunged the world into the war that put existentialism on the map.

In place of refinement and privilege, it offered energy and inclusiveness. The distance between band and audience shrank, and sometimes disappeared. In place of a rider of white wine, Evian and cocaine, it offered spit, sweat and blood. In place of systems, plans, improvable pasts and functional futures, it offered an exhilarating and dangerous present like a hyperactive adolescent. It couldn’t be stage-managed. It wasn’t a performance in any conventional sense of the word, but a happening.

Yeah, sure, you do your “9 to 5” bit to sustain the atrophied establishment. And then there’s the weekend for your “I’ve Got Friday On My Mind” punk persona. But look at the establishment today. It’s all but completely immune to punk mentality. It’s owned and operated by Wall Street instead.

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Existentialism as Punk Philosophy
Stuart Hanscomb argues that existentialism is punk philosophy par excellence.

[quote]no future: Nihilism

Dada is art that is anti-art. Punk is music that is anti-music. Existentialism is a philosophy that is anti-philosophy.[/quote]

In other words, whatever that means?

I would certainly not characterize existentialism as an “anti-philosophy” myself. Instead, it’s a frame of mind that starts with the assumption that human interactions are not derived from any essential or objective moral or political truths. “I” in the is/ought world is [existentially] the embodiment of dasein out in a particular world. And even the theistic existentialists rely on a “leap of faith” to their own One True Path font.

How do they avoid the contradiction? They walk a tightrope, which is part of the point. Punk music is an “outsider aesthetic” but it’s still an aesthetic. Likewise, existentialism must recognize a place for reflective rational discourse, since that’s necessary to philosophy; but part of its agenda is to identify the limits of such discourse, and in so doing redirect us to what this perspective marginalizes and represses.

Now, that is clearly my point as well. The limitations of philosophy, in my view, are derived from the assumption that we do live in a No God universe. In His place, however, come all of the One True Paths that ideologues and objectivists insist reflect the only path to enlightenment.

And, of course, the thing about punk rock is that, as with all the rest of us, the musicians who play it are often wholly dependent on others in society to provide them with everything else that they either want or need in their lives.

It will rail against conceits such as the possibility of absolute knowledge, universal moral codes, an ultimate meaning of life, a final harmony between individual and state, or between the self and its possibilities. It will, in short, point to the limits of rational enquiry, and accordingly, the limits of the rational mind’s jurisdiction over emotion, desire, and the body.

And how is that not basically a repugnant frame of mind to the objectivists among us? Again, in my view, existentialism is actually rejected because it challenges this or that One True Path and argues instead that given the limitations of philosophy in the world of conflicting goods, the best of all possible worlds is likely to be democracy and the rule of law.

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Existentialism as Punk Philosophy
Stuart Hanscomb argues that existentialism is punk philosophy par excellence.

Punk was “a politics of energy” (Stewart Home, The Assault on Culture, 1988), and also traded in extremes: short songs aggressively delivered, Mohican haircuts, ripped PVC, and the pogo dance.

As you might imagine, the ruling class was shaking in its boots when it appeared as though punk rock was actually going to change the world, turn everything inside out and upside down, create anarchy over the entire globe.

Instead, it took off only “in the heads” of some as this whole new way to play music. As though this would spark the revolution that the Sixties radicals failed to bring about.

The medium, like the message, was intense and to the point.

Instense, surely. But to what point? Not all punk rockers emulated the Clash. Punk, as with most other genres across the entertainment/art spectrum, can be found all up and down the “human all too human” collection of ideological/religious/philosophical/moral/political prejudices:

Punk ideologies

Similarly, the existential in Kafka is firmly linked to the surreal and grotesque worlds of dung beetles, hunger artists, and burrow-dwellers; Camus presents murder, despotism, plagues, and the punishment of Sisyphus; Sartre began with the neo-horror of Nausea and moved on to suicide squads, jealous assassins, and condemned prisoners; Kierkegaard used seducers and infanticide to illuminate the human condition; and Nietzsche styled himself as the anti-Christ. Since human existence is so vividly exposed by exploring its boundaries, extreme situations present the existentialist with a perfect method.

And then there’s my own even more glum assessment of human interactions as little more than the actual existential consequences of fractured and fragmented daseins embodying the Benjamin Button Syndrome in what may or may not be a free will universe for matter that “somehow” acquired self-consciousness. Though, sure, the more extreme the situation the more extreme reactions to it can be.

And who can deny that these days [around the world] uncertainties abound.

[HumAnIze]

“A deterministic universe does not take away free will. Free will simply means that choices are internal to a person rather than external to others. The internal cogs of the mind can be either predictable or unpredictable by an omniscient perspective and it wouldn’t change the free will aspect of a decision.”

Yes, exactly. Well said

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Sartre’s Being & Nothingness: The Bible of Existentialism?
Christine Daigle discusses some of the key concepts and ideas in Sartre’s most important philosophical book.

June 1943, occupied France. A writer named Jean-Paul Sartre sees his latest philosophical manuscript, Being and Nothingness, a “phenomenological essay on ontology”, 722 pages of fine print (in the original French edition), published in the midst of World War II. The presentation wrapper on the early reprint of 1945: “What counts in a vase is the void in the middle”!

Phenomenology is the study of conscious experience from the first-person point of view. Husserl used principles of formal ontology even as he bracketed the natural-cultural world in describing our experience, and Heidegger pursued fundamental ontology in his variety of phenomenology describing our own modes of existence. I shall address the role of ontology in phenomenology, and vice versa. Our account of what exists depends on our account of what and how we experience. But, moreover, our understanding of the structure of consciousness depends on our understanding of structure, basic ontological structure, and hence of the place of consciousness in the structure of the world. What makes consciousness “hard” for contemporary philosophy of mind is understanding how intentionality and subjectivity fit into the structure of the world: how phenomenology fits with ontology. Phil Papers

Formal or pure ontology describes forms of objects, as Husserl says. Phenomenology describes forms of conscious experiences, as we readily say. cairn

Now, all we need is for some here to react to this by instantiating it. In other words, noting how, given their own understanding of it, it impacts the behaviors they choose pertaining to conflicting value judgments.

Then the particularly tricky part where, given some measure of free will, one makes a distinction between the phenomenological and the ontological when, for example, posting here.

This wasn’t the first of Sartre’s writings to make some waves. His article on Husserl’s phenomenology from 1936-1937, ‘The Transcendence of the Ego’, had made quite an impression in philosophical circles. Its author cleverly re-appropriated Husserl’s goal of going back to the things themselves by kicking the ego out of consciousness and carefully delineating the various modes of consciousness and its encounter with the world. No longer personal, consciousness was presented as something that would only form an ‘I’ through its encounter with the world. The ‘I’ thus becomes an object, just like any other, only slightly more personal. After all, we care more for our ‘ego’ than for a rock!

Over and again in philosophy circles, we come upon this distinction:

Being is subdivided, as it were, into two major regions – being for-itself (l’être pour-soi) or consciousness, and being-in-itself (l’être en-soi) which is everything other than consciousness, including the material world, the past, the body as organism and so on. REP

As though given The Gap, Rummy’s Rule and the Benjamin Button Syndrome, this distinction is actually, what, a piece of cake?

Which is why I would be particularly interested in discussing this part…

…consciousness was presented as something that would only form an ‘I’ through its encounter with the world. The ‘I’ thus becomes an object, just like any other…

Why? Because this is the part I construe to be revolving existentially around dasein. Also, when Sartre speculated that “hell is other people”, I’ve always seen this as revolving around the assumption that not only will others objectify us but, for the overwhelming preponderance of us, we objectify ourselves.

[Demon]

Every ‘xxxISM’ is mental masturbation. It’s the fixation of thought within the boundaries of an idea or ideology. As is known, masturbation doesn’t yield any results. To make it clearer: a fool is a person subordinated to дурь. Дурь is the dominance of ideas or ideologies over reason. Finally, Дурость is дурь in the stage of growth. Doesn’t that seem funny to you?

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Sartre’s Being & Nothingness: The Bible of Existentialism?
Christine Daigle discusses some of the key concepts and ideas in Sartre’s most important philosophical book.

Setting his feet in the phenomenological tradition, presenting himself as an heir of Heidegger and as critical of the master phenomenologist Husserl and of the whole idealistic and rationalistic tradition, Sartre investigates the lived experience of the individual. True enough, he subtitles his book “a phenomenological essay on ontology.”

“Phenomenology and ontology are distinct fields within philosophy. Phenomenology studies the nature of conscious experience and the structures of consciousness, while ontology is concerned with the nature of existence and what exists. Ontology explores the fundamental types of entities and their relationships, whereas phenomenology focuses on the lived experience of phenomen.” AI

But then the part where, given a particular set of circumstances, philosophers are able to note this distinction in some detail. There are the lived experiences of self-conscious human beings interacting phenomenally with other self-conscious human beings. Okay, so, ontologically, how would one go about encompassing these interactions objectively? How would the individual out in a particular world understood in a particular way go about ascribing what he or she thinks and feels to his or her own subjective experiences rather than one or another philosophical assessment that revolves around objectivism.

However, while Heidegger had been interested primarily in the metaphysical nature of Being and only studied Da-sein (the being of the human individual) as an instance of it, Sartre wanted to focus mainly on this human reality. What of Being? The introduction of Being and Nothingness takes care of it rather quickly and concludes: “Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.” Now what? Let us get down to serious business and talk about what really matters: the for-itself, human reality, and its relationship with the in-itself and with others.

Then that profoundly problematic relationship between being and becoming. The part where contingency, chance and change sustain a human condition such that who we think we are at any given time is always subject to reconfiguration given new experiences. And even here only in assuming we have free will.

After all, are we really different from any other animals? Well, obviously, yes. But how do we explain that? In other words, given that it is our very brain that has to explain…itself?

I will not enter into the details of Sartre’s ontological theory, as this would entail an over-technical discussion that would not enlighten the reader as to the real import of the book.

For me, this pertains as well to the part where the “technical arguments” are brought down out of the philosophical clouds and intertwined in our actual behaviors.

Rather, I will concentrate on the concepts that he presents and that have shaped Sartre’s existentialism and contributed to the impact of his work. Thus, what follows will focus on freedom, responsibility, bad faith, and relationships with others.

But: will it only follow…conceptually?

[promethean75]

“Every ‘xxxISM’ is mental masturbation. It’s the fixation of thought within the boundaries of an idea or ideology”

[Bob]

@promethean75

Every ‘xxxISM’ is mental masturbation

Words that end in ism are just labels. They can be restrictive, but they can also expand horizons. Your comment is unreflected.

[Demon]

@Bob

Words that end in ism are just labels. They can be restrictive, but they can also expand horizons. Your comment is unreflected.

A label is obliged to mean something.
The label “-ISM” — it means the onanism of thinking. A looped fixation within the bounds of an idea or ideology.
In material terms, it’s all elementary: the electrical connections between brain neurons reinforce themselves when a thought follows the same path, because endorphins are released and the poor soul is happy to discover similarities — forced to think the same thing over and over, unable to stop mentally masturbating.
That’s exactly how all doctrines and religions work, all worldviews without exception.
Funny, isn’t it?