In your case, I would tend to agree. You seem to be an expert in this field.
But I was referring to the fact that Humanism’s core idea is to emphasise the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively. It’s beneficial because it promotes reason, ethics, and justice without necessarily appealing to supernatural forces and has inspired human rights movements, secular ethics, and educational reforms.
The core idea of Environmentalism is to advocate for the protection and preservation of the natural environment and seek sustainability, maintain biodiversity, and long-term health of ecosystems. Altruism is the selfless concern for the well-being of others, encourages generosity, social cohesion, empathy and helps grow volunteer movements and mutual aid networks.
Another “ism” is Pluralism, promoting acceptance and coexistence of diverse cultures, beliefs, and lifestyles. Fostering tolerance, dialogue, and peaceful multicultural societies. Our Democratic principles are built on this.
As a caveat, I would agree that even “benign” isms can be misused or distorted when dogmatized or enforced coercively. For example, Humanism can become elitist if it marginalises religious perspectives, and Environmentalism can turn technocratic or eco-fascist. So, in some cases, it is much more the way an “ism” is used, rather than the concept itself.
"A person who engages in masturbation is hindered by shame, but when it comes to the masturbation of thought, the situation is even worse. It’s a harmful habit that cripples the mind, and admitting it, even to oneself, is fundamentally impossible. Do you wish to deny that ‘ISM’ leads to limited understanding? Or will you argue that ‘ISM’ doesn’t bring pleasure? Perhaps you’ll counter that one ‘ISM’ is better than another because it’s your own? I won’t argue with the last point, as they say, there’s no accounting for taste. But let me share an anecdote relevant to the topic. A patient goes to the doctor complaining that he urinates crooked. The doctor asks, ‘Do you engage in masturbation?’ The patient (like you) indignantly replies, ‘Of course not.’ The doctor says, ‘Then I can’t help you.’ The patient leaves, but then the door cracks open, and the poor guy says, ‘What if I do?’ The doctor, without raising his head: ‘Change hands!’
What’s the point of this anecdote? It’s to show that all it takes is to stop believing in one delusion, and you’ll quickly find yourself in another. But to rid yourself of the masturbation of thought, you need reason and a rejection of belief in ‘ISMS.’"
This translation conveys the meaning and tone of the original text. If you need any changes or further adjustments, feel free to ask!
It seems Mr. Bob has yet to recognize the impossiblity of explaining or describing the fullness of the human experience and ignores the only philosophical certainty he could possibly have… the primacy of his own unique ego and the immediacy of his desire to obtain property and power.
He’s still looking for answers i reckon, Dizzle. Two thousand years and not a single philosophical problem is sizzled. With even the most brilliant minds at work at it. Like if John Nash or Bertrand Russel couldn’t figure it out, it ain’t happening, boss. You’d think they’d have realized this back in the 50s.
Don’t make me laugh, my slippers are dear to me. Present any philosophical problem – I’ll solve it easily. In reality, there is another problem – human reluctance to know. Let’s take the completely idiotic question of ‘primacy’. What comes first, consciousness or being? The answer: consciousness and being are two forms of one essence of content. Is the problem solved? Got another one?
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.
Being
The in-itself (in other words, Being), is the first of the pair ‘Being and Nothingness’ to be investigated by Sartre. It is not to be equated with the world. The world is a later product of the encounter between the for-itself (consciousness, human reality) and the in-itself.
Then [for me] this part:
As though there have not been countless human communities over the centuries that have once, still do now and probably ever will continue to construe the pour-soi and the en-soi in very, very different ways given very different embodiments of dasein.
Then those fiercely fanatical zealots [left and right, God and No God] who insist that the en-soi and the pour- soi are in perfect alignment. All you need to do is to become one of them.
A “phenomenological concept of intentionality?” But then the part where the conceptual construct is brought “down to Earth”. The part where the Benjamin Button Syndrome reveals all of those existential variables that can often be beyond our fully grasping or controlling.
Me, I link this part to The Gap and to Rummy’s Rule. The en-soi given the astounding vastness and complexity of the universe…of the multiverse?
Then the part where Sartre suggested that “Hell is other people”. For some, this revolved around the manner in which others objectify us. For me, however, it is equally applicable to how we objectify ourselves.
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.
We thus learn that the for-itself is none other than the nothingness that encounters Being. The for-itself, consciousness, is conceived of as a nothingness of Being, as a lack of Being. Indeed, intentional consciousness is initially empty, a void that is filled through its being conscious (of) the world. Only following this initial encounter can consciousness move on to self-consciousness and, eventually, ego formation.
You tell me. In other words, from my own frame of mind, the above encompasses a classic example of a “general description intellectual contraption”. Thus, all I can do is ask those here convinced they understand it philosophically, to note how it is applicable given their interactions with others from day to day.
Then back to the part where, given a particular set of circumstances, one individual’s rendition of being for himself or herself clashes with other individuals who see it as anything but something for them.
As for this part…
…what situation? And how is this not rooted existentially in dasein in regard to conflicting value judgments?
This is basically equivocal enough to mean very different things to those who have lived very different lives. And having “projects” is one thing, intertwining them in a world where the “projects” of others can result in any number of confrontations, another thing altogether.
Then those who argue that en-soi and pour-soi are actually interchangeable given…the only possible reality?
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.
Bad Faith
Sartre acknowledges that, most of the time, individuals will have recourse to bad faith to hide their own freedom from themselves. Bad faith is different from lying in that in bad faith, the dualism ‘liar/lied to’ vanishes: I am the one lying to myself and yet I believe in the lie. To me, the lie is the truth. Sartre calls this state a precarious one. Indeed, for in bad faith, I am also conscious of the lie: fundamentally, I know that the truth I believe in is a lie I made up for myself.
"In existentialism, bad faith (French: mauvaise foi) is the psychological phenomenon whereby individuals act inauthentically, by yielding to the external pressures of society to adopt false values and disown their innate freedom as sentient human beings. " wiki
Of course, for all practical purposes, who among us can actually pin down true freedom and true responsibility? In other words, given particular sets of assumptions regarding particular social, political and economic circumstances.
Anyone here care to give it a go?
Really, think about it. How many men and women sustain their interactions with others – at home, at school, at work, online etc. – by grappling with this philosophical quandary? Instead, people become waiters by and large because for all practical purposes most of us need to earn a living to pay the bills. It’s a job. And it’s a job for most given the manner in which, historically, capitalism encompasses employment by sustaining a particular political economy. One in which some make the distinction between being a wage earner and a wage slave.
For any number of socialists, bad faith revolves instead around those who refuse to grasp or to accept the part where historically capitalism creates the conditions which bring socialism into existence…materially, dialectically.
Naturally?
Here of course, such behavior might revolve instead around those who take their jobs as waiters more seriously than others. They like being a waiter and they are committed to being a good waiter. Though how many will stop to think “I am a waiter.”
Any waiters here? Yes? Okay, given the above, how do you construe yourself “on the job”? Philosophically, in other words.
There are clearly behaviors here that are valued more than others. And some certainly make better waiters than others. But who is going to argue that they embody the very essence of what being a waiter encompasses?
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.
What Sartre wants to get at here is that when I say that I am, I am missing my own being as a being that constantly makes itself. To put it differently, by claiming to have a static being (“I am”) I am denying that I am a dynamic being (“I become”) who makes oneself via its actions. Sartre says that, for consciousness, making sustains being. Hence, consciousness is as making itself, “consciousness is not what it is.”
Think of it this way. Given free will, we choose behaviors from moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day, year in and year out. At any particular time, in any particular set of circumstances, we might choose anything that we are physically capable of. We might start a novel, go bowling, masturbate, listen to music, plan a murder. And different people will react to what we do given the manner in which their own assessment of the world around them predisposes them existentially to react in ways not entirely fully understood or controlled.
I merely suggest there are basically two ways in which we can come to a point of view pertaining to value judgments. On the one hand, we can spend hours and hours and hours actually thinking about the pros and the cons of the behaviors we derive from our particular value judgments. We can then try to have as many different experiences as possible relating to those behaviors. And we can discuss them with as many different people as possible in order to get diverse points of view. And we can try to acquire as much knowledge and information about these behaviors/value judgments in order to be fully informed on it.
On the other hand, based on my own experience, most folks don’t do this at all. Instead, they live in a particular time and place, acquire a particular set of experiences, accumulate a particular set of relationships and acquire particular sources of knowledge and information – which then comes [rather fortuitously] over the years to predispose them to particular subjective points of view that might well have changed over and again throughout the years. And, indeed, may well change many times more. I know that mine did.
That’s what is crucial here in my view. The moral and political objectivists embody their own One True Path in order to sustain one or another rendition of the “psychology of objectivism”. The comforting and consoling belief that how they view themselves “out in the world” really and truly is the most rational frame of mind. It’s the belief itself rather than what is believed that reflects my own understanding of “bad faith”.
Does anyone here think they might have achieved it themselves? If so, how did you manage to accomplish it? And how does it impact the way you choose to interact with others in a world of conflicting goods.
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.
Relationships with Others
The last important part of Being and Nothingness that I wish to address is that which deals with the being-for-others. What Sartre has to say about interpersonal relationships in this section of the book has had a tremendous impact; it is thus fitting to turn our ‘gaze’ towards this part.
The part where some react to this as though others are attempting to objectify them. I merely take this further by suggesting that in regard to value judgments, many have no problem at all objectifying themselves.
Again, though, how, for all practical purposes, does this actually unfold given your own interactions with others? What are you conscious of? How, existentially, did you become conscious of it? Are you convinced that what you are now conscious of reflects the most reasonable assessment? Reflecting, in other words, what you deem to be the optimal description, such that all rational men and women are obligated to think and to feel and to intuit as you do?
But, clearly, part of the reason “failures to communicate” pop up everywhere in regard to conflicting goods is that, God or No God, there has yet to be a moral and political font either invented or discovered that we can all agree reflects the best of all possible worlds. Only countless others insisting you are either “one of us” or fuck off.
On the other hand, in my view, even if we did have access to the minds of others [and they to ours], what would really change in regard to conflicting goods? Would all of the ofttimes conflicting moral dogmas just dissolve into the One True Path?
Your own, say?
Does this make sense to you? If so, then, again, note how you translate it into the actual behaviors you choose when encountering “others” that reject your own value judgments. The part that revolves around living “authentically” by eschewing “bad faith”.
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.
It is this objectification process that makes the Other’s presence an alienating one. The Other’s gaze denies my subjectivity. By objectifying me, the Other reduces me to my bodily presence in the world, possibly to a tool, an instrument to be used in his world. Interestingly, this alienating process is reciprocal: I do the exact same thing to the Other. Hence, we are bound not to understand and not to acknowledge each other as free consciousnesses. Is that so really? Let us ‘look’ at this a little closer.
Of course, when you run this by the moral, political and spiritual objectivists, they do not or will not construe it this way at all. Others may try to objectify them but they “just know” that their own One True Path need be as far as it goes. They’ll tell you they already know everything that they need to know about being enlightened.
Or, for others, being saved.
What I do here, however, is to muddy the waters all the more by suggesting human social, political and economic interactions may well be but existential manifestations of dasein. And, as well, that being “fractured and fragmented” is entirely reasonable given human morality in a No God world.
In other words, they objectify themselves. They are indoctrinated as children. Or discover one or another rendition of The Way as adults. They convince themselves that they are in possession of an Intrinsic Self that “just knows” the difference between good and evil.
Then the part where some tolerate those deemed to be Other – “one of them” – and some do not.
Now all we need to do is explore human interactions given different sets of circumstances in order to connect the dots between the ontological and the ontic. In other words, the essential aspects of the human condition that are basically applicable to all of us versus the existential components of dasein given the Benjamin Button Syndrome which make failures to communicate in the is/ought world a daily occurence.
Unless, of course, my own “drawn and quartered” assessment is simply…incorrect?
Same thing. There’s what you think she means here philosophically and there’s how these philosophical assumptions fare existentially when confronted with any number of moral and political conflagrations. What is truly objective and what may well be considerably more intersubjective.
Thus an explanation for why moral, political and religious objectivism still “works” for millions around the globe is that alternative assessments such as my own are just too grim to be true.
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.
In my experience of the world, I meet with a web of objects that I make into instruments, which are given meaning through my project, i.e. my actions in the world. Thus the world is really a world for me. However, once the Other sheds his look upon it, the world is alienated from me: this same collection of objects is given a different meaning, is part of an Other’s experience. My world is taken away from me just as my being is, thanks to the onlooking presence of the Other.
Again, imagine you have become a castaway on an island. You are the only inhabitant. In deciding what to do from day to day to day it comes down entirely to what you prefer to do. On the other hand, if you are a religious person, you might also take that into consideration. It’s not just what you want but whether or not it is in sync with one or another set of moral commandments…to sin or not to sin.
God: the ultimate Other.
But then one day another person washes up on shore. Now there are the two of you. And while you may concur regarding any number of things, there are going to be things you don’t see eye to eye about. Then what? Well, as with the rest of us, it will come down to one or another combination of might makes right, right makes might and moderation, negotiation and compromise.
The main difference between Sartre and myself here revolves largely around the assumption on my part that in regard to moral and political interactions, “authenticity” and “bad faith” are no less existential contraptions rooted historically, culturally and experientially in dasein. In other words, while fractured and fragmented communication often unfolds in regard to conflicting goods, for those of my ilk that pertains to my own “self” as well. It’s not “one of us” vs. “one of them” as many see the world around them…it’s being “drawn and quartered”, pulled and tugged ambivalently in any number of entirely complex, convoluted and conflicting directions.
Alienation and disintegration are embedded in my own reaction to any number of things. Thus, most men and women have no problem reacting to peeping Toms as those who behave inauthentically and in bad faith. They can be seen, in turn, as evil and worthy only of our contempt and censure.
But even such monumental intentions can politically changed, as it occurred with Heidegger as regards Dasein, with an admittedly misunderstood which took place to Dasein.
Of course a world away much to the surprise of most at the time.
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.
The Legacy
What then of Being and Nothingness’ legacy? I would argue that its impact has been tremendous. Existentialism, as Sartre formulates it in this treatise, empowers the human being in a period when power seems to rest in the hands of only a few individuals.
Well, it might empower some, of course, but it can also befuddle and inhibit others. The last thing some people want is “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty”. That’s the whole point of objectivism…to make that all go away. On the other hand, Sartre came to grasp that political economy simply cannot be ignored. Power rests in the hands of a few because the deep state is owned and operated by the ruling class. Now, imagine how tricky that can become. Some see socialism as just another dogmatic agenda that can swallow the individual whole. Workers of the world unite…but only authentically? Sans bad faith?
What about allowing her to engage in her own projects? And, of course, in any particular context, the oppression can be such that you [male or female] are strictly forbidden from pursuing projects deemed harmful to the public good.. And in periods struck by nihilism and atheism, how exactly would existentialists pin down the least inauthentic behaviors. After all, any number of oppressors can practice the politics of “right makes might”. They don’t see it as oppression so much as clearly differentiating what they offtimes sincerely believe to be either Good or Evil behaviors.
In other words, “bad faith” is no less rooted existentially in the individual lives that we live.
The lifeless binary processing biological machine computes that it’s exists and doesn’t exist,It exists because it needs to exist to claim that it doesn’t exist and it doesn’t exist becaue it does possess life.This lifeless binary processing biological machine can make up as many moral rules as it likes.
The religions of atheism and theism are right there is no meaning in existence/non existence because it’s BINARY!!!
There is only meaning in life.
So don’t associate yourself with existence and non existence.
Place existence and non existence on both side of the philosophical/psychological fence and walk the straight path.
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.
No, really, let’s imagine those moral and political philosophers among us who champion each of the above offering one or another staunch defense of or fierce rejection of capitalism. Then they take their philosophical assumptions to those who champion Marx or Nietzsche or Rand or Rorty.
What in regard to capitalism today could they conclude [given a consensus] reflects either the best of all possible worlds or, perhaps, the only truly rational and virtuous account of political economy? Of nomadic tribes, hunters and gatherers, slash and burn
Then the angles they could all agree on because they are embedded essentially, objectively in the either/or world. You know the ones…the facts that are applicable to all of us.
Then the parts that are of particular interest to those like me: meaning, morality and metaphysics. In other words, what could the folks above tell us objectively about them…given particular sets of circumstances. Also, the scientists/philosophers above who were born and raised in different historical and cultural contexts. And, no doubt, having encountered what may well be vastly different personal experiences. The parts I root existentially in dasein out in a particular world understood in a particular manner. Embedded further in any number of factors swirling about us given countless combinations of contingency, chance and change.
Of course, that’s what any number of moral and political objectivists here might set out to argue theoretically is the case up in the philosophical clouds. But then the part where for centuries now mere mortals have not even come close to resolving it “for all practical purposes”.
Not sure what is being argued here. Human beings down through the ages have interacted socially, politically and economically in very different ways given very different assumptions about the world around them. And given very different manners in which the means of production evolved going all the way back to when we still lived in caves…momads, hunters and gatherers, slash and burn/agriculturalists communities, slave cultures, feudalists, mercantilists…
Yes, there were those like Rand who argued that what more “primitive” communities lacked was a John Galt to set them straight about capitalism. Whereas those of Marx’s ilk scoffed at the idea of creating a capitalist political economy long before capitalism itself even existed. First you needed the economy to evolve to the point where there was a “surplus labor” available.
The Free Market Existentialist by William Irwin
Alberto Giordano is left unsatisfied at an attempt to wed evolution, capitalism, and existentialism
Let us examine each connection [above] in turn. First, existentialism highlights individual responsibility over collective action.
Tell that to those existentialists who highlighted just the opposite. More or less…depending on the context. Sartre was an existential Marxist. In fact, he wrote a book exploring “I” and “we” and “them” out in a world where political economy always prevails. At least, historically, so far.
Talk about a “general description intellectual contraption”! Really, stop 100 people on the street at random and run this by them. Or, for that matter, given a No God universe, run it by the folks here:
On the other hand, if you ever do come to believe that we live in “an apparently absurd and meaningless world” how would you react?
Then those who will suggest arguing there is no higher meaning becomes, well, in and of itself the highest meaning. Then the part where choices and plans pertaining to the is/ought world are, in my view, rooted existentially in dasein.
The Free Market Existentialist by William Irwin
Alberto Giordano is left unsatisfied at an attempt to wed evolution, capitalism, and existentialism
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 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. 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.
On the one hand, to the extent an existentialist places an emphasis on the individual, capitalism would seem to reflect the best of all possible worlds. Of course, some note that if this is the case then millions upon millions will just have to grin and bear it.
On the other hand, that does nothing to make an entrenched political economy, a ruling class and the deep state go away.
Existentialism correctly understood? How about capitalism or socialism or communism or fascism or anarchism correctly understood? How about nihilism? Unless, perhaps, given the profoundly problematic nature of human interactions bursting at the seams historically and culturally in wave after wave of contingency, chance and change, there really is no One True Path at all.
Except there are hundreds and hundreds of them. And given this, I have to accept myself that the deep seated comfort and consolation that is derived from being a part of one or another rendition of The Way or The Cause or The Movement is not likely to be budged much by my own admittedly grim assessment. An assessment revolving around “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty” and a “fractured and fragmented” moral and political philosophy.
Capitalism without consumerism?! And defining ourselves in what particular way given what particular assessment of that which constitutes either internal or external forces in lives that existentially can be very, very different?
Voluntary simplicity? Prudent and enlightened self-interest? Same thing from my frame of mind. In other words, what I construe to be, at times, an enormous gap between what individuals believe these things should be “in their heads” and the reality of dasein, of contingency, chance and change and of the Benjamin Button Syndrome.
The Free Market Existentialist by William Irwin
Alberto Giordano is left unsatisfied at an attempt to wed evolution, capitalism, and existentialism
…in Chapters Four and Five, he tries to persuade us that there are no such things as moral facts, only moral habits shaped by evolution and human interaction. Morality, then, does not rely upon God or any fixed idea of human nature.
Yes, that’s what I believe myself, “here and now”. On the other hand, how exactly would I go about demonstrating that this is, in fact, what all reasonable and virtuous men and women are themselves obligated to believe in turn?
Well, I can’t…so I don’t.
A God, the God may well exist and in regard to a No God universe, it seems that everyday some mind boggling new discovery is made about the cosmos: https://youtu.be/4dOjejZzgJA?si=Ss6aaouK8JNbAzDo
Core morality? Let’s run that by any number of these guys:
See the problem? Proclaiming the existence of a core morality does not make the proclamations of all the other moral objectivists above go away. Instead, the far more critical factor here, in my view, revolves around the extent to which these objectivists append “or else!” to their own “one of us!” mentality.