To separate experience and action is to claim a false dichotomy. How does a person stand outside himself and do that? Our deepest values are what we most authentically are. We are not in a position to make the ultimate judgment on what that is. God alone could do that. The most we can do is give it our best shot–our existential commitment. Life demands that we do so. History reveals the risk we take in doing so. It looks like a garbage heap littered with good people on it’s wrong side. But what is that but the “perspective” of yet another pair of eyes limited by their own historicity? There is no transcendent perch from which to view history for us mortals though we like to imagine that there is.
Besides the God part, I tend to agree with you.
I feel like we’re thrown into existence without any guidebook, and we’re left to do our best to make good on it in complete ignorance.
All we can do is gamble and learn from the result - win or lose. And hopefully out of it, we can make wiser bets in the future.
The hardest part is making good on a bad loss. That’s what makes or breaks ya’
I’m generally on board with Satre’s criticism of false consciousness. At the same time, it seems to me there is such a thing as right and wrong, and thus such a thing as moral growth- we can become better people than we used to be. It seems a certain seperation between what we do and what we believe is needed in order to grow.
I suppose the guidebook is one’s own body, assuming one doesn’t have god.
existential commitment. excellent title. Sounds like something from
Kierkegaard. Anyway, the two words really don’t mix well, existential is
something from the edge, looking into the abyss as Nietzsche says whereas
commitment is the furthest thing from this. Have to think about this one for a while.
Kropotkin
Can’t one be an existentialist and committed to making the most of life?
To do so, requires one gambles - takes risk, in order to grow.
I don’t see them as exclusive.
My point is that it would take omniscience and absolute justice that we as humans don’t possess.
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It seems to me that these things --right/wrong, action/belief can be pulled apart as abstractions to be analyzed, but they are united with action in the flow of expereince. Moral growth is also a matter of life experience and therefore more than our conscious thoughts about it.
By your own reasoning, isn’t that statement just as dubious as any other? It seems like a fatalistic absolutism, “We simply cannot know what is right”. How do you know so certainly that we can’t? And if we truly can’t, then why bother to even try to guess?
By existential here I mean an attitude of involvement in contrast to a merely theoretical or detached attitude. “Existential” in this sense can be defined as participating in a situation with the whole of one’s being.
No. History shows people are often wrong. To suppose that we are above the rest is hubris. Existential commit requires a risk. The exigencies of life require decisions based on limited information. Experience proves that we are fallible and not omniscient. We should recognize that our perspectives are not absolutely relative and our commitments are only relatively absolute. I don’t know with certainty that we can’t, but I know of no way that we certainly can. We bother to try because to fail has existential eternal consequences in so far as we apparently have but one life to live.
What is ‘it’?
‘It’ = Living authentically?
If so, then I disagree.
It is authentic to make mistakes and learn from mistakes. This is not disingenuous.
Also, in the face of no better alternatives, we’re forced make do with nonideal conditions. I don’t think this means we’re undermining justice, because inaction is a choice with it’s own consequences.
‘It’ = Know our deepest values / authentic identity?
If so, I also disagree.
For values:
We are consistent beings. Despite appearances, we do indeed have a hierarchy of values. With time / trial & error, we can discover the hierarchy of our values.
For our identity:
We can examine how we came to exist, all that has shaped and influenced us. We can discern between that which is vital aspect of our identity, and what is periphery. Then when faced with circumstance that demands we prioritize between aspects of our identity, we can prioritize the vital elements.
Just like the human anatomy. Prioritize the welfare of the vital organs. Better to lose a finger than an eye. Better to lose an eye than your heart. Better lose your heart than your brain (A heart can be replaced).
Well said.
…and often right.
The rest of what?
… and “supposing” itself, regardless of direction, is a degree of hubris.
… seems irrelevant.
I don’t even know what that means, except for the expression of certainty (after stating that “people are often wrong” and “supposing otherwise is hubris”). It seems that being certain of such a thing is self-defeating to the arguing (similar to the “I know that nothing can ever be known”).
It doesn’t matter what the consequences are if there is nothing you could do about it anyway, due to having no pointer toward “good vs bad”. If it is mere hubris to believe that one knows good vs bad and thus such thoughts should be rejected, then there is no compass and no ability to make decisions (which appears to be the goal - “keep them down”). Why “risk” anything since you have no way of knowing better from worse?
It referred to my statement that you called the “God part”
That’s nitpicking. The point is we are seldom certain. Though hindsight is famously 20/20.
Humanity
Not really. We find ourselves conscious beings in the midst of life with limited experience and knowledge. We must suppose something until we learn otherwise. Recognizing that what we possess is supposition and not knowledge is a kind of knowledge or wisdom in itself.
It’s relevant to my statement about our epistemological situation. I see it as at best, learned ignorance which acknowledges the finitude of reason and its inability to grasp its own infinite ground. But, in recognizing this situation, we can be aware of the infinite which is present in everything finite, though infinitely transcending it. The inexhaustible ground is present in all beings. In spite of our finitude, we can be aware of our infinite depth. We cannot express it in terms of rational knowledge, but the knowledge that this is impossible is real knowledge/wisdom.
I’m not saying that nothing can be known, only that our knowledge is finite. Kant’s doctrine of the categories elucidates human finitude. But, his categorical imperative recognizes an unconditional element in the depth of practical reason. According to Kant, the categories of experience do not enable human reason to grasp reality-in-itself, but they do enable us to grasp our world, the totality of the phenomena which appear to us and which constitute our actual experience. The main category of finitude is time. Being finite means being temporal. Reason cannot break through the limits of temporality and reach the eternal. So, I’m not denying absolute reality. I’m just acknowledging the prism of finitude or existence through which we view it.
We find ourselves thrown into life as Heidegger explained. Not choosing is not an option. Even not choosing is a choice. Every action contains a conflict of absolutism and relativism. It is based on decision, but to decide for something as true or as good means excluding countless other possibilities. Every decision is, in some respect, absolutistic, resisting the skeptical temptation not to judge or act. It is a risk threatened by the excluded possibilities, many of which might have been better and truer than the chosen one. The possibilities are perhaps infinite. But, what we can actualize in our lifetime is finite.
It just sound irrelevant, cuz of all the highfalutin verbiage.
To me “Existential commit” just means living a life.
And “The exigencies of life require decisions based on limited information,” means the decisions we encounter and face in life, that we have to answer so quickly that we don’t even have time enough to google our mind for what the philosophers would do.
This is perchance a wild question but, are you suggesting theosis?
Isn’t that so obvious that it is … emm … irrelevant? It isn’t like anyone has a choice in that matter or that they have ever done anything differently than that. 
If the point to the OP is that people should try to live even though they might not know how to do it exactly right, well … I can’t hardly disagree with that.
Right… basically and I don’t think that is a trivial acknowledgement on a philosophy forum where people often take their shot and then dig in like they know ultimate truth. I’m asserting the unlikelihood that anyone can transcend in this life, the limited, fragmented knowledge and ambiguities of human existence. Sooner or later our disconnect from our essential selves is revealed in our experiences of anxiety and despair. We are not sitting on the throne of God participating in his essential knowledge of everything that is. We have no place of pure objectivity above our limited POV. Our cognitive function is as existentially conditioned as our whole beings.