Can anyone tell me why is it that no one ever speaks of the existential project?
Stuart, the probable reason is, firstly, I believe that is still in research phase. The guy's name is Philippe d'anjou (looked it up). But now that's here , as far as I understand it, it has to do with the grounding the existential reduction unto a sustainable design.
He concludes, that the “ethical dimension” seems to be “intrinsic”. Within the sustainability of such a design education.
What this probably means, is that the ground has shifted to the ethical dimension. --as opposed to sartre’s earlier socially responsible view.
How can the social fabric be supported and sustained in the existential mode? Through “design education” where the ethical dimension seems to be intrinsic, or within an individual’s own morality.
??? It does seem to beg.acting in good faith, and authentic experience. Anjou is perhaps trying to necessarily shift the ground, to re affirm sartr’es ontology. If he can’t then truly, the choices are few.
Why the need for a sustainable ground? Because the reduction leaves the groundless person abandoned. His freedom becomes a function of his will and his responsibility. If not, he falls into the nihilism for making choices for himslef in an absolute sense. He becomes free, but freedom which most couldn't comprehend, nor realise. I gather, an absolute reconciliation between freedom and responsibility is not feasoble, but neither is an absolute irreconciability. The ground would be useful to both points of view. I would suspect he might ground his ethics in a neo-kantian transcendental ideal. ??? Just gussing.
Obe, that’s very interesting, and related to what I’m asking, so let me think it over a while.
But, what I meant by existential project, was the term “project” as in, “My project is to do this and that in my life.” In a way “project” in that sense is interchangeable with the word “goal”, but it is full of subsequent meaning from Sartre’s early philosophy and perhaps the philosophy of other existentialist’s. It explains a lot, such as in your thread, “the “self” does not exist, so how can there be a death?”, it explains why death is not one’s concern unless it conflicts with one’s project.
One’s project isn’t simply one’s goals as they would write in a journal or a to-do list. We can change our project, but we can rarely do so instantaneously. As discussed in your thread death cannot be known by the subject, but one’s fear of it could be related to death conflicting with one’s project. To overly simplify; we fear we won’t accomplish our goals.
The idea of one’s project brings up interesting implications for the subject of “immortality”. If we live an unnaturally long life, perhaps in good health, beyond our project, either because it is completed, or the opportunity to complete it is gone, then we have to make a new one. Maybe we would gradually do so and it’s not an issue, but it brings up important questions related to the idea of immortality that helps put the idea of death in perspective.
Interesting and informative. But excuse me, I will ponder on this, and if I come up with something, try giving you an appropriate response tomorrow.
Goals in terms of accounting for time left to complete them? If so if I were to introduce the time as Wittgenstein defines immortality, -"immortality can be had by living in the moment, because the moment is timeless"-(somewhat correct), and if your goals had the nihilistic constraints of an inability to account for time,----then wouldn't your project be a moment by moment attempt at defining your goals?
If your attempt was truly goal oriented, they would be made minute by minute decisions. Otherwise nihilism would suffer a collapse, just as Kant’s synthesis did.
Stuart, I am not attacking Nihilism, I think I can be understood in terms of existentialism, but goal orientation in existentialism has not the same problem, if you look at the above research paper (ongoing-but credible) of using neo-Kantism as a ground for Sartre.
Wouldn’t this OP better suited for the Philosophy Forum, but if I think what you really had in mind for it, and that is to underpin with Jasper, when you think “we” may be ready for it , then it’s a different story.(If it at all feasable to go that far with it)
I may be off on Nihilism as inconsistent with goals let me know, but I was under the impression that Nihilism implied tital freedom. And wouldn't total freedom be constrained by choiced made ias a future goal? Would that goal be inconsistent with a change of plans? I meant it in that regard.
I was just keeping this next to yours being that they relate. I’m speaking in general terms of the existential project of others. Personally, projects don’t do much for me, that’s why I turned to nihilism. So if I were more “project oriented” then I would only fear death as a way to stop my project. As one closer to nihilism, death is already not my concern. (That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try to preserve my life, I just don’t obsess with death.)
PS came upon this late connotation looking at Nietzche’s “overcoming” in reference to Nihilism.
Unless stuart, you really meant ressentiment---or a way out of nihilism? If so, then thanks for bringing my attention to it, and I am looking at it at the moment and will get back to you on that. It's interesting, and I remember way back in my existentialist philosophy class, I did come up on the word "re-affirmation" (mine--i must say) and it is with surprise that I would come up on the notion. Stay tuned. Will try to get back within a day or two, trying to utilize Jaspers, and seeking some kind of rapprochement.
The existential project could also pose a question of the place nihilism puts post modernism. Where Nihilism stops at any attempt to draw a meaningful (evaluate-able) line to be drawn, as does Ricoeur’s anti eidectic-reduction , yet nihilism, as value, need not stop the project because of this limit. The limit shows the same weakness to this calculus , as It did to the mechanics (man within a machine) of Descartes. The three dialectics of Ricoeur, perhaps sheds some light on this, by a higher synthesis, where the interpretation, and the consistency of the self SHOULD not suffer the same kinds of collapse. Nihilism by itself does not stand, because it has arrived by transcendental reason, which it tries to annihilate , to overcome. I think re affirmation can be looked at in Spinoza’s ethics as a foreshadowing of post Cogito.
The project is precisely this: that the subject can not even be reduced, except to a naivete which calls for a higher synthesis. This project can not simply entail a categorical need based on ethical expediency, it’s existential necessity requires a ground, a new “naïve” ground. It’s the reinstatement of a higher necessity,a higher doubt then that, which descartes’ evil genius
Can muster. The only structure that Will is able to relax the upon the hold interpretation has on mythological projections, is a return to a “will to accede” by way of redemption.(Not necessarily in religious terms.)
This can be the only legitimate existential project to redeem it’s will.
Your going to have to give me more time to understand this.
Upon re-reading what I wrote, stuart, I came on the realization, that my blog is confusing on many levels. So I have an existential project to clarify, and I need more time for that, too. But briefly, all I was trying to express is, that Nihilism needs no ground per se, because nihilism point to the groundlessness of not only any necessary value ,in-itself, because by definition, nihilism is the annihilation of that very ground.
However, since the dialectic transcendental which gave rise to a solution, by reducing the reasonable-ness of a categorical evaluation, with it's own existential problems such as the idea of consistency, in evaluating existential qualifier of value-----the idea of a naïve consciousness devoid of evaluation, points to a necessary reevaluation, if a bridge into a futuristic ethics could be sought. Spinoza , a non cartisian could be the answer, taking into consideration the 1st reply by the study which was posted in your initial OP, "existential project. I think your own existence as you describe it, implies the need to connect with a wider than a singular question, and it's narrowness may necessarily asks the question, -how your own project is connected to upcoming trends. If you settled with no ground, then the posing of the question would only be a rhetorical one, but even then, implications can be discovered, as to your own query. I too need time with this, so maybe sometime we could somehow come up with if not answers, but maybe trends, and perhaps something of a direction.
The reduction of existentialism into the subjective sphere, (ego) is the attempt of existentialism to salvage what’s left of objective morality after Nihilism. Nietzche’s stand on “truth” was never a focus either on totally absolute, nor a totally relative truth. His truth was a perspective, and it too not an absolute. But for the most part, the assimptotes of subjective and objective in nihilism are not reducible, and knowledge (of these truths) have to be held up by the will.(Individual). Existentialism saw the necessity of interpretation, along these lines Rorty, too, but the continentals seeing the dialectic as faulted by reliance on itself to prove it’s anti-thesis--------(((not at first, factually,but later with the social ground----as with communism)) saw the transvaluation as too singular, to be understood. Nietzche himself didn’t intend “truth” to be a an absolute, but a value of perspective. This dichotomy is similar in structure to Russell’s infinite regress with “sense data”
These gaps between the intentional understanding of the pure understanding, and the intended meaning, is what was of concern, and not questions over the absolute values of objective morality. Nietzche's starting point was not absolutely tied to either end, and hence his eternally recurrent question became more of an "existential project", rather than a frozen stance of valueless-ness.
Existentialism reduced the phenomenology of ideas to appearances, by bringing focus to the determinism of so called objective truths, and the necessity to have a social/societal solution to the world of valuelesness. When that failed for existentialism, as a ground, the aesthetic, rather than the social, served as the signifier---of the coming post nihilistic/existential future of the project that is bound to proceed---because man is an evaluating being. Nietzche's intentionality was never an absolute sign, it was an attempt to form further developments, his nihilism was really based on the need to act, to overcome Nihilism. Existentialism developed this need to find basis other than singular.
Along the lines of the differences between the continental divide between such as Dorty, Rosen, and others to deny the Nihilism on the ground of the questionable efficacy of the absolute objective/subjective divide, fails because of the very key concept of intentionality:::and Heidegger clearly saw this. Nietzche probably never intended to create an absolute schism, he tried to cure it, by virtue of the misunderstanding that came about.
Any talk of an existential project needs to see the continental divide’s de-differentiation as a sine quo non rather than as a given fact.(With absolutely contingent truths) It’s simply a sign of a thorough misunderstanding. The absolute value such as the will to power, Nietzche is talking about, is probably rooted in some kind of mysticism like Schopenhauer’s buddhism.
There is no absolute even in the non-abssoluteness in any idea, hence this digression need not be anything else then a show, Stuart, that I have kept the promise, of at least trying to shed a light,(by looking into the subject) without reference to either the utility of modern trends, nor the uselesness of trying to overcome the abyss of the great divide of Nihilism.
I reread the entire thread and your last post, I’m gradually starting to understand what you’re saying, don’t worry, I appreciate it, the first three times I read Sartre’s B&N I barely understood a word, that is what drew me to it in the first place. Let me just say who I’ve read related to these subjects, B&N and Heidegger’s B&T up to section 11. I only know Nietzsche from this forum, and I have yet to get a clear picture of his philosophy (though I’ve heard a clear picture is not to be found), I’ve also heard about Wittgenstein and flipped through the tractus.
Now let me speak to all you posts in this thread in general, it seems that one of the arguments you were making is that analytics such as Wittgenstein have the same goals as Heidegger, and Sartre that is to subjectivise reality, but they do so using a system close to mathematical proofs which may defeat there purpose, rather than using the ambiguous or poetic style that does not defeat the continentals (I was just speaking about this with someone, was it you?).
I’m not a nihilist, only an aspiring one. If I were one then I would have no project. Being that I’m not, I have a project. I aspire against having a project (that’s what I’ve been doing , but this is the first time I put it in these words, so once again I really appreciate the help), but losing one’s projects takes time, but I spoke of the difference between goals and projects. I have not made or had any goals for a few months now, one can easily change or eliminate one’s goals, one’s project is different.
An interesting idea I picked up somewhere on these forums, (I think it was Moreno quoting Kundera) is that we’re more interested in redefining our past than making future plans. That’s not entirely inconsistent with Sartre. If one had a project and didn’t fulfill it one can have regrets, perhaps that is the very bases of regret, a true nihilist (if that’s possible) has no regrets. My project was appreciated, but turned into regret. My project now is ill defined, it is the fundamental building blocks that a functioning person has, I want to see the next few years, I want to help the two people that really matter to me as I can. Other than that, I don’t know, I want to reread B&N, so my project is to learn more about projects and other little day to day things.
If you wish to respond to this or add more, that’s great, or perhaps wait and I’ll reread your posts again and say more, I think that it’s inefficient to read what you completely understand, have you heard of “muccle confucion?” I think that can be applied to learning as well, when I reach a plateau, I move on to some other artistic or intellectual interest, then come back to it, there’s no time for stagnation. (There that’s another project of mine, philosophy in general, absorbed as fast as possible, the most irritating of projects that I still currently deal with.)
I concure absolutely and generally. I agree we may come back to this later, perhaps in other places, in more specificity, with or without a sense of urgency.
Because the concept is severly oudated and in itself is nonsens. It will in an unsessesary way make things overly complicated to comprehend and it is found that only very mentally ill people has problems comprehending what is real and unreal, where as sane people doesn’t have such problem.
It seems you are skewing and over simplyfing the project in question. But, I’d like to mention, since you were so kind to respond to this old thread of mine, that you didn’t need to keep your old name, but now with a z. I have not read much of your posts, but from what I’ve read I can tell you that the general theme, or philosophy, that you’re portraying always comes through in even the shortest of posts. You could have a completely new name such as xyz123 and write lenghty posts rather than your standard short posts and in old English rather than new, and I would still recognize you.
I could ask you, what’s real. That is ask you to illuminate the issue I’m lacking knowledge in, that is reality itself, but I don’t see such a line of requests going anywhere.
Then you should post such thead like this, in Hall of Questions.
Reality we live in is real, there’s nothing unreal here.
Sanity and insanity is the core problem which no one will recognize. People refuse the simple truth, because it’s political incorrect, intead they turn to all other places, speciall an attack against the revealer of such truths, but non the less it’s the simple truth.
What does PCness have to do with reality. Something becomes PC when enough people make it clear that if you speak in a certain way about certain issues you deserve to be nailed to the wall, and may well figuratively be. It’s not might makes right, but might always wins. I’ll be damned if I can think of an example where it doesn’t except by pure coincidence.
Maybe it's old but David did slay Goliath.
The weak can become mighty, true.