Picking up from the last post, we have two options: 1) we can do years of meditation in order to break through and see the insubstantial nature of ‘free will’ (few of us will do this) or 2) accept our inability to let the ‘free will’ thing go, and work with it. Which brings us to our next existential themes:

3. Angst and freedom

Freedom is usually a word with positive connotations, but for anyone reading into existentialist philosophy it is something that can trigger a cold sweat of anxiety. Because in this context freedom doesn’t just mean you can do whatever you want, it means “you can do WHATEVER you want.” This path, or that path … the onus is completely on you. There is no one and nothing telling you you must or even should pick one over the other. Total freedom.

When Kirkegaard, writing as Vigilius Haufniensis, wrote about this he used the example of a man standing on the edge of a tall building or cliff. And when the man looks over the edge, he not only experiences a focused fear of falling, but a terrifying impulse to throw himself intentionally off the edge. (I get this feeling sometimes when there’s oncoming traffic.)

Of course, just because you can do whatever you want, doesn’t mean you can want whatever you want. Attempting to just spontaneously want something, or nothing, would be to deny that we have any pre-existing values. And unfortunately (or fortunately?), you do – you were brought up with them, and just because you now realise they’re completely arbitrary doesn’t wish them away.

The existentialist concept of freedom is often misunderstood as a sort of liberum arbitrium where almost anything is possible and where values are inconsequential to choice and action. This interpretation of the concept is often related to the insistence on the absurdity of the world and the assumption that there exist no relevant or absolutely good or bad values. However, that there are no values to be found in the world in-itself does not mean that there are no values: We are usually brought up with certain values, and even though we cannot justify them ultimately, they will be “our” values.

In Kierkegaard’s Judge Vilhelm’s account in Either/Or, making choices without allowing one’s values to confer differing values to the alternatives, is, in fact, choosing not to make a choice — to flip a coin, as it were, and to leave everything to chance. This is considered to be a refusal to live in the consequence of one’s freedom; an inauthentic existence. (Wikipedia)

4. Facticity, authenticity and inauthenticity

So a condition of your freedom is taking into account facticity, which are things that exist “in-itself”, things that are, rather than be. Confused? Here’s a list of things I accept as my facticity:

• I have a body that will eventually die
• I’m not a bird
• Yesterday I walked to the postbox
• I was born and raised in Sydney
• My upbringing has led me to believe in equality
• Sometimes I get jealous of other people
• I feel like like I have ‘free will’

These are things I understand about myself. Of course all of these can change (some requiring a larger mind shift than others), but for me, embracing my new found freedom (do, think, be whatever I want), and then trying to arbitrarily “turn off” these current understandings about myself would be a denial of my facticity. An attempt to simply forget what has already surfaced.

I must stress that none of these things are immutable. For example, perhaps over time I will learn that in fact I never did get jealous of other people. Perhaps I had misread those feelings. But here, right now, I cannot just switch off that pre-conceived notion about myself, or instantaneously wish it into non-existence. That would be an “inauthentic lifestyle”. The only way to transform that understanding would be to change the way I think in a deep and meaningful, sustained way. And often that only comes about after a particularly enlightening experience, or undergoing a long journey involving greater self-awareness and knowledge.

Which is why, taking ourselves back to that card game with Nihilism and Existentialism, although, yes, we have the freedom to now play ‘whatever we want’, there are some conditions. Namely, you must accept your facticity, and from that platform, leap into the wilderness. Even though facticity binds you to a starting point, there’s still a lot of room to move.

Denying one’s facticity isn’t the only form of inauthenticity, however. There is the flip side, which is binding too strongly to social norms, which is,

… a sort of “mimicry” where one acts as “One should.” How “One” should act is often determined by an image one has of how one such as oneself (say, a bank manager) acts. This image usually corresponds to some sort of social norm, but this does not mean that all acting in accordance with social norms is inauthentic: The main point is the attitude one takes to one’s own freedom and responsibility, and the extent to which one acts in accordance with this freedom. (Wikipedia)

Let’s use my own pre-conceived notions to illustrate:

Earlier this year I was feeling some anxiety that I was 25. It meant only 5 years to cram in a lot of living because for me 30 was a death sentence. It meant kids, husband, mortgage, stable job, no more adventures, wild partying or transient lifestyle. I mean that’s just what one does at 30, and any alternative is sad, or indicative of one’s inability to commit, get serious, be real, to make something of oneself.

But now I see how very silly that was. That I can do whatever I want at 30, and make of it and see it as whatever I want. Nobody is forcing me to do or think anything.

However, in this process, it would be unhelpful for me to deny that I was raised believing in these social norms. And because I was raised believing them, and for the most part many people still believe in them, it will not be easy to live alternatively. Many people around me will begin to go down that path at 30, and it will become increasingly lonely and difficult for me to not get sucked into that current. This is accepting (or being aware) of one’s facticity.

Battling onwards with the themes of existentialism!

2. Existence precedes essence

A central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called their “essence” instead of there being a predetermined essence that defines what it is to be a human. It is often claimed in this context that a person defines himself, which is often perceived as stating that we can “wish” to be something — anything, a bird, for instance — and then be it. According to most existentialist philosophers, however, this would be an inauthentic existence.

What is meant by the statement is that a person is (1) defined only insofar as they act and (2) that they are responsible for their actions. For example, someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, defined as a cruel person. Furthermore, by this action of cruelty they themselves are responsible for their new identity (a cruel person). This is as opposed to their genes, or ‘human nature’, bearing the blame. (Wikipedia)

I remember once when I was in high school, and no doubt troubled by typical teenage insecurities, I imagined myself having only ever lived on a desert island, without a single other soul. And I thought to myself, there, would I be funny? Dorky? Intelligent? Kind? Cruel? Without anyone to interact with, how can you ever know if you are any of these things? And if you never once ‘act’ these things, are they still a part of you?

For the French existentialist Jean-Paul Satre (1905-1980), your essence only emerges in the act of existence. Which is to say no, your essence is not locked up inside of you like a rattling genie in a bottle. You are the sum of your actions. It is the way you live, the way you talk, the way you treat others, the things that you do, that make you. And outside of that lived life, there is no essential you.

And Satre’s lifelong partner Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) carried this idea into feminism, developing the idea that “one is not born a woman, but becomes one.”

The thing is, as more work is done on the differences between the male and female brain, or looking at the way personality traits are, in actual fact, written into our genetics, not to mention hereditary mental disorders, one can’t help but wonder if some of this negates their ideas. (According to Evolutionary psychologist Nancy Etcoff in her excellent TED talk on the science of happiness, 50% of our ability to be happy is determined by genes – but there’s still 50% which is unaccounted for.)

In fact science and psychology – particularly evolutionary psychology and social darwinism – are constantly coming up with theories that attempt to explain why we act the way we do. It seems like that long list of diverse human behaviour, that seemed to embody the creativity, the chaos, the diversity and the irrationality of humanity, is one by one being linked to ever-more complicated expressions of simple, prosaic evolution. In fact if you take this to the extreme, perhaps every single thing we humans do and think links back – somehow – to evolution.

So in reply to the existentialists, can we be responsible for our actions? Are we actually free to choose? Or are our bodies simply driven by that primal urge to survive (Schopenhauer’s will to live), and making all the decisions for us?

Many psychological scientists argue that the concept of “free will” is more of a philosophic issue than a scientific one, given that it is difficult to experimentally conceptualize or to empirically test. It is also largely a semantic house of mirrors: we feel free (have “free will”) when we have the capacity to choose. However, do we have the capacity to choose what we want to choose? (And, if so, can we choose what we want to want to choose, and so on…)

Evolutionary psychology, as does psychological science in general, operates under the assumption that human behavior has causal roots. Our desires and wants, and our choices, are a complex interaction of biology and environment; we can “feel free” while our behavior is determined. (Wikipedia)

Perhaps every aspect of humanity, from the transcendental beauty of great art, the genius behind technological innovation, to the mad irrationality of love boils down to some sort of evolutionary drive. Even somewhat counter-intuitive things like altruism and homosexuality, will some day be explained as part of a survival instinct. But where does knowing that it’s all an illusionist’s ‘trick’ get us?

Evolution delivered us ‘free will’ – the feeling (note, just a feeling) that each of us is a unique entity, responsible for our actions and more sophisticated than just a bundle of primal, biological urges. And evolutionary psychologists may continue to uncover the mechanics behind the illusionist’s elaborate trick, but for now not enough links have been made for the spell to be broken. We will continue to be amazed by art, feel personal responsibility for the actions we’ve made, and, yes, feel like love is some kind of mystical connection between two souls.

Although we’ve accepted there is (or can be) value in invented meaning, despite its lack of intrinsic meaning, this doesn’t mean we simply go back to the way we were before we started thinking about all this stuff. To do so would be to deny our new-found freedom. But what to do with it and how? It was a task the existentialists dedicated themselves to.

Let’s go through some of the concepts they wrote about:

1. Focus on concrete existence

Man exists in a state of distance from the world that he nonetheless remains in the midst of. This distance is what enables man to project meaning into the disinterested world of in-itselfs. This projected meaning remains fragile, constantly facing breakdown for any reason — from a tragedy to a particularly insightful moment. In such a breakdown, we are put face to face with the naked meaninglessness of the world, and the results can be devastating.

It is in relation to the concept of the devastating awareness of meaningless that Albert Camus claimed that “there is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide” in his The Myth of Sisyphus. Although “prescriptions” against the possibly deleterious consequences of these kinds of encounters vary, from Kierkegaard’s religious “stage” to Camus’ insistence on persevering in spite of absurdity, the concern with helping people avoid living their lives in ways that put them in the perpetual danger of having everything meaningful break down is common to most existentialist philosophers. (Wikipedia)

Your relationship with meaning, now that you’ve become aware that it’s projected and invented, couldn’t possibly be the same before, if you have truly believe it (which is very difficult to do. I wouldn’t at all claim it’s penetrated me to the core yet.) Here’s an example,

Let’s say you’re an Olympic runner. And all your life you’ve felt like it was your destiny to run. It was what you were born to do! However, one evening there is a storm, and you crash your car into a tree. Your leg is damaged to the point that your Olympic career is cut prematurely short. At this point two things might happen to you:

a. You can continue that “fantasy”* (or truth?) of there being intrinsic meaning in the universe and believe that this accident was destiny also. It happened because the universe was telling you you’re meant to do something else with your life.

(Or for me another example are those parents who lose their child to bulimia or drugs or whatever, and then write a book or go on a speaking circuit, trying to convince kids not to go down the same path. As a way of coping with grief they begin to believe this is why their kid died, because it led to them going on the speaking tour, and saving other kids. When it actual fact the kid died because … well lots of kids die senselessly. All the time.)

b. You realise, with a sense of despair and bitterness, that in fact you were never “meant” to do anything. The universe had never cared one ounce about getting you on that Olympic gold podium, and hence had taken it away from you without any thought or awareness of you at all. The tragedy makes you realise there’s no meaning to anything which leaves you feeling suicidal.

Obviously the second option isn’t too good. But the first is only good if you’re steady as a rock. A brave and steely heart is required to invest so concretely in an invisible, enigmatic higher power that works in such mysterious ways, never revealing to you the plan behind all the changing circumstances that inevitably arise in life. (Religious faith may help provide that steadiness.)

Of course, there is actually a third option.

What if you had never assumed in the first place you were born to do anything. Your talent in running happened as a matter of circumstance: you were born with the ideal runner’s body and temperament, and given the right opportunities and upbringing. Upon the accident, you would obviously feel disappointed. But you wouldn’t feel devastated, because unlike the person in letter B, you never saw your self, or the purpose of your life as a fixed entity.

And in actual fact, if you took this is to the nth degree, one would never feel ashamed or proud of anything one did. Because even the self has no intrinsic meaning.

Previously I asked if you believed in a Supreme Being. But perhaps an equally pertinent question is, do you believe you have a soul? And isn’t believing one has a soul just as faith-based as believing there is a God?

Perhaps, after all, we are just cells, carbon, atoms, just like everything else. That our feelings and thoughts are just electrical impulses. And that this mass of things that is conceptually thought of as ‘me’ or ‘Monica’ is just stuff – stuff as natural and present and perpetually rearranging and recycling as every other “stuff” in this universe.

Of course, it’s very difficult to break down that belief in the ‘I’. Because everyone else keeps making you feel like an ‘I’. People are perpetually reaffirming the ‘I’ for you, and making you believe you are fat, skinny, weird, smart, dumb, funny, popular, vain, despicable, talented etc. when it actual fact you ARE none of these things. You are just stuff, and not a YOU at all.

There are times where we do forget about the ‘I’. Anytime when we’re absorbed in living. Like when you’ve just completed a 3 hour trek up a mountain and you’re looking at the most stunning 360 view and no thoughts are running through your head, you’re just there, silent and in quiet awe.

Or when you’re absorbed in work, in study, in music, in sport. Anytime when you are completely and utterly engaged in the present, and, very importantly, feeling calm, in a “zen-like state”.

(You might be utterly engaged in an activity, but if you are simultaneously overwhelmed by emotion it remains an affirmation of self. Despair, anger, shame, pride, jealousy, vanity, fear – these all come about because you feel like something has happened or may happen to you, or you’ve done something, or you are responsible for something.)

It is the little running commentary in your head and that great scope of intense, complicated emotion, where the ‘I’ lives. It is that which separates us from babies, animals, plants, the mountains and sky. We, unlike them, are conscious (perhaps falsely) of being. And, “this distance is what enables man to project meaning into the disinterested world of in-itselfs.”

Removing one’s ego (the goal of Buddhism, by the way) does not mean the removal of all responsibility from one’s action. It simply means building an awareness that one’s actions are not attached to a non-existent self, but are intimately connected to everything else – to the point of dissolution.

Perhaps you’ve already noticed that I am planning to adopt much of the Buddhist approach into my life. But I don’t want to get too sidetracked, for now let’s continue on with the Existential concepts in the next post!

*I called it “fantasy”, but strictly speaking I wouldn’t claim FOR SURE that there isn’t intrinsic meaning, only that we don’t and probably can’t know whether it exists or not. When you don’t want to invest in absolutes, you have to begin bandying a lot of “maybes” out there!

The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. (Wikipedia)

So said Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) in an 1835 letter to his friend Peter Wilhelm Lund. It’s a strange idea – a “truth” that is true for me.

After all, isn’t truth meant to be like fact – verified and indisputable? Reality. Actuality. The Truth, according to Dictionary.com, is an “ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience.”

But here Kierkegaard has transformed the concrete Truth into something far more slippery. In one sentence he has bedded it in subjectivity, brought it right back down to perceived experienced. The truth is different for every individual, as is the “meaning(s) of life”. Both truth and purpose are unstable, and completely and utterly UP TO YOU.

And so began the time in philosophy dubbed existentialism.

Here’s an analogy that works for me:

You are floating – no – existing out in space, in nothingness, and you have a pack of cards. You are building a house with those cards, sometimes adding cards, sometimes removing. The shape of the house changes as you do this, but you’re not thinking too hard about it.

Suddenly Nihilism comes along and says, “what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m playing with these cards,” you reply.

Nihilism is shaking its head, and grinning wickedly. “But those cards doesn’t exist. They’re all in your head.”

Suddenly you look down and the imaginary cards have disappeared. You can’t believe all along those cards had just been in your head. Crazy!

But now you have nothing to do, and it gets you quite depressed. Nihilism wanders away, laughing.

Existentialism comes along and seeing you inquires, “what’s up?”

“Nothing. I was playing with these cards, but then I realised they were totally imaginary, and now I’m pretty depressed because there’s nothing to do. Frankly, I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” you reply.

Existentialism sits down in front of you and grabs you by the hand, full of passion. “Wasn’t it better when you were playing cards?”

You nod glumly.

“Well play with the imaginary cards then! Even though you know they’re imaginary, and you don’t have to play with them, existence is better if you are. So imagine them back!”

And like a dawning sun you slowly realise Existentialism is right. Even though you’ll always be aware that the cards you’re playing with are imaginary, that doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy playing them!!

“And guess what?” Existentialism pips up, full of sincerity in its eyes and a warm smile on its face. “You don’t even have to play cards. You can play anything!“

Well actually we’re not completely free of all constraints. But that’s coming in another post.

For those of you who found my story a little too optimistic, the French-Algerian writer Albert Camus (1913-1960) used this analogy in his book The Myth of Sisyphus (I’m going to write about more him later):

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus uses the analogy of the Greek myth to demonstrate the futility of existence. In the myth, Sisyphus is condemned for eternity to roll a rock up a hill, but when he reaches the summit, the rock will roll to the bottom again. Camus believes that this existence is pointless but that Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning and purpose in his task, simply by continually applying himself to it. (Wikipedia)

The thing about nihilism is that everyone recognises it’s no way to live. In fact, some of the most famous philosophers to write on the subject sought to find escape hatches.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), a Prussian philosopher, is a name often associated with nihilism:

Nietzsche claimed the ‘death’ of God would eventually lead to the loss of any universal perspective on things, and along with it any coherent sense of objective truth. Instead we would retain only our own multiple, diverse, and fluid perspectives. This view has acquired the name “perspectivism“. Alternatively, the death of God may lead beyond bare perspectivism to outright nihilism, the belief that nothing has any importance and that life lacks purpose. (Wikipedia)

And yet Nietzsche did not consider all values of equal worth. Which is to say, just because morality is a human invention, doesn’t mean it isn’t a project worth working on. Nietzsche appreciated nihilism, but only as a stage in human development that we could one day overcome, following which we would build a new and true foundation upon which to live.

Nietzsche saw light in a concept he called the Übermensch, which he expounded in his 1883 novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra (a book I currently have on order.)

The Übermensch is an exercise of action and life: one must give value to their existence by behaving as if one’s very existence were a work of art. Nietzsche believed that the Übermensch “exercise” would be a necessity for human survival in the post-religious era. (Wikipedia)

That first sentence caused a little “bing!” sound to go off in my head. After all, do we not come to a piece of art accepting of it’s own self-created reality? For example, when you listen to a piece of music, or watch a film, it is like entering a different world. And even though it’s “fictional” – that is to say creates it’s own world of logic, colour, textures, emotions etc. without any direct relationship with ‘reality’ – we are still greatly moved and emotionally invested, despite leaving our own ‘true’ world behind, during the experience of the piece.

And perhaps that’s how we should see life. Nihilism shows us that nothing is “real” in a permanent, absolute, transcendental way. But we are living, and experiencing something, albeit for the short time that constitutes one lifetime. So why not, as in art, accept the world it is offering – admire it’s beauty, allow yourself to be moved, and experience it. Just like the mini-reality of every art piece, something is triggering us to have feelings and thoughts (LIFE!). There may be no concrete reality behind these sensations, but that does not mean we should discard those very sensations as worthless.

Because beyond those sensations, there is nothing.

The analogy with art only works in the sense that like our experience with art, we must see life as a contained experience. And how even with the knowledge that it is ‘untrue’, we can enjoy it and find meaning in it. What happens within the realm of that piece of art, or life, doesn’t matter in any permanent sense but you accept what you are offered and ‘go with it’, so to speak.

However I don’t think the analogy works when trying to decide, in practical terms, how to live one’s life. That is, morality.

How do we make choices, when we ‘know’ nothing has any inherent value. When you take away all inherent value (and in fact, all universal truth), does this not lead to a ‘nothing/anything goes’ situation. When nothing is valid, everything is valid! When everything is valid, nothing is valid. On what basis do we make decisions when deep down inside we know nothing is actually (or essentially) right, wrong, good, bad or evil? What happens when the very foundation upon which all ethics is based, suddenly has no substance?

As with all the existentialists to follow him, there’s a high degree of paradox in the thinking of Nietzsche:

Sometimes Nietzsche may seem to have very definite opinions on what he regards as moral or as immoral. Note, however, that one can explain Nietzsche’s moral opinions without attributing to him the claim of their truth. For Nietzsche, after all, we needn’t disregard a statement merely because it expresses something false. On the contrary, he depicts falsehood as essential for “life”. Interestingly enough, he mentions a “dishonest lie”, (discussing Wagner in The Case of Wagner) as opposed to an “honest” one, recommending further to consult Plato with regard to the latter, which should give some idea of the layers of paradox in his work.

Which, I believe, leads us to the concept of facticity and authenticity, that can be found in the work of 20th century existentialists. But let’s leave that for another post!

It’s one of those wonderful questions if you do, and frightening, I’d-Rather-Not-Think-About-It questions if you don’t, or you’re not sure.

Because without God, there are no transcendental, absolute values. All values are invented. And once you’re in that territory, you’re in the terrifying realm of nihilism.

What’s nihilism? To answer that question I do, what I always do when I’m not sure of something. I turned to the internet. In this case, Wikipedia.

Existential nihilism argues that life is without meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Moral nihilists assert that morality does not exist, and subsequently there are no moral values with which to uphold a rule or to logically prefer one action over another. The term nihilism is sometimes used in association with anomie to explain the general mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence that one may develop upon realizing there are no necessary norms, rules, or laws.

ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING!!

If you’re not really sure what I’m talking about here, let me give you an example.

Murder is bad.

Most of us instinctively feel that the act of murder is intrinsically bad. That is, it has badness imbued in it. It has properties of bad. It is and always will be bad.

But in light of a nihilistic outlook, murder is only bad because we humans say it is bad. Not because the act itself is bad, in any way. And not only that, we humans saying it’s bad is an act of total, creative invention. It’s a made-up rule that serves it’s purpose because it’s useful for our society or survival.

In one of my previous posts I talked about the way I, almost arbitrarily, chose a life-calling; to improve the lives of the less fortunate. But from a nihilistic point of view, one would ask, well what’s the point in doing that? What’s the point in not-doing that? There is no way of discriminating between the two paths, because neither has, nor the results have, any intrinsic value.

At the end of the day, if there is no God, there is no one to tally the results and punish/ reward us. And so aren’t all actions deduced to, does it benefit me? And even the answer to that has no intrinsic value (as in, it doesn’t matter if you benefit or not … because nothing actually matters. Our puny lives make no difference to the cold and silent, eternal universe.)

One only has to look at the different attitudes cultures, civilizations and religions have towards sex, family, death, work, war, truth, community, the individual, politics, nature etc. to realise how diverse and inconstant perspectives are. And without faith in a higher being, no objective standard exists to judge them against. (These concepts are further explored in cultural and moral relativism, which I’ll look at in another post.)

And of course if you take nihilism to it’s nth degree you get this …

An extreme form of metaphysical nihilism is commonly defined as the belief that existence itself does not exist. One way of interpreting such a statement would be: It is impossible to distinguish ‘existence’ from ‘non-existence’ as there are no objective qualities, and thus a reality, that one state could possess in order to discern between the two. If one cannot discern existence from its negation, then the concept of existence has no meaning; or in other words, does not ‘exist’ in any meaningful way. ‘Meaning’ in this sense is used to argue that as existence has no higher state of reality, which is arguably its necessary and defining quality, existence itself means nothing. It could be argued that this belief, once combined with epistemological nihilism, leaves one with an all-encompassing nihilism in which nothing can be said to be real or true as such values do not exist.

Where lies our salvation from this paralysing realisation? Never fear, two centuries of philosophers have been on the case!

My existential journey has taken me through a forest of awesome Wikipedia pages, which I’ll write about over the next few weeks, and tag with “Monica’s Mind-Blowing Trip Through Existential Philosophy”; from Schopenhauer and Buddhism, to Camus and Absurdism!