DE Weekly: Existentialism in Everyday Life
A philosophy that cannot be in some way applied to everyday life, both to the overarching motivations and the minutiae alike, cannot be very useful to us at all. One thing I have tried to demonstrate in writing about Existentialism––a famously obtuse and difficult philosophy for many––is that it can, in fact, be applied in the consideration of both.
What does it mean to “apply” Existentialism in everyday life? What would it look like in practice?
DE Weekly: Freedom, Responsibility, & Political Existentialism
Much like other philosophies, Existentialism carries with it a political dimension, insofar as it can be applied to the larger realm of groups of people and societies in general. For example, in the same ways that the arguments laid out in Plato’s The Republic have provided discourse for human politics, so have the writings of Existentialism been applied.
One does not need to look too far in the literature to see this: Albert Camus’s The Rebel and many of Jean-Paul Sartre’s short stories (“The Wall,” “The Childhood of a Leader,” and “Dirty Hands,” to name just a few) all have something to do with our political nature.
DE Weekly: The History, Development, and Precursors of Existentialism
While it is true that Existentialism arguably did not cement itself as a real, solidified philosophy until the twentieth century, its core tenets were explored and espoused over the centuries preceding the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, who organized it into a cohesive school of thought.
I have written about how certain ideas we would today call “existentialist” in nature can be found as far back as Aristotle’s time, can be gleaned from theologians such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, and were present in the work of Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and others.
DE Weekly: Situatedness, the Crowd, & the Limits of Freedom
Last week, I wrote about radical freedom in Existentialism: a facet of our human condition that gives us the ability to choose which actions we take in our lives, and which contributes, ultimately, to the outcomes of our lives. I wrote also about the anxiety of choice we all encounter as a result of this, and the despair that might follow.
Further, I described what “genuine” free will might mean for us as humans, and how to exercise it appropriately.
DE Weekly: The Anxiety of Choice, Despair, & Genuine Free Will
In Existentialism, freedom is one of the basest conditions of human existence that contributes to our human nature. Our freedom is as radical as it is inescapable; as humans, the existentialists would say, we have no predetermined purpose or meaning, meaning it up to us to define our essence through our own choices.
In writing that we are “condemned to be free,” Jean-Paul Sartre was emphasizing the true inescapability of the level of our radical freedom. That we are unable to shirk this level of sheer responsibility for our own lives might lead to despair.
DE Weekly: Jaspers, Existenz, & the Encompassing
I have only mentioned the German-Swiss philosopher Karl Jaspers a few times by way of sharing his quotes in some newsletters over the years, but I have not dedicated an entire newsletter to him and his writings yet. Today, I’ll share a bit about this man whose influence on modern psychiatry and on Existentialism should not be overlooked.
Jaspers defined philosophy not as simply something we think about or write about in order to “understand” big ideas, rather, he believed philosophy was something we undertake as an “active search.”
DE Weekly: Nietzsche, The Greatest Weight, & Eternal Recurrence
“What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence––even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’”
That idea comes to us in the shape of a thought experiment, under Aphorism 341, “The Greatest Weight,” from Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science; it is an idea that has come to be called “eternal recurrence.”
DE Weekly: Bad Faith, Sartre’s Waiter, & Who Are We?
I have mentioned Jean-Paul Sartre's idea of mauvaise foi––“bad faith”––in countless newsletters over the years, as it is a crucial concept to understand when discussing such Existentialist ideas as the burden of choice, authenticity, and radical freedom. But, what does bad faith actually look like in action? And, what are its consequences?
Sartre defines bad faith as a self-deception whereby we either convince ourselves or allow ourselves to be convinced that we lack the freedom necessary to escape the anxiety of being through exercising our personal responsibility to do so.
DE Weekly: Frank Jackson, Physicalism, & Mary’s Room
Last week, I wrote about Thomas Nagel’s 1971 essay “What Is It Like to Be A Bat?”. I emphasized how one of the conclusions of the essay is that we cannot fully understand everything if we use only a physicalist, materialist lens; some things require a deeper understanding of mind and consciousness.
Today, I’m going to introduce you to a thought experiment that reinforces this notion. It was invented by Australian philosopher Frank Jackson and is called “Mary’s Room.” It is one of the strongest challenges to reductionist physicalism and an interesting foray into the philosophy of mind.
DE Weekly: Nagel, the Mind-Body Problem, & What Is It Like to Be A Bat?
Earlier this year, I wrote about American philosopher Thomas Nagel’s 1971 essay “The Absurd,” a work exploring the absurdity of life so central in Existentialism, arguing that we should take a “backward step” from our own perceptions to view the irony in our human condition.
I mentioned then that, although that essay is definitely interesting, I believe Nagel’s most interesting ideas have to do with consciousness and subjective experience.