DE Weekly: Augustine, Sartre, & Ex Nihilo
Creatio ex nihilo is a Latin phrase which means “creation out of nothing.” In a religious context, it infers that God created the universe and everything in it out of absolutely nothing: no pre-existing materials. It differentiates the act of creation in the human sense (say, me creating this newsletter) from God’s creation.
St. Augustine of Hippo, one of my favorite writers, once said that in light of this creatio ex nihilo, every creature on the earth carries with it the heritage of nonbeing. In other words, there is a palpable sense of true nothingness that haunts us and every other finite thing in this world.
DE Weekly: Monism, Dualism, & Phenomenological Ontology
Like any philosophy, Existentialism boasts a wide array of philosophical thought, owing to the varying worldviews of its most prolific authors; Albert Camus is not the same as Jean-Paul Sartre is not the same as Martin Heidegger is not the same as Søren Kierkegaard. However, there are consistent through points that can be traced in the writings of all of the above.
That being said, we might ask ourselves: is there a common ontology that underpins the whole of existential thought (or at least much of it)?
DE Weekly: Maybe, Watts, & the Parable of the Chinese Farmer
Last week, I shared some ideas from Taoism, the ancient Chinese philosophy that emphasizes living in harmony with all forces in the universe throughout your life. I then connected the ideas to the Existentialism of the twentieth century. This week, I would like to highlight a writer who drew from the former to inspire the latter: Alan Watts.
Alan Watts was a British and American writer who called himself a “philosophical entertainer” (a rather apt moniker, I might add). He made his name popularizing the aforementioned Taoist philosophy for Western audiences, as well as Buddhist, Hindu, and other Eastern ideas.
DE Weekly: Traffic, Taoism, & the Illusion of Control
Imagine you leave for work one morning, hop in your car, and take your usual route, only this time, you end up in a standstill traffic jam. The cars ahead of you are not moving, the cars behind you are not moving, and you are not moving.
You try switching lanes: the other lanes move no faster. You try searching the horizon for the cause of the slowdown: you cannot see anything.
DE Weekly: Husserl, Aristotle, & Pyrrhonism
Would you believe me if I told you the ideas that led to the development of Existentialism appeared as early as the fourth century BC? The ideas I mean are those of suspension of judgment toward what we perceive, skepticism about the order of things, and the desire to adopt a tranquil disposition in relation to the world and the human condition.
Traditionally, philosophical ideas that we would call “existential” in nature are traced back to Søren Kierkegaard, the eighteenth-century Danish philosopher and theologian who approached the ideas through a Christian lens.
DE Weekly: Nagel, Irony, & the Backward Step
“Most people feel on occasion that life is absurd, and some feel it vividly and continually. Yet the reasons usually offered in defense of this conviction are patently inadequate: they could not really explain why life is absurd. Why then do they provide a natural expression for the sense that it is?”
This is the opening paragraph of Thomas Nagel’s 1971 essay “The Absurd.” Nagel is an American philosopher and University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University. Among many other things, his body of work explores the philosophy of mind.
DE Weekly: Creativity, Greene, & Until the End of Time
A little over a year ago, I read a great book by American physicist Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, called Until the End of Time. The book explores the history of the universe from its beginnings to its eventual heat death, with a special focus on life and consciousness in the in between.
For someone who has little to no knowledge of universe-level physics (but who still has a wild fascination with such topics), I really enjoyed this book; Greene does a fantastic job explaining complex scientific processes with the reader and making sense of the material.
DE Weekly: Benatar, the Asymmetry Argument, & Camus’s Rebel
Earlier this week, I came across a post on social media from a so-called “anti-natalist,” someone who believes that it is wrong to have children, and that we should not do so. Their reasons, they claim, are philosophical. “When you bring someone into this world,” this person wrote, “you are introducing them to a lifetime of pain and suffering.” The conclusion they draw from this is that it is morally wrong to procreate.
I wish this view of humanity was a one-off. Alas, that is not the case; there have been whole philosophical treatises written on the subject aiming to advance the anti-natalist view.
DE Weekly: Mortality, Psyche, & Kierkegaard At a Graveside
The English word “psyche” comes from the Greek psyche (𝜓𝜐 𝜒𝜂′), meaning soul, self, life, mind, or inner being. It derives from the word psucho (𝜓𝜐 𝜒𝜔), meaning “breath” or “to breathe.” This is because the psyche, that is, the soul, is the animating energy behind the self in each person.
In the modern day, I wish we would treat the words “psyche” and “soul” in the English language as interchangeable. They should be, in fact; after all, when one feels one’s soul is lacking in something they seek a psychologist.
DE Weekly: Aestheticism, Wilde, & The Picture of Dorian Gray
“I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After-life to spell: And by and by my Soul return’d to me, And answer’d: ‘I Myself am Heav’n and Hell.’” This poem from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is repeated in a film I watched this past week, the 1945 adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The poem is read throughout the movie by the film’s namesake, Dorian Gray. Sitting for a portrait painted by his friend Basil Hallward, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a man who lives only for pleasure, and suggests to Dorian that men should pursue only their sensual pleasures.