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: Regret, Sunk Cost, & The Wrong Train Theory
There is a metaphor for life often attributed to a Japanese proverb which is called the “Wrong Train Theory.” The proverb goes something like this: “If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station. The longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be.”
The Wrong Train Theory suggests that if you are on a train that you thought was taking you where you needed to go or wanted to be, but you realize after a time that you’ve boarded the wrong one, you should get out at the very next stop.
DE Weekly: Free Will, Good Faith, & Bruce Almighty
Free Will is at the center of existential philosophy. The existentialists agreed: as humans, we possess a radical freedom which allows us the opportunity to create meaning in our lives through our own choices. This opportunity is not to be taken lightly, however; with this level of freedom comes real responsibility.
Why did Jean-Paul Sartre say we are “condemned” to be free? It is for this very reason. Being as it is that we are responsible for our choices, it implies that we are responsible also for how our choices affect other people.
DE Weekly: Consciousness, Faith, & Free Will
The major question the existentialists sought to answer was, “What is the meaning of life?” Complementary to that question is another: does life even have meaning? Of course, they weren’t the first philosophers to ask this question. People had been thinking about this for thousands of years before them.
There are a lot of different ways to approach the potentiality of a grand, overarching meaning to life itself. Existentialism attempted to ground meaning in what we can actually see; it placed our perception above all else and used it to explain what might give each of our lives meaning.