July 6, 2024
Someone asked why we would take care of a family member who did wrong upon another family member? I mentioned how they were an elder and how that demands a certain level of unequivocal, unquestioned respect. He probed further and I didn’t have much to say beyond that. A sense of duty is something we’re very accustomed to have, and I’ve never thought super critically about why it’s there. I just assumed it’s a shared custom: you have it or you fake it until you do.
Existentialism is an individual reckoning? It’s an attempt to make sense of your life in the midst of billions of others: now, in the past, and in the future.
Existence is verifiable: you have an object in front of you and you assert that it exists. We can do the same with ourselves. But the object itself doesn’t have to question this or is aware of the fact that it exists. Existentialism, as a subject of study, however, implies there is some kind of meaning to question and therefore not only do we exist, but we also ask “why?”
Well, religion gives a nice plug to this hole. God put us here. Now the inquisitive might ask why God put us here, but an existentialist by definition doesn’t need to ask that question, since the question only applies to you as the person who exists. Existentialism demands responsibility. If we are asking this question, the one looking for answers about why we're here, we’ve decided religion is insufficient and we look elsewhere. Now, us, as the people who exist have to seek and find the answer for ourselves and with no other existence to question—why we exist has to come from something much more internal.
Sartré has his work: Existentialism is a Humanism. In it, he gives his reproaches to arguments against existentialism, particularly ones by the realists and Abrahamic theists (Christians, specifically). He starts off by stating them in a way that articulates why it feels or maybe now I can say felt so aversive to me.
Existentialism feels like a form of very self-absorbed contemplation. And this kind of contemplation is a luxury, it’s “bourgeoise philosophy.” It is an atheistic school? For the reasons in my anecdote, if you decide to follow the path of the existentialist, it’s because religious explanation of your being wasn’t enough. This excessive contemplation is also not only indulgent: it’s a choice that you make to walk into a pit of despair. Dwelling, in this respect, is a waste of time when there is another mindset you could adopt that washes it all away.
But in reading through it, I buy a lot of the takes. For one, existentialism is a form of responsibility. Here, we understand that man makes choices, and these choices are representative of his purpose and his values, and in making those choices it’s not only a representation of who he is, his values, and purpose; but also the values and purpose that he thinks should be reflected in all of mankind. Man is nothing if he exists but his existence lacks essence—and above all, Man is his meaning.
Therefore, we make all these choices as an existentialist, and therefore we carry not only the weight of our own being on our shoulders, but everyone else’s as well.
Man chooses himself and by choosing for himself he chooses for all men.
He explains how we almost paint a portrait of our selves with these value-driven actions, intentional or not, and they are public works that people interpret. So as I come to understand, if someone can say you are someone who is driven by these set of values, slowly we see the emergence of some unified framework for values in our communities, and in mankind. Communities reveal the values they care about, norms begin to form, people get exiled, and others get drawn in. But the emergence of groups that all collectively care about the same things only happens when the majority takes on the burden of existentialism at all. This is our first nudge to contextualize moral subjectivity together with existentialism.
Another point I found interesting was that existentialism may seem atheistic, but at least in this context, it’s more like a tandem philosophical school. Whether you believe how you came to be was because of God or not, and whether the values you care about were written in your holy book or not, if the meaning behind humanity is meaning itself, then it’s almost like existentialism is this moral checkpoint.
We take responsibility for all that we do, and then as a disciple you decide how much it aligns with the principles of the religion that you subscribe to. It’s an alternative to “quietism,” which is this idea of letting others do what you can’t. You do everything, you choose to refrain. And because everything exists within the context of your existence, everything else is irrelevant. Honestly, even though as I was reading I could see the contrast between quietism and existentialism, it’s pretty unclear to me now. Perhaps, the quietism refers to the deference of seeking meaning itself: but existentialism claims it’s already kind of endowed and you play a game of back and forth and iterative interpretation to be able to articulate what is sort of already there.
So now, we also understand subjectivity and moral relativism. Sartré describes two female characters of these two books who are in love with men that are in love with other women. The first, Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, decides that it is right for her to stay in love but never pursue this man. This is what she claims is right and she sticks by this rightness. The second, La Sanseverina in Stendhal’s Chartreuse de Parme, believes that life is love and in wanting to live a full life she should at least try and be with this man. Sartré, an existentalist, thinks that neither of these women are wrong. I guess it’s the intentionality from both women, each of them fully expressing who they are, what they believe in, who they believe in—they express that unrelentlessly. And maybe that is the most important thing: taking full responsibility for yourself, and with that, everyone else.