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Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life
Robert C. Solomon, Ph.D.
Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin
Professor Robert C. Solomon is Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and
Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Solomon is also the recipient of several teaching awards and honors, including the
1973 Standard Oil Outstanding Teaching Award,
the University of Texas Presidential Associates’ Teaching Award (twice), a Fulbright Lecture Award, University Research and National Endowment for the Humanities grants, and the Chad Oliver Plan Iwe Teaching Award (1998). He is also a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Professor Solomon is the author of The Passions, In the Spirit of Hegel, About Love, From Hegel to Existentialism, The Joy of Philosophy, and A Passion for Justice and is the coauthor, with Kathleen M. Higgins, of What Nietzsche Really Said. He has authored and edited articles and books on Nietzsche, including Nietzsche and Reading Nietzsche with Kathleen M. Higgins. His most recent books, also with Kathleen Higgins, are A Short History of Philosophy and A Passion for Wisdom. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
In addition, Professor Solomon writes about business ethics in such books as Above the Bottom Line, It’s Good Business, Ethics and Excellence, New World of Business, and A Better Way to Think about Business. He regularly consults and provides programs for a variety of corporations and organizations concerned about business ethics. He studied biology at the University of Pennsylvania and philosophy and psychology at the University of Michigan. He is married to Kathleen M. Higgins. Professor Solomon has taught at Princeton University and the University of Pittsburgh and often teaches in New Zealand and Australia. ■
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INTRODUCTION
Professor Biography ............................................................................i
Course Scope .....................................................................................1
LECTURE GUIDES
LECTURE 1
What Is Existentialism? ......................................................................6
LECTURE 2
Albert Camus—The Stranger, Part I...................................................9
LECTURE 3
Camus—The Stranger, Part II ..........................................................12
LECTURE 4
Camus—The Myth of Sisyphus ........................................................16
LECTURE 5
Camus—The Plague and The Fall ...................................................20
LECTURE 6
Camus—The Fall, Part II ..................................................................24
LECTURE 7
Søren Kierkegaard—“On Becoming a Christian” .............................27
LECTURE 8
Kierkegaard on Subjective Truth ......................................................31
LECTURE 9
Kierkegaard’s Existential Dialectic ....................................................34
LECTURE 10
Friedrich Nietzsche on Nihilism and the Death of God .....................38
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LECTURE 11
Nietzsche, the “Immoralist” ...............................................................41
LECTURE 12
Nietzsche on Freedom, Fate, and Responsibility .............................44
LECTURE 13
Nietzsche—The Übermensch and the Will to Power........................47
LECTURE 14
Three Grand Inquisitors—Dostoevsky, Kafka, Hesse ......................51
LECTURE 15
Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology ........................................54
LECTURE 16
Heidegger on the World and the Self ...............................................58
LECTURE 17
Heidegger on “Authenticity” 61
LECTURE 18
Jean-Paul Sartre at War 64
LECTURE 19
Sartre on Emotions and Responsibility.............................................68
LECTURE 20
Sartre’s Phenomenology ..................................................................71
LECTURE 21
Sartre on “Bad Faith” ........................................................................75
LECTURE 22
Sartre’s Being-for-Others and No Exit ..............................................79
LECTURE 23
Sartre on Sex and Love ....................................................................82
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LECTURE 24
From Existentialism to Postmodernism ............................................85
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
Glossary ...........................................................................................88 Biographical Notes ...........................................................................91 Bibliography ......................................................................................94
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No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life
Scope:
E
xistentialism is, in my view, the most exciting and important philosophical movement of the past century and a half. Fifty years after the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre gave it its identity and one hundred and fi fty years after the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard gave it its initial impetus, existentialism continues to win new enthusiasts and, in keeping with its still exciting and revolutionary message, vehement critics.
The message of existentialism, unlike that of many more obscure and academic philosophical movements, is about as simple as can be. It is that every one of us, as an individual, is responsible—responsible for what we do, responsible for who we are, responsible for the way we face and deal with the world, responsible, ultimately, for the way the world is. It is, in a very short phrase, the philosophy of “no excuses!” Life may be diffi cult; circumstances may be impossible. There may be obstacles, not least of which are our own personalities, characters, emotions, and limited means or intelligence. But, nevertheless, we are responsible. We cannot shift that burden onto God, or nature, or the ways of the world. If there is a God, we choose to believe. If nature made us one way, it is up to us to decide what we are to do with what nature gives us—whether to go along or fi ght back, to modify or transcend nature. As the delightfully priggish Kate Hepburn says to a wonderfully vulgar Humphrey Bogart in the movie The African Queen, “Nature is what we are put on this earth to rise above.” That is what existentialism is all about. We are responsible for ourselves.
There are no excuses.
But to say that the basic message of existentialism is quite simple and straightforward is not to say that the philosophers or the philosophies that make up the movement are simple and straightforward. The movement itself is something of a fabrication. None of the major existentialist fi gures, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Camus—only excepting Sartre— would recognize themselves as part of a “movement” at all. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were both ferocious individualists who vehemently rejected all movements. To belong to a philosophical movement, each of them would have said, would be to show cowardice and a lack of integrity, to be simply one of the “herd.” Heidegger was deeply offended when he was linked with Sartre as one of the existentialists, and he publicly denounced the association. Camus and Sartre once were friends, but they quarreled over politics and Camus also broke the association and publicly rejected it.
Many of the other writers and philosophers who have been associated with the movement would have been equally hesitant to embrace the title had they known of it. The main exceptions were those who have wanted or needed to derive some fame and notoriety by associating themselves with existentialism. In the 1950s in the United States, for example, Norman Mailer proudly took up the title, giving it his own defi nition, “hip.”
The existentialists’ writings, too, are by no means simple and straightforward. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche write beautifully but in such challenging, often disjointed, exhortations that trying to summarize or systematize their thoughts is something of a hopeless venture. Heidegger is among the most diffi cult writers in the entire history of philosophy, and even Sartre—a lucid literary writer when he wants to be—imitates some of the worst elements of Heidegger’s notorious style. Much of the challenge of this course of lectures, accordingly, is to free the exciting and revolutionary message of existentialism from its often formidable textual enclosures.
The course begins, after a brief introduction to the historical context and the very notion of “existentialism,” with a discussion of the twentieth-century writer and philosopher Albert Camus (1913–1960). Chronologically, Camus is already late in the game. (We will trace existentialist ideas as far back as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the mid-nineteenth century, but we will not explore those fi gures—say Socrates or Saint Augustine—who with some justifi cation might be called their predecessors.) Philosophically, it is often said that Camus is more of a literary fi gure, a lyrical essayist, than a philosopher. But the art of persuasive personal writing rather than dry philosophical analysis is one of the earmarks of existentialism. (Even the obscure writings of Martin Heidegger [1889–1976] are remarkable in their rhetorical and emotional effi cacy.)
In this sense, Camus is exemplary in his combination of deep contemplation and often poetic writing and, because his ideas are less complex than the probing and systematic works of the other existential writers before him, he makes an ideal beginning. We will start with his most famous novel, The Stranger, published in the early 1940s, which combines a disturbingly “fl at” descriptive style with a horrifying sequence of events, introducing us to a character whose reactions to the world are indeed “strange.” It is our reaction to this character, however, that makes the novel so deeply philosophical. What is it that makes him so strange? The answer to that question starts us thinking about the way we think about ourselves and each other, what we take for granted and do not normally notice.
After an analysis of The Stranger, I want to take us through a number of Camus’s later works, beginning with a philosophical essay he wrote about the same time, The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he introduces his infamous concept of “The Absurd.” Then, in Lectures 5 and 6, I want to examine two later novels, The Plague and The Fall (the last novel Camus published in his lifetime, although his daughter recently published an unfi nished novel he was working on at the time of his death). My aim in these fi rst half dozen lectures will be to set a certain mood for the rest of the course, a rebellious, restless, yet thoroughly conscientious mood, which I believe Camus exemplifi es both in his writings and in his life.
In Lectures 7 through 9, I want to turn to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) and his revolutionary work. Kierkegaard was a deeply religious philosopher—a pious Christian—and his existentialist thought was devoted to the question, “What does it mean to be—or rather, what does it mean to become—a Christian?” We should thus be advised that, contrary to some popular misunderstandings, existentialism is by no means an anti-religious or unspiritual philosophy. It can and often does embrace God, as well as a host of visions of the world that we can, without apology, call “spiritual.” (We will see that Nietzsche and Heidegger both embrace such visions, although in very different ways.)
In Lectures 10 through 13, I want to consider in some detail the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and his role in this rather eccentric movement. Nietzsche is perhaps best known for his bold declaration “God is dead.” He is also well known as a self-proclaimed “immoralist.” In fact, both of these phrases are misleading. Nietzsche was by no means the fi rst person to say that God is dead (Martin Luther had said it three centuries before), and Nietzsche himself was anything but an immoral person. He attacks morality—or rather, he attacks one conception of morality—but nevertheless he defends a profound view of ethics and human nature.
In Lecture 14, I want to turn briefl y to three diverse but exemplary fi gures from the history of literature. All three display existentialist themes and temperaments in their works: Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), the great Russian novelist; Franz Kafka (1883–1924), the brilliant Czech novelist and story writer; and Hermann Hesse (1877–1962), a twentieth-century Swiss writer who combined a fascination with Asian philosophy with a profoundly Nietzschean interest and temperament.
In Lecture 15, I would like to briefl y introduce the philosophical method of a philosopher who could not be further from the existentialist temperament but yet had a profound infl uence on both Heidegger and Sartre. He is the German-Czech philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), who invented a philosophical technique called “phenomenology.” Both Heidegger and Sartre, at least at the beginning of their careers, thought of themselves as phenomenologists. In the rest of that lecture and in Lectures 16 and 17, I would like to consider Martin Heidegger’s very diffi cult but extremely insightful philosophy.
Finally, in Lectures 18 through 23, I want to consider the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), and in Lecture 24, I would like to fi nish with a comparison and contrast with French philosophy since his time. My suggestion will be that much of what is best in “postmodernism” is taken more or less directly from Sartre, despite the fact that he is typically attacked as the very antithesis of postmodernism. Existentialism, I want to argue, was and is not just another French intellectual fashion but a timely antidote to some of the worst self-(mis)understandings of the end of the century.
How should one approach these lectures? My advice on the lecture on The Stranger is a good example of how I think each lecture should be approached. Although the lectures are self-contained, it would be ideally desirable to read the “Essential Reading” (in this case, the novel) before hearing or viewing the lecture. That way, you come to the lecture ready to question and challenge with your interpretation and ideas. This will be true even for the very diffi cult readings from Heidegger and Sartre. It is very helpful to have contact with their style and vocabulary even if the ideas at fi rst seem impenetrable. Initial contact is even more desirable with our other two major authors, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Both write in a strikingly personal, provocative style, and nothing will impress the reader more than an immediate, fi rst-hand confrontation with their witty and sometimes shocking aphorisms and observations.
Of course, many if not most viewers of the lectures will not have the opportunity to read the material before every lecture. I do suggest, however, that some attempt be made to read the essential material soon after. (I hope the lectures entice one to do so.) The questions are designed to help the reader straighten out the ideas and vocabulary, make various comparisons, and most important, work out his or her own views regarding the material in the lectures. In general, the introductory questions presume only a hearing of the lectures and perhaps some of the essential reading. The advanced questions invite further reading and more extensive thought.
Existentialism is, fi rst of all, a philosophy of life, a philosophy about who we are. The ultimate intent of the course, accordingly, is not only to inform the viewer about a very exciting philosophy but also to enrich his or her life and make all of us think about who we are in a very new and bold way. The main texts for the lectures can be found in Robert C. Solomon, ed., Existentialism (New York: McGraw Hill/Modern Library, 1974). Secondary texts that follow the perspective of the lectures can be found in Robert C. Solomon, From Rationalism to Existentialism (Rowman and Littlefi eld, 1979), and Continental Philosophy Since 1750 (Oxford University Press, 1988). ■
What Is Existentialism?
Lecture 1
As for metaphysical freedom, whether there really is freedom, free will, in the very nature of things—this is a question none of these philosophers address very directly, except in the negative. Nietzsche, for example, makes fun of it and says that the very idea of a free will, of a subject who is detached from the causal nature of the universe, is really just a kind of illusion.
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xistentialism is a movement, a “sensibility,” not a set of doctrines. It is not, as it is too often said, a necessarily “gloomy” philosophy.
It is, rather, invigorating and positive. Nor is it necessarily atheistic, a form of “secular humanism.” Søren Kierkegaard, the “fi rst” existentialist, was profoundly religious. In a world pervaded by victim psychology, existentialism offers a refreshing sense of empowerment.
Existential attitudes can be found as far back as ancient times. It is possible to trace existentialism, defi ned one way or another, back to Socrates and Augustine, perhaps even to Heraclitus. We will limit our examination to fi ve defi nitive fi gures, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre. They do not form a “school” or share any particular outlook on religion and politics. Kierkegaard is a pious Christian; Nietzsche and Sartre are atheists. Kierkegaard despised politics; Sartre was a Marxist; Camus, a humanitarian; Heidegger, a Nazi. Strictly speaking, perhaps, the only true existentialist was Sartre, who defi ned the term to refer to his own work during and immediately after the Second World War. He pursued the idea that “we make ourselves.” Expanding our vision, however, the movement certainly includes such literary fi gures as Fyodor Dostoevsky and Franz Kafka, among others.
Three themes pervade existentialism:
• A strong emphasis on the individual (although this is variously defi ned and understood). A lot of these writers were truly eccentric. Each of them takes individuality in a different direction.
• The central role of the passions, as opposed to the usual philosophical emphasis on reason and rationality. The emphasis instead is on a passionate commitment. For the existentialist, to live is to live passionately.
• The importance of human freedom. Existentialists are concerned with personal freedom, both political freedom and free will. This is central to Kierkegaard and Sartre, but not so obviously to Nietzsche and Heidegger. The relationship between freedom and reason is particularly at issue. Traditionally, acting “rationally” is said to be free, while acting out of emotion is considered being a “slave to one’s passions.” The existentialists suggest that we live best and are most ourselves in terms of passion. Kierkegaard’s notion of “passionate commitment” is central.
The special meaning of the central term, “existence,” is fi rst defi ned by Kierkegaard to refer to a life that is fi lled with passion, self-understanding, and commitment. For Nietzsche, to really “exist” is to manifest your talents and virtues—“becoming the person you really are.” The key component of existentialism’s general “sensibility” is the striking realization of one’s own “contingency.” One might have never been born, or been born in a different place, at a different time, as a different person, or possibly not as a person at all. Heidegger’s image of “thrownness” suggests how much of our lives is given, not chosen. Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” in which a very ordinary middle-class man wakes up to fi nd himself changed into a giant cockroach, is a spectacularly unusual example of the contingency of our particular existence.
Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” is a problem, not a solution to the question of existence.
The existentialists challenge the idea that human existence is so tied up with Existentialism basically urges us to live our lives to the fullest, although what this means will take somewhat different forms.
thinking. Existentialism basically urges us to live our lives to the fullest, although what this means will take somewhat different forms. Of all philosophers, it seems to me that existentialists are the most geared to our own needs and expectations. Although its origins are European, existentialism is perfectly suited to contemporary American thought. ■
Essential Reading
Solomon, Existentialism, Introduction.
Supplementary Reading
Any decent short overview of existentialism, e.g., many encyclopedia entries (Collier’s, Grolier, Encyclopedia Brittanica, and so on).
For a lighter treatment, read the mock interviews in Solomon, Introducing the Existentialists (Hackett). For an eye-opener, there is always Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.”
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. What do you mean by the phrase “personal freedom”? What counts as “being free” for you?
2. What is an individual? What (if anything) makes a person an individual, even “unique”?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. Are the passions, by their very nature, “irrational?” What is meant by the term “rationality”? Is rationality always a good thing?
2. Do you believe in fate? What would this mean? If I were to introduce you to a very good fortune teller (who had an accuracy rate of over 95%) and she offered to tell you the outcome of your marriage or the date of your death, would you be willing to ask her? Why or why not?
Albert Camus—The Stranger, Part I
Lecture 2
Camus was counted as one of the “existentialists” virtually from the 1940s, when Sartre invented the term. He and Sartre were quite good friends for some time. ... They broke off around 1955 for reasons we will get to later, but basically, there was a sense in which Camus never really felt comfortable with the “existentialist” label. At one point later in his career he actively repudiated it.
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amus’s novel The Stranger is an excellent place to begin studying the peculiar shifts of mind that best characterize existentialism. Camus resented being labeled an “existentialist,” and he rejected the term. Nevertheless, The Stranger is the epitome of the new existentialist literature of the 1940s. The book is set in Algeria, in the middle of an intensifying civil war (which is never mentioned). It concerns the fate of a rather dull young man (Meursault), who gets caught up in a murder and is sentenced to death. Meursault is something of a Rorschach test for readers; different generations see different attributes in his peculiarities. In the 1960s, my students saw him as “cool”; in the 1980s, they saw him as a nerd.
What is “strange” about Meursault is that he seems to feel nothing. He doesn’t seem to think for himself or engage in refl ection at all. He Albert Camus (1913–1960).
does not grieve the death of his mother. (“Out of sight, out of mind.”) Where any of us would feel shock or abandonment, such emotions are lacking in Meursault. He has no sense of morality or morals. (He is incapable of judgment.) He is not repulsed by the activities of his neighbors (a pimp and a sleazoid). He has no ambitions. (He is offered a post in Paris and doesn’t see the point.) He does not respond to love. (When Marie asks him, “Do you love me?” he doesn’t understand. Love involves decisions and commitments, but Meursault understands none of that. Nor does he have any conception of what marriage entails.)
He does not respond to the fact that he has killed a man and will himself die on account of it. (Nor does he manifest any signs of fear or guilt or anxiety.) Meursault simply has no conception of the future and only an occasional fl eeting thought of the past. He makes no plans and has no regrets. He lives moment by moment. He also has no feelings, except for the physical sensations of heat and Meursault simply light, smell and taste. A life without reason is not has no conception necessarily a life of intensifi ed feeling. People without thoughts are often without feelings, too.
of the future and only an occasional The oddity of the murder is: Was there a murderer? fl eeting thought of The description of the murder makes it seem as the past. though the killing “just happens.” Is Meursault ever an “agent” of his own actions? The murder scene is frightening, because Meursault feels no
moral qualms or anxieties. The strangeness of the trial is manifest in Part II. Was Camus politically naive? What is the author’s purpose in portraying a trial of a Frenchman condemned to death for killing a “foreigner” (in self-defense)? The vicious racial tensions of the time appear nowhere.
The trial has primarily philosophical signifi cance, as in Kafka’s novel, The Trial. (Kafka depicts a young man who is put to death without ever knowing the charge.) The novel ends with Meursault facing his execution philosophically. The ultimate point of the novel is the nature of guilt and innocence. But it is also a celebration of life for life’s sake. The point of the trial is to turn Meursault into a human being. ■
Essential Reading
Camus, The Stranger, Part I, 1946 (“British” translation); 1988 (“American” translation).
Supplementary Reading
Lottman, Camus: A Biography.
Todd, Albert Camus: A Life.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. Have you ever met someone like Meursault? What do you think of him (or her)?
2. To whom is Meursault a “stranger”? In what ways is he “strange”? Is this “lifestyle” attractive or appealing to you? Why or why not?
3. Can a person live without caring? Does the idea of a life without passions sound attractive to you? Why or why not?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. Could a person literally live “for the moment,” with no sense of past or future?
2. What is required to be the “agent” of one’s actions? Is causing something to happen suffi cient?
Camus—The Stranger, Part II
Lecture 3
I would argue that what we call “rationality” is bounded by our emotions. What we care about, and to act rationally, is ultimately to act in line with what we care about and what our culture cares about. Finally, emotions, as a general rule, tend to be unrefl ective. What that means is we have them, but we don’t necessarily think about the fact that we have them.
T
he fl at, matter-of-fact portrait of Meursault in The Stranger captures an age-old philosophical dilemma—the role of reason and consciousness in human nature. The juxtaposition of “lived experience” and refl ection raises the question of their inter- and independence. In The Stranger, we have the sense that consciousness sometimes interferes with life. What does it mean to be rational? Rationality requires the ability to refl ect on one’s life. In this sense, Meursault isn’t rational. Rationality requires the ability to anticipate consequences. Rationality requires the ability to adhere to standards and values. Rationality, thus, has a social dimension.
To what extent do our emotions and moral responses depend on reason? Emotions are essentially conceptual, intentional. Emotions require the basic elements of rationality. What we call “rationality” is bounded by our emotions. Emotions are often unrefl ective, but many emotions depend on the ability to refl ect. Emotions essentially involve values. The “rational” thing to do may be that which makes the most emotional sense. Emotions are essentially about the self.
Do experience and refl ection oppose one another? Camus suggests that this is the case. When Meursault stops living his life (when he goes to prison), he begins to refl ect. What he refl ects on is precisely the life that he has lost. In fact, the relationship between experience and refl ection is much more complicated than this simple opposition would suggest.
The notion of refl ection turns on two different but related metaphors: Refl ection as in one’s refl ection in a mirror and refl ection as in introspection, a “turning in” on oneself. The fi rst sense may be aptly compared with “seeing yourself as others see you.” The second sense may be illusory, or utterly dependent on the fi rst sense. In what sense can your consciousness be your consciousness? Since Hegel, it is generally agreed that self-comprehension depends on the recognition of others. Meursault becomes self-aware only with the scrutiny of the judicial process. With self-awareness comes selfidentity and refl ection—along with Meursault’s new feelings of guilt.
What does it mean to be innocent? Meursault is innocent in the straightforward sense that he is unaware of the moral signifi cance of his actions. The Biblical story of Adam and Eve takes innocence as the ignorance of good and evil. Meursault is incapable of being repulsed by cruelty (Salamano and Raymond). Meursault is certainly not innocent in the even more straightforward sense that he murdered a man. He is guilty in the sense that he did it; that is, he caused the death of the Arab. He is guilty in the legal sense that he is declared “guilty” by the court. What is not clear is the extent to which he is morally guilty, that he did in fact know what he was doing. To refl ect is to be guilty; not to refl ect is to be innocent. Camus was adamant about issues of social justice. In one sense, guilt (e.g., “original sin”) affects all of us, whatever we have done, just by virtue of consciousness. Camus’s experiences in wartime are clearly
expressed here. Except for children, there are no innocents in war.
The Stranger ends in a meditation on the Camus was adamant about issues of social justice.
meaning of life. When the prison chaplain queries Meursault about his vision of the
afterlife, “he fl ies into a rage and insists, ‘this life is the only one that means anything!’” This is the fi rst true emotion he has felt in the course of the book. Asked to imagine an afterlife, he can think only of living this life again. He realizes that life is so rich that after only one day of it, one could spend an eternity dwelling on the details. He thinks about how he has lived and decides that it doesn’t matter how one has lived. It only matters that one has lived.
Later, in The Myth of Sisyphus, he will say, “there is only quantity of life.” Quality of life is in some sense a bogus notion. He then opens his heart to “the benign indifference of the universe.” This dramatic phrase sums up much of Camus’s philosophy. We will see it again in The Myth of Sisyphus. The notion of “a happy death” haunts all of Camus’s work. (His fi rst novel, before The Stranger, was entitled A Happy Death.) ■
Essential Reading
Camus, The Stranger, Part II.
Supplementary Reading
For a lyrical introduction to Camus’s life in Algeria and his thought, see his Notebooks. A harshly critical but worthwhile general analysis is O’Brien, Camus; see also Solomon, “Camus’s l’etranger and the Truth,” in From Hegel to Existentialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). A somewhat dated biography is Bree, Camus. More recent are Lottman and Todd (see Lecture 2).
For parallel insights, read Kafka, The Trial; Melville, “Billy Budd, Sailor,” Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Stories; Kosinski, Being There.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. You will recall that Meursault shot the Arab only after the latter had drawn his knife—a knife that he had used to slash Meursault’s friend a short time earlier. Why does his attorney not plead “self-defense”?
2. What is the meaning of “guilt” in Part II of The Stranger? Why does the jury fi nd Meursault guilty? What is the point of this somewhat “absurd” trial? Why does the magistrate call him “Mr. Antichrist”?
3. Do you believe that Meursault’s immersion in “lived experience,” with its corresponding lack of refl ection, is the optimal way of getting the most from life? Or does refl ection play an essential and positive role in even our most elementary experiences (feeling the warmth of the sun, the taste of chocolate, and so on)?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. Years after The Stranger was published (in 1955), Camus retrospectively described Meursault as “a man who doesn’t lie.” Yet he does lie, as evidenced by his willingness to perjure himself for Raymond when the police came to arrest him for beating his Arab girlfriend. Can Camus’s claim be reconciled with such incidents? Is it enough to be a “hero for the truth” if one simply doesn’t lie—or doesn’t think—about the meaning of what happens?
2. The “little robot” woman appears twice in the novel, once in the fi rst part and once in the second part. What role does this fl eeting character play for Camus? How does she illustrate the central division between Meursault’s bland observations and his being “looked at” and judged?
3. Do you believe that the self (and self-consciousness) arises only with the refl ection and judgment of other people?
4. In the very last line of the book, Meursault tells us that he hopes spectators at his execution greet him with “howls of execration.” Why would he have such a desire? Is there anything in the logic of the novel to prepare us for this?
Camus—The Myth of Sisyphus
Lecture 4
One of the themes of Camus’s philosophy, and in particular his political philosophy, is the theme of rebellion. Rebellion here is a very curious notion because it is not full-fl edged revolt in the sense that we typically think of it. ... Sisyphus rebels, but what is interesting is he does not do what we would expect him to do as a member of his own labor union; that is, to drop the rock and refuse to push it any further. ... He rebels in the sense that he refuses to accept the absurdity that has been imposed upon him by the gods.
I
n The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus gives us a philosophical theory, or rather, perhaps, a vision, to accompany the odd and disturbing view of the world of The Stranger. Sisyphus was condemned by the Olympian gods to spend all eternity in fruitless labor, rolling a rock up a mountain until it would roll back down of its own weight, again and again and again. Nothing could be more absurd, Camus tells us, than a life of such futility.
The “absurd” is this vision, this sensibility that has come to preoccupy the modern mind. Camus defi nes the absurd as a confrontation between “rational” human beings and an “indifferent” universe. It is the view that, despite our hopes and expectations (for justice, for salvation, for peace and harmony), the world does not deliver or care. Meursault accepts the indifference of the universe as “brotherly” in The Stranger. Camus is an atheist. (But he also says that if there were a God, it would not matter—life would still be absurd.)
In The Stranger, Camus suggests that death makes life absurd. This view has been around since ancient times. The character of Sisyphus makes it painfully clear that an eternity of futility is more absurd than a mere lifetime of futility. Death, then, is a kind of blessing, an escape from perennial boredom. Sisyphus and Ecclesiastes both suggest the absurdity that our lives amount to nothing.
One of Camus’s targets in the Myth is the contemporary glorifi cation of science and “objectivity.” Galileo’s retractions before the threats of the Church were more comic than tragic, Camus suggests, because it is life, not truth, that really counts. The absurd is born, Camus suggests, of the impersonal, abstract, scientifi c view of the world and what one contemporary philosopher has called “the view from nowhere.” Ultimately, only personal experience is meaningful.
Reason is characterized by the question “why?” This is a quest for explanation, for justifi cation, for an account that makes an action or an event comprehensible. But every “why?” leads to another “why?” All series of “why?” questions end nowhere. In terms of understanding as well as satisfaction, life is essentially absurd. Understanding does not give us satisfaction. The absurd is a confrontation between our rational minds and an “indifferent” universe. Sisyphus can be interpreted in two ways in this context. He devotes himself to his labor so completely that he must be considered happy. Thus, the role of refl ection, of reason, is a problem. It leads to a question—“what does this amount to?”—to which the answer is “nothing.”
He undertakes his task with resentment, and his resentment of the gods thereby makes his life meaningful. Sisyphus rebels by refusing to accept the absurdity imposed on him. Camus defi nes the absurd as a confrontation between “rational” human beings and an
“indifferent” universe.
Camus presents reason as a problem. “Rationality” has different meanings.
It refers to “consciousness” on the one hand. Only human consciousness can see absurdity in a repeated pattern. It refers to the intelligibility (comprehensibility and justice) of the world on the other. In this, Camus reminds us of some characters invented by the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, in particular, Ivan Karamazov and the spiteful fi gure in Notes from Underground.
In what sense is Meursault an absurd hero? For him, there is no commitment. In the fi rst part of the novel, he doesn’t rebel. In the second part, he rebels when he rebuffs the priest. Either we fi nd the meaning of life in our lives, Camus seems to be saying, or not at all. From The Stranger and Sisyphus, the answer is that life is its own meaning; philosophical refl ection does not give us meaning. In Camus, only insofar as we are engaged in our lives do our lives make sense. ■
Essential Reading
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus; partially reprinted in Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 177–188).
Supplementary Reading
Camus’s later elaborations on the Myth are in his book The Rebel; for a more “metaphysical” perspective on “the absurd,” see Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation. For a somewhat larger interpretation of Camus’s philosophy, see Sprintzen, Camus.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. Camus begins The Myth of Sisyphus with the assertion that “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Do you agree with him? Why would he make such a seemingly outrageous suggestion?
2. What is “the absurd”? Camus gives us several possible ways of living in the face of “the absurd.” What are they? Do you think that they are equally meritorious? What is “philosophical suicide”?
3. Do you agree with Camus when he asserts that our existence is no less absurd than that of Sisyphus? Explain.
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. Camus characterizes a man gesturing behind a glass partition while he speaks on the telephone as a “dumb show,” which leads us to ask why he is alive. We can appreciate this characterization—at least at fi rst blush. But ask yourself: Would we also consider the scene a dumb show and question why the man is alive if we could hear his conversation—if we could hear that his gestures fl ow from his just having been told that his house is on fi re? Consider your own telephone conversations. Aren’t they also merely “dumb shows” that would lead an observer to question the signifi cance of your existence? What does this tell you about the relationship between vantage point or perspective and meaning?
2. Camus, who considered himself a political moderate and a humanist, states that “to abolish conscious revolt is to elude the problem.” Elsewhere, he emphasizes the need for “metaphysical revolt.” Who or what is Camus, an avowed atheist, revolting against?
3. Would “the absurd” simply disappear in the face of irrefutable evidence that God exists?
Camus—The Plague and The Fall
Lecture 5
The most fascinating character of the novel is a fellow named Tarrou. He is a combination of saintliness and cynicism, and I am tempted to say that he is by far the character in the novel who most closely represents Camus and Camus’s own attitudes.
T
he Plague is Camus’s most social-minded work, in which the plague is a metaphor for the absurd. The theme of the novel is impending but unpredictable death, both individual and collective. The plague is often seen as a metaphor for the Nazi occupation. The novel is set in Algeria, but Camus wrote it in southern France in the early years of the German occupation. As a metaphor for the Nazi occupation, the impersonality of the plague was the subject of considerable criticism. It is worth noting that Camus treats Nazism as a faceless evil, not as the result of the evil intentions of one man.
More important, The Plague is an exploration of how people together face the absurdity of a lethal threat. The plague cannot be cured or prevented. It cannot even be explained, although accounts proliferate along with the plague itself. Should one fi ght it, albeit without palpable success? Should one try to run and evade it? Should one take advantage of it? (Compare Sartre: “Each of us gets the war we deserve.”)
Camus’s characters represent these different ways of approaching both the absurdity of life and social solidarity. Among Camus’s characters are a doctor, who would seem to be the hero of the novel, fi ghting the plague (the absurd), even with the knowledge that the plague cannot be beaten or prevented. There is also a very ordinary man, ironically named M. Grand, whom Camus curiously identifi es as the hero, perhaps precisely because of his ordinariness. A young man, Rambeau, is separated from his wife by the quarantine. He spends his time trying to fl ee to join her.
An ironic and witty character, Tarrou, is torn between saintliness and cynicism. Tarrou is clearly closest to Camus in the novel, even if Rieux and Grand are identifi ed as the heroes. Tarrou’s irony (to be distinguished sharply from cynicism) establishes the philosophical poignancy of the novel and best illustrates Camus’s conception of the absurd. A scoundrel, Cottard, profi ts from the plague. He is utterly amoral, the most human manifestation of evil in the novel. A priest, Father Paneloux, blames the plague on the sins of the people (and then dies of plague himself). We think immediately of the chaplain in The Stranger, trying to impose an otherworldly interpretation on a disaster that
is straightforwardly secular. Camus harshly denounces the attempt to declare all men evil, bringing into relief his seemingly opposed thesis in The Stranger (and, later, in The Fall).
All in all, The Plague is a portrait of how we face All in all, The Plague is a portrait of how we face death and the injustices of life.
death and the injustices of life. The true evils in life are often faceless, and they are inevitable. In
The Plague, the absurd confronts all of us, engendering a sense of solidarity. To deny these evils, or to attempt an escape from them, is what Camus (in The Myth of Sisyphus) condemns as “philosophical suicide.” Camus disagreed with his Marxist contemporaries, who defended Stalinist cruelties.
In Camus’s last novel, The Fall, he returns to the theme of refl ection and lived experience, innocence and guilt. In a seedy bar in Amsterdam, we meet (Jean-Baptiste) Clamence, a once extremely successful, high-powered Parisian attorney. He reports to us, in considerable detail, his prowess before the bar, his good works, his charming and winning personality, his prowess with women. He makes it very clear to us that he has had an enviable life. In an important sense, Clamence’s life is fl awless and he has everything one could desire. At the same time, he describes to us his undoing—three seemingly trivial incidents that undermined him in the most profound way: a fi ght with a motorcyclist, a peal of laughter on a bridge, and his witnessing of an apparent suicide.
As elegant, articulate, and thoughtful as Meursault was thoughtless, Clamence leads us through a meandering but captivating monologue. Although there is a virtually silent interlocutor at the bar, it is evident that we, the readers, are the audience to whom Clamence addresses his “confession.” If Meursault was “strange” because he thought, judged, and evaluated so little, Clamence is burdened by an apparent inability to stop thinking, judging, and evaluating. The target of his most bitter judgments is, it seems, himself. But, in fact, these judgments tend to ricochet back to the reader. As Clamence describes to us the hypocrisy and folly of his own successful life, we too are seduced into doubting ourselves and our own integrity. ■
Essential Reading
Camus, The Plague.
Supplementary Reading
Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, an account of the actual lives of the people of the region of France where Camus wrote The Plague. For parallel reading, see Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. Does Rieux fi t the image of the “absurd” hero? Consider your response in the light of The Myth of Sisyphus.
2. Do you think that the citizens of Oran are responsible for the plague as Paneloux suggests? How does Paneloux’s own death affect your conclusion?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. When Rieux says that he would rather be a man than a saint, Tarrou replies “Yes, we are looking for the same thing, but I am less ambitious.” What do you think Tarrou means by this?
2. Contrast Grand with Meursault. Both seem to be perfectly “ordinary” heroes. But in what sense is either of them a hero at all?
Camus—The Fall, Part II
Lecture 6
What Clamence does is talk to us. He convinces us of his own fraudulence and hypocrisy, and he forces us to examine ourselves—our lives and our actions—and ask whether we might be self-deceptively guilty of exactly the same kind of fraud and hypocrisy.
I
n The Fall, Camus displays refl ection and guilt in extreme form. Clamence, the attorney, describes himself as a judge/penitent. He describes even his past accomplishments and virtues as hypocritical and manipulative. Clamence presents many of his past actions—including some of the most seemingly benevolent, altruistic actions—as motivated by vanity and selfi shness. The real question is whether the misdescription and manipulation lie in his reports rather than in his past deeds themselves. The question of self-deception is unresolvable. Does Clamence really believe what he is saying to us? The pervasive question of the novel is why Clamence is
telling us all this. It is not just that he is The question Camus a compulsive talker. It is clear that he is poses remains: How does trying to do something with us. one reconcile refl ection
and experience?
With Clamence, consciousness seems to become a disease. In comparison with
Meursault’s happy innocence, Clamence, an extremely intelligent, successful, sophisticated cosmopolitan, wallows in misery and guilt. In comparison with Meursault’s unrefl ectiveness, Clamence’s pathological refl ections throw one of the basic premises of philosophy (“the examined life”) into question. The idea that consciousness can become a “disease” comes from both Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. In one sense, Clamence is an extremely rational (articulate, strategic, manipulative) person. In another sense, he is clearly irrational. He gives up the good life, chooses misery over happiness, and undermines others out of what looks like sheer sadism of the “misery loves company” variety. The dominant aspect of Clamence’s consciousness has been interpreted as pride, one of
The central question of Camus’ philosophy was how to reconcile refl ection and experience.
the seven deadly sins. The “fall,” accordingly, is the fall of pride. Wounded pride becomes resentment, but resentment itself becomes the cause of selfjustifi cation. His arrogant pride at the end of the novel is no less outrageous than it was at the beginning.
Critics have claimed that Clamence never considers Christian redemption. But there are numerous allusions—from the book’s title to the name JeanBaptiste—that recall this tradition. The theme of judgment runs all the way through the novel. Clamence forces us to examine our lives. He doesn’t judge us, but manipulates us into judging ourselves. Camus’s notion of original sin has no religious overtones, however. Insofar as we are refl ective, we will feel guilty.
Toward the end of his life, Camus intended to study Indian philosophy. Camus was killed in a car crash (the car was driven by his publisher). One can imagine the turns his thought might have taken and in what ways the path from The Stranger to The Fall might lead to Buddhism. The question Camus poses remains: How does one reconcile refl ection and experience? ■
Essential Reading
Camus, The Fall.
Supplementary Reading
For parallel reading to The Fall, see Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. What three discrete events led to Clamence’s fall? Do you consider it plausible that these events should have had such an effect on Clamence, enough to make him throw off his entire enviable, successful life? Why do you think that they had such an effect?
2. Clamence calls himself a “judge-penitent.” What does this mean? He says: “Don’t wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.” Who is doing the judging? On what basis are we being judged?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. Do you believe Clamence when he claims that the impetus behind the good deeds he performed in Paris was simply his own vanity? If not, why would he lie to us?
2. Contrast Doctor Rieux (in The Plague) with Meursault and Clamence. If Meursault’s existence in the fi rst part of The Stranger can be characterized as pure lived experience and Clamence’s existence in Amsterdam as (more or less) pure refl ection, how might Rieux be characterized? Does he surmount the limitations of the other two?
Søren Kierkegaard—“On Becoming a Christian”
Lecture 7
The question is: What is it to be a Christian? It is a very diffi cult question. On the one hand, [Kierkegaard] looked around, and he says that most of the people in his society simply assumed they were Christians because they were born of Christian parents and they were raised in a Christian society. ... He wants to say that is utterly insuffi cient.
S
øren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) did not, in the usual sense, have a very happy or fulfi lling life. He was crippled in both his appearance and in his emotional development. He was burdened by an oppressive sense of guilt and inadequacy. He spent virtually his entire life in Copenhagen while he despised bourgeois complacency and the whole of “the present age.” As a young man, he carried on for a year in Berlin with his somewhat more hedonistic friend, Hans Christian Andersen. Hedonism was not for him, however. He experienced it as self-defeating, shameful, and humiliating. He rejected both the life of pleasure and the life of friendship. Pleasure (“the aesthetic”) would remain a problem for him throughout his career. He rejected a promising career in the ministry and a potentially happy marriage to pursue his lonely and often controversial philosophical and religious mission.
The place of reason and the role of suffering and passion in life became some of Kierkegaard’s primary concerns, in particular with regard to religion and religious belief. He described his own mission in philosophy as “to redefi ne what it means to be (or become) a Christian.” He rejected the idea that simply being born a Christian is suffi cient to be one. He also rejected the idea that simply growing up with certain beliefs was suffi cient to make one a Christian. He insisted, much to the dismay of many of his Christian compatriots, that it is easier to be(come) a Christian if one is not already born one. Christianity is a commitment, not something to which one passively adheres.
Most so-called Christians, Kierkegaard says (the “mob” of what he disdainfully calls “Christendom”) are not that at all. He accuses most Christians of blatant hypocrisy, empty belief conjoined with banal social membership. Most Christians display no passion for their faith at all. Most of Christianity is a mass or “herd” phenomenon. Christianity is not to be understood in terms of doctrines, rituals, or social belonging. Belief in doctrines is a part of Christianity, but not the essential part. Rituals are at most a minimal accouterment of Christianity. (This is obviously a refl ection of Kierkegaard’s Lutheranism and part of his rejection of Catholicism.) The fact that other Christians exist in the world is somewhat irrelevant. One is, ultimately, a Christian all by oneself.
Christianity is a paradox, but this paradox demands passionate faith. The paradox is one of belief, but its proper response is passion. In Kierkegaard’s day, one of the reigning paradoxes was the idea that God could be both eternal and temporally present as a man. Today, a more pressing paradox for most Christians would be the so-called “problem of evil,” the idea that an all-powerful, all-
In Kierkegaard’s day, knowing, good and kind God would allow so much suffering in the world. For Kierkegaard,
one of the reigning
a leap of faith is necessary for a passionate
paradoxes was the religious belief.
idea that God could be both eternal and Kierkegaard’s philosophical bete noir was G.
W. F. Hegel. As a student, Kierkegaard studied temporally present
with Friedrich Schelling in Berlin. Schelling
as a man. denounced Hegel’s philosophy as “negative.”
Schelling and Hegel had been college roommates and competitors. Hegel, who (along
with Kant) dominated philosophical thought in Denmark, defended the idea of a supra-historical collective world-spirit (or Geist), leaving little room for the individual. Hegel’s Geist was, according to the popular interpretation, identical with human consciousness and the world. Hegel thus denied the identity of God as entirely separate from his creation and from human beings. Hegel also defended the idea that Geist was rational and could be rationally comprehended by human beings. Kierkegaard, by contrast, offers the fear and trembling of a personal confrontation with God. He rejected both the collectivity of Geist and the idea that God could be rationally understood.
Hegel’s relationship with Schelling was complicated. Schelling became famous very early, while Hegel was still struggling to fi nd his way in philosophy. Later, Hegel became even more famous, Schelling’s star faded, and Schelling was fi lled with jealousy and wounded pride. None of this was evident to Kierkegaard, but Schelling’s prejudices fi t in perfectly with his own predispositions. While Kierkegaard was studying in Berlin, two of his other classmates were the proto-Marxist Friedrich Engels and the anarchist Mikhael Bakunin. In Hegel, Kierkegaard found a paradigm of collective, rationalist thinking. In reaction, Kierkegaard became the champion of “the individual.” ■
Essential Reading
Kierkegaard, Journals, (excerpted with other readings in Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 3–28).
Supplementary Reading
Gardiner, Kierkegaard; for a more literary perspective on Kierkegaard, see Mackey, A Kind of Poet.
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling. To appreciate Kierkegaard’s polemic against Hegel, take a look at Hegel’s Introduction to The Philosophy of History; for Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, see also Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation in Hegel, and Solomon, Continental Philosophy Since 1750, “Kierkegaard.”
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. Kierkegaard claimed that “it is easier to become a Christian when I am not a Christian than to become a Christian when I am one.” What did he mean by this?
2. Would Kierkegaard have approved of the attempts by philosophers and theologians to prove that God exists? Why not?
Advanced Question to Consider
1. For Kierkegaard, God’s existence is more palpable than anything else that he encounters in this world. Yet, in attempting to proselytize his reader, he deliberately refrains from insisting on the truth of God’s existence. Why?
Kierkegaard on Subjective Truth
Lecture 8
The subject of truth is a complicated notion, but the fi rst thing to say about it is that it is a quite conscientious slap in the face of philosophers.
For a philosopher, truth, whatever else it might be, is objective.
T
he central concept of Kierkegaard’s philosophy is “subjective truth”: making a commitment, making the leap of faith to believe.
Kierkegaard allows that objectivity is fi ne in its place (e.g., in science). Kierkegaard is happy to say, “all power to the sciences, but… .” Questions concerning God and religion are not objective questions. Science attempts to undermine the miracle by making it plausible—e.g., the case of Moses crossing the Red Sea. Objectivity should not be allowed to invade the existential realm, the realm of personal meaning and signifi cance. This is the realm of religion. It is also the realm of ethics, which Kierkegaard identifi es with the philosophy of Kant. Kierkegaard puts great stress on what he calls “the ethically existing individual,” the focus of his existentialism. To believe with Hegel that the world is ultimately rational does not give an answer to the question “How should I live?”
Subjectivity is, fi rst of all, “inwardness and passion.” It is a commitment, not a mere discovery or “correctness.” Subjectivity is the realm where we fi nd that very special sense of “existence” (from which “existentialism” will eventually get its name). It is living fully, which may not be outwardly evident. It is living inwardly, in the depth and richness of one’s feelings. Passions, for Kierkegaard, are not mere feelings (sensations) but profound insights into the beings we really are. To say that a passion is subjective is to say (for one thing) that it can be known and appreciated only “from the inside,” by the person whose passion it is. Personal choice is the key to subjectivity, “taking hold” of one’s life. One does this by committing oneself passionately to what one chooses. Kierkegaard’s own choice, which he advocates throughout his twenty-some volumes of writing, is Christianity, redefi ned in his own passionate way.
Christianity requires faith, which is not rational, but involves passion and commitment. The paradoxes of Christianity, quite the contrary of making faith less plausible, are required to provoke the passion that faith requires. Christianity—and existence more generally—involves “inwardness.” Not only may it not be discernible “from the outside,” but it may well seem meaningless to anyone else. You can love someone with all your heart without it being evident to
Passions, for anyone else. Kierkegaard gives the example of two people making love, a performance that
Kierkegaard, are would seem ludicrous to anyone other than the
not mere feelings couple. Religious passion cannot, therefore, be (sensations) but collectivized into an organized religion.
profound insights
Collectivism is the very opposite of what a into the beings religious community might be (for example, a
we really are. monastery where each individual keeps his faith to himself). Kierkegaard says he wants to break back into the monastery. Most of what he says could be
translated to virtually any other religion. Because there is no “correct” form of subjectivity, it remains to a subjective author to seduce his readers, not to convince them rationally. Kierkegaard’s books are an elaborate seduction. You can coax, not argue, someone into authentic existence. ■
Essential Reading
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientifi c Postscript, (excerpted with other readings in Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 3–28).
Supplementary Reading
Gardiner, Kierkegaard; for a more literary perspective on Kierkegaard, see Mackey, A Kind of Poet.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientifi c Postscript.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. What is the relationship between “subjective truth” and “objective uncertainty”? Are they in confl ict? Is the very notion of “subjective truth” self-contradictory? What is the relationship between “subjective truth” and that which we take to be objectively certain, such as science, particularly with regard to religion?
2. In what sense is believing in God necessarily irrational? Is this necessarily a bad thing?
Advanced Question to Consider
1. Kierkegaard, like Camus, introduces a notion of “the absurd.” For Kierkegaard, “the absurd is—that the eternal truth has come into being in time, that God has come into being, has been born, has grown up, and so forth…” For Camus, it is “the perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles.” How do you see their two very different perspectives on “the absurd,” one having to do with the incomprehensibility of God, the other having to do with the impossibility of a rational life? How are they related?
Kierkegaard’s Existential Dialectic
Lecture 9
Every time you satisfy a desire, a new one takes its place. So, if the aim of the aesthetic life is satisfaction, there is a sense in which this is impossible.
There is always frustration. There is always dissatisfaction.
I
n conscientious contradiction to Hegel’s philosophy, Kierkegaard develops an “existential dialectic.” Hegel developed a grand historical
“dialectic,” proving that history and humanity have an ultimate purpose, a pervasive rationality. Kierkegaard develops his “existential dialectic,” a personal dialectic with no ultimate purpose, no rational direction. In Hegel, history develops through confl ict, an idea later echoed in Marx. But Kierkegaard’s dialectic is solely about the individual. We are faced with various choices, various “modes of existence” or “lifestyles.” Although each mode of existence might dictate its own priorities or rationality, there is no reason or rational standard for choosing one rather than another. Kierkegaard distinguishes three such modes: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.
The aesthetic mode of existence is the life of pleasure, of desire and satisfaction. Unlike many philosophers, Kierkegaard saw this mode—or its refusal—as a choice. The aesthetic mode might be exemplifi ed in the life of Don Juan, the Spanish libertine. (Kierkegaard’s favorite opera was Mozart’s Don Giovanni.) Don Juan pursued his own pleasures, without consideration for others. He lived a life devoted to personal satisfaction. But the aesthetic life need not be so vulgar. Mozart himself could also be seen as living the aesthetic life. He lives in pursuit of the ideal satisfaction of beauty, to be found (or expressed) in the perfect piece of music. Nevertheless, the aesthetic life depends on personal satisfaction. The problem with the aesthetic life is its tendency to boredom. One becomes jaded with the very pleasures one pursues. Thus, one becomes insatiable, and the aesthetic life becomes self-defeating (Kierkegaard’s own youthful experience). As in Sisyphus, the repetition is numbing. Goethe writes in Faust: “from desire I rush to satisfaction; from satisfaction I leap to desire.” Thus, there is no aesthetic satisfaction.
The ethical mode of existence is the life of duty. The choice of being ethical is, for Kierkegaard, not itself a rational choice. Kierkegaard follows the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant by insisting on the centrality of duty and moral principle. Kierkegaard also believes, like Kant, in the universality of reason, but with a subtle twist. Reason is universal in the realm of ethics, but not outside it. The ethical mode is defi ned by universal moral principles and consideration for the well-being of others. It is altruistic in the sense that it is other-directed rather than concerned with one’s own satisfaction. The exemplar is Socrates, who died rather than compromise his virtue. To choose the ethical life is to choose to live rationally, but one does not rationally choose the ethical life. The ethical life has limits and frustrations, however, given the
overwhelming number of injustices in the world. Thus, the urge to good also becomes self-defeating, as in compassion “burnout.”
The religious mode of existence has as its The aesthetic mode of existence is the life of pleasure, of desire and satisfaction.
basis the belief in God. Kierkegaard seems to have paid little attention to religions other than Christianity. By Christianity, he means a somewhat constrained, “fundamentalist” version of Lutheranism. The religious life also includes aspects of the ethical life (Judeo-Christian morality), but confl ict may exist between the ethical and the religious. This confl ict is exemplifi ed in the story of Abraham, which presents an intolerable dilemma to someone who both believes that God’s word is ultimate and has a need to obey the moral rules. One of the most obvious moral rules, against killing your own children, is called into question by God’s command. Kierkegaard describes the necessity for continued faith in such a dilemma as a “teleological suspension of the ethical.” ■
Essential Reading
Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 3–28.
Supplementary Reading
One of Kierkegaard’s most accessible books is Either/Or, 2 vols. The most systematic view of his religious conception of subjectivity is Concluding Unscientifi c Postscript. For the signifi cance of Kierkegaard’s thought in the broader context of Western thought, see MacInytre, After Virtue.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. Kierkegaard discusses three “modes” or “styles” of existence—the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Which are you? What does this mean? In what sense have you “chosen” this lifestyle? Does it make sense, according to Kierkegaard, to say that “some days I am x, other days I am y”?
2. According to Kierkegaard, is there a rational basis on which one can decide which of these three modes of existence to embrace, which one is right, which one is “right for you”?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. For Kant, ethics begins with the autonomous, rational individual, who dispassionately determines what duty requires and acts accordingly. For Hegel, on the other hand, ethics begins with the community, which imbues its citizens with its ethical “substance”; the citizens in turn defi ne themselves by the community’s terms. Would Kierkegaard embrace either of these positions? If not, what would his criticism of each position be?
2. Kierkegaard asserts that “boredom is the root of all evil.” Which mode of existence does he believe is most susceptible to it? Explain. Is Kierkegaard suggesting that certain modes of existence run up against their own internal contradictions? What would they be, in each case?
3. What does Kierkegaard mean by the “teleological suspension of the ethical”? Is he suggesting that the ethical and religious modes of existence necessarily come into confl ict? Consider the foundation of ethics for those who look at the world from a highly religious perspective. Could Abraham have consistently rejected God’s command in favor of his ethical precepts?
Friedrich Nietzsche on Nihilism and the Death of God
Lecture 10
Frederick Nietzsche, who died in the summer of 1900, might well be considered as the prophet of the 20th century. He anticipated much of what today is called “postmodernism,” and a great many people have cited him as the end of the period of classical philosophy.
T
he watchword of Nietzsche’s philosophy is “nihilism.” This might be summarized, in his phrase, as “the highest values devaluing themselves.” Among these values are truth, religion, and morality. Nietzsche himself, however, is no nihilist. His thesis is rather that the values we hold are themselves nihilistic, self-undermining. For Nietzsche, the ultimate value is life itself. The values he attacks are “anti-life” or “otherworldly.” He rejects the preference for some other existence—whether it is heaven or the classless society—that is better than this one. His is a philosophy of aggressive acceptance of the world and ourselves.
Nietzsche’s touchstone (as for so many German scholars in the nineteenth century) was the ancient Greeks. But the focus of Nietzsche’s admiration was not the famous Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, whom Nietzsche saw as already “decadent.” He admired instead the warriors of Homer’s epics and the great Pre-Socratic tragedians. The philosopher he admired was Heraclitus with his “dark sayings.” He says, “How they must have suffered to have become so beautiful.” In Nietzsche’s fi rst book, The Birth of Tragedy, he suggested that “only as an aesthetic phenomenon can the world be justifi ed.” His moral philosophy is fi lled with warrior images and virtues.
In the realm of religion and morality, Nietzsche issues his harshest challenge. He repeats the (already classic) utterance “God is dead,” an echo of Hegel and Martin Luther. This statement suggests not so much the truth of atheism as a diagnosis on the moral state of the modern world. Nietzsche offers us an alternative to Jesus in the form of the Persian prophet Zarathustra who, unlike Jesus, preaches “the this-worldly,” not the “other-worldly.” The statement also refers to a certain metaphysical picture of the world. It is a rejection of the “otherworldly.” The “otherworldly” stance of religion can be traced back to Plato. This rage for unity manifests itself in monotheism but began with the Pre-Socratics. Nietzsche claims that reason itself can be an escape from life, again as in Plato: “Christianity is Platonism for the masses.” Socrates endorsed
“the tyranny of reason” and developed the vision of another, “truer” world of
which this world is a mere shadow.
Nietzsche endorses a view that we might call “epistemological nihilism.” Nietzsche endorses a view that we might call “epistemological nihilism.”
He says, for example, “there is no truth” and our greatest “truths are only errors that we cannot give up.” In many ways, he would seem to be a classical skeptic, except that he rejects the very ground and distinctions on which most skepticism is based. He rejects the distinction between the “true world” and the world of appearances as a form of the otherworldly. He defends “perspectivism,” that is, the view that all our knowledge of the world (and of ourselves) is gleaned through one or another perspective, a particular point of view. Even science is just one of many points of view. There is no “objectivity” as such, no “facts,” no unbiased point of view. Ideally, we should try to appreciate as many perspectives as possible. Using Kierkegaard’s schema, Nietzsche adopts the aesthetic perspective. Nietzsche’s view of truth is primarily pragmatic, anticipating later American philosophers. ■
Essential Reading
Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 43–78. (For an overview, see Continental Philosophy Since 1750, “Nietzsche,” pp. 111–126, or From Rationalism to
Existentialism, pp. 105–139.)
Supplementary Reading
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, and Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ (in The Viking Portable Nietzsche).
Two good short introductions are Stern, Nietzsche, in the Modern Masters series, and Tanner, Nietzsche, in the Past Masters series.
See also Kaufmann, Nietzsche—Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, and Nehamas, Life as Literature.
Essays on Nietzsche’s individual works can be found in Higgins and Solomon, eds., Reading Nietzsche.
Another general overview of Nietzsche’s philosophy is What Nietzsche Really Said, by Solomon and Higgins. See also the Teaching Company lecture series For the Love of Life: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, by Solomon and Higgins.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. Was Nietzsche a nihilist? If not, why did he reject conventional morality and religion? What values did he believe in?
2. Nietzsche proclaims, “God is dead.” What did he mean by this? Do you agree with his diagnosis?
3. Why does Nietzsche so virulently attack Socrates? Of what does he accuse him? Of what does he see him as a symptom? What do you take to be Nietzsche’s overall attitude toward Socrates—contempt or, perhaps, envy?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. Describe Nietzsche’s brand of “epistemological nihilism.” Does he believe that there is ultimately no truth of the matter and that we are simply the kind of creatures who need to believe that there is? Does he believe that there is a truth of the matter but that we simply cannot know it? Or does he believe that the whole question is simply beside the point and that we debase ourselves by searching for it?
2. In what ways is Zarathustra a Christ-like fi gure? How does he differ from Christ? What does it mean that he continually fails to get his message across? What do you personally make of him?
Nietzsche, the “Immoralist”
Lecture 11
Nietzsche certainly contributed heavily to the understanding of himself as destroyer, as an immoralist, as an antichrist. He claims himself to be an “immoralist,” and I think this is perhaps, more than anything else, one of the reasons why he is so often attacked in philosophy and outside of philosophy as a danger. The truth is that Nietzsche was generous, kind, courteous, trustworthy, a good friend, and my guess is he probably never did an immoral thing in his life.
N
ietzsche claims to be an “immoralist,” at war with morality. In fact, he was generous, compassionate, and courteous, even if he does denounce such virtues in his fl amboyant writings. Nietzsche did not attack morality as such. Rather, he attacks one particular sort of morality that he considers nihilistic. That morality is Judeo-Christian and the bourgeois morality defended by Immanuel Kant and suggested by the categorical imperative.
Universal principles, says Nietzsche, don’t take into account the vast difference between individuals. Does love extended to everyone—per the New Testament—still deserve to be called love? Whether Christianity or utilitarianism, such universal principles have ignored an old philosophy with great credentials, one of virtue and character. Like Aristotle, Nietzsche argues that the focus of ethics is on individual character—“what kind of a person am I?”
In his book Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche suggests that there are basically two perspectives on morality, Master and Slave. These names indicate both the origins and the temperament of these two moral positions. Both master and slave morality refer to historical positions in the ancient world of Greece and Rome. Master morality originated with the “masters” of the ancient world, the powerful aristocracies that ruled even in the periods before Greek democracy fl ourished. Slave morality originated with the literal slaves and servants of the ancient world, the powerless, those who were deprived, by force or because of their own infi rmities, of the good life enjoyed by the aristocracy. Nietzsche sees Aristotle as belonging to a decadent culture, after the “golden age” and the Homeric period of warrior virtues.
Master morality is by temperament aristocratic and independent. It takes as the prototype of “good” the masters’ own virtues. It puts its emphasis on personal excellence (areté). Slave morality is, in contrast, a temperament that is servile, reactionary, and resentful. It rejects the virtues of the masters as “evil.” It is primarily characterized by its motivation, which is defensive. It is also vengeful, bitter, and fi lled with self-loathing Slave morality considers “good” to be denial of desire, abstention, and self-denial in general. From this tradition, we Universal principles, learn that the good is self-denial. And we are says Nietzsche, don’t left with two distinct moral types: one based on excellence; the other, on self-denial.
take into account
the vast difference The modern age can be characterized as the between individuals. result of two thousand years of slave morality, but the master mentality never disappears. Master morality is sublimated. It appears as “bad conscience.” This is a war within between pride and humility. It is also a confl ict between excellence and mediocrity. Masterly strength and virtue never truly disappear. The master morality may be driven underground or forced to sublimate itself into other outlets (e.g., the Popes in the medieval church).
Nietzsche envisions an evolutionary possibility that would be the ultimate expression of master morality as “spiritualized” by way of slave morality. This possibility is called the Übermensch, and it is, perhaps, Nietzsche’s most famous (or notorious) creation. ■
Essential Reading
Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 43–78.
Supplementary Reading
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals; The Will to Power; and Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Walter Kaufmann, ed., The Viking Portable Nietzsche.
An excellent view of Nietzsche’s ethics is presented in Hunt, Nietzsche and the Original of Virtue.
For a postmodernist interpretation of master and slave morality and the will to power, see Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy.
For an excellent analysis of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, see Higgins, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. See also Solomon and Higgins, What Nietzsche Really Said,
Chapter 5, “Nietzsche’s War on Morality.”
Introductory Question to Consider
1. Nietzsche distinguishes between “good and bad” and “good and evil.” How does he understand the difference between “bad” and “evil”? Does “good” mean the same thing in the two pairs of terms? If not, how does it differ in each?
Advanced Question to Consider
1. “That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange; only it gives no ground for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: ‘these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather its opposite, a lamb—would he not be good?’ there is no reason to fi nd fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the bird of prey might view it a little ironically and say: ‘we don’t dislike them at all, these good little lambs; we even love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb’” (Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Book I, Para. 13). What is Nietzsche’s point here? What is he saying about master and slave morality?
Nietzsche on Freedom, Fate, and Responsibility
Lecture 12
What we do, because we are the kind of creatures we are, is we act. Because we are the kind of introspective creatures we are, we try to think we must have caused that action through some more or less deliberate mental activity. Nietzsche wants to say most of our lives are not so refl ective—not so deliberative. Nietzsche is one of these philosophers who says that consciousness is something that is vastly overrated.
O
ne of the most fascinating and perplexing aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy is his seemingly contradictory defense of fate on the one hand and existential self-realization on the other. In Nietzsche’s
example of the lambs and birds of prey, he suggests that our characters are inborn. We
are born with certain talents. We must “realize Eternal recurrence— ourselves.” We are not without limitations. the idea of reliving Nietzsche repeats Pindar’s admonition to one’s life over and
“become who you are.”
over again—can be
Nietzsche follows Schopenhauer in his heavy read, in part, as an use of the word “Will,” but he rejects much affi rmation of fate.
of what Schopenhauer has to say about it. He rejects Schopenhauer’s pessimistic depiction of life as amounting to nothing. He also rejects Schopenhauer’s metaphysical understanding of the Will as a “thing in itself.” Nevertheless, he agrees with Schopenhauer’s rejection of free will. Free will depends on an “imaginary” notion of the self or subject, as advocated by Kant. Free will confuses causes and effects. For Nietzsche, consciousness is overrated: We are biological creatures whose every action can (in principle) be explained naturalistically. All actions can, therefore, be explained (but not justifi ed) by motives and intentions.
Nietzsche follows the ancient Greeks in his belief in fate. For the Greek tragedians, fate was an undeniable aspect of human life. The notion of fate does not have to be understood as a crude and mysterious force. Heraclitus says, “fate is character,” and this is a view that Nietzsche would wholly endorse—that we can become what we were born to be. Nevertheless, Nietzsche insists that we can and should “give style to our character”—in other words, our character is to some extent our own doing.
Eternal recurrence—the idea of reliving one’s life over and over again— can be read, in part, as an affi rmation of fate. The idea of eternal repetition does not cause, but reiterates, the idea of an inevitable outcome. Eternal recurrence is, above all, an affi rmation of who one is, one’s character, and therefore one’s destiny. Nietzsche praises amor fati—the love of fate—as the most positive outlook on life. The love of fate does not preclude taking responsibility for “becoming who you are.” Fate is not blind resignation, but it is the acceptance of who you are and what you have to do with your life. Nietzsche, unlike Kierkegaard and Sartre, has an ambivalent attitude toward the notion of responsibility. ■
Essential Reading
Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 43–78.
Supplementary Reading
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols in Walter Kaufmann, ed., The Portable Nietzsche.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. Does it make sense to deny that we have “free will”? What does this mean? Does it mean that our choices are mere illusions?
2. What does it mean to believe in fate? How is fate different from luck? From chance? What kind of “necessity” is it that makes fated events come about?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. Can you have a concept of responsibility without the presumption of freedom? Would it make sense to hold people responsible if fate determines what they do?
2. Does it make sense to say that the self is the cause of our actions? That we bring about our actions by intending them? Or is Nietzsche right that we fi nd ourselves acting, then read back into the action the notion of prior intention?
Nietzsche—The Übermensch and the Will to Power
Lecture 13
In this, the last lecture on Nietzsche, I’d like to talk about two of his most famous and most notorious notions—the notion of the Übermensch, the superman or overman, and his idea about the “will to power.”
T
he Übermensch is Nietzsche’s best-known invention, in part because of George Bernard Shaw’s lampoon of the notion in his play, Man and Superman. In fact, the notion only appears in one of Nietzsche’s books, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and then only at the beginning. Nietzsche does speak with some frequency of “higher men,” clearly within the realm of the human, however. The Übermensch is portrayed by Zarathustra as a “possibility” for the future, something to which humanity can aspire. Nietzsche is clearly in Darwin’s thrall in many ways. Nonetheless, he doubted Darwin’s supposed premise that the best survive. But Zarathustra simultaneously introduces the more likely evolutionary possibility of “the last man,” the self-contented, self-satisfi ed utilitarian modern man. “We have invented happiness,” says the last man [“and he blinks”]. Zarathustra intends to horrify his audience with this vision, as he would inspire them with his vision of the Übermensch.
The Übermensch can be conceived in terms of ancient master morality, “spiritualized” by two thousand years of humility, ready to reassert itself in more refi ned form. The Übermensch is free of resentment and wholly independent of the “herd.” Although the Übermensch is conceived of as an evolutionary possibility, Nietzsche does not pursue Darwin and clearly fears that any such “improvement” of humanity is highly implausible. Nevertheless, Nietzsche clearly distinguishes between those who aspire and are “higher” and those who merely react and resent and are, thereby, “lower.” The poet Goethe is Nietzsche’s most frequent example of such a higher man, clearly suggesting that the realm that concerns Nietzsche is not so much biological evolution as human spirituality and creativity. What distinguishes the higher from the lower, at least in some of Nietzsche’s pronouncements, is a difference in the “will to power.”
“The Will to Power” is a phrase that Nietzsche employs throughout his philosophy. “The Will to Power” is to some extent borrowed from Schopenhauer’s “Will” and should be taken with a grain of salt, because Nietzsche rejects Schopenhauer’s metaphysics. By “power” Nietzsche does not mean military power or power over others, but power of creativity and imagination. Power is best conceived as self-mastery, inner strength. Schopenhauer took the Will to be a metaphysical force, “the thing-in-itself.” Nietzsche rejects all such metaphysics and the very idea of “the thing-in-itself.”
For Nietzsche, the will to power provides a serious theory of motivation. Human behavior (animal behavior, too) is motivated by the desire for power. Nietzsche is often ambiguous about whether power itself is desired or the feeling of power. (These are not the same.) Nietzsche makes bold universalist claims, but the idea of power as goal and motivation is best considered as a limited empirical hypothesis, not a theory of human nature as such. The desire for power (self-mastery, self-expression) is directly opposed to the pervasive hedonic theory—that people (and animals) act to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. The utilitarians, for example, use the pleasure principle as a central tenet. But Nietzsche sees power as a profound version of what we would limply call “self-esteem.” Thus, such passions as love “The Will to Power” is to and pity often have ulterior and some extent borrowed from sometimes dubious motives.
Schopenhauer’s “Will” and
The will to power might also be
should be taken with a grain of taken to be a celebration of the
salt, because Nietzsche rejects passionate life. The history of
Schopenhauer’s metaphysics. philosophy is fi lled with praise for tranquility and peace of mind. This is the height of slave morality, the
idea of cutting attachments and losses. But Nietzsche presents us with an alternative ideal, the idea that passionate attachments (whether to ideals or art or people) are what life is all about. The metaphor of energy pervades Nietzsche’s works. Energy (as opposed to matter) was the central term in nineteenth-century physics. The dynamics of energy provide Nietzsche with a model for human behavior that does not conform to the traditional notions of inertia and momentum in human behavior. Excitement and adventure become the keys to a good human life, not (as in many philosophers) resignation and contemplation.
Passion represents energy in human life and experience. In this, Nietzsche again resembles no one so much as Kierkegaard. Not every passion is desirable. Some passions are “life-stultifying” and stupid, such as resentment. They “drag us down.” Others are highly refi ned and cultivated. These are the “grand passions” that make life worthwhile. For Nietzsche, as for many other philosophers of the century, “nothing great is ever done without passion” (the phrase is from Hegel). Nietzsche ultimately rejects the dichotomy between reason and passion. The passions themselves have “their own quanta of reason.” They are themselves forms of insight.
Nietzsche’s philosophy is a philosophy of passion and energy. The ultimate passion is the love of life, but not simply life as life. It is the love of your life and what you have done and are doing with it. The test of this love of life is what Nietzsche calls “the thought of eternal recurrence.” Simply stated, how do you feel about living your life, exactly as is, once again? Philosophy, contra Schopenhauer, is an affi rmation of life. Eternal recurrence also provides an existential test, an ongoing means of scrutinizing how one is living and what one is doing with his or her life. ■
Essential Reading
Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 43–78.
Supplementary Reading
For a postmodernist interpretation of master and slave morality and the will to power, see Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy; for an excellent analysis of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, see Higgins, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.
Nietzsche, The Will to Power, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Walter Kaufmann, ed., The Viking Portable Nietzsche.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. What is the will to power? To what extent do you think this phrase unavoidably refers to power over other people? In what sense does it refer to self-discipline and self-mastery?
2. Zarathustra announces the coming of the “Übermensch.” Who is he? Although Nietzsche says very little about him, what sense do you make of him? What do you make of the possibility that he is “super human”? Is Nietzsche making an evolutionary prediction? (He is writing only a few decades after Darwin.) Explain.
Advanced Question to Consider
1. Eternal recurrence has been described as a “metaphysical doctrine”: Time is not linear but loops around such that what is happening now has happened an infi nite number of times in the past and will happen an infi nite number of times in the future in exactly the same way. Eternal recurrence can also be interpreted as a “psychological doctrine” (a metaphorical tool for enabling us to determine how we should will) and an “ontological doctrine” (only active, master-like willing will return; reactive, slave-like willing will not). Which of these views—if any—do you embrace? Why?
Three Grand Inquisitors—Dostoevsky, Kafka, Hesse
Lecture 14
In this lecture I’d like to discuss three literary fi gures who fi t quite well into the sensibilities that we have been discussing. They are the Russian author Dostoevsky, the Czech author Kafka, and the Swiss author Hermann Hesse.
F
yodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was Nietzsche’s contemporary, had a Kierkegaardian religious sensibility, and anticipated some of the central themes in Heidegger’s philosophy. In his Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky introduces us to a character who is obsessed with free will, his “most advantageous advantage,” and is utterly spiteful, indecisive, and ineffective as a result. His reaction to his own liver disease is to let it get worse. The central theme is freedom or free will. Dostoevsky attacks the Enlightenment notion that freedom and happiness go hand in hand. Being spiteful isn’t a personality disorder but a philosophical position, a manifestation of free will. In his novel The Idiot, by contrast, Dostoevsky introduces us to a character who is “perfectly good,” who is motivated only by the purest moral sentiments, and who becomes a disaster for all around him. This is, in one sense, a defense of Kant’s position that intention is what matters.
In his Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky introduces the problem of nihilism by way of brother Ivan, anticipating Nietzsche a few years later. Ivan, educated in the West, has imbibed much of Enlightenment philosophy. Between his sensual older brother, Dmitri, and his younger brother, Aloysha, we see the spectrum of European philosophy. Dostoevsky poses a number of dilemmas about human life that are intended to place the movement of nihilism in higher relief. In The Brothers Karamazov, he also introduces “the Grand Inquisitor,” the head of the Christian church who, when faced with Christ’s second coming, insists on executing him once again. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky pursues the idea that “if there is no God, then everything is permitted.”
Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was a Jewish writer living in pre-communist Czechoslovakia (Bohemia). His writings exemplify “the Absurd.” They also raise the question of self-identity in a brilliantly original way. Gregor Samsa becomes a giant insect in “Metamorphosis.” The story emphasizes a Cartesian separation of mind and body. Our self-identity is construed by our role in society. Kafka’s images of guilt and innocence in The Trial powerfully infl uence Albert Camus in The Stranger. For Kafka, human beings are guilty by virtue of their very existence. This theme is common to many Kafka’s images of of our writers—consciousness, instead of guilt and innocence in being a blessing, may be a disease. With consciousness, comes despair.
The Trial powerfully
infl uence Albert Camus Hermann Hesse (1877–1862) was a in The Stranger. German-Swiss writer who bridged the abyss between European and Eastern
(Indian) thought, particularly Buddhism. In Siddhartha, Hesse retells the story of the Buddha and his enlightenment in very human terms. Hesse was also an admirer and advocate of Nietzsche. In Demian, he presents a quasi-occult image of the exceptional person, a child who prefi gures the Übermensch in being “beyond good and evil.” In Steppenwolf, he gives us a superior adult, who thinks of himself as half man and half wolf. Consequently, he is miserably unhappy, trapped in a Nietzschean image of himself. Like Kafka, Hesse challenges Nietzsche’s aggressiveness and optimism. Ultimately, Hesse claims that one has many selves. Like Kafka, Hesse radically challenges our ordinary concept of self. In Steppenwolf, he offers us the Eastern image of a “no self” self, the self as an onion—not a peach—with many layers but no essential core. With Hesse, one starts with Nietzsche but attains a certain passion that even Nietzsche didn’t understand. ■
Essential Reading
Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 33-42 (Dostoevsky); 166-168 (Kafka); pp. 79– 92 (Hesse).
Supplementary Reading
Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground and The Grand Inquisitor, trans. by Ralph E. Matlaw, and The Brothers Karamazov, trans. by Constance Garnett.
Hesse, Demian, trans. by Michael Roloff and Michael Lebeck, and Steppenwolf, trans. by Basil Creighton.
Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories, and The Trial, trans. by Breon Mitchell.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. Do you believe that “if there is no God, everything is permitted”? What does this mean?
2. To what extent to you think that “Kafkaesque” descriptions of the world are true and warranted? Is life ultimately supposed to make sense?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. Can you describe the Buddhist “no self” in terms that are congenial to Western philosophy, existentialism in particular?
2. Kafka’s character Joseph K. is arrested for no reason, put on trial, and ultimately condemned to death. In what sense are we all “guilty” in some such sense?
Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology
Lecture 15
Being and Time is not really about Being. It is a kind of preliminary work, a kind of preparation for asking the more serious questions that he simply anticipates. What goes on in Being and Time is the examination of a very particular kind of Being—what Heidegger refers to as “the being through whom the question of Being comes into question.” That is, us.
E
dmund Husserl (1859–1938) was the founder of phenomenology. Phenomenology was a new version of Cartesianism, carving out the special realm of consciousness or “subjectivity.” Phenomenology is the examination of consciousness. Phenomenology might be defi ned as
“the study of the essential (or ‘intentional’) structures of experience.” Intentionality means
that consciousness is about something. Husserl One of the most himself was a mathematician who was primarily vitriolic recent interested in the nature of necessary truth rather controversies in than the problems of life. philosophy involves
Philosophy, according to Husserl, seeks the question, “Who
certainty, as Descartes did, not empirical was Heidegger?” facts, as in natural science. Husserl sought an “Archimedean point” from which to establish such a foundation for all knowledge. (Husserl’s enduring interest is always focused on the “necessity” of mathematical truths.) Husserl’s “Archimedean point,” the foundation of all knowledge, was the Transcendental Ego. Husserl’s phenomenology provided the method for the existentialist investigation of the self, fi rst in the philosophy of Husserl’s prize student, Martin Heidegger, then in the work of the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre.
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was a student of Husserl’s, but he was formerly a student of theology and more concerned with the deep questions of human existence than the more abstract questions that fascinated his teacher. (Heidegger later commented that the purpose of philosophy was to “invent a new God.”) Heidegger’s early work is often referred to as “existentialist,” although he himself rejected that affi liation. His fi rst work, Being and Time, has existentialist themes. The central question of Heidegger’s philosophy was the “question of Being.” This must be distinguished from more particular “ontic” queries about the nature of beings, or entities. “Ontology” (or “fundamental ontology”) was his effort to understand the nature of Being as such. Being is to be understood from a phenomenological point of view. Being has clear religious overtones. We are essentially ontological creatures, which means, in Heidegger’s view, that we necessarily query the world about our own existence and identity. The being that so queries the world, the being that each of us is, is what Heidegger calls “Dasein,” or “being there.”
The quest for Being fi rst of all requires an understanding of “that being through whom the question of Being comes into being,” in other words, Dasein. Looking at Dasein from a phenomenological point of
view, it is fi rst of all Being-in-the-World. Unlike Husserl and Descartes, Heidegger Rene Descartes’ philosophy was the ancestor of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s.
says our primordial experience is a unifi ed experience of being in the world. Heidegger would not describe us in the more naturalistic terms of “human being,” because from the innocence of the fi rst-person view, the question of what we are in nature remains to be determined. He does not talk about consciousness or subjectivity. Being and Time is largely devoted to the phenomenological description of what it is to be a Dasein. Although Heidegger believed that fundamental ontology was only possible as phenomenology, he rejects Husserl’s emphasis on consciousness and the Transcendental Ego.
Heidegger sketches out the essential “existential” features of Dasein. Because Dasein is essentially “ontological,” it is, by its very nature, selfquestioning. On the one hand, the idea that we are essentially questioning creatures is common to almost all philosophers, culminating in Descartes. On the other hand, Heidegger refuses to talk about this questioning in terms of consciousness and subjectivity, as Descartes and Husserl did. Consequently, Dasein has an identity crisis. It wants to know “who” it is. What we think of as our identity is a false one.
One of the most vitriolic recent controversies in philosophy involves the question, “Who was Heidegger?” Heidegger committed himself briefl y to National Socialism (1933–34). He served as Rector of Freiburg University under Hitler, was responsible for the fi ring of Jewish professors, and gave several well-documented pro-Nazi speeches. Heidegger never repudiated National Socialism but only bemoaned its failure.
Reconciling his life to his philosophy is a problem. But as Nietzsche suggested, to understand a philosophy, we must understand the philosopher—only then does a full picture emerge. Heidegger denies that he is doing “ethics” in his “fundamental ontology,” but it is not so obvious that his philosophical views are entirely separable from his personal and political commitments. ■
Essential Reading
Selections from Heidegger’s Being and Time in Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 93–123.
Chapter 11 of Solomon, Continental Philosophy Since 1750, pp. 152–172.
Supplementary Reading
Although still diffi cult, the best exposition of Husserl’s phenomenological “method” is Edmund Husserl’s Paris Lectures, in Solomon, Phenomenology and Existentialism. These were rewritten as Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. For the very courageous, try Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by Joan Stambaugh.
Some good overviews of Heidegger are: Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1; Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge; Metha, The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger.
For an overview of Husserl, see Solomon, Continental Philosophy Since 1750 (chapters on Husserl and Heidegger), and From Rationalism to Existentialism, “Martin Heidegger: Being and Being Human,” pp.184–244. For a lighter approach to Heidegger, see Solomon, Introducing the Existentialists.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. For Heidegger, what is the difference between the “ontic” and the “ontological”? Why is it important that we (i.e., “Dasein”) are “ontological”?
2. According to Heidegger, when is it that we begin to deliberate on the particulars of a project in which we are engaged and start to see things as “things,” as “objects”? Think of yourself engaged in an everyday project. Do you agree with him? Explain.
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. How does Heidegger’s approach to phenomenology differ from Husserl’s “phenomenological method”? What are some of the different underlying presuppositions?
2. What does Heidegger gain by referring to “Dasein” (“being-there”) rather than “human consciousness” or just “people,” for example? Is Dasein an individual? The human collective? Both? Neither? Why talk in this novel way?
3. What, in general, is the relationship between a philosopher and his philosophy? Nietzsche comments (in Beyond Good and Evil) that every philosophy is “the personal confession and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.” What would count as “pro-Nazi” implications in a treatise such as Being and Time? How explicit would such implications have to be?
Heidegger on the World and the Self
Lecture 16
We can say Being and Time is basically a concern about ourselves and the world and how we fi t into the world. There are two features I want to talk about—two existential structures in this lecture. The fi rst is the nature of knowledge, which has been the focus of philosophers since at least the Greeks. The second is the notion of the self, which, at least in the terms that we are going to be speaking in, essentially has been the main concern of philosophy since at least Descartes.
F
rom the point of view of Dasein, the world is no longer a mere object of knowledge. Philosophers think of the world and the things that make up the world as, fi rst of all, something to be known. But Heidegger says we are not fi rst of all “knowers.” We are, instead, engaged in the world, faced with tasks. Kant or Wittgenstein, for example, describes the world as the totality of objects and states of affairs—but that isn’t obvious to Heidegger at all.
The world, accordingly, fi rst appears to us as “equipment,” not as an object of knowledge. For Heidegger, the world is knowing how, not knowing what, as in the example of using a hammer in a workshop. So, too, the appearance of “things”—even something as basic as a hammer—becomes a phenomenon to be explained, not an obvious philosophical starting point. Paying attention to the task itself (refl ection) can interrupt the very process of doing it. Heidegger questions the ultimate benefi ts of technology, suggesting that our view of the world as “resource” betrays both our own nature and the nature of our relationship to the world. Competition and consumerism make us diminished beings, no longer authentically engaged in the world.
From the point of view of Dasein, it is no longer clear what the self is. Descartes’s famous “I think, therefore I am” is a misleading paradigm of self-identity. It suggests a disastrous split between the mind (“I am a thinking thing”) and the body, which Heidegger rejects. It also suggests that selfknowledge is immediate and transparent. Heidegger tells us that the self is neither immediate nor transparent, and self-recognition is rare and special rather than philosophically routine.
This need and capacity to clarify our own mode of being, to be “ontological,” raises the questions of what it is to be genuinely one’s own self—or authentic (eigentlich)—and in what way can we then properly approach the question of Being. It also raises the question of what it is to be inauthentic (uneigentlich). Most of our lives,
we are not our genuine selves, not authentic but inauthentic, what Heidegger calls the das Man (“one is”) self.
Heidegger develops the concept of the self as From the point of view of Dasein, it is no longer clear what the self is.
das Man. The ordinary self is not the self of Cartesian refl ection. It is not an individual self.
It is an “anonymous” self, a self defi ned by other people. The ordinary self is, thus, inauthentic. When we describe ourselves, we refer to the roles we play or social categories. The das Man self is the social, comparative self. Although it is essential to life, it is not our genuine self. This view harks back to Kierkegaard’s and Nietzsche’s attacks on the “herd mentality” of contemporary society, but Heidegger doesn’t accept the extremity of their rejection of everyday social life. Heidegger’s contrasting notion of authenticity comes to play an enormous role in existentialist literature.
Heidegger encourages us to be authentic, to “take hold of ourselves.” Heidegger dramatically announces that we are “thrown” into the world, suggesting a dimension of involuntariness and fatalism. To take hold of one’s self, one doesn’t reject society but resolutely accepts one’s historicity and reasserts the self in traditions and “destiny.” ■
Essential Reading
Selections from Heidegger’s Being and Time in Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 93–123.
Supplementary Reading
Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1.
Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 39–48, 59–70, 77–82, 107–122; and The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays.
Solomon, From Rationalism to Existentialism, pp.184–244.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. How does Heidegger’s approach to phenomenology have ecological overtones? In what sense can he be construed as attacking the very idea of the earth as a “resource”?
2. What (who) is das Man, the das Man self? To what is it opposed?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. What is the nature of “existence” for Heidegger? Does this say anything more than affi rm the fact that we have choices and make decisions?
2. In what sense are we “thrown” into the world? What images does this violent choice of words suggest? What does it imply about the nature of our lives?
3. “The word ‘I’ is to be understood only in the sense of a non-committal formal indicator, indicating something which may reveal itself as its ‘opposite’ in some particular phenomenal context of Being. In that case, the ‘not-I’ is by no means tantamount to an entity which essentially lacks ‘I-hood’ but is rather a defi nite kind of Being which the ‘I’ itself possesses, such as having lost itself” (Heidegger, Being and Time, “The ‘Who’ of Dasein”). What is Heidegger telling us about the nature of “self-identity”? Contrast this notion of the “I” with Husserl’s more “Cartesian” approach.
Heidegger on “Authenticity”
Lecture 17
To think about authenticity is to think about living a certain kind of life. It is to think about living what most of us call a very serious kind of life, or a very profound kind of life, in which the larger questions about being, and our being in particular, are always in some sense in front of us.
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n Nietzsche’s description of master and slave morality, he clearly prefers the former. So, too, does Heidegger, who gives us an ethics of authenticity. Heidegger encourages us to be authentic (eigentlich), to “take hold of ourselves” or comport ourselves toward the world in a certain way.
Among the various “existential” features of Dasein, Heidegger highlights three: existence, facticity, and fallenness. Existence (Existenz) is that which is essentially Dasein. Dasein has no essence other than the fact that it exists. “Existence precedes essence.” Dasein has “possibilities.” Existenz is that feature of Dasein through which we envision our possibilities, our future. It is the capacity to make choices. (Heidegger’s later philosophy will question this existential concept of choice.) It is our necessary ability to look into the future and disclose to ourselves the three interwoven dimensions of time, the present, the past, and the future. Our moods (not to be conceived as merely transient mental states) are ways of being “tuned” into the world, in which our existenz is disclosed to us. Heidegger says our moods are shared. They are not “in our minds” but out there, in the world.
Facticity consists of the brute facts that characterize us, such as height, weight, date of birth, and so on. Here is where Heidegger says that we are “thrown” into a world not of our choosing. Our “historicity” is our historical situation.
Fallenness is the “pre-ontological” way in which Dasein fails to face up to its ontological condition and “falls back” to daily inauthenticity, das Man. It is the everyday core of inauthenticity, falling back into tasks. It is what we experience in our everyday lives and should be respected as such. But fallenness alone is just one dimension of human life and not yet authentic. Heidegger goes on to distinguish various authentic and inauthentic modes of being: Understanding is opposed to curiosity. Thinking is opposed to calculation. Speech is opposed to chatter.
Heidegger marks these distinctions as the The most dramatic structure of conscience. We cannot help but suggestion in Being ask questions about what we are and feel anxiety about our existence. and Time is that we are
all “Being-unto-death.” The most dramatic suggestion in Being and
Time is that we are all “Being-unto-death”
(Sein-zum-Tode). The recognition of our
own mortality is that it is a necessary fact about us. But we normally don’t take this seriously. Our mortality prompts us to “take hold of ourselves” in an authentic “resolution” of our own existence. It also forces us to appreciate our limitations and immerse ourselves in our “historicity,” our historical situation. Being-unto-death forces us to see ourselves and our lives as a single unity.
This last point is immensely problematic because of Heidegger’s own place in history. Does his philosophy make an excuse for his fl irtation with the Nazis in the name of “historicity,” his historical situation? Why did he never repent for his involvement in the National Socialist cause? Facticity? Fallenness? Or bad faith? ■
Essential Reading
Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 93–123.
Supplementary Reading
Solomon, From Rationalism to Existentialism, pp.184–244. For a good analysis of Heidegger’s own “historicity,” see Sluga, Heidegger’s Crisis. For a good defense of Heidegger, see Young, Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. Defi ne the following Heideggerian terms: “facticity,” “thrownness,” “existence,” and “fallenness.”
2. Who is “das Man?” Is it you? Or “partially” you? Explain.
3. What role does death, or more precisely, “Being-unto-death,” play in the realization of authenticity?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. Heidegger asserts that “fallenness”—which is the result of losing oneself in the idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity of “the they”—“does not express any negative evaluation, but is used to signify that Dasein is proximally and for the most part alongside the world of its concern.” Is it true that Heidegger doesn’t view “fallenness” normatively? If so, why should we try to live “authentically,” especially given that Heidegger tells us that fallenness brings “tranquility”?
2. What would it mean to live “authentically” in the world? Is there any way that “you” could live authentically in a world that is otherwise “fallen,” or does individual authenticity depend on living in a more “authentic” context?
Jean-Paul Sartre at War
Lecture 18
Sartre wrote voluminously. It is said that he wrote as much as 20 pages a day every day of his life, and he lived into his 70s. The idea is that what he wrote was so varied and so, in a way, all over the place, that to talk about Sartre’s philosophy is really just to talk about a piece of a very grand campaign.
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ean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) is the ultimate existentialist; he concentrates on the issue of responsibility. His voluminous writings amount to a huge oeuvre, a true testament of “engaged literature.” He named the movement and popularized it, fi rst in France, then throughout Europe and America. The characteristics so often identifi ed with existentialism are his own. Only his most faithful companion, Simone de Beauvoir, has stuck with his philosophy, while correcting him on important points and arguing all the way.
It is Sartre’s philosophy, condensed in his great tome, Being and Nothingness, that can best be summarized in the phrase “no excuses!” His analysis of human nature was solidifi ed during the horrible years of the German occupation. He spent time in a Nazi war prison—not a concentration camp. Nevertheless, he borrows much of his language from Heidegger and earlier German philosophers. Sartre’s vehement denunciations were mainly aimed at his fellow Frenchmen for their cowardice, hypocrisy, and collaboration with the Germans.
What bothered Sartre was the way that everyone disclaimed responsibility for not helping the Resistance, for living their lives as normally as possible, and for collaborating with the enemy. This context prompted the question “What is human nature?” Their excuses during the war included: “What can I do about it?”—an appeal to individual impotence. “I didn’t start the war, did I?”—an appeal to personal innocence. “Everyone else is doing it”—an appeal to the “herd,” to the diminution of responsibility by dispersal. “I’m just looking out for myself (the same way everyone else is)”—an appeal to human nature, the instinct for self-preservation. “I couldn’t help it; I had no choice”—the appeal to helplessness. “I couldn’t help it; I was afraid”—the appeal to emotions (as determining behavior).
Against all such excuses, Sartre wants to argue that we are “absolutely free.” We are responsible for what we do, what we are, and the way our world is. This does not mean (what is absurd) that everyone can do (succeed in) anything they choose. It does mean that there are no ultimate constraints on consciousness, on our ability to undertake (or try) to behave in the most eccentric, courageous, or perverse ways. Our choices aren’t unlimited, but choices are always available. Meursault experienced a kind of freedom while in jail in The Stranger. Though imprisoned, he discovers freedom of thought and, in a sense, of choice about how he will die. Sartre gives the example of a mountain—is it a sacred object, an obstacle, an insurance against invasion? How we see the world is a function of our chosen project. Moreover, our motives and emotions do
not determine our behavior. We determine what motives we will follow and how we see the world through our emotions.
Sartre’s harsh view is that everyone is Sartre’s harsh view is that everyone is responsible for his or her situation.
responsible for his or her situation. He famously says, “Everyone gets the war he deserves.” War inspires fear, heroism, greed, opportunism. Though a war is chosen by no one, it requires one to make choices, and “the war” is the outcome of those choices. Whatever the situation, Sartre argues, one has choices. Not all of them are conscious. One makes of the situation and oneself what one can. One may adopt an attitude of defi ance, or resignation, or escape. Whatever we do is to the exclusion of other alternatives. Many choices are made by default.
The threats to freedom are often thought to be internal, such as the intrusion of strong emotions. Emotions and motives, for Sartre, are parts of the situation. To say that something was merely said in anger is false—it may be closer to what one really feels than years of polite conversation. In a sense, anger is a choice—one decides whether to react to something or repress it. “Falling in love” is also a series of choices we make. Shyness is usually presented as a structure of the personality. But is shyness—or cowardice, for that matter—a given that determines us or a sequence of choices we exercise individually? Thus, we are all responsible for what we do, what we are, and the way the world is. ■
Essential Reading
Solomon, Existentialism, esp.
pp. 196–205. “Existentialism Is a Humanism,”
Supplementary Reading
Sartre, The Wall and Other Stories, trans. by Lloyd Alexander, and The Age of Reason (a novel), trans. by Eric Sutton.
Solomon, From Rationalism to Existentialism, pp. 245-324.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. In what senses can we be said to be responsible for ourselves? Is the limit of our responsibility the reach of our voluntary actions? Or can we be held responsible for things outside our control---for example, the way the world is?
2. Consider Sartre’s contention that we are “absolutely free.” What, exactly, does he mean by this? Does he mean that we can achieve whatever we want at any time? If this is not the case (and it clearly is not), how could we be “absolutely free”? Explain.
3. What would it mean to say that a person in prison has a multitude of choices? What might they be?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. Sartre maintains that “the fi rst principle of existentialism” is that “man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.” What does he mean? Is every aspect of ourselves within our own personal control? If not, what sense can be made of Sartre’s claim?
2. If you were a Frenchman in Paris during the early 1940s, what would you have done? What factors infl uence your decisions? To what extent do basic questions of survival dominate your thinking?
3. If you were a German soldier in Paris during the early 1940s, what would you have done? What factors infl uence your decisions? To what extent do basic questions of survival dominate your thinking?
Sartre on Emotions and Responsibility
Lecture 19
By the time he had written Being and Nothingness, Sartre was also evolving a notion of his own of psychoanalysis. It was not Freudian psychoanalysis. It was what he would call “existential” psychoanalysis. The principal difference with Freud was that it was not mechanistic. To put it all into another slogan: Where Freud says, “I cannot,” Sartre would say, “I refuse.”
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n an early essay on emotions (1938), Sartre argued that emotions are choices, “magical transformations of the world.” He wanted to get away from the mechanistic picture of emotions as brute forces or mere physiological disturbances. He tried to defend the emotions as choices, strategies for coping with a diffi cult world. They are also, accordingly, our responsibility, not mere excuses.
One of his targets is the great American philosopher-psychologist William James. James argued (though not consistently) that an emotion is merely a set of sensations caused by a physiological disturbance that is itself caused by a disturbing perception or image. The beauty of James’s theory, for psychologists and philosophers, is how specifi c it is. Sartre argues that emotions (and all acts of mind) must have “intentionality,” direction toward the world, and cannot be mere sensations or “feelings.” Emotions, then, are always about something. James, on the other hand, suggests that some emotions are instinctual in nature—thus, perception gets short shrift. Furthermore, Sartre argues, emotions have “fi nality” or purpose. There are reasons for one’s emotions. An emotion is a strategy for dealing with the world. In Aesop, the fox’s perception transforms the world when he can’t get the grapes he wants. The fox refuses to see himself as a failure, thus escaping from the humiliation of defeat. In the story of the fainting woman, emotion refl ects a choice to evade an intolerable situation. Even through love and joy, one chooses to absolve one’s self of responsibility.
A second target is Freud. Sartre rejects “the unconscious.” But is there really a difference between this concept and Sartre’s “pre-refl ective” consciousness? Sartre also rejects the very idea of “psychic determinism,” the notion that human emotions, thoughts, and decisions are caused by antecedent conditions and external events. They are not to be construed as forces “within us,”
the Freudian “id,” acting upon us against our will (and apart from our knowledge). Emotions are strategies, knowingly and willfully (but not refl ectively) undertaken.
Sartre’s view of the participation of the body in emotion anticipates some Sartre’s view of the participation of the body in emotion anticipates some of the most interesting recent work in neuropsychology.
of the most interesting recent work in neuropsychology. Emotions are not just bodily reactions or sensations. Nevertheless, Sartre develops his own brand of psychoanalysis, “existential” psychoanalysis. The essential difference with Freud becomes not so much the existence of the unconscious but the rejection of the supposedly mechanistic, impersonal workings of the mind. ■
Essential Reading
Sartre, The Emotions: Sketch of a Theory.
Supplementary Reading
Fell, Emotion in the Thought of Sartre. For various readings on the nature of emotion (including William James’s classic “What Is an Emotion?”), see Cheshire Calhoun, ed., What Is an Emotion?
Soll, “Sartre’s Rejection of the Freudian Unconscious,” in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed., Paul A. Schilpp.
Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life.
———, “Sartre on the Emotions,” in Schilpp, ibid.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. What does Sartre mean when he refers to emotions as “magical transformations of the world”? What leads us to “magically transform” the world in one particular way as opposed to another?
2. What does Sartre mean by the term “intentionality”? What role does “intentionality” play in Sartre’s theory of the emotions? How does it enable Sartre to respond to the skeptic?
3. Why is Sartre intent upon rejecting Freud’s “the unconscious”? notion of
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. According to the American philosopher William James, an emotion is nothing more than a sensation that is caused by a physiological manifestation (which, in turn, is caused by a perception). Sartre has several major problems with this view. What are they?
2. Consider Sartre’s introduction of “that face which appears at the pane” at the end of The Emotions. In response to this face, Sartre tells us: “the behavior which gives emotion its meaning is no longer ours; it is the expression of the face, the movements of the body of the other person which come to form a synthetic whole with the disturbance of our organism.” What do you make of this description? Can it be reconciled with Sartre’s position throughout the book that our emotions are voluntary and, therefore, ultimately our own responsibility?
3. By calling emotions “magical” transformations of the world, is Sartre negatively evaluating them? Are they always some form of “sour grapes”— some evasion or distortion of the world by consciousness because of its inability to change the world to meet its ends? If so, do you agree with Sartre? Are all (or some) emotions necessarily evasions?
Sartre’s Phenomenology
Lecture 20
The starting point of Sartre’s great work, Being and Nothingness, is phenomenology. More particularly, it is a phenomenology of consciousness. This would indicate that Sartre is going back to Husserl and saying what Heidegger refused to say: that the subject matter (and what we are going to be examining in phenomenology) is consciousness itself.
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n separating consciousness and the world, Sartre is a Cartesian. Freedom and responsibility have their source in consciousness. Sartre tells us that consciousness is freedom. Responsibility is the (necessary) awareness of
being the incontestable author of an event or situation.
Sartre tells us that “consciousness is nothingness.” Consciousness is not a thing (an object of consciousness). Introspection cannot make an object of consciousness. Consciousness is always “behind” the things of our awareness; it is the activity that discloses them. Consciousness is intentionality. It is always about something other than itself.
Consciousness is therefore outside the nexus of causal relations. If consciousness could be caused, the deterministic thesis would be true and the result would be the loss of responsibility. Consciousness is freedom from external determination. This does not mean that Sartre denies the scientifi c view of the mind as explicable (at least in part) in terms of neurophysiology. Sartre adopts a “two standpoints” view, much like his illustrious predecessor Immanuel Kant. From the fi rst-person phenomenological perspective, we cannot see ourselves as anything other than free. But from a naturalistic (scientifi c) standpoint, we can view ourselves as creatures that can be explained by biology and the other natural sciences. Sartre uses the word “spontaneity” to carve out a middle range between deliberate agency and mindless habit.
Consciousness has the power of “negation.” We are not simply passive receivers. We have expectations, which can be thwarted. We impose values on our world. We can say “no!” to the situations in which we fi nd ourselves. Or, we see things in terms of what we can do with them. When we perceive through negation, we construe the world in terms of what’s not there. We are always able to “distance” ourselves,
“step back” and adopt an attitude toward Sartre’s phenomenology objects of consciousness, even with pain.
of human nature is Whether or not we do it deliberately, we
do something like this all the time. intended to take the
place of traditional By way of negation, we can distance philosophical argument. ourselves from our mental states. In pain, we not only suffer. We also ask, “What does this mean? Do I deserve this? Can I
take this? Should I cry out or complain?” So, too, in anger, real wisdom can be found in the simple motherly advice to “count to ten.” We can reconsider our anger, its cause, its warrant, its expression. We can ignore anger, or overcome it, or give into it. We say that we “fall” in love, but we also encourage it, provoke it, decide whether to follow through on our impulses or not. However strong the attraction, one can always ask, “What am I to do about this?” Finally, cowardice, like courage, is not simply a vice or virtue one is born with. A person decides, through his or her actions, to be a coward or to be courageous. This was of particular concern to Sartre as he observed his compatriots during the war.
Sartre’s phenomenology of human nature is intended to take the place of traditional philosophical argument. Arguments derive conclusions from premises. But often the premises themselves are more controversial than the conclusions. Since Plato, the linearity of logical argument too easily eclipses the multidimensionality of experience.
Phenomenology presents us with experiences so “essential” that they prove the point beyond any possible argument. Three examples follow. First, nausea is an experience of the pervasiveness of Being. This is the thesis described in Sartre’s novel Nausea. His character, Roquentin, fi nds existence intrusive.
The novel shows being (by way of the being of particular entities) to be utterly undeniable, whatever arguments skeptical philosophers may produce. Second, anguish is an experience of our own freedom. Anguish is different from fear. (The latter concerns what might happen to us; the former, what we might do.) In a dangerous situation, we realize that nothing stands between us and our own willful self-destruction. Third, shame is an experience of the existence of other people. We do not primarily know of the existence of others by way of perceiving them. We know of the existence of other people primarily because of our experience of their perceiving us. ■
Essential Reading
Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 194–205; Continental Philosophy Since 1750 (chapter on Sartre); From Rationalism to Existentialism, Chapter 7, “Sartre and French Existentialism,” pp. 245–324.
Supplementary Reading
For the curious and very industrious, Sartre, Being and Nothingness, and Nausea. See also Barnes, Sartre.
For a lighter approach to Sartre, see Solomon, Introducing the Existentialists; Sartre, Notebooks for an Ethics; Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist; Anderson, Sartre’s Two Ethics.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. What is “nausea” as Sartre uses the word (in Nausea)? What does the experience of “nausea” signify for Sartre? (How would you compare it with Camus’s experience of “the Absurd”?)
2. Why does Sartre single out “anguish”? What does Sartre mean when he categorically states that “man is in anguish”? Consider one of Sartre’s more compelling examples, the person who walks dangerously close to the edge of a precipice. How does this situation highlight the fact that “man is in anguish”?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. In “Existentialism as a Humanism,” Sartre stresses the “atheistic” nature of his brand of existentialism. Yet Sartre and Kierkegaard do not sound dissimilar when speaking on such matters as choice, commitment, and anguish. In what ways does the belief in God cause Kierkegaard’s brand of existentialism to differ from Sartre’s?
2. In Nausea, what do Roquentin’s rather grotesque descriptions of his own body (his limp hand, the saliva in his mouth) signify about the role of the body in experience?
3. Compare Sartre’s Roquentin with Camus’s Meursault (The Stranger) and Clamence (The Fall). Although Meursault and Clamence seem in many ways to be polar extremes, it would seem that Roquentin, depending on his perspective at any given moment, has certain experiences or attitudes in common with each. Explain this if you can.
Sartre on “Bad Faith”
Lecture 21
Perversely, Sartre, like Heidegger, says he is not doing ethics. Nevertheless, I think there is no question whatsoever that any reader can raise that that is exactly what he is doing
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n Being and Nothingness, Sartre elaborates his “phenomenological Ontology,” a phrase borrowed from Heidegger. It is phenomenological because it steadfastly holds to the subject matter of experience and the fi rst-person standpoint. This leads to conclusions at odds with science and “objective” thinking, although Sartre does not reject science. It is an ontology because Sartre, following Heidegger, insists that the content of experience is and must be the content of our reality.
The key to the Cartesian structure of Being and Nothingness is the basic distinction between being-for-itself and being-in-itself. Being-for-itself (pour-soi) is the being of consciousness. Being-in-itself (en-soi) is the existence of things. Later in the book, Sartre will introduce a third basic category, being-for-others, as in his examples of shame and embarrassment.
Sartre distinguishes between consciousness and the self. In an early essay, “The Transcendence of the Ego,” Sartre argued that consciousness is not the self. The self is “out there in the world, like the consciousness of another.” The self, he goes on to argue, is a product, an accumulation of actions, habits, achievements, and failures. Sometimes other people know us better than we do. Sartre also distinguishes self-conscious refl ection from ordinary “prerefl ective” consciousness. He distinguishes between consciousness and self-consciousness. Running for a bus, I am not conscious of myself but only of the “bus to be overtaken.” Consciousness doesn’t contain the “I,” the self.
Human existence is both being-in-itself and being-for-itself. As embodied in a particular place at a particular time in particular circumstances, we have what Sartre (following Heidegger) calls “facticity,” or facts that are true about us. As consciousness, we have what Sartre calls “transcendence” (Heidegger’s “existence”). The term “transcendence” means “outside of” but serves several very different uses for Sartre. It refers, fi rst of all, to our transcendence of the “facts.” Desires or plans reach beyond facts. It also refers to our transcendence of the present into the future. We are to be described by our personalities and our plans—“I am what I am not.” The desire to be both in-itself and for-itself is the desire to be God. The very notion of One’s self turns out to be God, for Sartre, is a contradiction.
negotiable—our freedom
When we talk about possibilities, we
makes the facts about are limited by our facticity. Facticity us vulnerable. and transcendence limit each other.
Confusing facticity and transcendence is what Sartre calls “bad faith,” a kind of
self-deception. In his discussion of bad faith, Sartre provides us with four of his most often quoted examples: the waiter in the cafe, a young woman on a fi rst date, the frigid wife, and the hesitant homosexual. One’s self turns out to be negotiable—our freedom makes the facts about us vulnerable. In all of these examples, Sartre attempts to take on Freud—“I refuse to” versus “I cannot”—but the examples, at least all but the last of them, have serious problems. We falsify ourselves by subscribing exclusively to facticity—or transcendence. Either alone leads to bad faith, but bad faith is inescapable.
Sartre raises serious questions about what should count as an “ethics.” Sartre does not in fact reject morality. He establishes an ethics of what is more commonly called “integrity.” ■
Essential Reading
Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 194-247.
Supplementary Reading
Danto, Sartre.
Fell, Heidegger and Sartre: An Essay on Being and Place.
Fingarette, Self-Deception.
Jeanson, Sartre and the Problem of Morality.
Natanson, Critique of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Ontology.
Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. What is the difference between “being-in-itself” and “being-for-itself”? Pay special attention to the question of personal self-identity (“one is what one is” or “one is what one is not”). In what sense(s) is personal identity a function of time (past-present-future)?
2. Describe an incident or circumstance (perhaps continuing) in which you were or are in “bad faith.” What sorts of steps did (could) you take to get out of bad faith? In what sense was (is) this impossible?
3. Consider Meursault, Clamence, Rieux, and Roquentin. Are any or all of these characters in “bad faith?” Explain.
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. Why does Sartre describe Being and Nothingness as a “phenomenological ontology?” Does this “synthesis” create a tension in the work? Explain.
2. “I think, therefore I am,” declared Descartes. Why does Sartre attack this famous slogan? Why does he take such pains to separate the self from the fact of consciousness? What’s wrong with the idea that the self is “in” consciousness?
3. According to Sartre, “the essential structure of sincerity does not differ from that of bad faith…” What does he mean by this? Is all sincerity in bad faith or simply the objective of being sincere?
4. In terms of the “double property of the human being, who is at once a facticity and transcendence,” compare Sartre’s “fl irtatious woman” and “the waiter.” Have they both entered bad faith by the same route? If not, what is the difference between them?
5. Sartre contends that “man fundamentally is the desire to be God.” What does he mean by this? (Put your answer in terms of the two human properties of “facticity” and “transcendence.”) In connection with the last question—is it only God that can avoid “bad faith”? Does “bad faith” smack of the “doctrine of original sin”? Explain.
Sartre’s Being-for-Others and No Exit
Lecture 22
As always with Sartre, who we are is an ambiguous notion. It is who we are in the eyes of the person who has caught us.
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early halfway through Being and Nothingness, Sartre introduces his third ontological category, being-for-others. Though last in his formulation, it is equal to the others in importance. “Being-forothers” has a more paranoid ring than Heidegger’s “being with others.” In Cartesian philosophy, with its primary emphasis on consciousness, skeptical problems arise concerning our knowledge of the “external” world and our knowledge of the existence of other people.
Many philosophers have argued that we know of the existence of other people through an obvious kind of inference. The inference is from our knowledge of our own minds and behavior and our observation of others’ behavior to the contents of others’ minds. Sartre rejects this approach. It wrongly assumes that we have a way of verifying the analogy between our minds and behavior and others’ minds and behavior. It wrongly supposes that we can know ourselves independently of the recognition of other people. This last thesis Sartre borrows directly from Hegel, from whom he also borrows
substantial portions of his view of being-for-others.
Sartre insists that our primary knowledge of other people comes not from observing them but rather Sartre insists that our primary knowledge of other people comes not from observing them but rather from being looked at by them.
from being looked at by them. Thus, shame is our conduit into the interpersonal world. He takes the case of writer Jean Genet. Caught in the act of stealing, Genet’s decision to accept the label “thief” will determine his future existence. As in Camus, our experience with other people is not happy. We are all, in essence, always on trial. What other people think of us is a powerful determinant of who we are. We are necessarily infl uenced by the way other people see us—and the way we see ourselves. Being-forothers is being objectifi ed according to their judgments. Bad faith is seeing ourselves only as others do—or only as we do.
Sartre, like Camus, seriously considers the prevalence of guilt as a necessary outcome of human awareness and being-for-others. For Sartre, however, the notion of responsibility takes priority over the more pathological notion of guilt, a secular notion of original sin. Sartre goes on to argue that our relations with others are essentially confrontations and relations of confl ict. In his dramatic play No Exit, one of his characters sums it up: “Hell is other people.” One character is dogged by the question of whether he is a coward or a hero. Another is an upper-class murderess; still another is a lesbian. Relations between people are essentially struggles for self-defi nition, struggles for authenticity. My conception of myself is largely the result of others’ views of me. Others’ views of themselves are largely the result of my (and others’) views of them. Consequently, we are perpetually engaged in a kind of tense negotiation over how we will judge one another. Being-forothers is, thus, a critical part of our being. ■
Essential Reading
Sartre, No Exit.
Supplementary Reading
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, pp. 471-559.
Schroeder, Sartre and His Predecessors.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. What does it suggest to you that Sartre introduces being-for-itself and being-in-itself so far in advance of any explicit mention of being-forothers? Do you think that he views the third category as on a par with the other two?
2. How does shame establish beyond doubt the existence of other people for us?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. In what way is the struggle for authenticity a struggle against other people? How do you see Sartre here playing out once again the arguments of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger against “the herd”?
2. Is it possible, in your view, to have genuinely authentic relations with other people? Or is Sartre right that the very nature of human consciousness means that all such relationships are confl icted?
3. Is Garcin (in No Exit) a coward? Explain.
Sartre on Sex and Love
Lecture 23
I often remark to my students that their friends are rarely such a matter of circumstance as they often suggest. ... Even if you are assigned to a roommate, you still have a number of basic choices. For example, you have the choice to like or despise that person, whether to hang out or avoid them completely. People choose their friends, and it is very interesting to ask on what grounds they choose them. ... We choose our friends on the basis of among other things, our conception of ourselves.
S
artre’s analysis of human relationships as confl ict suggests troublesome consequences for the understanding of one of our most tender human emotions, love. Love, as in all relationships between people, is essentially a struggle for self-defi nition, a struggle for authenticity. Even friendship, which people often think of as a weak or casual form of love, is essentially a struggle for self-defi nition. We pick people who will reinforce our own conception of ourselves. Friendship, however, is rarely exclusive, and friends do not (usually) make exclusive claims on each other. Thus, the overall determination of self-identity in the hands of any single friend will usually be considerably less than that determination in the hands of a lover.
When one has multiple lovers (as Sartre was prone to do), the overall determination of self-identity in the hands of any single lover may also be considerably less than the determination of self-identity in the hands of a single, exclusive lover. Love becomes a seductive strategy to win the other over. Because love is a strategy with an objective, not simply a “feeling,” it can succeed or fail. When it fails, it readily leads to sadism, masochism, and hatred.
Sexual desire becomes the desire to turn the other into a “sex object.” Reducing the other person to his or her body and bodily responses is manipulating or eliminating his or her capacity for judgment. Reducing the other person to a vehicle for one’s own pleasure is also a way of manipulating or eliminating his or her capacity for judgment. The aim of sex, contra Freud and most people, is not pleasure. Pleasure is only a vehicle and can even get in the way of sex’s strategy of control and manipulation. The aim of sex, in Nietzschean terms, is power. Sartre turns the twists and turns of romance into a diabolical play of wills. Hegel’s “master and slave” paradigm plays a central role in his analysis. The submissive one becomes dominant as the master becomes dependent. Hegel argued
The aim of sex, in Nietzschean terms, is power. that all such relationships are unstable.
Harsh as it seems, Sartre has done an important
service in forcing us to open our eyes to the complexity and diffi culties of our interpersonal
lives. For most of Western history, the complexities of love have been buried under an avalanche of romantic foggery.
The contrast with Aristophanes, the dramatic spokesman in Plato’s Symposium, is instructive here. Aristophanes offers us the classic parable of a single soul, split in two by the gods, each half desperately trying to fi nd its perfect fi t, its other half. Sartre, by contrast, insists that there is no such unity, no such “fi t.” The people we meet have been brought up differently. Even for those who are “made for each other,” there is a good deal of adjustment and compromise. Relationships are never fully stable; they are, to use a word Sartre borrows, “metastable.”
But Sartre maintained a romantic relationship with Simone de Beauvoir for fi fty years, an apparent counter-example to his own harsh philosophy of relationships. Sartre did claim to fi nd a true “being-with-others” in politics, not romance, “on the barricades,” his primary pursuit for the last thirty years of his life. ■
Essential Reading
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Part III, and Notebook for an Ethics.
Supplementary Reading
Anderson, Sartre’s Two Ethics. Barnes, An Existentialist Ethics.
de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Chapter 4A (on the master-slave dialectic).
Solomon, About Love.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. “Hell is other people,” writes Sartre in No Exit. What does he mean? Why does he believe this (in his philosophy, as well as in this play)? Do you think this is true? Why or why not?
2. Can you think of a genuine instance of “being-with-others (as opposed to being-for-others”)? What would this be like? Would such an instance pose an objection to Sartre? Could Sartre allow that such a relation is possible? Explain.
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. Although “being-in-itself” and “being-for-itself” are introduced quite early in Being and Nothingness, “being-for-others” is not introduced until Part III (p. 303). Does this mean that being-in-itself and beingfor-itself are in some sense ontologically prior to being-for-others— that being-for-others is somehow derivative? If so, what could Sartre mean when he states, “it is not true that I fi rst am and then later seek to make an object of the Other or to assimilate him; but…I am—at the very root of my being—the project of assimilating and making an object of the Other”?
2. What is the relationship between being-for-itself and being-for-others? In the fi nal analysis, who is responsible for my emotional outlook? What does this mean in practical terms?
From Existentialism to Postmodernism
Lecture 24
The truth is that existentialism is still a vibrant movement, and for that reason, I haven’t spent any time at all in the past 23 lectures trying to defi ne what it is.
H
as existentialism gone out of fashion? I don’t think so. Existentialism is more than a simple movement or period in history. As Sartre said, to try and defi ne it is to freeze it—thus my own reticence about specifi cally defi ning the movement. Although the movement began in Europe, its real home now is in America. American ideas of self-improvement and mobility share much with existentialism.
Existentialism seems to have been eclipsed by two generations of philosophers since Sartre. Sartre was attacked by Levi-Strauss, a “structuralist” anthropologist, for his anthropocentrism and neglect of other cultures. Then he was rejected by a new generation of French philosophers under the banner of “postmodernism” (also “poststructuralism”). Key fi gures include Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Roland Barthes. Barthes and Foucault put forward the idea of the “death of the author,” which denies Sartre’s notion of Cartesian subjectivity. In Deleuze, the impersonal play of forces also attempts to replace all subjectivity. Although all these
philosophers were profoundly infl uenced and inspired by Sartre, there has been almost a conspiracy of silence regarding Sartre’s work.
First and foremost, Sartre’s strong orientation The self, even
“consciousness,” as Sartre understood it, has been rejected.
toward subjectivity (and with this, most of phenomenology, as well) has been rejected.
The self, even “consciousness,” as Sartre understood it, has been rejected. The postmodernists also reject rationality, objectivity, truth, and knowledge, as these concepts are traditionally understood. These claims are problematic, but they are also derivative of Sartre’s own theories, including the rejection of ultimate rational guidelines.
In addition, Sartre’s “Enlightenment project,” his ideal of a “purifying refl ection,” and his politics of freedom have been rejected. In Sartre, there is a raging sense of rationality. Returning to the harsher views of Nietzsche, Foucault and Deleuze stress power and impersonal force as the determinant of truth and values. Derrida rejects Sartre’s overly unifi ed notion of self. The self is marginalized, fragmented, in Derrida. Nevertheless, there are serious questions about the locus of both political responsibility and morals in the postmodern reaction. The liberating project of Freud’s psychoanalysis may be analogous in some ways to the “purifying refl ection” of Sartre. But the emphasis on personal responsibility is a welcome rejoinder to the current cultural paradigm of victimization.
I would like to suggest that the existentialist view has much to recommend it, not just as an interesting movement in twentieth-century philosophy but as an authentic way of life, much needed as this terrible but remarkable century comes to a close. ■
Essential Reading
Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida in Solomon, Continental Philosophy Since 1750, pp. 194–202.
Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind.
Supplementary Reading
Dreyfus and Rabinow, The Essential Works of Michel Foucault.
Kumaf, A Derrida Reader.
Miller, Michel Foucault.
Norris, What’s Wrong with Postmodernism?
Sallis, Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida.
Introductory Questions to Consider
1. What is postmodernism? What is modernism? In what sense is Sartre’s existentialism, in particular, a “modern” philosophy? In what sense is Nietzsche, by contrast, “postmodern”?
2. To what extent is knowledge a matter of power, as Foucault suggests? What does it mean to say, “the subject is socially constructed,” through power relations?
3. To what extent is there “nothing aside from the text,” as Derrida has famously argued? In what sense are the world and ordinary life a text?
Advanced Questions to Consider
1. In what ways does Sartre anticipate the postmodernists? In what ways does he advocate the elimination of “the subject” from philosophy?
2. What could come after “postmodernism,” i.e., what is post-
postmodernism? Is the Enlightenment dead and gone, or is postmodernism possibly just another phase of Enlightenment (modernist) thinking?
Glossary
Absurd: For Camus, the confrontation and confl ict between our rational expectations of the world (justice, satisfaction, happiness) and the “indifference” of the world.
Aesthetic (mode of existence): Kierkegaard’s conception of a life based on desire and its satisfaction.
Authenticity: Heidegger’s notion of genuine human existence.
Bad faith: Sartre’s conception of those forms of self-deception in which we deceive ourselves about ourselves, about our natures and responsibilities.
Being-for-itself: For Sartre, human consciousness.
Being-for-others: For Sartre, our painful awareness of other people and their effects on us through their judgments and “looks.”
Being-in-itself: For Sartre, the existence of things in the world.
Being-towards-death: Heidegger’s notion of human mortality and the importance of full awareness in facing death.
Dasein: Heidegger’s conception of “the being through whom being comes into question,” i.e., human existence.
Das Man: Heidegger’s conception of the inauthentic self, the self constructed by and through other people.
Ethical (mode of existence): Kierkegaard’s conception of a life based on a chosen commitment to moral principles and duty to others.
Existence (Existenz): For Kierkegaard, a full-blooded, freely chosen, passionately committed life; for Heidegger, that which is essentially Dasein. Dasein has no essence other than the fact that it exists, that it has possibilities and projects to undertake.
Existentialism: The philosophical movement that stresses individuality and personal responsibility, as epitomized in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre.
Facticity: For Heidegger and Sartre, the brute facts that characterize us, such as our height, our weight, our date of birth, and so on.
Fallenness: For Heidegger, a “pre-ontological” way of dealing in the world, a way in which Dasein fails to face up to its ontological condition
Master morality: Nietzsche’s conception of a self-confi dent morality of virtue and excellence.
Objective uncertainty: Kierkegaard’s attempt to capture those realms of human existence in which knowledge becomes irrelevant and personal decision becomes all-important.
Ontology: For Heidegger, the study of Being.
Phenomenology: In Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, the study of the essential structures of consciousness, experience, or Dasein.
Postmodernism: Contemporary philosophy that rejects the idea of the unifi ed self and the clarifying powers of reason.
Religious (mode of existence): Kierkegaard’s conception of a life based on a chosen devotion to God and His commandments.
Slave morality: Nietzsche’s conception of a reactive, resentful insistence on universal principles and the protection of the weak.
Subjectivity: In Kierkegaard, the realm of personal passion and commitment. In Sartre, phenomenology, the realm of consciousness.
Subjective truth: In Kierkegaard, passionate commitment.
Thrownness: For Heidegger, our “existential” condition, the state in which we fi nd ourselves thrown into this world, that we are “abandoned.” It is the “there” in which Dasein fi nds itself.
Transcendence: For Sartre, the power of consciousness to negate and go beyond the facts of the matter.
Transcendental ego: For Husserl, the realm of consciousness.
Übermensch: Nietzsche’s dramatic image of a more than human being.
Will to power: Nietzsche’s conception of the fundamental motivation of all human behavior, including morality and philosophy.
Biographical Notes
Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–1986). French novelist, essayist, and philosopher and Jean-Paul Sartre’s lifelong companion. The author of The Ethics of Ambiguity and many other works. Best known for her insightful commentaries on growing up female in a very male culture, living through the war years, and fi nally, on growing old.
Camus, Albert (1913–1960). French-Algerian (pied noir) essayist and philosopher, author of The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Plague, and The Fall and many lyrical and political essays. Best known for his very personal expressions of humanism. His friendship with Sartre erupted with their disagreements over the Algerian War and the general question of violence as a legitimate political means.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1821–1881). Russian writer and religious thinker, author of Notes from Underground, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, and other novels. Best known for his deep sense of anguish and doubt regarding ultimate religious matters.
Foucault, Michel (1926–1984). French philosopher and polemicist, fi rst categorized as a structuralist, then as a post-structuralist and postmodernist. Author of such books as The Archaeology of Knowledge, The Order of Things, and A History of Sexuality. Best known for his emphasis on power in the world of ideas and culture.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1770–1831). German philosopher who followed Kant as a “German idealist,” author of The Phenomenology of Spirit and several other important works. Best known for his vision of an all-encompassing historical world-spirit that it is just our luck to fi nally have made fully realized.
Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976). German philosopher who followed Husserl as a phenomenologist but expanded his interests to include traditional theological and metaphysical matters, author of Being and Time and many other works. Best known for his notion of “authenticity,” which came to dominate many existentialist concerns.
Hesse, Hermann (1877–1962). German-Swiss writer and author of Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddharta, and The Glass Bead Game (for which he won a Nobel prize). Best known for his synthesis of Western and Eastern (Buddhist) thinking.
Husserl, Edmund (1859–1938). German-Czech (Moravian) philosopher and mathematician; best known as the founder of “Phenomenology.”
Kafka, Franz (1883–1924). Bohemian (Czech) writer famous for his tales of the bizarre, for instance, “Metamorphosis,” The Trial, and The Castle.
Kant, Immanuel (1749–1804). German philosopher, “German idealist,” best known as the author of three “critiques,” “The Critique of Pure Reason,” “The Critique of Practical Reason,” and “The Critique of Judgment.” As a moral philosopher, he has long been characterized (or caricatured) as strictly rational and “rule-bound”; thus, he becomes a point of departure for such different thinkers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855). Danish religious philosopher and fi rst “existentialist.” He is best known for his concept of an irrational “leap of faith” and his many religious works, many of them written under pseudonyms, emphasizing the importance of personal choice and commitment in becoming a Christian and in living a full life more generally. His philosophy has many important parallels with Nietzsche, despite their very different positions on the desirability of Christianity.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900). German philosopher who attacked both the Judeo-Christian tradition and contemporary culture and politics with great style and passion. Author of The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and many other works.
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–1980). French philosopher, essayist, and literary writer responsible for naming “existentialism” and for defi nitively promoting some of its central themes, notably the theme of freedom and responsibility that we have summarized as “No Excuses!” Author of Being and Nothingness and many other works.
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860). German philosopher who followed Kant (competing with Hegel) as a “German idealist.” Author of The World as Will and Idea. Best known for his grumpy cosmic pessimism but equally important for bringing together Western and Eastern (Buddhist) ideas.
Zarathustra (sixth century B.C.E.). Persian prophet, founder of Zoroastrianism, belated hero of Nietzsche’s quasi-Biblical epic, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Bibliography
The main texts for the lectures can be found in Robert C. Solomon, ed., Existentialism (New York: McGraw Hill/Modern Library, 1974). Secondary texts that follow the perspective of the lectures can be found in Robert C. Solomon, From Rationalism to Existentialism (Wash., D.C.: Rowman and Littlefi eld, 1979), and Robert C. Solomon, Continental Philosophy Since 1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Anderson, Thomas, Sartre’s Two Ethics (Open Court, 1993).
Barnes, Hazel, An Existentialist Ethics (New York: Vintage, 1971).
———, Sartre (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott, 1973).
Beauvoir, Simone, The Ethics of Ambiguity (New York: Citadel
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Camus, Albert, Notebooks, 1935–1951, translated by Philip Thody (New York: Knopf, 1963).
———, The Fall, trans. by Justin O’Brien (New York: Random House, 1956).
———, The Stranger (New York: Knopf, 1946, trans. by Stuart Gilbert [“British” translation]; 1988, trans. by Matthew Ward [“American” translation]).
———, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. by Justin O’Brien (New York: Random House, 1955) (partially reprinted in Solomon, Existentialism, McGraw-Hill, pp. 177–188).
———, The Plague, trans. by Stuart Gilbert (New York: Random House, 1948).
———, The Rebel (New York: Knopf, 1956).
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Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Crime and Punishment (New York: Signet, 1968).
———, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. by Constance Garnett (New York: Modern Library, 1975).
———, Notes from Underground and The Grand Inquisitor, trans. by Ralph E. Matlaw (New York: Meridian, 1991).
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———, The Trial, trans. by Breon Mitchell (New York, Schocken, 1998).
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———, Either/Or, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959).
———, Fear and Trembling (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).
———, Journals, trans. by Alexander Dru (London: Oxford University Press, 1938; excerpted in Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 3–5).
Levi-Strauss, Claude, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).
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Melville, Herman, Billy Budd, Sailor (New York: Bantam Books, 1962).
Metha, J. L., The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
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Murdoch, Iris, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (New Haven: Yale, 1953).
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———, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967).
———, The Gay Science, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974).
———, Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Walter Kaufmann, ed., The Viking Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking Press, 1954).
———, Twilight of the Idols, trans. by Walter Kaufmann, in Walter Kaufmann, ed., The Viking Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking Press, 1954).
———, The Will to Power (New York: Vintage, 1967).
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Sallis, John, Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
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Philosophical Library, Inc., 1956).
———, The Emotions: Sketch of a Theory (London: Methuen, 1962).
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———, The Wall and Other Stories (New York: New Directions, 1948).
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———, Notebooks for an Ethics (New York: Chicago, 1992).
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