Existentialism revisited, lecture 2, week 3

Existentialism was a movement which focused on the uncertainty, pointlessness and bleakness of life. It has a number of different theorists who hold slightly different perspectives on the subject.

“The rebel’s weapon is proof of his humanity. This irrepressible violence is man re-creating himself” - This quote is helpful in understanding the motives for violence as an agent for change.

Nietzsche was a provocative theorist and had a particular viewpoint which can be considered to reside in the category of existentialist literature and theory. He referred to the end of god, or at least the end of belief in God which highlighted the uncertainty of the 19^th century. His specific quotation of this sort of realisation was that – ‘god is dead’. He used this term in order to refer to the crisis of uncertainty and the need of something new to sustain us. This path to sustainability was found with freedom and the ability for people to find value within themselves;

“the sea, our sea, again lies open before us; perhaps never before did such an “open sea” exist.”

Therefore He was highlighting the ability for people to now choose where they go in life. For example different people had different moralities, therefore different conceptions to follow for their own individual strive towards excellence.

Nietzsche spoke of the Ubermensch, which meant to overcome. Choice was essential to the existentialist point of view, simone de Beauvoir, or, one is born.

Heidegger was a fellow existentialist. He spoke of Being and Time. He managed to influence other well known and well spoke of theorist of existentialists such as Satre with his theories on the Dasein within each of us.

Heideggers theories on being and time were mainly formed as an attack on Descartes theories of ‘I think therefore I am’. Descartes spoke of the difference between the mind and the body which split the world into two substances. This was known as the Cartesian idea, philosophy is ultimately impossible because of this because we cannot understand ourselves because we are not both our mind and our body but only stuck in our mind.  

This contradicts with Heideggers theory that being in the world comes from dedication to one specific subject for example, Journalism. The spatial relationship between you and this subject helps to define you as a person, not the imbalance between your body and mind. He also believed in the power of choice similarly to Nietzsche however contrasting with Satre with his Facticity (intractable human condition)

To explain this further Satre’s Facticity theory talks about how we do not have a choice from the beginning. We are born in a certain time, in a certain place with certain parents. He explains that the Dasein then must be wedded to where we happen to be thrown into life. Therefore he creates the term “throwness”. We are born with a blank slate however we already have a past and is ultimately luck.

In most existentialist literature it seems that it is the future which is the most important dimension as the future consists of creatures of the possible, or in other words the endless possibilities of what we seem to be moving towards.

The term transcendence is our own reaction to our own facticity, our possibilities which may or may not be realised. We are defined by our choices and our ability to re-create ourselves. The past is inapplicable to the present and the future. This was crucial for Frantz Fanon as it was a path to escape the role of the “victim”.