Theism and Existentialism

Probably one of the first attributes most people associate with existentialism is atheism. That makes sense when so many influential existentialists (Nietzsche and Sartre) were atheists. But the fact that a lot of people ignore, is that the father of existential thinking, Soren Kierkegaard, was an extremely devout protestant.

Kierkegaard's perspective on Christianity is very appealing to me, he uses compelling logic to expand on his frustrations with the church of his day, and common paradoxes of religions. For instance, he really disliked when people tried to prove "miracles" in the bible using facts and science. Just the attempt of explaining a miracle, to him is an attempt to make something extraordinary into something that could have happened naturally. I personally don't see why it matters whether or not a certain miracle actually occurred. The bible is a book that provides spiritual guidance, not historically accurate depiction of events. It isn't a history book. His main point is that faith is faith, and science is science, and attempting to combine the natural with the supernatural is just one way to weaken one's faith.

The main reason Kierkegaard is regarded as the father of existentialism however, has everything to do with how he practiced Christianity. The way he viewed Christians, and most importantly, how to be a Christian was the main reason he is considered an existentialist. Kierkegaard talked a lot about existence, not in the sense that things exist physically, but how the individual exists in a world that is inherently absurd.

To Kierkegaard, existence has everything to do with responsibility, making decisions and making commitments. To him existence has to involve taking a hold of one's life, making decisions and being passionate about life. He went as far as making a distinction between this existentialist way of living life and the herd mentality of the mobs. These are the people that don't make "decisions", that just go along with the flow of the crowd. He uses an analogy of a man that tries to mount an untamed stallion and tries to ride it despite the stallion's resistance. He compares this scenario with a scenario where a man just falls asleep in a wagon, and is taken places by the horse pulling the wagon. To him. this contrasts the active mode of existing to what most people do, which is to follow the crowd, and just go where life takes you. People that just always take the path of least resistance. To Kierkegaard, finding his truth was much like finding that stallion.

In more general existentialist terms, Kierkegaard's truth is what other philosophers would substitute for meaning. Sartre's atheism often negates religion, as he believes it to be something that consumes the human passion to an absurd cause. But much like kierkegaard, existentialism to me is a lot more general and subjective. I think my passions and my truths are all part of who I am as an individual. And if what I am includes a person with faith in a God, then I don't see how this minimizes my own personal journey to self discovery. Personally, it is actually a bit of a challenge, since as a scientist I often find myself following logic and evidence to reach conclusions, which is most certainly not the ideal mentality most religious people to develop their faith in a higher and sometimes paradoxical power.

Know thyself (pt. 1) - responsibility over emotions

I think I've been asking myself some fundamental questions about being for almost ten years. I'm not terribly sure what got me started, but I think it was part of the whole teen phase. Well, for me it was mostly at the end of that part of my life, when I was 18 years old, or close to it. That is when it all started, but I think that was an important set of questions that have yielded some answers, but created another larger set of questions. A lot of these questions have been sitting inside my head for many years, but they were there out of pure curiosity and the pursuit of further understanding myself.

Last year was a bit of a rough one for me, with a lot of changes happening in my life and a lot of things I had to deal with. I firmly believe that one's true identity isn't fully explored until he/she is forced to do that, which was certainly the case for me then. My personal struggles forced me to think about how I felt about my life, about my religion and about what I was about. That's when I started to learn more about an area of philosophy that has always fascinated me, existentialism. My two favorite existentialist philosophers are Sartre and Kierkegaard.

Just today I was reading about some of Sartre's views on emotions and responsibility. Most people, see emotions as types of reactions to conditions in the environment. They see it somewhat similarly to feelings (these words are even interchangeable sometimes), where something happens and that leads the person to feel a certain way. The way these words work in English it almost leads one to believe that, after all you FEEL an emotion.

Sartre, on the other hand, has a very different view on emotions. He says emotions are always about something. You don't just love, you love someone. You don't just hate, you hate someone, or something. So all emotion is intentional, because they are always about something (unless you are talking about some psychiatric situation, but this is philosophy not psychology). He uses examples to show how emotions are intentional responses to certain conditions. One particular example that comes from Aesop, a story about a fox and grapes, which gives origin to the common notion of "sour grapes". In short, the fox sees a set of delicious grapes, and craves them, but he can't reach them. This causes the fox to turn away and say, "they are probably sour anyway". Sartre calls that type of scenario as a "magical" transformation of the world. Which is a way to indicate that what changes about the grapes has nothing to do with the chemistry of the fruit, but everything to do with the attitude of the fox and how it see the grapes. This idea ties in with the concepts of phenomenology and ontology, which is seen throughout the works of Sartre and Heidegger. This is the idea that the way in which we experience things, and the way the world is, are firmly tied together. Often, what we do is this kind of magical transformation, where instead of actually doing something to change the world, we transform it in our minds. In this story, one can see that the fox refuses to see itself as a failure, instead the fox sees itself as wise fox, not willing to spend energy on a wasted project.

This idea of escaping from a difficulty, is the heart of Sartre's ideas. He says emotions are essentially a mode of escape behaviour. We have our emotions, not because they are "caused in us", but rather because they are a way to deal with the world in which we come to see ourselves as better off than we would otherwise. He says emotions act as choices, ways to transform our world and to make difficulties disappear.

So what is existentialism?

Unlike a lot of the titles of my older posts, I didn't just arbitrarily pick a title for this blog. In recent years I've been trying to explore a few complex questions and I really liked a lot of the ideas from thinkers often labeled under existentialists. Existentialism is a word you probably hear every now and then but might not know exactly what it means, so I'm going to probably post a few times about what existentialism means to me, and why I find it a very comforting way of looking at life.

Perhaps a good way to start is to explain what existentialism involves and what it doesn't include. Existentialism is a philosophical school of though that includes certain views on human free will, and often philosophers talk about people becoming better when struggling against their individual nature and fighting for life. Existentialists believe that decisions are often difficult and have consequences, so personal responsibility and discipline is important. It is viewed that society and other social constructs are arbitrary and a lot of things are not rational.

Above are some of concepts that existentialism involves. It does not however involve the value of wealth, pleasure or honor in life. Social values and structures can serve to control the individual. Existentialism does not preach the idea that people should accept things for what they are and that this is enough in life, it doesn't include the idea that people are basically good but tainted by external forces. It doesn't believe that science will make things better. You should also never say "but I wanted X and Y" or "it's not my fault".

Maybe I'm just being confusing, so here is one definition of what existentialism is:

"Existentialism is a 20th century philosophy that focuses in the analysis of human existence from many angles. It focuses on humans as individuals, each one spending a lifetime changing their essence. Existentialists are concerned with finding themselves and finding meanings in life through choices and personal responsibility. Personal choices are unique without the need for an objective form of truth."

I love most of the ideas involved in Existentialism, but I just wish to note that I don't agree with everything in it. I suppose a true existentialist wouldn't :). In particular, religion is often dismissed by existentialists, and a lot of these philosophers happen to be atheists. However, religion and existentialism to me are very much complementary to each other, so much so that the father of existentialism was the christian philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. I also don't necessarily disregard of the general need for methods to control people, as these shouldn't be seen as constraints for personal development, but they are just part of the environment presented to the individual.