Existentialism made me do it
Existentialism got me in trouble on the weekend. Although I’m something of an existentialist myself, whenever anyone else claims to be one, I gag. “How cliché,” I mumble to myself. Existentialism is supposed to be a dark secret you brew about alone in the privacy of your own home, and or with the occasional woman that spends the night and likes to talk after sex. Why is this? Because existentialism ain’t much. It blows my mind to think that there is actually a school espousing such prophecy. Existentialism is kind of like scepticism; if you actually abide by it then you aren’t being very existential (this from a guy that regularly attends an anarchist reading circle). Essentially it is the philosophy of being for the sake of being – and this being can be manifest however you see fit. So if you tell me you’re an existentialist you aren’t telling me much. All your saying is that you have nothing useful to propose about yourself or anything else, except you are aware of your “Being” and this makes you better than everyone else at the party. Next time I’ll snap back with a “well I’m an alchoholisist, and I drink for the sake of drinking, but I am aware of and embrace my problem”… or maybe I'll save that for the AA meeting.
Finally what spurred me to write this post? Even though it’s not even 10am yet, I’m pretty sure I’ve already experienced the highlight of my day in this post over at the weblog.
Finally what spurred me to write this post? Even though it’s not even 10am yet, I’m pretty sure I’ve already experienced the highlight of my day in this post over at the weblog.
posted by Nicholas @ 21.3.06
8 Comments:
double post you jackass!
who said "i'm an existentialist"?
was it someone at that party on saturday? haha
i'm not sure i agree with you completely as to what existentialism is.
it's definition is kind of hard to define since it varies from philosopher to philosopher.
they way you're looking at it is very phenomenological....which makes me tend to think you're speaking with heidegger in mind.
the brentano-husserl-heidegger route is very different from sartre or ponty or gramsci. though based around the same general notion.
i wouldn't say i'm an existentialist. but i would say i'm conscious of its state.
-stefan
then whats the difference between those lineages mr. smartypants?
one starts with internal consciousness as existence...trying to focus on what it is that defines existance before we come into contact with anything external that creates our essence.
the other starts with a more concrete(i use this word instead of 'material', for a reason) social context in which one realizes that they are not born into but rather they project their existance...and thus to quote sartre, their existence precedes their essence.
both start with the realization of the individual existence as the centralization...and ponder the potential of this.
good show.
uhhhhh...
I'd recommend that you read "The Ethics of Ambiguity" by beauvoir. it's pretty short and if i can get my way through it with only two entry level philosophy classes than i'm sure you can finish it in a night. she probably has written the easiest analysis to understand and grasp on existentialism. it really is more than just skepticism.
-michelle.
mich -- i don't think we're really calling it sceptic, i'm only saying that it really isn't much of an ism. there's no consistent set of beliefs that is existentialism. it makes a few base assumptions and says lets discuss them. it's a methode, akin to assuming everything is social a construction and going from there. to make matters worse -- the existentialist assumption is so fuking vague that almost anyone and everything could be reduced to it. essentially, it's assuming "being effects experience." very few people would question this assumption. maybe descartes would say "being is experience",i suppose a hardcore empiricist would say "experience is being," although even aristotle realized that this was a simplification, and that experience had to be qualified by sense perception and memory -- as long as we argue that those two mediums might not be perfectly neutral we're back at square one.
sorry i just re-read my post, and i see where the confusion derives from.
my beef is with "existentialism" not operating using an existential methode. this allows for an existential philosophy and excludes the likes of poser hacks.
beauvoir may outline her own notion of existentialism, but many others do aswell. (i probably will get around to reading that eventually, but right now i'm all about pierre bourdieu) perhaps someone can say to me i'm a beauvoir existentialist and i may give them some cred points, but i'd rather they just say "i've read beauvoir and i like her ideas; sometimes i even apply them to my day to day goings on"
(this is partly a beef with existentialism, but also partly a beef with 'isms' in general.)
I'm an alchoholisist too.
-nat
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