DE Weekly: Art, Angst, & Existential Aesthetics
Sometimes, I will be reading something, or watching something, or I’ll simply see something and think to myself, “There is something existential about this.” Perhaps it is just me, and the amount of time I spend with the philosophy––but, I’ve seen others make similar observations, so maybe it is something inside of all of us to some degree.
Existentialism is called what it is because of its emphasis on existence: how humans exist and operate in the world as unique beings.
DE Weekly: Heidegger, Dostoevsky, & Authentic Being-for-Others
Over the past two weeks, I’ve written about the various writings and opinions of Existentialist authors who gave us a foundation for what could be called “existential ethics.”
Two weeks ago, I wrote about Emmanuel Levinas, who opined that we should treat ethics as “first philosophy,” meaning fundamentally underpinning our philosophy should be the obligation of ethical responsibility.
DE Weekly: Values, Moral Relativism, & Existential Ethics
Last week, I introduced Emmanuel Levinas, the twentieth-century French philosopher who posited ethics as “first philosophy.” To him, this meant that the force fundamentally underpinning all of philosophy is our ethical responsibility.
Before anything else, Levinas argued, we are first of all called into existence to be unconditionally obligated to serve others. Our first act as a Self, then, should be to consider the Other.
DE Weekly: Levinas, First Philosophy, & the Ethical Infinite
In Existentialism, the Self and the Other are two major focuses, accounting for one of the most important areas of study of the philosophy. The Self represents one’s own consciousness and being, the most fundamental way a being-in-the-world exists apart from others. The Other represents another free consciousness, totally separate from yours, that disturbs the subjectivity of your existence.
Jean-Paul Sartre is famous for birthing the phrase “Hell is––other people!” in his iconic play No Exit, and elaborating on the intricacies of the Self and the Other in Being and Nothingness.
DE Weekly: Time, Eternalism, & Illusion
Over two millennia ago, the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle concocted a paradox called the “Paradox of Time,” found today in his Physics. In this paradox, we are asked to consider how time can really and truly exist.
Aristotle’s time paradox says that time is composed of non-existent states, the past and the future. These non-existent states are separated by a vanishing present; as soon as each moment of the present passes, it is gone to the past.
DE Weekly: Augustine, Sartre, & Ex Nihilo
Creatio ex nihilo is a Latin phrase which means “creation out of nothing.” In a religious context, it infers that God created the universe and everything in it out of absolutely nothing: no pre-existing materials. It differentiates the act of creation in the human sense (say, me creating this newsletter) from God’s creation.
St. Augustine of Hippo, one of my favorite writers, once said that in light of this creatio ex nihilo, every creature on the earth carries with it the heritage of nonbeing. In other words, there is a palpable sense of true nothingness that haunts us and every other finite thing in this world.
DE Weekly: Monism, Dualism, & Phenomenological Ontology
Like any philosophy, Existentialism boasts a wide array of philosophical thought, owing to the varying worldviews of its most prolific authors; Albert Camus is not the same as Jean-Paul Sartre is not the same as Martin Heidegger is not the same as Søren Kierkegaard. However, there are consistent through points that can be traced in the writings of all of the above.
That being said, we might ask ourselves: is there a common ontology that underpins the whole of existential thought (or at least much of it)?
DE Weekly: Maybe, Watts, & the Parable of the Chinese Farmer
Last week, I shared some ideas from Taoism, the ancient Chinese philosophy that emphasizes living in harmony with all forces in the universe throughout your life. I then connected the ideas to the Existentialism of the twentieth century. This week, I would like to highlight a writer who drew from the former to inspire the latter: Alan Watts.
Alan Watts was a British and American writer who called himself a “philosophical entertainer” (a rather apt moniker, I might add). He made his name popularizing the aforementioned Taoist philosophy for Western audiences, as well as Buddhist, Hindu, and other Eastern ideas.
DE Weekly: Traffic, Taoism, & the Illusion of Control
Imagine you leave for work one morning, hop in your car, and take your usual route, only this time, you end up in a standstill traffic jam. The cars ahead of you are not moving, the cars behind you are not moving, and you are not moving.
You try switching lanes: the other lanes move no faster. You try searching the horizon for the cause of the slowdown: you cannot see anything.
DE Weekly: Husserl, Aristotle, & Pyrrhonism
Would you believe me if I told you the ideas that led to the development of Existentialism appeared as early as the fourth century BC? The ideas I mean are those of suspension of judgment toward what we perceive, skepticism about the order of things, and the desire to adopt a tranquil disposition in relation to the world and the human condition.
Traditionally, philosophical ideas that we would call “existential” in nature are traced back to Søren Kierkegaard, the eighteenth-century Danish philosopher and theologian who approached the ideas through a Christian lens.