My Reflection Upon The Bridge Course : Existentialism.
Introduction : The blog is a response to the Thinking Activity assigned by my professor Dr Dilip Barad sir in regard with the Bridge Course of Existentialism. In this Bridge Course we were assigned a task to watch the ten explanatory videos and read some source material regarding the topic 'Existentialism.' Here in this blog I will be talking about the interesting ideas I found while watching the ascribed videos along with the questions erupted in my mind upon being acquainted with the idea of what 'Existentialism' is.
Let us have a brief outlook of the Existentialism movement :
• Merriem-Webster Dictionary : 'a chiefly 20th century philosophical movement embracing diverse doctrines but centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad'
• Oxford English Dictionary : 'a philosophical theory or approach which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.'
> Here are some prominent Existentialist Thinkers :
(Source : Wikipedia)
› 1st Video :
In this initial video, we can get acquainted with the basic concept of what Existentialist Movement is all about. As the narrator in the video says : "If you believe in God, who go crazy and preach all kind of crazy stuff to you. God will only be possible after thinking as an individual. For example, it's only after realizing the absurdity of life and livijg in despair that you can fully devote yourself to God and understand Him. And this cannot be preached or achieved by being a part of a herd or a community. Philosophers like Camus will of course argue against this and say by believing in God you've taken an easy wayout. For Camus, you have to understand and recognize the absurd and fully embrace it. Believing in God is considered Philosophical Suicide for him."
› 2nd Video :
In this video, I got further understanding of Existentialism by the means of Absurd Reasoning we find present in Albert Camus's The Myth of Sysyphus. The video deals with the relation of individual thoughts and suicide. So, if Life = Despair + Absurdity = Suicide. We find another reference of the movie 'Stay' in which the sub-protagonist Henry Letham remarks that "An elegant suicide is the ultimate work of art." The narrator speaks : "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined, it is only when you pause to think then you suddenly discover the absurdity in life...when this happens and your whole universe is divested of illusions and light, you feel like a stranger. This divorce between man and his life, actor and his setting - is properly the feeling of absurdity."
› 3rd Video :
In the video, we can get to another succeeding point of the Absurd as the narrator discusses : "'The absurd' is neither in the man, nor in the world, it can occur in their presence together."
Second to the point is the concept of Physical Suicide & Philosophical Suicide.
Physical Suicide : - Negating yourself to get away from the absurd. To kill yourself as a living person.
Philosophical Suicide : - Denial of the absurd; perpetual denial. To kill yourself as a philosopher.
Another point is the struggle all get left with the absurd includes :
- A total absence of hope does not mean Despair.
- A continual rejection does not mean Renunciation.
- Conscious Dissatisfaction does not mean Immature Unrest.
Albert Camus : "I am taking liberty at this point of calling the existentialist attitude philosophical suicide."
We find dichotomy of opinions between Albert Camus and Søren Kierkegaard :
Søren Kierkegaard : "If man had no consciousness, what would life be but despair?"
Albert Camus : "Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable."
› 4th Video :
The video deals with the comparison between Dadaism and Existentialism. Thinkers such ad Hugo Ball, Janco, Jearn Arp, Tristan Tzara, and many others disgusted by the first World War, moved to Zurich and founded the Dada movement. They thought : Old Values = Cause of the War. It was merely an art movement in the painting regime wherein paintings did not seem to follow the set patterns and rules to it.
Friedrich Nietzsche : "Whom do they hate most? Him who breaks uo their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker. He, however, is the creator."
Just like Existentialism, Dadaism pushes us to accept ourselves against the values which others have created, and imposed on you.
Hugo Ball : " How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, Europeanised, enervated? By saying 'Dada'." (Manifesto)
Questions » Destroying Firm Basis of Values » No Answer Pitched in Response = Dadaism.
› 5th Video :
This video tries to give a tentative solution in three most possible ways to the anxiety aroused by the realization of absurdity in life :
Life/You + Anxiety ≈ (1) God (2) Truth (3) Embracing Absurd.
Further the video deals with the Second World War and its aftermaths, Despair & Absurdity. So, as a response to this, Existentialism emerged.
This video of the list is quite interesting as it asks one pertainable question : 'Existentialism' & 'Nihilism' : Are the two concepts same? The answer is No. Why? Let us find out.
Nihilism for Sóren Kierkegaard is 'The loss of individuality (Levelling.)'
For Friedrich Nietzsche, "the highest values devaluate themselves."
For Emil Mihai Cioran, 'Passivity' or 'Nihilistic Consent.'
Another interesting thing regarding 'Suicide' either physical or philosophical one is voiced up by Hermann Hesse in his 'Der Steppenwolf' : "All suicides have the responsibility of fighting against the temptation of suicide."
This is the longest of the ten videos. In this video, the accentuation is put upon What Existentialism is not and what it possibly can be referred to as.
Existentialism is not 'A Philosophical System' and 'A Set of Doctrines.' But, it is best classified as 'A Philosophical Movement' arose in 19th Century Europe whose Founding Fathers are Søren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900), and Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 - 1881.)
The Existentialism became prominent in the mid-20th century, esoecially after Second World War; there emerged famous existentialists such as Franz Kafka, Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre.
Robert Solomon expressed : "'Existentialism' is an attitude that recognizes the unresolvable confusion of the human world, yet resists the all-too-human temptation to resolve the confusion by grasping toward whatever appears or can be made to appear firm or familiar..."
Another agelong conflict we find is that Divine or Immortality v/s Existential or Temporal Attitud to Life.
Jean-Paul Sartre in the lecture given by him in 1945 titled as 'Existentialism is Humanism' comes up with the groundbreaking statement : "Existence Precedes Essence."
The narrator proceeds : "The concept of 'an essence' is put forth most famously in the work of the Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle. Aristotle believed that every substance or in other words, every indipendent thing be it a person, a rock, a tree - has an essence. The essence of a substance can be seen as its necessary properties or characteristics which are required for the thing to be what it is. Aristotle had a teleological view of nature - all substances in nature tend towards the actualization of their essence. For instance, Acorn » Tendency » Essence » Full-Grown Oak Tree. In terms of humans, Aristotle saw our essence as the nature (essence) of humans was acting in full accordance with reason. And it was this idea which influenced scholastic philosophers in the middle ages to come up with the now commonly used definition of man as the 'Rational Animal.' Aristotle believed that humans unlike inanimate matter and other animals, could choose whether or not to act in accordance with their nature."
In further course, we find a nuantic difference between Nihilism and Existentialist concept of Individuality :
Nihilism : No objective meaning and no personal/subjective meaning.
Existentialism : Alike Nihilism, no objective meaning, but one can create one's own personal/subjective meaning.
› 8th Video :
The very video is a video with lightweight converstion between the narrators and children on the topic of Philosophy which demands a large portion of thinking activity which superficially seem impossible in context of children who are fresh lives unknown to the dynamics of the world.
I found that philosophy is not easy to be understood, especially by children lacking ample worldly experiences as well as they are already - by and large - raised up by feeding up with religious philosophies, social conducts & mannerism, behavioural pattern which nearly impossible to be get wiped away from their highly sensitive and constant learning minds which always seek to learn and absorb whatsoever turns up in surroundings which we generally refer to as culture and soicety or as what Hippolyte Taine calls Race, Milieu, Moment.
› 9th Video :
This video is concerned with individual preference of liking Existentialism by Eric Dodson. He presents 3 grounds upon which the video bases its root :
(1) Why I like Existentialism?
- Combining Mind & Heart
- Honesty & Directness
- Holism
- Rebellion
(2) How Existentialism affected my everyday life?
- Thinking & Epistemology
- Compassion
- Immensity
Two sides of Existentialism :
(1) Obvious Intellectual Side.
(2) Subtle Existential Sensibility or
an Existential Way of Life.
The narrator declares : "This video will be pretty personal, and not very philosophically technical in nature. Take it with a grain of salt. As it is emerged from personal experience, thus may vary a lot from person to person."
The narrator observes that Existentialism makes appeals to the two interlinked sides of human nature :
(1) Appeal to Intellect - Speaks to Reason/Mind.
(2) Appeal to Widely Evocative Mytho-Poetic Side - Speaks to Emotion/Heart.
The narrator goes on while concerning the relative topic of Extraordinary & Staggering Honesty of Existentialism : "Basically, I find that existentialist thinkers are much more straightforward than average about many aspects of life that are hard to admit and discuss; things like : (1) How absurd life really is. (2) How we fall away from our deeper destinies. (3) How we self-deceptively deny our deeper freedom."
Academics : 'We are alive to understand things.'
The Narrator : "It is not so much that we are alive to understand things, but that we understand things in order to be more fully and powerfully alive."
The last of the series of videos votes in to clarify the Existentialism Movement. It holds : From 'Essentialism' to 'Existentialism.' The narrator throws some light on Philosophy : "Philosophy is about the dialectic; someone puts forth an idea and someone else responds to it." The narrator illustrates the statement by taking several references of prominent philosphers from past to modernity :
• Plato & Aristotle » Essence » A certain set of properties that are necessary, or essential for a thing to be what it is.
For instance, the blade of a knife is an essential property or quality which makes a knife a knife.
"Now Plato and Aristotle thought that everything has an essence including us and they believed that our essences exist in us before we're even born. So, by this thinking, part of what it means to be a good human is to adhere to your essence." From here we get the idea of Essentialism.
"But in the late 1800s, some thinkers started to challenge the idea that we are imbued with any essence or purpose."
• Friedrich Nietzsche » Nihilism » The belief in the ultimate meaninglessness of life » Existentialism.
Conclusion : In concluding part, I would like to know you all that I have prepared a note while watching the video and here I am attaching the link of the prepared pdf file of note so that you can get an access to that via Google Drive : Click Here to view the file.
Thank you!
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