EXISTENTIALISM

Latin “Existere” – “to stand out, to become or to emerge”

 Martin HEIDEGGER research assistant to HUSSERL, mostly unreadable, between the wars.

  Roots are in writings of Soren Kerkegaard and Frederick Nietzsche.      

(Good book is “Existentialism” (1970) by Mary Warnock, Oxford Univ. Press.)

They and the other main E. philosophers both demonstrate the principal intention of Existentialism

As being to explore the potentials for freedom and the inherent limitations of our

Experience as being-in-the-world.

      Key themes:   –  freedom

                             –  responsibility

                             –  nothingness or death

                             –  aloneness or isolation

                             –  meaning/meaninglessness

                             –  Initial sombre note:  Quote from Spinelli

 Authentic vs Inauthentic Beings

As inauthentic beings we are constrained by self-imposed conventions and conformity to

Prevailing attitudes and morality – e.g. religion, culture/society, class, gender.

 Mary Warnock:

“Sartre initiates his analysis of the existence of the other with experience of being seen, of being caught by a gaze which freezes me in my tracks, reduces me to the condition of an object, steals my world from me, and takes away my freedom along with my subject position.     

                                                                                          

 Existentialists                                                                                           

See our lives as an incomprehensible, uncertain and threatening existence leading only to death – we are living to die!! 

We therefore have to give meaning to our existence – by surrounding ourselves with conventions and rules.

This makes us inauthentic and deadens our existence.

(What rules and conventions can you think of that act in this way?)

As authentic beings we recognise our individuality and our potentialities.  We acknowledge our role in determining our actions, thoughts and beliefs (accept responsibility) – Milgram experiments.

So we take responsibility for our actions – we form our own opinions and express them freely, don’t worry how people see us, about status, we derive interests from a true desire for understanding:  We have control, are in charge of our lives.

Also Isolation, Nothingness and Angst.  The depressing aspects of Extentialism.

Meaninglessness.  E.’s believe that life itself has no meaning.  Only two certain things, being born and death.  Everything in between is uncertain.

Some seek ‘the truth’ through religion, philosophy etc, but E.’s believe that our knowledge of our existence is incomplete and unknowable, unattainable.

We construct the meaning of life for ourselves and therefore our life is meaningless.  Trying to   construct meaning for our life results in us recognising that something else is controlling our existence and there we have no control over what happens to us.

And so we enter an existence of inauthenticity, i.e. a denial of responsibility for our actions as they are being controlled.  That limits our ability to fully experience our world.

E. has clear-cut political and social implications e.g. beat music and ‘the angry young man’of art, drama and literature developed out of a form of existentialism, not being afraid to confront conventions.  1960’s/1970’s fashion and punk rock also good examples.  Doing you own thing, what feels right for you.

Inauthenticity = passivity, competition, striving for success, viewing others as the primary means of defining one’s status, seeking applause.  Followers not leaders.

Authenticity = openness, flexibility, co-operation and responsibility.  Results in a state of equality of importance and status between ourself and others.

Authentic beings  –  value their aliveness

                             –  take responsibility for their choices

                             –  show greater autonomy and resistance to socialisation

                             –  are more integrated, creative and tolerant of others

                             –  place emphasis on ‘ now’, not the future

                             –  do not seek recognition

We can exhibit both these states of existence at different periods of time, in different situations.  (When are we authentic?  When inauthentic?)

Inauthenticity is the prevailing one, the common tendency – recognise it?

Therefore, could impact on our research.  Need to recognise this state and its influence on the way people behave.  Are the participants ‘authentic’ or ‘inauthentic’?  How are we acting and therefore influencing the subject?

Approaching issues of existence head-on.

Individuals are responsible for their own existence, but often fail to take the opportunities that offers.  “I own my body and my existence, my right to self-determination”  Everyone has absolute freedom to make choices about their existence.  (Ask for examples).  Human beings do not possess freedom, they are freedom – we choose our mode of existence.

What we believe is less important than how we believe it; e.g. CND supporters, ALF, environmentalists actually take action.

State of “Bad Faith”  –  people claim to have no control over own actions, or more specifically fail to take action when action is clearly required.

Examples  –  woman in restaurant with potential suitor

                 –   person with financial problems carries on spending but does not do accounts, fearful of what will be revealed.

Spinelli  –  comments that both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche have said that:

                 “Each of us possesses a far greater degree of freedom of thought (and belief

                 and by implication of behaviour) than many of us think possible”.

A Philosophy for Life?

“…. In finding ourselves thrown into an incomprehensible, uncertain and threatening existence which eventually, incontrovertibly, leads to our death, we, as a species, give way to the experience of dread and overwhelming anxiety.  In order to defend against this dread, we convince ourselves (that is, we lie to ourselves) that this is not so, that it cannot be the case, that existence is meaningful and rule-bound and open to convention.  Via this defensive

action our existence becomes ‘inauthentic’.  The relative security of inauthentic existence has a price, however, and it is a heavy one:  it is the very ‘deadening of our existence through self-imposed limitations on our potentials as beings-in-the-world.”

                                                                                                Spinelli (1989)

The inauthentic being “ignores the reality of his own relation to the world.  There is an Ambiguity in his dealings with reality.  He partly knows what things are, but partly does not, because he is so entirely caught up in the way other people see them, the labels attached to them by the world at large. He cannot straightforwardly form any opinion, and his statements are partly his own, partly those of people in general.”

from:

"Existentialism"   Mary Warnock (1970)   

As Therapists & Counsellors; if we don't have a philosophy or wider understanding of people & how we live in the world, one will be thrust upon us.

Neil Benbow

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