By:
Wrendolf C. Juntilla
One crucial stage in the
psychological development of a human being is when one begins to introspect.
Psychologists generally agree that this peculiar human activity begins at
adolescence (Papalia et al., 2004). At this stage, a human being starts to be
conscious of his or her identity and longs, though immaturely, for
self-determination. This implies that spontaneous with self-consciousness is
self-construction. Psychologists also tell us that in most frequent cases, a
human being at teenage stage patterns this self-construction to the trend he or
she sees in peers.
There will come a time, however,
that introspection becomes deeper and external environment gradually loses its
paradigmatic role in self-construction. Here, the individual’s confrontation
with the questions like “Who am I?”, “What is my purpose?” and “What is the
meaning of my life?” becomes more intimate. Although there is no suggestion
that every individual actually asks these questions, introspection can tell us
that even if it may take different forms and circumstances one’s inclination to
achieve a more mature self-identity and purpose setting is evident.
That the search for identity and
purpose happens in an individual makes existence a philosophical problem. Existentialists
give us profound explanations of why this is so.
One of them, Jean-Paul Sartre,
contends that the pursuit of identity and purpose is the source of anguish. This is his contention in his
philosophy wherein he distinguishes two kinds of beings: the for-itself (pour
soi) and the in-itself (en soi). Being-for-itself are conscious beings (i.e.
human beings) while the in-itself are objects. Unlike the in-itself,
consciousness is always dynamic, boundless and free. It cannot be objectified
because it is precisely the one which objectifies, that which defines and
describes reality. Hence, it is the very nature of the human person as a
conscious individual to create and construct reality.
One central masterpiece of a
human being is himself and his life. The conscious individual, aware of this power, this freedom, finds it important
that the identity he or she creates is not a mere conformation to something external.
Rather, it must spring from within, from his or her own free choice. As what
usually happens, according to Sartre, an individual tends to evade this act of
freedom by escaping from himself or
herself and conforming to the
external environment. This happens when ones fails to take responsibility for
his or her life by letting others define, govern, and determine his or her own
existence.
Sartre claims that since a human
being is a conscious being, and since consciousness is a fundamental free
activity, one, then, can never do away with freedom. Human beings are condemned
to be free. Denial of this power entails denial of one’s personhood, for
personhood is always characterized by freedom. For Sartre, this is where
anxiety looms. Being free and conscious, the individual realizes that he or she
has the responsibility to create himself or herself (Sartre, 1946, p.52).
Sartre’s version of anguish
purports the idea that in self-confrontation we also confront the questionable
meaning of our existence. This comes from the realization that human existence
is contingent; that is, we could have not been born but nevertheless had been.
If this is so, then one might ask anxiously: “Why are we born at all?” We
experience this in self-confrontation because existence is always personal. When
we confront existence, we do not confront others’ life but our own.
We may not claim that being able
to confront the questionable meaning of our existence makes us conclude that
life is inherently meaningless. However, for Arthur Schopenhauer, a pessimist,
it really does.
Schopenhauer borrows much of his
concept of self from Kant’s epistemology which claims that it is the world that
conforms to the mind and not the other way around. From this perspective,
Schopenhauer believes that it is the agent who constructs the world. However,
disagreeing with his contemporary –Georg Hegel – that the construction of the
world is an activity of the Spirit (Geist) permeating and illumining every
individual mind, Schopenhauer claims that it is the Will of every individual which determines and gives meaning and
intelligibility to the world (Luper, 2000 p.103). People have different perspective
because it is their desire – their will – which colors what they perceive.
Our desires, says Schopenhauer,
keep us from self-confrontation. In desire, we are directed outside of
ourselves, towards that which we desire. According to Schopenhauer, this allows
the Will to hide from us the questionable meaning of our existence. When we
desire something we do not normally ask why we need to exist. It is but part of
fulfilling our desires that we must continue existing. However, it is in the
state of hopelessness, in the absence of desires, that we are led to shift our
gaze from the outside to our own existence. We will eventually realize that
existence in itself, without desires, is futile and absurd. Our not having something
to look forward in the future makes existence reveal its pointlessness (Luper,
2000, p. 103).
Schopenhauer might have
prescribed a life lived with desires to overcome this anxiety. However, he
thinks it is unwarranted. Desires help us escape this grim reality, but this
doesn’t change anything. Existence is still pointless. To this, Schopenhauer suggests
we stop caring about existence. Though he does not prescribe suicide, he
proposes that to stop caring about existence is to stop desiring anything. In
this way, the individual has nothing to expect from life and the pointlessness
of existence becomes more acceptable. Such pessimistic solution is influenced
much by Schopenhauer’s affiliation with Buddhism (De Torre, 2000, p.64).
Friedrich Nietzsche, another German
philosopher who was believed to be the inspiration of Nazi ideology (although
there is no historical fact to prove this allegation), derives much of his
concept of human person from Schopenhauer. But to denounce life as Schopenhauer
would prescribe is never acceptable to him. It is true that the individual
cannot find a necessary reason for existence, but it doesn’t mean that he
cannot create one for himself. Nietzsche sees in Schopenhauer vengefulness
against what life has made of him (Luper, 2000. p. 104). Schopenhauer’s
pessimism construes Nietzsche’s belief that human weakness is the reason why
life is suffering.
Nietzsche claims that the proper
attitude in response to life is not to condemn it, to wish that one should have
not existed. Instead, human beings must learn to embrace their fate whatever it
is, that is, to embrace this life here and now (Garcia, 2008). One reason why
we cannot affirm our life in this world is because we delude ourselves in
believing that there is another world better than this, a world that we call
heaven in our religion. Yet, according to Nietzsche, that world does not exist
and so does God, and the more that we look forward to it is the more that we
deny this present life that we have.
By rejoicing over our irreversible
fate of being in this world, we have claimed ourselves superior and indeed the
master of our own life. It is no longer our situation that determines what we
must feel and think. Rather, it is the other way around. What we want to feel
and think is now what defines our reality and our situation. We now govern our
own world, and we become masters of our own self.
However, superiority or greatness
doesn’t only entail loving our fate (amor
fati) but more importantly determining what kind of life we want to live.
This means that we do not simply conform to social conventions or objective
values that can suppress our creativity. Such is the way of weak mediocre
people who just let themselves be governed by conventional moral principles
that are not of their own making. Superiority means going ‘beyond good and
evil’, being able to define our own morality (master morality), and create our
own values. It is then necessary that “God is dead” (Nietzsche, 1887); in this
way we become free from God, from whom we always make the source of morality
and values. Nietzsche claims that this is the way of higher kind of person who
makes himself his own god: the Superman.
Nietzsche reminds me of a story of a
conceited king who once summoned his personal tailor to make him a dress that
would make him the most handsome man in the palace. The clever tailor managed
to convince the king that in order to get this dress, he has to give him his
kingdom. Desperate, the king agreed. Then the tailor made for him an ‘invisible
dress’, which, since it is invisible, the king cannot see. So the king, after
giving away his kingdom, walked proudly in front of the crowd thinking he is so
handsome in his invisible dress only to find out, upon hearing mockery and
laughter, that he is not wearing any dress at all.
The father of existentialism – Soren
Kierkegaard – suggests that trusting our own greatness to save ourselves from
anxiety is like wearing an invisible dress which, however thick it is, cannot
hide our own nakedness and vulnerability. Nietzsche would claim it is false
hope to believe in God and forget oneself, but Kierkegaard would say that what
is false hope is to believe in oneself and forget God.
Kierkegaard agrees as well as with
other philosophers that we are able to distract ourselves from confronting our
existential agony by the desires and goals we set for ourselves. We implicitly
desire the continuation of our existence in order to fulfill them (Luper, 2000,
p.13). However, misfortunes will always come, given that as finite and limited
beings, we cannot assure ourselves to be able to fulfill our desires and goals.
To mitigate anguish which is a consequence of misfortunes, we can adopt
different modes of existence. We can pursue a life whose goal is to acquire
pleasure and avoid pain (aesthetic) or a life lived in accordance to values we
set for ourselves (ethical). In either way, we assume self-governance; and
there, Kierkegaard says, looms despair.
Contrary to Nietzsche’s view,
Kierkegaard maintains that a human being cannot do it all by himself although
he may believe he can. According to Kierkegaard, part of discovering our true
identity is recognizing our dependence on God (Luper, 2000, p. 15). A failure
to do this amounts to a false view of the self, and hence a false view of how
life must be lived.
Such is Kierkegaard’s view that he
believed as well as with other theistic philosophers that the only firm solution
for existential anxiety is a life wherein one takes a leap of faith, a kind of
life entrusted to God (Kierkegaard, 1985). In faith, says Kierkegaard, we
confront our own self, including our nakedness and vulnerability. However, it
does not end there. Recognizing our incompleteness requires that we also
recognize the Being who can complete us – that is God. Hence in faith our
desire for meaning and eternity is fulfilled. The trust that we give to a
Transcendent gives us the assurance that whatever may happen something good is
prepared for us.
Kierkegaard recognizes that this
belief is irrational. In the first place, we do not meet God the way we meet
people. In the second place, it is impossible to be absolutely sure that
whatever happens is for the best. Indeed, theist claim, since God is
transcendent, everyday situation is always a sign (cipher) of Transcendence which
necessarily requires a leap of faith in order to be understood (Garcia, 2008).
As for the second problem, Kierkegaard claims that a person who believes in God
recognizes this irrationality of faith, but still he continues to believe.
Hence, for Kierkegaard, a faithful is not deceiving himself. This tells us that
in the light of faith, a person achieves a personal
truth, that which he or she can live
and die for. This truth that faith brings cannot be judged objectively since it
is beyond the grasp of reason. Blaise Pascal, a ‘convert’ from the God of the
philosophers to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, puts it wonderfully in
this way: “The heart has its own reason that reason cannot know” (Pascal, 1958).
Conclusion:
As free and conscious beings, it is but normal for
us to seek our identity and meaning in existence. Anxiety creeps into our lives
due to our failure to find them,
consciously or unconsciously. Nonetheless, the reality of anxiety tells us that
life cannot and must not be unworthy
of living. It tells us that we care about existing, and we do not want to exist
blindly just we do not want not to know who we really are. Moreover, the
reality of anxiety tells us that a life worth living is not something that is
served on the table waiting to be consumed. It tells us that to find life’s
meaning we ought to do something. No other people can do this for us although
they may help us along the way. Most of all, anxiety tells us of our
incompleteness and hunger for the Absolute.
This longing for the Absolute cannot be repressed (De Torre,
2001, p. 72). If we do, are forced to indentify the Absolute as ourselves by taking ourselves to be the ultimate source
of values and meaning – the atheistic way. However, if indeed this is possible,
then why is there existential anxiety in the first place? Why do we need others
to realize our identity? If we are the Absolute,
then why do we feel boredom, absurdity, and fear of death? If we are complete,
then why do we need to be loved and to love, to go outside of ourselves? To
deny in theory what is proved in practice is what philosophers love to call a living contradiction, and claiming that
we are our own god manifests just that.
The truth is that we need God, and we are not Him. In this view,
we can see that leap of faith is not a philosophical
suicide, a blind adherence to something untrue. Rather, it is an act of
openness to and union with the Transcendence, the Absolute Thou in whom we
become complete. St. Augustine tells us of this truth: “our soul is restless
until it rests upon God.”
To trust one’s self is indeed an act
of courage, of greatness. But is it not greater and nobler, because it is more
risky, to believe, to take a leap of faith? As the song goes, “who knows what’s
miracle when we believe”? That in all of its bleakness life lived in faith is
still meaningful: that is awesomely miraculous…and cool.
References:
De
Torre, J. M. (2000). Contemporary
philosophical issues in historical perspective (pp. 62-66). Philippines:
University of Asia and the Pacific.
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J. F. (1955). Philosophical psychology
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Garcia,
L. D., “The Courage to Take the Leap of Faith: Theistic Existentialism” in
Gripaldo, R.M. (2008) The philosophical
landscape: a panoramic perspective on philosophy (5th ed.) (pp.
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Kierkegaard,
S. (1985). Fear and trembling. Translated
by Alastair Hannay. London: Pengui Books.
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S. (2000) Existing: an introduction to
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