Existentialism Notes + Midterm

nonrational

irra

nonrational: to acknowledge that human reason can’t solve all problems/ has its limits. In the leap of faith, Kierkegaard exercises the nonrational options

irrational: drawing conclusions without evidence

rational: drawing conclusions with sufficient evidence

Dialectical

Conflicts create progress

Thesis + antithesis

Hegel: dialectical method: how everything works

Homo faber

Man the maker/creator

Marx (capitalism) (alienation)

Homo faber: man the maker/creator. When you feel like a cog and wheel of the assembly line (KM), alienated from nature (homo faber)

Master and Slave

Hegel

If there is no slave there is no master

Transition of power → movements of power are constantly changing and cycling

Master’s position is determined by slave

Master: thesis

Slave: antithesis

Original Sin

We are all born with an innate sin (inherited from Adam and Eve)

Problem of Evil

How can God be real if evil things are happening in the world (innocents are suffering)

Zeitgeist

• The spirit of the age

• An expression of the Weltgeist, but contextualized in your particular place in human history

Soren Kierkegaard

Danish philosopher (1813-1855) who critiqued traditional Christianity and emphasized subjective truth and personal relationship with God.

• Died at age 42

• Lived entire life in copenhagen denmark (save for two trips)

• Spent a year in berlin, bestie was Hans Christian Anderson

• Made one trip to sweden

• Mentally crippled by guilt instilled by his father and the faith

  • His father once uttered a blashphemous expression condemning god, and he slept with the maid of the house and was then forced to marry her because she got pregnant

  • One of 7 children

  • Father said that all his children would die before age 34, because the father had committed acts of blasphemy

    • 34 age jesus died

  • 5 of Kierkegaard’s siblings died before 34

    • Only Soren and his brother peter survived after 34, but soren died at 42

• Never married, broke off two engagements, thought being married would get in the way of his pursuit to be a Christian

• Inherited some wealth that allowed him to pursue his life as a writer

• Had kyphosis

  • A condition where you have a hump on your back (hunchback)

Aesthetic Lifestyle

A lifestyle devoted to pleasure

Devoted to pleasure, requires constant switching to prevent boredom, akin to the rotation of crops.

Ethical Lifestyle

A life of doing one's moral duty and abiding by a set of objective moral rules and principles

Religious Lifestyle

A passionate, subjective choice to commit yourself to God in whatever way God requires

• An inward transformation

• Had a really intense dislike of people who outwardly professed their faith

Rotation of Crops

Concept of switching activities to prevent boredom, a key idea in aesthetic lifestyles.

Abraham Story

Illustrates the difference between ethical and religious life, emphasizing obedience over moral principles.

Imprimatur

Seal of approval for a correct Bible translation by the Catholic Church, critiqued by Kierkegaard for controlling religion.

Subjectivity

The highest task for every human being, willing to become subjective

• A truth is subjective if it is true to you

Emphasis on personal relationship with God and individual experience, a key aspect in Kierkegaard's philosophy.

Focus on individual perspectives and choices in existentialism.

Leap of Faith

Passionate belief in God despite objective uncertainty, a central concept in Kierkegaard's existentialism.

Objective Uncertainty

Facing a world of moral mess and dehumanization, questioning how to bridge the gap to faith, a challenge for Kierkegaard.

Idealism

A metaphysical theory that posits ideas and thoughts as the only real entities in the world

Rationalism

Epistemological stance rejecting Kant and emphasizing the role of reasoning in understanding the world

Rationalisms metaphysical system is idealism

Weltgeist

The rational principle governing the world according to Hegel

• World Spirit

Alienation

The state of being isolated or disconnected from a group or activity one should belong to

We can only see others objectively

Capitalism

Economic system leading to alienation, especially in feeling like a mere cog in a corporate machine

Social alienation

Feeling ostracized or disconnected from society, leading to anguish and despair

One side: you self alienate through bad faith

Other side: you cannot self alienate because there is no faith

Nature

Increasingly explained by science, leading to questions about humanity's place in a mechanistic world

Self-alienation

Doubt about one's identity and existence, a key concept in existentialist thought

Bad Faith

The denial that you are totally free and totally responsible pure possibility, of free will

To be in bad faith is to be alienated from who you are, because who you are is pure possibility, and to think you are not is bad faith

• Denial of one's freedom and responsibility, leading to self-alienation

• Denial of pure possibility and free will, focusing on taking responsibility.

Theistic Existentialists

Philosophers like Tillich and Dostoyevsky advocating worship of a higher power

• Kierkegaard also applies

Toothache

Symbolizing the existentialist choice of irrationality over reason, emphasizing free will

• discussed by Dostoevsky

Modernism

Cultural movement marked by faith in progress, reason, industrialization, and urbanization

Phenomenological approach

Focuses on how experiences appear to consciousness and influence emotions and actions

Sense based philosophers

Don't say real or not real, what's important is the life I am living

My experiences are unique to me, and therefore it has its reality in my consciousness

Refuse to get into the disputes of appearance vs reality, idealism, etc

Interested in the world as it appears to me

Existential Crisis

The condition of human beings, singly or in groups, experience a traumatic event or a traumatic condition which is urgent and provokes feelings of anxiety, fear, dread, anguish, despair, abandonment or terror.

• Traumatic events provoking feelings of anxiety, fear, and despair, leading to an existential crisis

• Not a neurosis but a human condition involving repressing or obsessing about death.

Repression

Psychological timebomb that must be addressed.

Folk Psychology

Common understanding of psychological processes, not reliable in academic research.

Ex post facto

having retroactive effect or force

• changes consequences of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed before rule

Deductive Argument

Claims the conclusion is necessarily true based on logic.

Inductive Argument

Claims the conclusion's probability and likelihood increase with accumulating evidence.

Agency

Accepting one's power to act with consequences, opposite of determinism.

Angst

Deep fearfulness when contemplating death, basis for agency and free will.

Free Will

Metaphysical libertarianism asserting the possibility of choice and responsibility.

Nihilism

Belief that life has no inherent meaning or cosmic significance.

Objective vs subjective

Distinguishing between objective and subjective values in existentialist philosophy.

Existentialists

focus on the subjective value

Unsystematic

Contradictory by nature

No logical consistency

Altruist

Pursuit of other’s pleasure/health/wellbeing

Egoist

Pursuit of own pleasure/health/wellbeing

Hedonism

Pursuit of pleasure

Mythotherapy

 assuming multiple social masks which are myth making devices to enable you to assume multiple personal identities

Cosmopsis

• Paralysis, inability to choose, faced with too many choices

• Satire of existentialism, as Sarte says “you have unlimited responsibility”

Faith

Believing in what you don't understand

Not a spectator sport, most people are spectators (attending ceremonies, rituals, etc)

• These are outward displays of faith, Kierkegaard wants you to go inward

God

God cannot be identified with any particular religion. God is a person but so huge, so great, that we can neither step away from god nor comprehend god. It is impossible to know god objectively

Truth

Subjective truth is on an equal footing with objective truth (the sciences), but in terms of living your life, subjective truth should be preferred, because it is fueled by passion and the inward

Really Existing

• Wants us to really exist, finding a truth that you want to live for

• No amount of rational truth

The value of the bible

• Didnt love the miracles

• Valued the non miraculous stories in the bible because they provide for an overwhelming sense of the magnificent, incomprehensibility of go

Choosing God

• Rejecting all rational and objective approaches to God

• Recognize that God is the great unknown

• Develop a feeling for god's awesomeness

• In the face of objective uncertainty, make the leap of faith

Knight of Resignation

Someone who is outwardly religious, visibly pious, abides by all the moral rules prescribed by a religion, but are often hypocritical

Knight of Faith

• The ideal

• Inward, seeks god in solitude, make the leap of faith QUIETLY, and has in his or her mind becoming christian

• In the true spirit of christianity, which is LOVE and RESPECT your NEIGHBOR

• Places the individual or the particular above the universal

Teleological suspension of the ethical

The suspension of universal ethical standards for the purpose of obeying god and thereby expressing one's faith

Spiritual trial

• Story of abraham and isaac

• Every time one is called upon to assert themselves as a single individual in the face of an ethical universal

Paradox of Faith

• Standing in absolute relation to the absolute

• To obey god in spite of what we have been taught that god requires

• The single of individual is higher than any universal

Tragic Hero

One who acts within the security of universal ethical standards, consequently you lead a tragic life

Tragic Life

When a person leads their entire life not realizing that their life is one of becoming

Human Greatness

Resigning oneself totally to the will of god

The deception that god needs us

• God can require everything from us and for no reason, because humans are unworthy servants

• God does not need us

The Wonderful Lamp

When rubbed, the spirit appears, that is, when a person becomes passionate and a subjective law giver, then god, like the genie, comes into existence

Doctrine

• A set of beliefs about god and the universe 

• The litmus test of faith

• To be a roman catholic you MUST believe in the virgin birth of Jesus

Myth

A set of stories that convey a sacred meaning

Ritual

Acts of public or private worship 

• Ex: attending church, visiting the cemetery for funeral rites

Morality

A set of ethical principles that need to be followed

Organization / Hierarchy

Organization is hierarchical

• Ex: pope, priest, congregation, etc

Totems

Natural objects or animals that are believed by a particular religious group to have a particular spiritual significance

• Emblems

• Ex: eagle feather for specific indigenous tribes

Metaphysics

The study of what's real

Epistemology

The study of how we come to know something

Has empiricism ( related to epistemology )and rationalism

UNIVERSAL

• A universal moral theory/rule/code is true for everyone everywhere

UNIVERSAL truths are true for everyone everywhere

objective truths are also universal