Dictionary of Existentialism

Haim Gordon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781579581671
• eBook ISBN: 9781135948016
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Existentialism, as a philosophy, gained prominence after World War II. Instead of focusing upon a particular aspect of human existence, existentialists argued that our focus must be upon the whole being as he/she exists in the world. Rebelling against the rationalism of such philosophers as Descartes and Hegel, existentialists reject the emphasis placed on man as primarily a thinking being. Freedom is central to human existence, and human relations and encounters cannot be reduced simply to "thinking." This Dictionary provides--through alphabetically arranged entries--overviews of the various tenets, philosophers, and writers of existentialism, and of those writers/philosophers who, in retrospect, seem to existentialists to espouse their philosophy: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevski, et al.

AESTHETICS

Mathew Rampley

Aesthetics is frequently confused with the philosophy of art, given that an aesthetic experience is frequently equated with the experience of a work of ART; indeed, a work of art is seen as exemplifying an aesthetic experience. Undoubtedly, there is a close relation between aesthetics and the philosophy of art, but the two are not identical. Existentialist aesthetic thinking inevitably has to be traced back to the aesthetic theory of Kant, in particular, his concept of the disinterested aesthetic judgment. As a reaction to this tradition, a recurrent motif of existentialist thought is the stress on the profound intertwining of aesthetic experience and lived reality. Indeed, for many, the aesthetic is the basis of the lived, not a mode of experience detached from it. One exception to this approach is SARTRE, whose insistence on the irreality of the objects of the IMAGINATION seems to give his thought a Kantian flavor. This impression is tempered, however, by Sartre’s interest in committed writing.

Ironically, as the founder of a tradition that inverts the philosophical denigration of art, KIERKEGAARD views the aesthetic as a stage to be overcome. There is a further IRONY, given that his writing, with its adoption of various literary genres and use of various pseudonyms, has an aesthetic quality. His work is suffused with self-reflective irony, but he is not merely successor to those romantics for whom irony was the symbol of the infinite. For Kierkegaard irony is only a means to an end, namely, the authentic LIFE of FAITH. It is like the via negative: not the TRUTH, but the way; the establishment of an authentic life will thereby represent the suppression of the ironic. He thus implicitly criticizes the privileging of irony in romantic POETRY, in that Romanticism values irony as an end. The aesthete lacking any higher ethical VALUES exists in a state of perpetual passivity; one is dependent on the contingent and immediate and is enmeshed in continual boredom. To counter this state, the aesthete, fearful that life will lose its diverting multifariousness, either seeks ever greater and novel stimuli or is plunged into a profound self-absorption. Both responses include the constant dread of NOTHINGNESS. Art, too, is often only a beautiful transfiguration of human dread, without resolving it, since art may remain subject to the same logic of CONTINGENCY, boredom, and immediacy and therefore can fail to point beyond itself to the ETHICAL or the RELIGIOUS STAGES.

NIETZSCHE is consistently hostile to Kantian aesthetics and criticizes two major aspects: its predominantly female character and the issue of disinterestedness. He attacks the emphasis on analyzing aesthetic experience from the position of the passive, hence feminine spectator. Strictly speaking, this is misleading since Kant does give some attention to questions of CREATIVITY and genius. In contrast, Nietzsche seeks to introduce a productivist aesthetics that emphasizes the creative artist and views the aesthetic experience as intimately bound up with the WILL to POWER. The sense of aesthetic form marks the will’s striving for organizational control through creative intervention in the world. He admires the aesthetic form of tightly disciplined bodies such as the Jesuit order or the Prussian officer corps. The Romantic dissolution of form is a sign of an enfeebled will to power. Regarding the question of disinterestedness, Nietzsche grounds the aesthetic attitude in the physiological functioning of the human organism, specifically, human sexuality. Beauty is always erotic, as the myth of Pygmalion suggests, and, indeed, in the most pious of religious paintings such as those of Raphael, he sees an erotic drive. Also, theoretical KNOWLEDGE is guided by the aesthetic through their common grounding in will to power.

Although art is of central importance in HEIDEGGER’s philosophy, the aesthetic experience is much less central. In the essay “The Origin of the Work of Art,” the traditional orientation of aesthetics toward subjective sensuous experience is criticized. The work of art is viewed as a disclosing of truth. Heidegger views van Gogh’s painting of a pair of peasant shoes as disclosing their essential being, together with the lived reality of an individual peasant woman and the truth of her peasant existence. Truth and beauty thus merge in the specificity of the aesthetic experience. Heidegger does not discuss at any length the aesthetic imagination. He returns to the concerns of the ancient Greek philosophers, specifically, Plato, to work through once more the problem of art and truth.

The basis of Sartre’s aesthetics is his theory of the imagination. In The Psychology of the Imagination, Sartre mobilizes HUSSERL’s concept of INTENTIONALITY to explain both the place of images in CONSCIOUSNESS and their relation to their OBJECT. Criticizing the philosophical tradition that saw the image as a content of consciousness, Sartre sees the image as a mental event, distinguished by the manner in which its object is intended. While all conscious events intend an object, the imagination, in contrast to PERCEPTION, intends its objects as nonexistent. Hence, the imagining consciousness engages in a process of quasi observation since its objects are posited either as absent, nonexistent, or as making no particular claim to existence or nonexistence. At the heart of the image, therefore, is the element of NEGATION, of nothingness; somewhat problematically, Sartre concludes that the imagining consciousness necessarily negates the real WORLD. Yet it is precisely the irreality of the image that permits its spontaneity, since it is not related to the transcendent objects of the perceiving consciousness.

Sartre’s theory of the image forms the thrust of his theory both of the aesthetic object and of the work of art. The work of art is the prime example of the aesthetic object; as the product of creative imagination it is subject to the same intentional mode as the image. Hence, the work of art qua aesthetic object, although manifest in physical terms, is nevertheless experienced as a nonreality. The movements of the dancer and the performance of a Beethoven symphony are merely physical analogues of the aesthetic object of dance or Beethoven’s music that exist nowhere. Similarly, a painting works as an aesthetic object precisely as the negation of the real world. Sartre’s view of the aesthetic object, the creative imagination, and, finally, the artist is somewhat bleak. The aesthetic attitude comprises a shutting out of the Other, exemplified by the withdrawal into subjectivity of Genet or Flaubert or, indeed, by the obsession with nothingness that Sartre observes in Giacometti. Sartre’s extension of the theory of the imagination to that of the work of art is also vulnerable to criticism since it excludes all nonrepresentational art. Certain types of abstract painting, for example, that draw attention to their very materiality would not count as works of art or as aesthetic objects. Also Sartre’s theory of the nihility of the aesthetic object runs counter to a better-known aspect of his thought on artistic production, namely, the notion of the committed writer articulating the dialectic of lived reality.

MERLEAU-PONTY’s approach is the antithesis of Sartre’s in that the aesthetic is the basis of perception. Of key significance is the distinction, first drawn in his Phenomenology of Perception, between primary and secondary expression. Primary expression designates the articulation of the primordial encounter between the lived body and the world. It denies the objective givenness of the world, which is, more properly, an environment or milieu. The character of this given environment is determined by the interplay of BODY and world. Hence, primal perception is always already aesthetic in ESSENCE, both because of the role of the body as the locus of perception and also because of its creative CHARACTER. Secondary expression is, by contrast, the articulation of the experience of BEING as already constituted by bodily engagement. Such would be, for example, the discourses of science and technology. Given that primordial experience is fundamentally aesthetic in character, it follows that Merleau-Ponty privileges art, especially painting, as a primary mode of articulating the experience of being. Painting does not merely represent the visible as a neutral spectacle; instead, through its sensuous nature, it also reenacts the carnal engagement with the world. That it should fall to art to re-create most faithfully the intertwining of SUBJECT and world indicates the crucial role that aesthetic experience plays, albeit implicitly, in his thought.

Primary Works

Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Psychology of the Imagination. Trans. Bernard Fretchman. New York: Washington Square Press, 1966.

Bibliography

Johnson, G., ed. The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetic Reader. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993.

Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. Heidegger, Art and Politics. Trans. Chris Turner. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.

AESTHETIC STAGE

Robert L. Perkins

The aesthetic stage of EXISTENCE is associated primarily with KIERKEGAARD. The aesthete claims to live poetically: by optimizing possibility and denying the claims of others upon one’s own autonomy and WILL, the person poeticizes his or her LIFE. Denying social and moral RESPONSIBILITY, the aesthete lives for the moment and manipulates others. To admit the claim of another upon oneself would be to submit to the other, to be dominated. Rather, the aesthete seeks to dominate, and IRONY is the principal tool. Domination and manipulation may be a combination or variation of two forms, either sensual immediacy (Don Juan) or reflective sensuality, as portrayed in Kierkegaard’s “Diary of the Seducer.” Understanding commitment and passionate relations to another to be the basis of being dominated, the aesthete ironically urges that passion, particularly, LOVE, and all forms of COMMUNITY are illusions. Because the aesthete sees others as objects to be manipulated for one’s perceived benefit, he or she does not enter into upbuilding and supportive relations with others. The aesthete is, indeed, lonely and melancholic. The inner result is despair and hopelessness even if the outer appears as glitter, laughter, and enjoyment.

Primary Work

Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or. Vol. 1. Trans. David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959.

ALIENATION

Phyllis Kenevan

Alienation, as recognized by existentialists, may be evoked by an absurd universe, silent in regard to passionate human questioning, or by the failure of humans to make the leap of FAITH needed to relate to their creative source. It may also be the response to NIHILISM as religious, cultural, and social paradigms fail and begin to disintegrate. Since the self is a temporal process, one can be alienated from oneself, say, through self-deception about one’s past or denial of RESPONSIBILITY for one’s future; one can also lose oneself in the absorption and preoccupation of everyday public EXISTENCE.

In “Letter on Humanism,” HEIDEGGER describes human existence as homeless, because we have abandoned BEING. What Marx recognized as alienation has roots in the homelessness of modern man, which is coming to be the destiny of the WORLD (see MARXISM). The thinking of the West has fallen behind the course of the world destiny, which demands thoughtful reflection about the dimension in which human existence would be at home. That dimension is determined by Being. The way to approach coming destiny is through contemplative thinking, which precedes the differentiation of theoretical and practical thinking and is more rigorous than conceptual thinking. The rootedness of human existence is threatened at its core by the loss of caring about Being; we have even forgotten the meaning of the question concerning Being. Much of this loss stems from the path taken by traditional Western PHILOSOPHY. Modern technology has created a new technical relation between humans and the world. All of NATURE has become an energy source for modern technology and industry. Technological advance will move faster and faster. In this crisis we have been unable to confront meditatively what is dawning in this age. With this technological perspective, spiritual goals are no longer meaningful, and MYSTERY has no VALUE. Humans become raw material, merely resources to be used.

We need to find a new ground and foundation so as to meet this crisis. Through meditative thinking, Heidegger claims, we can confront the problem and try to understand the significance of the uncanny, increasing dominance of technology. He is not advocating turning away from modern technology; rather, he urges that although we affirm technology, we also deny it the right to dominate us to the point that it destroys us as thinking beings. The greatest danger is to be captivated and bewitched by calculative thinking and embrace it as the only way of thinking. The way out of homelessness would then be lost, for we can reach the truth of Being not through becoming standing reserve for technology but only through an openness to the mystery. Only then may we find the way of dwelling in the world without being alienated.

Being-in-itself, for SARTRE, is absurd rather than mysterious; it speaks to us neither through the heavens nor through the silence. It simply is, is-in-itself, and is what it is. It is contingent, as is consciousness, or being-for-itself. Listening to the silence or opening ourselves to Being is useless. Both the meaning of the world and our ESSENCE as humans are without justification. In his novel Nausea, existence appears to the protagonist, Roquentin, as an undifferentiated stuff, without purpose or meaning. As a conscious being in an undifferentiated plenitude of being, Roquentin is a stranger in the universe, alienated by the failure of finding a meaning for himself or for the world. That absence of meaning is why the human condition is forlorn or abandoned. CONSCIOUSNESS desires to be what it is and to know itself as such, but this is an impossible desire since the for-itself is a temporal process always unfinished; furthermore, to know itself would mean to be at a distance from itself, which would make self-identity impossible. The attempt to know oneself through the LOOK of the other also fails since that look objectifies me but misses my TRANSCENDENCE. That alienating look can also objectify me as a member of a class. The Critique of Dialectical Reason suggests that social alienation can be healed through the group-in-fusion, through its unity of common PROJECTS. When the group-in-fusion is at its strongest, and there is activity in common, FREEDOM is not alienated; alienation can return when the group-in-fusion deteriorates. A concluding section of Being and Nothingness summarizes that consciousness is contingent, in a contingent universe, alienated because always other than what it knows, alienated from its self-identity, and unable to found its NOTHINGNESS. Despite its metaphysical impotence, consciousness as creative freedom has the opportunity and responsibility to structure a world made meaningful through its projects and intentions.

Number 377 in NIETZSCHE’s The Gay Science, entitled “We Who Are Homeless,” describes the free spirits who are homeless because they are ahead of their time and have faced the breakdown of BELIEF in an absolute. That absolute may be in terms of Western philosophy or of the Christian GOD. A pathological nihilism is the consequence of the loss of the absolute; it can be overcome if and when humanity incorporates healthy categories to interpret the world. Before that could happen, the shadows of God, our contemporary values and meanings, having lost their foundation in the absolute, would lose their significance. The madman in the marketplace proclaiming the death of God is conveying the threat of metaphysical alienation. The breakdown of belief in the Christian absolute was inevitable, since CHRISTIANITY was doomed to perish of its own value system, primarily its belief in absolute truth; for when claims about a moral world order were put to the test, they proved not to be true. Western philosophy, also dominated by Judaic-Christian values, fails in the same way. The outcome of this failure, a conviction of the worthlessness of existence, was the greatest danger. Those unable to overcome the alienation caused by nihilism remain within the ascetic ideal; they would rather aim at the void than be void of a goal. Only the future SUPERMAN will have the WILL and vitality to overcome homelessness and alienation, to face time and finitude with joyful affirmation and live in harmonious continuity with all of nature. The cure for alienation requires a superhuman answer, but that answer could come from no transcendent source but rather from the creative human will.

Metaphysical alienation is understood by KIERKEGAARD as spiritual alienation. Its cause is a self alienated from itself as SPIRIT and therefore lacking personal relation to God. Spiritual alienation can be recognized in boredom, melancholy, and despair. In boredom, one sees the nothingness of human existence when one fails to find meaning in anything one pursues. A gnawing emptiness and tedium pervade one’s life, which no diversion can relieve; nor can the world of everyday concerns free one from the profound emptiness. Melancholy is another response to meaninglessness. The melancholic person cannot explain the ground of one’s affliction, precisely because one is alienated from its cause. Such is a spiritual ailment and a universal condition of existence. With both melancholy and boredom, there is a genuine threat to one’s being, since one is not bored with a particular object or person. The cause of alienation is one’s existence. In boredom or melancholy, all activities and relationships lose their significance. No distraction or diversion can dispel their meaninglessness because the cause is an inability on the part of the self to face its finitude and freedom. The only solution is to resolutely attempt to face up to one’s life as eternal spirit and to make the choice one can no longer evade.

In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard shows through a dialectic of despair how the attempt to escape from the real self follows certain patterns. Ultimately, there is no escape from this sickness except through faith. In all forms of despair the individual is alienated from one’s real self. That self can be attained only when it relates itself, through a personal act of faith, to its creator. Only the individual can make the leap of faith. In the case of the exceptional individual whose leap of faith may involve a teleological suspension of the ethical, it is paradoxical that one’s relation with God that ends one’s spiritual alienation may alienate the individual from one’s fellow humans.

Primary Works

Heidegger, Martin. The Question concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling and The Sickness unto Death. Trans. Walter Lowrie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954.

Bibliography

Barret, William. Irrational Man. London: Heinemann, 1961.

Kruks, Sonia. Situation and Human Existence: Freedom, Subjectivity and Society. London: Unwin Hyman, 1990.

Laing, Ronald David. The Divided Self. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Dictionary
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• About the Contributors