Within the tradition of existentialism, the notion of the project is of central importance. Philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre consider projectuality to be one of the defining aspects of how human beings are in the world. In their work, the idea of the project is a necessary component of how individual subjects shape and attribute meaning to their existence. In Sartreâs perspective in particular, oneâs existence is characterized by oneâs orientation towards the achievement of an overarching existential project (Sartre 1966, 717â722).
In very broad terms, an existential project could be defined as the aspiration to be in a particular wayâto be a certain kind of subject. It is through the lens of oneâs projectual disposition that things and events encountered in a world become meaningful for the individual: they can be recognized as obstacles to the fulfilment of the project, as tools and opportunities that can be leveraged towards the achievement of the project itself or parts of it, and so on (ibid.). In this chapter, we intend to show that the notion of the project is a fruitful lens through which we can observe the way we inhabit virtual environments, and articulate an understanding of âvirtual subjectivityâ.
From our standpoint, understanding the existential relevance of a projectual attitude in virtual worlds fundamentally consists in answering two key questions. The first concerns the projectual structure of the individualâs being in a virtual context: how does an existential project give shape to the individualâs being in the virtual world? This question will be tackled in Sects. 1.3 and 1.4. The second question focuses, instead, on the existential significance of virtual worlds in general. More specifically, we will explore the relation between the individualâs being in virtual worlds and the existential project that shapes oneâs life as a whole: in what way(s) does the practice of taking on a virtual project figure in the overarching project of an individualâs being? Further elaborations on this question and tentative answers to it will be provided in Sects. 1.4 and 1.5.
1.1 The Notion of the âExistential Projectâ
In existential philosophy in general, and particularly in the work of Sartre (1966), the project is considered to be fundamental for oneâs being-in-the-world. For Sartre, projectuality is an organizing principle that contributes to the formation and transformation of oneâs subjectivity. Approaches that are common in existential philosophy postulate that, as individual human beings, our existence is initially determined by what Heidegger termed a âthrownnessâ (Geworfenheit) into the world (2008, 174). As a subject, one is always âthrownâ into a world, in the sense that one finds oneself characterized by qualities, capabilities, and conditions that one initially has no control over. Examples of oneâs thrownness are oneâs place and date of birth, oneâs gender, the socio-technical contexts one finds oneself in, oneâs possible congenital defects, etc. In other words, we can understand one as always being âthrown into the worldâ in a certain way, characterized and bounded by a contingent set of factsâa facticityâon the basis of which (and against which) one understands and develops oneâs existence. This facticity constitutes the basis for what Sartre terms our âexistential situationâ (1966, 127).
Sartre establishes a distinction between oneâs situated existence and a more essential aspect of oneâs selfhood (ibid., 147). One can take stock of the contingent facts of oneâs existenceâfor example, that one lives in a certain country, that one stands in a network of relations to the members of oneâs family, and so on. Those facts notwithstanding, according to Sartre, one is always conscious that oneâs existence is not fully determined by them. Oneâs selfhood, he writes, transcends the contingent facts that are true about oneself in oneâs present situation. One might presently be employed as a university professor, but this does not define who one is completely: one is always free to make something else of oneself. To think otherwise (to convince oneself that one simply is a university professor) would be to live in what Sartre terms âbad faithâ: refusing or ignoring oneâs existential freedom, and oneâs possibilities for self-determining and self-transforming (ibid., 87).
Sartreâs radical approach claims that one could go as far as bracketing every external, contingent fact about oneself, leaving one existentially groundless and in a state of indeterminacy. The themes of groundlessness and indeterminacy are also central to the work of another philosopher, Helmuth Plessner, whose anthropological work in relation to technology will be the focus of Chap. 3. For both Sartre and Plessner, in the face of the impossibility to find any stable grounding for oneâs individual existenceâthat is, any reliable ways to anchor oneself to a specific set of values or sense of the selfâthe individual develops an existential need to make something out of oneself: to become, through free self-determination, a particular kind of being. For this reason, we can understand human existence as shaped, by definition, by an overarching project that Sartre calls an âoriginal projectâ (ibid., 717). He describes the existential drive discussed earlier in this paragraph as a âproject of beingâ (ibid., 722). This project consists in how one projects oneself beyond the current conditions of oneâs existence towards the subject that one wishes to be. The term used by Heidegger to indicate this projectual disposition (Entworfenheit) also captures the quality of being always âthrown aheadâ of oneâs present situation (Heidegger 1962, 184, 185).
Of course, if a projectual structure is inherent to the human subject, then one also needs to understand the human being as always projectual. What that means is that the human being cannot ever complete the existential project, as oneâs existential setup and oneâs drive to self-determine and surpass oneself are better understood as an unfinishable project. Even if a particular project were to be completed, the existential situation would only constitute newly established contingent facts for one to project oneself beyond.
1.2 Subjectivities in Digital Gameworlds
As we already mentioned, according to existential philosophy by and large, in our everyday existence we find ourselves thrown into a certain existential situation, and it is in relation to that existential situation that one forms the project to be a certain kind of subject. We argue, in a similar way, that when interacting with a digital environment, the users engage with a virtual situation. This perspective implies two theoretical premises:
- the first is that digital environments are understood by the users as an existential situation, and, hence, is engaged as a âworldâ, and
- the second is that, in order to experience a digital environment as a world in which one can plan, act, and pursue a project, the users must be situated as subjects in relation to the artificial world in question.
If we take this perspective, then the emergence of a virtual world into oneâs consciousness must be recognized as being cognitively, psychologically, and existentially dependent upon the users being âthrown aheadâ or âprojected beyondâ their actual existential situation. In other words, users invest themselves in subjectivities that take that virtual world as their âsituationâ (Vella and Gualeni 2019).
To date, the field within which most theoretical investigation has been performed into the question of subjectivity and existentialism in digital environments is that of digital game studies. Most explicitly, Matthew Thomas Payne proposes âexistential ludologyâ as a method for theorizing player experience in digital gameworlds. His suggestion is that âif existential phenomenology asks about the possibilities and meaningfulness of human action in the lived world, then existential ludology [âŚ] asks similar questions about meaningful play in the virtual worldâ (2008, 622). For Payne, this means developing a method of game analysis that âworks by cataloguing numerous game-play experiences to forward meaningful statements about how particular games evidence recurrent and stable experiential structuresâ (ibid., 624).
By th...