Anti-Creedance Front

Well, it sounds like they are simply religious social liberals. "Whatever's right for you". I don't see anything wrong with that.

Defiant Heretic

They aren't all religious. In fact, most of them aren't. I'm something of an existentialist, myself. (I don't really like putting myself into a neat little catagory, but that one fits me as well as any.)

JP2

NMJ:

Perhaps this quote of Satre's, which still stands as one of the most powerful lines I've ever come in my philosophical readings, may help to clear things up a bit:

"While one is never free from one's situation, one is always responsible for what is made of one."

No existentialist discounts the importance of the circumstances into which one is born, nor those which continue to exert a powerful influence throught the course of one's life. It would be preposterous to do so. Nonetheless, within the boundaries of what one is freely "permitted" to do within one's circumstance, there are a seemingly infinite amount of choices that need to be made, and which are entirely independant of these said external circumstances. Every choice (or non-choice, which amounts to the same thing) made within these boundaries are entirely one's own, and one is - as such - entirely responsible for them. One can blame no-one but himself for choices that were made freely.

Nonetheless, I agree with you when you say that a great deal of choice is out of our hands. Many of our limits are defined by where and when we are born, many more are a result of our immediately post-natal domestic circumstances: if my family cannot afford to send me to school, how can I possibly have the choice to become a powerful lawyer should I so desire? Nonetheless, regardless of how constrained one is, one still has choices, one is condemned to choose and one is entirely responsible for the choices that one makes. A smaller spectrum of choice, as a result of one's circumstance, is no excuse to choose irresponsibly.

Keith Russell

Not Michael:

If existentialism is "philosophy stressing the responsibility of the individual for giving meaning to reality", then it doesn't say we create our reality, only that we create whatever meaning our reality is to acquire, and/or possess.

My own problem with existentialism is that it is generally not a very optimistic philosophy. It seems to me that existentialism views life, not as an aestheticcally blank slate upon which one can inscribe whatever meaning one may choose, but as an absurdity to be--at best--cynically endured.

Life, from an existentialist POV, seems to generally lack meaning--as if creating meaning doesn't truly yield valid meaning.

Keith.

JP2

Actually I would say that existentialism is the most optimistic of doctrines for that very reason. If one's existence precedes ones essense, then we are all born with this "clean slate" and it has some revolutionary consequences. John Locke was the first to postulate this sort of idea, likening the mind at birth to a "blank piece of paper" that is gradually filled as we begin to experience the world around us. From this principle - that we are born with no pre-ordained essense whatsoever - he was able to devise revolutionary political principles concerning, among other things, equality, education and human rights (most of which we now take for granted) that formed his conception of "democratic government", and that in turn became the corner stones of the new American political system (many of the words of the constitution are taken almost directly from Locke's Second Treatise on Government written over 100 years earlier) as well as the French and English revolutions. Locke's ideas shaped our current political world perhaps more than any philosopher before or since, and - if we trace each of his ideas back far enough - they are all derived from his concept of equality based on the principle that we are all born as a blank sheet of paper, and that none of us are born with a pre-defined essense.

Of course, given that our existence precedes our essense in such a way, we differ from virtually every other thing we encounter. Each of these things exist to serve a certain purpose, and it is their untranscendable facticity which dictates what they can and cannot do. The chair is forever forlorn to be sat upon, a pen is forever doomed to be written with, and a cow is forever comndemned to eat grass and stare blankly. If we can identify a raison d'etre among these things at all, then we can say that they lack the sentience to "transcend" what they were condemned to be at their conception - in the mind of their inventor in the case of the chair and the pen, or in the case of the cow, in the set of genes that comprised it's original zygote.

Of course, we, as humans are also restricted by our genes, but - as I said before - freedom amounts to the sum of all available choices, and regardless of how restricted one is by one's situation, there is still an awful lot of choices to be made. Our facticity is not as totally restrictive as the facticities of the chair, the pen and the cow.

Put simply, if one were to view life merely as an "absurdity to be cynically endured" then that is a choice that one has made. Nowhere in man's pre-existential facticity (if there is one at all) does it say that acceptance of the fundamental principles of what we broadly call "existentialism" must lead to such a cynical, pesimistic view. If one has arrived at such a view then, as with most other facets of one's nature, it is a view that one has chosen for oneself.

Keith Russell

JP2:

The 'blank slate' concept is being devastated by new findings in cognitive science, genetics, and neurology.

If it hasn't been soundly refuted, the destruction is nearly complete...

Keith.

JP2

The blank slate analogy needn't be literally valid to serve its purpose though.

There are undoubtedly genetic and neurological factors at work that go some way to defining some part(s) of us prior to birth, but the fact remains that prior to experiencing the world, we are all largely equal, and there is still little to in terms of pre-defined "essence".

Keith Russell

JP:

Prior to experiencing the world, we are all largely equal?

Males and females have--prior to experiencing the world--demonstrative hormonal, muscular, skeletal, and other differences.

Birth defects (whether due to trauma, improper maternal nutrition and/or drug use, or genetic defects) do not arise due to post-birth world experiences.

While I agree that all of the things that make up our mental or physical personalities are physical in nature, and I agree that experience does play a large role in shaping who we each become, I cannot agree that 'prior to experiencing the world, we are all largely equal'.

That is simply nonsense.

Keith.

philechat

Let's say that existentialism has two branches--one focused on ethics and one on epistomology. In epistomology there is an entire field on phenomelogy, which is based on the study of phenomena (after Kant, most existentialists asserted that Truth, or numena, is inaccessible to human reason and only perceptual experience can be studied).

In ethics the classical existentialists (like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche) reject Kant's "practical reason"(i.e. Golden rule) and any form of historical and telelogical purpose in the design of individual morality (as of Hagelian idealism and Mill's utilitarianism). In short, early existentialists do not consider morality to be of a rational basis but rather as a series of individual and subjective "choices" whose values lie ultimately within an individual.

Not all existentialists are "free will" proponents. The primacy of choice does not imply that an individual is completely independent of external influences...only that each person should accept the consequence of their choices, regardless of the "external influences" one experienced during the moment of choice.