Existential Doctrines and The Consolation of Philosophy
In my previous post, I discussed free will and determinism as a foundation for the philosophical paradox that corresponds with existentialism. In addition, the meaning of knowledge and experience play a role in existentialist doctrines. As promised, this post will address existentialist theories, arguments on free will and determinism, and a diverse philosophical discussion of other beliefs.
Existential Oscillations is quite similar to fallibilism. It believes that humans have the capacity for knowledge and innately susceptible to fallacies in logic, perception, and choice. This basically means admitting that your beliefs could be wrong without completely dismissing them. Existentialism believes that each person has absolute freedom over their choices, and furthermore, life’s outcome.
What Else do Existentialists Believe?
As I discussed in my last post, existentialists subscribe to the Kantean argument as the source of pure knowledge. Therefore, they also believe that the internal (mental) world trumps the external (physical) world. We’ll look at some opposing arguments to this doctrine later, as this also enters a metaphysical debate.
Radical Freedom
Existentialists believe that every person has the freedom to choose their actions and decide the meaning of their lives. This belief system denies deterministic doctrines, which argue that the events in life are both permanently defined and hidden from human knowledge. Radical Freedom is the absolute capacity to choose one’s own actions and create oneself in a world we cannot control.
Meaning and Purpose
Existentialists derive the meaning of life from subjective, individual perceptions free of the external world’s societal hierarchy, monetary system, and founding religion. For this reason, existentialism often requires solitude, even absolute separation, from humanity’s vices. Purpose is defined as the fundamental feature of explaining the nature of things by their means to an end.
Dread and Anxiety
To become an existentialist, is to become a Spider-man of sorts– with great power comes great responsibility. One’s awareness could influence angst, despair, and dread. Existentialism actually encourages absolute experiences and emotions, however negative they may seem, because it allows them to know themselves more fully. Dread means the understanding the nature of nothing and being, according to Heidegger; the contemplation of one’s mortality and finite essence; and grasping the implications of freedom, that nothing is predetermined, and one might do anything at all.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s Bad Faith
Like any form of faith, one must believe wholly in its doctrines; otherwise, his or her doubt will lead to what existentialist Sartre calls bad faith, or what we call existential oscillations. Bad Faith assumes that human beings are always and everywhere radically free. We experience the anguish and uncertainty that we are absolutely responsible for our choices (dread). To commit bad faith, one employs strategies to deny his or her freedom in order to diminish the uncertainty of freedom. However, the paradox lies in the ability for people to be simultaneously aware and unaware that they are free.
The Case of the Green Lights
For me, the greatest mystery of reality started with a series of green lights. I noticed one day that in driving 10 miles, I did not stop once. What caused such fortune, I wondered. After deliberating, I concluded the following potential options:
- I had performed some good deed and, by the grace of God or Karma, received a reward.
- I reached the first light at the precise moment necessary to arrive at the subsequent lights before each turned yellow.
- I believed in the power of potential of positivity to drive without disruption.
- The universe granted me one day of green lights and good songs on the radio.
- I didn’t actually notice, or take account of, the one red light in a series of green.
- Streetlights mean nothing.
This is your basic Why did the chicken cross the road? question. And there are plenty more answers, trust me. Suppose this chicken is an existentialist, its answer would fluctuate between (2) and (3).
Number five might have something to do with Idealism, which suggests the nothing outside the mind has value. Therefore, if you believe something to be true in your mind (against what reality says), then it is true. George Berkeley’s Idealism denies the existence of everything, other than the mind and ideas within it. There is no external world underpinning our experience. Furthermore, our illusion of the external world is created by collections of our internal experiences.
The last option is definitely a nihilistic point of view, which argues that nothing has value or exists in either internal or external worlds.
The first and third options lean more towards determinist arguments because they rely on “God” or “the universe” to initiate the sequence of green lights. Not all existentialists completely deny the existence of a higher diety, they just believe that these entities have no control or influence over the events in their life.
What is the Consolation of Philosophy?
The Consolation of Philosophy written by Boethius provides an interesting perspective on the correspondence between free will and determinism. During extensive conversations with Philosophy, Boethius addresses several issues associated with his crisis of faith (which is quite similar to the idea behind existential oscillations). My favorite arguments concern fortune, fate and providence, time, and the origins of knowledge. Boethius drew from several ancient philosophers including Plato and Aristotle, as well as the religious (mainly Christianity) and Stoic beliefs.
Fortune
Classical fortune is depicted as a woman spinning her wheel, which deals out both good and bad circumstances to people. In philosophy and religion, believing in and gambling with fortune is known as one of humanity’s many vices or sins. In Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius writes:
For bad fortune, I think, is more use to a man than good fortune. Good fortune always seems to bring happiness, but deceives you with her smiles, whereas bad fortune is always truthful because by change she shows her true fickleness. Good fortune deceives, but bad fortune enlightens… And so you can see Fortune in one way capricious, wayward and ever inconstant, and in another way sober, prepared and made wise by the experience of her own adversity. And lastly, by her flattery good fortune lures men away from the path of true good.
Fortune describes events or circumstances that ultimately change one’s life for better or worse by introducing some new aspect such as money, land, or power. Eventually, one uses these resources up and is left with nothing at the end, blaming it the forces of misfortune. The vice lies in the perishable nature of fortune’s gifts, which unlike virtue and spiritual salvation, destroy the purity of one’s mind and soul.
Fate and Providence
As I mentioned last week, Determinism is a branch of philosophy that argues events occur as a result of some outside, universal source, which human beings can neither know nor control. In addition, determinism also believes in causation, or cause and effect, which requires an initial action that decides all subsequent outcomes. The Consolation of Philosophy offers a deterministic argument to explain fate and providence. Boethius writes:
The generation of all things, the whole progress of things subject to change and whatever moves in any way, receive their causes, their due order and their form from the unchanging mind of God… The mind of God has set up a plan for the multitude of events. When this plan is thought of as in the purity of God’s understanding, it is called Providence, and when it is thought of with reference to all things, whose motion and order it controls, it is called by the name the ancients gave it, Fate.
I might reference Boethius in future posts when discussing the existential issues of time and knowledge.
What’s Next?
The next blog post will go further into existential issues and conflicting metaphysical and ontological arguments, such as the mind-body problem and origins of knowledge. These will build upon the Locke vs Kant debate discussed in last week’s post.
Quote of the Week
“The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Existential Oscillations 