Simone de Beauvoir and Existentialism

What is EXISTENTIALISM?

→ n.  a philosophical theory which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.

"existentialism n."  The Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  Irvine Valley College.  1 October 2006  <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t23.e19249>

What is EXISTENTIALISM?A loose title for various philosophies that emphasize certain common themes: the individual, the experience of choice, and the absence of rational understanding of the universe with a consequent dread or sense of absurdity in human life. The combination suggests an emotional tone or mood rather than a set of deductively related theses, and existentialism attained its zenith in Europe following the disenchantments of the Second World War. However, the first significant thinker to stress such themes was Kierkegaard, whose work is generally regarded as the origin of existentialism. Existentialist writing both reacts against the view that the universe is a closed, coherent, intelligible system, and finds the resulting contingency a cause for lamentation. In the face of an indifferent universe we are thrown back upon our own freedom. Acting authentically becomes acting in the light of the open space of possibilities that the world allows. Different writers who united in stressing the importance of these themes nevertheless developed very different ethical and metaphysical systems as a consequence. In Heidegger existentialism turns into scholastic ontology; in Sartre into a dramatic exploration of moments of choice and stress; in the theologians Barth, Tillich, and Bultmann it becomes a device for reinventing the relationships between people and God. Existentialism never took firm root outside continental Europe, and many philosophers have voiced mistrust of particular existentialist concerns, for example with being and non-being, or with the libertarian flavour of its analysis of free will.

"existentialism"  The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Simon Blackburn. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  Irvine Valley College.  1 October 2006  <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t98.e866>

Western Philosophy’s Family Tree:

Hebrew

Religion

Greek

Philosophy

Epistemology Truth revealed at precise moments of history to specific individuals or groups

Universal truth, discovered through rational inquiry; anyone can learn the Pythagorean Theorem

Ethics Covenant ethics; specific commands

(It’s good because God commands it.)

Universal ethics; “to know the good is to do the good.” (The Gods love it because it’s good.)

Metaphysics Essence precedes existence: special creation (by God)

Essence precedes existence: “Ideal forms”

“Christianity is Plato for the masses.”-- Friedrich Nietzsche (BGE)

In Christianity we have a specific, historical event (the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ) that becomes universal. After these “Christ events” Christians would (eventually) see Christianity as grounded in a universal revelation of the Absolute. All knowledge, morality, and everything that can be considered “real” becomes grounded in Christ. (And the Church, has Christ “earthly body,” became the authority for all epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics.)

It All Starts With God.For everything, absolutely everything,

above and below, visible and invisible . . .Everything God started in him and

finds its purpose in him. Colossians 1:16 (Msg.)

Unless you assume a God,the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.

Bertrand Russell, atheist.

It’s not about you.

The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or your own happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose. . . .

From the first page of the first chapter of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life.

WHAT ON EARTH AM I HERE FOR? Day 1 It All Starts with God 17 Day 2 You Are Not an Accident 22 Day 3 What Drives Your Life? 27 Day 4 Made to Last Forever 36 Day 5 Seeing Life from God’s View 41 Day 6 Life Is a Temporary Assignment 47 Day 7 The Reason for Everything 53 PURPOSE #1: You Were Planned for God’s Pleasure Day 8 Planned for God’s Pleasure 63 Day 9 What Makes God Smile? 69 Day 10 The Heart of Worship 77 Day 11 Becoming Best Friends with God 85 Day 12 Developing Your Friendship with God 92 Day 13 Worship That Pleases God 100 Day 14 When God Seems Distant 107 PURPOSE #2: You Were Formed for God’s Family Day 15 Formed for God’s Family 117 Day 16 What Matters Most 123 Day 17 A Place to Belong 130 Day 18 Experiencing Life Together 138 Day 19 Cultivating Community 145 Day 20Restoring Broken Fellowship 152 Day 21 Protecting Your Church 160 PURPOSE #3: You Were Created to Become Like Christ Day 22 Created to Become Like Christ 171 Day 23 How We Grow 179 Day 24 Transformed by Truth 185 Day 25 Transformed by Trouble 193 Day 26 Growing through Temptation 201 Day 27 Defeating Temptation 209 Day 28 It Takes Time 217 PURPOSE #4: You Were Shaped for Serving God Day 29 Accepting Your Assignment 227 Day 30 Shaped for Serving God 234 Day 31 Understanding Your Shape 241 Day 32 Using What God Gave You 249 Day 33 How Real Servants Act 257 Day 34 Thinking Like a Servant 265 Day 35 God’s Power in Your Weakness 272 PURPOSE #5: You Were Made for a Mission Day 36 Made for a Mission 281 Day 37 Sharing Your Life Message 289 Day 38 Becoming a World-Class Christian 297 Day 39 Balancing Your Life 305

This way of thinking--attempting to ground our ideas in universal, absolute, truth--is a key feature of Western Culture. It works pretty well when I want to know things about the physical world around me because that world seems to conform to “laws.” I might be justified in concluding that those laws were instituted by God (or not).

But what about me?

On the one hand, I’m a physical object, too. I’m subject to the “laws” of nature as well.

On the other hand, I seem to be “free.” I choose to buy a house in Oceanside, take a job at IVC, eat tuna for lunch, etc.

This freedom to choose could be experienced as what Kundera called, “lightness.” But could that “lightness” become unbearable?

In the West, we tend to try to “add weight” to our choices, and thus to our lives, and thus to existence itself, by “grounding” those choices in something not (or less) contingent and (more) absolute.

Obviously, for most people, God is the “Absolute” of choice, but one could choose a political ideology, a nation, a people, or . . . ? Whatever you put on the scale, you hope it’s heavier than you are, otherwise it won’t ground your choices and you will become like Stalin’s son; he put himself on one side of the scale and shit on the other . . . “and the scales did not move.” (He had become unbearably light.)

Since the fourth century “God” (conceived in a particular way), has served as this Absolute.

In America, the God of Christianity still seems to be the best ‘Absolute’ out there, hence, the popularity of Rick Warren’s book.

But suppose I start thinking about this. If the God of Christianity is true, and if truth is universal, shouldn’t reason be able to lead me to this truth?

Suppose I were to ask Rick Warren, “how do you know there is a God, what God is like, and what God’s purpose for the universe is?”

He might answer: “The Bible reveals God to me.”

But I might ask: “Why should I believe the Bible instead of the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, the Rig Veda, or Catcher in the Rye?”

This is where the rub comes in. There is no objective way to demonstrate that the Bible is the Word of God (and all those other books aren’t). This is part of the modern world.

So, in the absence of some objective evidence for the Divine Authority of the Bible, a believer might respond with some kind of subjective evidence. But how could such subjective evidence ever be universally valid?

This is the problem of existentialism.

Though the term is thrown around rather loosely sometimes, and though it would probably be wrong to claim that “existentialism” represents some kind of coherent “school” of thought, the people we tend to associate with existentialism tend to be people who have emerged from strong Judeo-Christian backgrounds (often they are/were personally very religious) and have experienced both some kind of crisis as a result of the tension they feel between the Absolute (or loss thereof) and the contingent (and the objective and the subjective), and they have experienced something that leads them to believe there is a way to get beyond this crisis by rejecting (typical) Western philosophy.

The Big Names in Existentialism

Pascal• 1623-1662• Against Descartes• We never have an

experience of God; God is always hidden.

• “Pascal’s Wager”• “Custom is our Nature”• People who don’t want

to face these problems tend to pursue Geometry or . . . Tennis

Kierkegaard• 1813-1855 (Pre-Darwin)• Anti-Hegel• Plato’s philosophy destroyed

the authentic religion in Christianity

• Emphasized Abraham’s “offering” of Isaac: ethics are private, not universal

• “Leap of faith”

Nietzsche• 1844-1900 (post-Darwin)• Anti-Socrates, Kant, and

pretty much everybody else• “God is dead” (and this is a

traumatic event)• Europe is stuck in this old

Platonic-Christian way of thinking

• Anti-nihilist

Heidegger• 1889-1976• Synthesized Kierkegaard

and Nietzsche• 1927 Being and Time• Dasein (the being of

humans) involves choice, awareness of future, reality of death.

Sartre• 1905-1980• 1938 Nausea• 1943/1956 Being and

Nothingness– being– no-thingness: “consciousness”

• 1946 “No Exit”• Didn’t believe in “bourgeois

marriage”--life-long relationship with Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir

• 1908-1980• Philosophy at Sorbonne• 1947 Ethics of

Ambiguity• 1949 The Second Sex

(myth of ‘the eternal feminin’)

• Numerous novels, essays, memoirs, and books

How does de Beauvoir lay out the existential crises?

How is it related to ethics?

I. Ambiguity and Freedom

SdB’s Version of the Problem (pp. 7-8)

• The ambiguity:– rational animal/ thinking reed– asserts himself as “pure internality against which no external power can

take hold, and he also experiences himself as a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things”

– “At every moment he can grasp the non-temporal truth of his existence.”– “unique subject amidst a universe of objects”– “an object for others” - - “an individual in the collectivity”

• The philosophical response:

– reduce mind to matter– reabsorb matter into mind– merge them within a single substance– the dualists establish hierarchy between body and soul (denied death, or

denied life– tended to construct ethical systems by dissolving the ambiguity into pure

inwardness or pure externality

Existentialism and Ethics• Been accused of solipsism• (And of not explaining the condition of many

people, but SdB takes that on in the next chapter)• “From the very beginning . . . has to be his

being.” (pp. 9-11)• According to Sartre, the passion to which man

subjects himself is something he chooses and “finds no external justification.” (pp. 11-12)

• Key SdB argument: p. 14: no suppression of instincts, etc., but also no “foreign absolute.”

Various Kinds of Ethics

• Dostoyevsky: God. (pp. 15-16)

• Kant: Transcend “empirical embodiment,” “choose to be universal” (p. 17)

• Marx(ism): Needs of people, class, etc. define aims and goals (pp. 18-23)

• Sartre (and SdB) (pp. 23-34)

What is EXISTENTIALISM?A loose title for various philosophies that emphasize certain common themes: the individual, the experience of choice, and the absence of rational understanding of the universe with a consequent dread or sense of absurdity in human life. The combination suggests an emotional tone or mood rather than a set of deductively related theses, and existentialism attained its zenith in Europe following the disenchantments of the Second World War. However, the first significant thinker to stress such themes was Kierkegaard, whose work is generally regarded as the origin of existentialism. Existentialist writing both reacts against the view that the universe is a closed, coherent, intelligible system, and finds the resulting contingency a cause for lamentation. In the face of an indifferent universe we are thrown back upon our own freedom. Acting authentically becomes acting in the light of the open space of possibilities that the world allows. Different writers who united in stressing the importance of these themes nevertheless developed very different ethical and metaphysical systems as a consequence. In Heidegger existentialism turns into scholastic ontology; in Sartre into a dramatic exploration of moments of choice and stress; in the theologians Barth, Tillich, and Bultmann it becomes a device for reinventing the relationships between people and God. Existentialism never took firm root outside continental Europe, and many philosophers have voiced mistrust of particular existentialist concerns, for example with being and non-being, or with the libertarian flavour of its analysis of free will.

"existentialism"  The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Simon Blackburn. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  Irvine Valley College.  1 October 2006  <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t98.e866>