Basics of Existentialism - Essay Example

BASICS OF EXISTENTIALISM Option 2: Feodor Dostoevsky – s from the underground Life means different things to different people. It has been defined as the quality that animals and plants have when they are not dead, and is not characteristic of objects and substances. In my view, life is the culmination of the experiences we get on earth while we have breath in us. In layman’s language, these words by Dostoevsky may be loosely translated to mean that no matter how pitiful our lives may be, it does not change that fact it is life and not mere calculations. In this essay, this phrase is examined in order to get the contextual meaning. For the essay written by Dostoevsky to be understood clearly, it is necessary to decipher appropriate meaning from the phrases therein. To the author the ability to have desires, choose, and have a free will is what constitutes life. Without these attributes, man would cease living to become “a stop in an organ.” The will is a manifestation of life, thus, without will there is no life (Marino 195). There being a will in a person is what makes them alive. Man, is a complex creature who in addition to will, has a rational side which seeks to be satisfied, as well. The rational side of man is satisfied by reason. The way man lives his life is according to his desires. There are some people who live their lives “as morally and as rationally as possible.” Their intention for doing this is to be a light, an example, to their fellow men. They want others to know that it is possible to live life following what is moral, and rational. These people, however, have one time or another “been false to themselves.” Even when man gets all else he wants and desires, he will want to prove himself. The choices he will make will be far from rational in this effort. When life is lived manifesting the will of a man, it becomes worthless. Man has desires which present him with the chance to make a choice. The option that man makes is made, according to what he stands to gain from it. But, the advantage only seems, it is not real. The way we live our lives is what makes it a sorry business. When man makes a choice, it is made in order to obtain a supposed advantage. But this advantage that seems to be real is, in fact, nonsense. More so, the choice is made in foolishness. Therefore, looking at the whole business of making choices, it is driven by things that are not what they seem to be. When the options possible for explaining a certain situation are worked out on paper, the desires that drove us to them in the first place no longer exist. We make these choices nonetheless. The desires we have, give essence of our living. “Extractions of square-roots,” is a means of Dostoevsky saying that life is not a series of mathematical deductions (Marino 201). There has been no discovery made on “a formula for all our desires and caprices.” Making of formulas follows reason, while making a choice follows desire. When you work out desires on paper, reason dictates otherwise. When the two conflict, Dostoevsky deems that reason is followed, and sense has to be incorporated into the desires. Arithmetic dictates that ‘twice two make four.” The laws of arithmetic and nature cannot coincide with the free will of man. This free will is the life that man lives. Even so, man has the will to choose his interests, which will be far from what nature and arithmetic suggests. The life that man leads is guided by trying to achieve the things that he believes will make him happy. If there is such a time where man was given all the things he desired at one time, he will still not be satisfied. He will turn to folly just to prove himself. The only thing that man is really afraid of is to be controlled. When man lacks the means to prove his point, he resorts to causing chaos and destruction. He will come up with different kinds of sufferings, even to the extent of cursing. Cursing is the only privilege that man has above other animals, and what distinguishes him from them. All these things, man will do in an effort to prove to himself, not others, that he is a man. Man works hard to follow reason then works harder to refute it, and prove his point. Closely looking at the life that man lives proves that it is a sorry business. Life as is is free will. This free will guides man to all his desires, the things he thinks and believes he wants and needs. This life leads to chaos and suffering as man seeks to “gain his point” in different matters. Life, therefore, is what leads to suffering; it is a sorry business. Living only causes pain since it is born of futile efforts (Marino 228). There are times when man tries to follow reason, such as guides square-roots. Doing so, however, goes against what life is. Man will go against the same reason, and exercise his will in choosing an alternative path. This he does in order to prove that he can opt otherwise, proving that he has a will, and by extension, living his life. Option 3: Friedrich Nietzsche – On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche in his essay begins by making the assertion that man does not know himself. The ignorance comes about since man has been so absorbed in other matters to get to the point of knowing oneself. Man, all the same, is a creature that is entitled to making promises. Though some will make promises they will keep, others will not. For the man who keeps his promises, he is worthy of fear, trust and respect. He is a ‘free’ man, and the consciousness of this is referred to as conscience. It is a dominant instinct of the power that a ‘free’ man possesses “over oneself and destiny.” In order to understand the issue of conscience properly, it is essential to consider the genealogy of morality. The problem, though, is that whatever opinion the genealogists have to say on conscience is based solely on “modern” experience. Modern in essence means what is has no knowledge of the past. The modern man, therefore, is a man whose ideas revolve around what has been in the last five periods (Marino 175). Knowledge based on such limited knowledge cannot be close to the truth. The results based on such knowledge, thus, “have a less than tenuous relationship to the truth.” Since the modern man concerns himself with what has been happening in recent times and not in the far-off past, such should be considered. In the last millennia, Europe has been concerned with tracing where the “holy God” originated from. Conceiving gods is not a guaranteed cause for a “degraded imagination.” This is despite the fact that the invention of god has only caused man to self-crucify, and self-lacerate. Man has invented the gods. This invention of man has caused the man only to rage within himself. “Evil comes only from us...but they themselves make themselves stupidly miserable.” (Marino 23.18) Greeks invented gods who helped them keep bad conscience away from them (Marino). This helped them to live happy lives. Christianity, on the other hand used its God to bring to life their bad conscience. The existence of God made bad conscience, the things that caused it and the results of the same more real. There being a God for Christians, therefore, was a source of torture. This is the opposite of what the Greek gods did. The Greek gods kept this “bad conscience” away. Modern man, following the ideas of the recent times, adopted the essence of God that had been created. Man is constantly trying to analyse his conscience in order to remain right with the God he invented. The conscience of such a man is under constant scrutiny to identify what he can do or how to do it so as to be right with God. This vivisection of his conscience is what concerns the modern man most. He is constantly digging through his conscience to find out what is wrong with it. Since this is the practice that those whose ideas we have borrowed did, we do the same. The modern man, not only inherits ideals from the immediate past generations, but also their cares. The past millennia were mainly concerned with how to cleanse their bad conscience. Being heirs, we carry on with the same bad practices. We have followed similar beliefs on Christianity, with the same God. The past millennia were more aware of their bad conscience since religion magnified it (Marino 183). The same applies to this generation. Since we are modern, we fail to look at what people of beyond the past millennia believed, and practiced. We fail to see beyond the practices of the recent past. This activity of trying to deal with the conscience, only brings with it torture. The torture is rooted in the awareness of evil. The modern man is constantly aware of the wrong he does, thinks, and says. The belief in a God who knows all these makes the mistakes more real. The result of this is a bad conscience. The modern man has, therefore, been inclined to finding out the wrong he has done. He is always scrutinizing himself to isolate this wrong. The inclination to our being wrong increases the severity with which we deal with ourselves. Our instincts incline us to always see what is wrong with us. This is a torturous state since it leads to misery. The God, who is our own creation, causes the modern man to constantly complain of evil. I say this because the modern man could not be clear on what is evil if god did not exist; and God is the invention of man. Due to this invention, man only made himself miserable (Marino 180). Man constantly scrutinizes himself as the past millennia have taught him, to discover what is amiss with his conscience. This is self-torture that the modern man has inherited from the past millennia. Work Cited Marino, Gordon Daniel ed. Basic Writings of Existentialism. New York, NY: Modern Library, 2004. Print. Read More