Recreation is viewed as a time for hedonism, not re-creation. It is viewed as a pleasant escape from life.
Re-creation on the other hand is a spiritual activity. It is a time for reflection, study and re-creating yourself more powerfully for life.
The decadent pursue the former, the overcoming man the latter.
Psyblog states:
It seems likely that this left to right bias has its roots in language (although not everyone agrees, cf. Chatterjee, 2001). Evidence for this comes from people who speak languages written from right to left like Arabic or Urdu who, sure enough, display the same bias, but in the opposite direction.
There is another left to right bias in the basic syntax of language: the vast majority of languages describe events in the order subject, verb, object (with the notable exception of the passive tense).
Together these two facts mean we not only look to the left first, but we also expect the subject to be on the left, and the object to its right. Subjects are by definition active ‘do-ers’ while objects are the passive receivers of the do-ers’ actions.
With the metaphysical notion of time, we have constructed the concepts of causation, subject, action/force, and object. Objectivity (‘what’) is supposedly represented by the sciences, whereas subjectivity (‘how’) is the domain of personal interpretation and relation. While Hume took an axe to causation, Nietzsche blew up the roots of these distinctions with dynamite, declaring that objectivity itself is but a subjective misinterpretation that we cannot live without. Pragmatists such as John Dewey and William James deflated the whole bloated philosophical tradition of ontology and epistemology, and focused on what mattered most, namely human needs. I follow in their footsteps and maintain that we should use these categories wisely.
We see ourselves (subject) as acting on the world (object) in time. We therefore assume that we are agents with ‘free will’. From a utilitarian viewpoint this is best. However, it may shadow the way in which the world acts on us. We may not recognise how culture can dominate our decisions and actions, and in such moments we are not truly free. We may become slaves to our narrow-minded way of viewing the world.
Philosophy, such as that from Hume and Nietzsche, can set you free, but you have to be ready for the initally uncomfortable journey. Your cherished assumptions will be exposed as dogma, your values will be overhauled, and you will be left in the wilderness for a while. But then you can go back into the world and create your own meanings and values on a solid foundation. In doing so you will experience the joy of a free spirit.
Jonathan Ree discussed Kierkegaard @ In Our Time.
Ree states that Kierkegaard believed that Socrates was about taking down pretensions to knowledge, not the building up of philosophical systems, such as that of Hegel. I can think of no one who more attacked pretensions to knowledge than Nietzsche (Hume comes second). Perhaps Nietzsche was Socrates truest disciple – now that’s irony.
I’m coming up with a list of popular films with existential motifs. I plan to discuss these in later posts. Care to list anymore?
Nowadays, many believe that philosophy is only a legitimate pursuit in its negative dialectics, as a method of criticism. I think this attitude neglects the positive contribution that philosophy can make to our self-creation in the world.
Negative dialectics is ripe in existential philosophy. If you want relentless, occasionally brutal, criticism just go read Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heiddeger, Camus or Sartre on a broad array of subjects including Christianity, morality, contemporary culture, politics and philosophy in general. I would say its primary negative dialectic concerns countering unthinking adherence to hollow cultural customs (herd behaviour) and irresponsible personal relations to the world and others.
However, existentialism also points us to a positive dialectics. What it points to is not an objective ‘theory of life’, but a subjective, constructive behaviour in life rooted in the individual’s deepest roots of existence. It demands that the individual fill in all the details. This positive dialect is necessary because we all face unavoidable either/or decisions in life. We cannot stand back from the world and look at it as spectators with a critical, analytical, abstracting eye. We must live it.
Some introductory articles:
Thomas asks Who am I?
What do we mean when we refer to the “I”? What is the self fundamentally? Nietzsche instructs us: “become who you are.” But how is this possible? In becoming, I am changing, and thus I am different after I change than I was before. But it was I who changed, and so the I is in some sense a constant.
Ah, the Ship of Theseus paradox, Platonic forms, and all that jazz. The I that is changing is the I that changed, but the I is an abstraction. There is no concrete persistence, only interpretation makes it so. Everything is in a state of flux. Carl Jung talks of one of the ego’s functions being ’stability of identity’. He sees this function as essential for our making consistent decisions in an otherwise world of chaos. To order (rationalise) is human and wise, but it is also to misunderstand.
I think it is useful to distinguish between self as self-identity (the socially-constructed ‘I’) and biological entity (‘bio-self’) , although we are both and the two aspects are intertwined. The bio-self may be more accurately seen as a force in particular contexts, rather than an entity.
I have taken “become who you are” (Pindar, in full “learn and become who you are”) as a strictly ethical imperative dealing with ‘authenticity’ of behaviour. It means become that projection of yourself (self-identity) that is most virtuous, or that gives you the greatest sense of self esteem/self-expression. Our self-identity is socially constructed, conditioned by upbringing, peers, etc.; we don’t have control over it by default. However, we can create a new narrative or conception of self, and through meditation pursue and fulfill it. “Become who you are” is an indictment to courage, to understand and master yourself, recognising both the reality of your circumstances and your freedom to choose an empowering, life-affirming response to them. Courage is not the popular image we have of it (e.g. Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies), but rather the simple, dispassionate recognition and passionate, thankful embrace of our ability not to impose excessive, restrictive, ever-fictional interpretations (rationalism) on phenomena, your self-concept, your past, limits on your behaviour and self-expression, and the world in its entirety.
But whose (or what’s) authenticity of behaviour do we refer to? Some objectification of our’s, the name matters not. An object is a point-in-time focus of consciousness to which we may attribute behaviour and/or qualitative/quantitative properties. The bio-self will always be an abstraction due to it never being concrete, however it can be well defined as body in the traditional vernacular. The reference of self-identity, however, cannot be defined. To attribute any essence to it would be ‘bad faith’. It would not be who you really are because in restricting yourself (and your behaviour) through a particular self-defintion you deny the freedom that you have not to be defined. Once you label me, you negate me (Kierkegaard).
From Twilight of the idols:
The error of free will. Today we no longer have any tolerance for the idea of “free will”: we see it only too clearly for what it really is — the foulest of all theological fictions, intended to make mankind “responsible” in a religious sense — that is, dependent upon priests. Here I simply analyze the psychological assumptions behind any attempt at “making responsible.”
Whenever responsibility is assigned, it is usually so that judgment and punishment may follow. Becoming has been deprived of its innocence when any acting-the-way-you-did is traced back to will, to motives, to responsible choices: the doctrine of the will has been invented essentially to justify punishment through the pretext of assigning guilt. All primitive psychology, the psychology of will, arises from the fact that its interpreters, the priests at the head of ancient communities, wanted to create for themselves the right to punish — or wanted to create this right for their God. Men were considered “free” only so that they might be considered guilty — could be judged and punished: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental psychological deception was made the principle of psychology itself).
Today, we immoralists have embarked on a counter movement and are trying with all our strength to take the concepts of guilt and punishment out of the world — to cleanse psychology, history, nature, and social institutions and sanctions of these ideas. And there is in our eyes no more radical opposition than that of the theologians, who continue to infect the innocence of becoming by means of the concepts of a “moral world-order,” “guilt,” and “punishment.” Christianity is religion for the executioner.
Although Jesus’ death was meant to cleanse the world of guilt and punishment these concepts remain stubbornly persistent, especially amongst Christians. The innocent sheep being completely determined by the direction of the shepherd is not a vision they have of mankind. Instead, we are the ‘evil’ wolves with the ‘free will’ only to ’sin’. Indeed, someone profits from the Christian’s ideology, but it is not mankind.
Are you authentic? – A good overview
