Hatzimoysis on Existentialism

Some introductory articles:

• Who am I?
• Irrationalism, immoralism, individualism
• From Sartre to Dostoevsky
• The importance of authenticity

Who am I?

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).

Nietzsche on free will

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.

Authenticity in a nutshell

Are you authentic? – A good overview

You of the future

You are always becoming the you of the future. We are constantly projecting ourselves into the future, always expecting things, always hoping things. We live in the future, we are pulled ahead of ourselves.

Further reading:

A better tomorrow? – A bright vision of tomorrow makes for a sunnier today. Our relationship to the future affects our current state of mind

Change your self

Some advice: Strategic Change: How to reinvent your personality

Authenticity: one of three basic psychological needs

It ought to be reassuring to have psychologists make the same conclusions as the philosophers you follow. Indeed, if the ‘inference to the best explanation’ of observations from empirical science does not align with one’s philosophy than it really ought to be thrown out. I am reassured in this case.

Psychologists have confirmed the emphasis that Existentialists have placed on ‘authenticity’. In Dare To Be Yourself they define authenticity as the unimpeded operation of one’s true or core self in one’s daily enterprise.

Some background on the concept:

Enlightenment philosophers secularized ideas of selfhood, but it took the 20th century’s existentialists to question the idea that some original, actual, ultimate self resides within. To them, the self was not so much born as made. One’s choice of action creates the self—in Sartre’s words, “existence precedes essence.” For Heidegger and confreres, authenticity was an attitude: the project of embracing life, constructing meaning, and building character without fooling yourself that your so-called essence matters in any absolute, a priori sense.

“The philosophical question is, do we invent this authentic self?” says Portmann. “Or do we discover it?” Socrates believed we discover it; the existentialists say we invent it.

There are many benefits to being ‘authentic’:

Authenticity is correlated with many aspects of psychological well-being, including vitality, self-esteem, and coping skills. Acting in accordance with one’s core self—a trait called self-determination—is ranked by some experts as one of three basic psychological needs, along with competence and a sense of relatedness.

But it is not an endeavour for the weak. There are obstacles that you must overcome (apologies for the long quote; I do so for the sake of emphasis):

Another reason we’re not always true to ourselves is that authenticity is not for the faint of heart. There is, Kernis and Goldman acknowledge, a “potential downside of authenticity.” Accurate self-knowledge can be painful. When taking a test, it isn’t always fun to find out where you score on the grading curve. “Our self-images can be highly biased,” Leary notes. “But in the long run, accuracy is almost always better than bias.”

Behaving in accord with your true self may also bring on the disfavor of others: Must you admit to being a Democrat when meeting with your conservative clients? Does your wife really want to know whether you like her new dress? “Opening oneself up to an intimate makes one vulnerable to rejection or betrayal,” Kernis and Goldman observe. It can feel better to be embraced as an impostor than dumped for the person you really are.

Authenticity also requires making conscious, informed choices based on accurate self-knowledge. Like the existentialists, today’s psychologists emphasize the role of active choice in creating an authentic life: a willingness to evaluate nearly everything that you do. That’s no mean feat in a culture where even simple acts—you can dye your hair any color you want, your television carries more than 500 channels, and Starbucks advertises more than 87,000 ways to enjoy a cup of coffee—require conscious consideration among alternatives.

Such freedom can be exhausting. Baumeister has found that deliberation, no matter how trivial, exacts a cost in psychic energy, of which we have only a finite amount. His studies show that authentic action demands a certain amount of psychological exertion that depletes the self’s executive function. “It’s harder to be authentic,” he says. “It takes more work.”

Leary sees it as an outright burden, part of the perennial longing and doubt that he calls “the curse of the self.” So here we are, stuck with our self-awareness, which also compels us to continually define and refine our sense of ourselves as unique individuals against a background of conformity, superficiality, exhibitionism, and lots of other unique individuals.

But wait, there’s more. In order to realize an authentic life, says Kernis, one often has to set aside hedonic well-being—the kind of shallow, short-lived pleasure we get from, say, acquiring things—for eudaimonic well-being, a deeper, more meaningful state in which gratification is not usually immediate. Sissies need not apply.

The fact is that we tend to flourish under the most challenging circumstances, and enduring the pain and confusion that often accompany them can bring out the best—and most authentic—in us, fostering such deeply satisfying qualities as wisdom, insight, and creativity. But our cultural climate is filled with an alluring array of distractions, from online gambling to video games, that often turn out to be junk food for the mind.

Too Rigid for Our Own Good

But the really hard work, according to Cope and others, is the amount of ego-wrangling required to contact the core self. One of the biggest barriers to authentic behavior, he says, is the arbitrary and rigid self-image that so many of us nurture but which in fact distorts experience and limits self-knowledge. “Oftentimes, the very first line of defense you get with the folks who say, ‘I’m leading an inauthentic life,’ is that they’re living life according to a fixed set of views and beliefs about how they should be.”

Man does not want happiness

A warning from Nietzsche that the pursuit of happiness may not be an end in itself.

If we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how. Man does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that.

Man, in his basic natural state, does not seek out happiness exclusively. He unavoidably makes many choices that sacrifice potential happiness for the sake of other life instinstcs, such as sex and competition for status.

The ‘Englishman’ is a socially-constructed identity; there is no Englishman (or Utilitarianism, the cloaked reference)  in nature. Happiness too is obscurely socially-constructed; it has come to mean much more than pleasure.

Beware of ends that may be little more than social myths.

The curse or blessing of the conscious brain

We simply cannot live as Meursault in Albert Camus’ The Stranger (in the former part of the novel).

In The Stranger, Meursault lives solely through sensory experience. He has no plans, no ambitions, he doesn’t follow the dictates of reason, he lacks emotion, he always takes the path of least resistance.

The reality is that we cannot live like that, at least not all the time. We are limited to the extent that we can experience ‘flow’ (Csíkszentmihályi) or ’self-realisation’ (Maslow) in our activities.

The curse or blessing of the conscious brain is the we humans, unlike simpler animals who only have a subconscious brain, have by nature the necessity to introspect, keep track of experiences, and plan. These faculties can be a source of despair and worry, or joy and excitement. Should we envy the cockroach that does not have these concerns?

See also: In Our Time: Neuroscience

The Antichrist by Nietzsche

Audiobook available at LibriVox: The Antichrist

Text is available here.

Other Nietzsche works available as audiobooks: LibriVox: Search Results

Choice quotes:

The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something that is to come “above the earth” or “after death.” The whole concept of natural death is lacking in the evangel: death is no bridge, no transition; it is lacking because it belongs to a wholly different, merely apparent world, useful only insofar as it furnishes signs. The “hour of death” is no Christian conception: “hour,” time, physical life and its crises do not even exist for the teacher of the “glad tidings.” The “kingdom of God” is nothing that one expects; it has no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it will not come in “a thousand years”—it is an experience of the heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere.

This “bringer of glad tidings” died as he had lived, as he had taught—not to “redeem men” but to show how one must live. This practice is his legacy to mankind: his behavior before the judges, before the catchpoles, before the accusers and all kinds of slander and scorn—his behavior on the cross. He does not resist, he does not defend his right, he takes no step which might ward off the worst; on the contrary, he provokes it. And he begs, he suffers, he loves with those, in those, who do him evil. Not to resist, not to be angry, not to hold responsible—but to resist not even the evil one—to love him.