Okay, it’s settled then. We move on to others.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
Me, I start here of course: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Thus making what I construe to be a crucial distinction between those aspects of “I” that appear more rather than less beyond our control, and those aspects that appear to be more rather than less in our control but are rooted more rather than lessin in dasein.
Here, however, my own refrain is basically, “one way or the other it’s still largely dasein.” Whether we act in a certain way because of our identity or act in a certain way and thus establish our identity, we still live in a world bursting at the seams with contingency chance and change. A world in which both our identity and our actions are predicated only more or less on our control of new experiences, new relationships and contact with new information, knowledge and ideas.
The identity that we think we have “here and now” is predicated in large part on our indoctrination by others “there and then” as a child in a particular world historically and culturally. And the choices that we then make, the actions that we then take to reconfigure “I” existentially are [in my view] still ever a work in progress from the cradle to the grave. And never within reach of a moral narrative that establishes one’s true identity in sync with the right thing to do.
In other words, the existentialists focus on “authenticity” in order to suggest that attempts to objectify the self are “inauthentic”. Either the selves of others or your own. But while I can clearly understand this given the manner which objectivists among us are the rule, there is only so much one can accomplish in pinning down “authentic” choices in the is/ought world.
Was Sartre being authentic when he placed his bet on “ultra Bolshevism” and Maoists? Or was he instead succeeding only in objectifying his own political narrative in the name of taking that “condemned to be free” existential leap?
My point in regard to identity here is that there do not appear to be right or wrong answers to questions like this. There is only what appears to be “I” as an existential contraption rooted in dasein.
in a nut shell sartre’s turning to communism in his critique of dialectical reason was a conclusion arrived at necessarily to resolve what he perceived as THE fundamental problem humanity is faced with. and that is - in his language - the objectification of the ‘other’ as a being-in-itself, something that causes the for-itself to forego its freedom… and this was a no-no for sartre. capitalist society… with its commodification of labor and the alienation of the proletariat, was exemplary at creating this problem… so the logical solution to him was the inception of a classless society.
of course for sartre, hell would always be other people, but society would be less of a hell if there was far less objectification going on. he didn’t want people to be ‘things’, as being such is a tremendous restriction of freedom.
I know what Sartre felt from when I was living in the same house as another philosopher and his girlfriend below a cartoonist who did things like rollerskating and gamelan practice on our very thin ceiling.
Ultrabolshevism, Maoism, is interesting in that it represents a very clear minded passion, unapologetic in its will to power. Bolshevism in general is naked wtp vs menshevism which is more western. I don’t know Sartre enough to say this for sure but he was likely disgusted enough with the world not to have any illusions. But he wasn’t German in that he wanted to do all that nasty power grubbing himself all too literally. The French always have the problem of refined taste which isn’t compatible with direct expressions of will to power, they always need some explosive human Other to do the job for them.
More to the point [mine] hell is not just other people. It is also yourself. One way or another you turn yourself into a “thing” – an “object” – when you make distinctions between the right thing to do – or in living authentically – and the wrong thing to do – or in living inauthentically. Morally and politically in other words.
On the other hand, in the either/or world, there very often is a right and a wrong way to do things. I would bring this up with Mr. Reasonable for example. If you start with the assumption that capitalism is the right political economy and you set yourself a goal of becoming financially secure as a capitalist, then you either accomplish this by choosing the right behaviors or you don’t by choosing the wrong behaviors.
But if someone comes along and insists that buying and selling stocks is a component of the necessarily evil capitalist political economy, what then?
How is it determined that either capitalism or socialism is more clearly in sync with living an authentic life? And how are the objectivists on either side here not basically reconfiguring “I” from an existential contraption rooted in dasein and conflicting goods into an insufferably self-righteous authoritarian hell bent on turning the world into “one of us” vs. “one of them”?
Camus seemed to place his bet more on individual freedom – a man or a woman choosing to live an authentic life by rejecting overarching moral and political dogmas. But that doesn’t make the points raised by, among others, Marx and Engels go away.
The personal is always going to be political when the “rules of society” are set into place by those who have accumulated the most economic and political power.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
Here though Sartre would have had to note for me an action that he chose, and then clearly described for me this juncture at which his sense of identity is the starting point for the action or the action itself is the starting point for his identity. How in the world can they not be all tangled together in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein and conflicting goods?
Unless of course I am simply missing the point here.
The act that he embodied in choosing an existential leap to Maoism flowed in large part from all of the existential variables in his life that predisposed him to go in that direction.
Sort of his own personal rendition of the points I raise here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
And then having acted from that trajectory he creates many new existential variables that will propel “I” further. He has new experiences, new relationships, access to new ideas [in a world of contingency, chance and change] and thus “I” evolves accordingly.
It’s not like he woke up one morning, turned to Simone, and just blurted out “I’m a Maoist!”. Of course the manner in which his own particular “I” was predisposed to go in that direction played an enormous part in the action to choose itself. And that he acted as he did in itself precipitated new factors that would impact profoundly on the life that he lived.
But only [in my view] to the extent that one comes to recognize “I” as an existential contraption rooted in dasein.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
You either get this or you don’t.
But: How to explain it if you do.
For me it’s an overpass at Herring Run Park. On some days it became a real ordeal making it from one end to another. The knowing that I was never quite sure if I wanted to tumble over into oblivion. And grappling with the tug of war being waged inside my head by psychological forces I would never be able to actually explain. Not even to myself.
It was an entirely different kind of anguish because it came from deep down inside myself. It was like grappling with the reality of existing itself but not knowing what the hell that actually meant.
And [of course] right around the corner from Sartre’s nausea. Which was in turn largely ineffable. “I” free to topple over into the abyss. But never quite believing that I ever would. But never absolutely certain of it.
And this frame of mind can be directed outward towards others as well. All of the terrible things that you can inflict on them if only “I” comes around to a set of circumstances that makes it all the more possible.
What could you do? What are you convinced that you could not do? I still recall an incident at college when, in Vaneeta Burkhardt’s abnormal psychology class, the discussion got around to murder. “Could you murder someone?”, she asked. And of course the students [all fresh out of high school] were absolutely certain that they could not. But I had enrolled in college on the GI Bill. I had just been discharged from the Army, having spent a year in Vietnam. An experience in which the man I was before the war had been completely reconfigured into basically a whole other person. At least in some important respects.
I knew [intellectually, viscerally] how a set of circumstances could prompt you to do things that, before the experience, you never even imagined that you could or would do.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
This is basically surreal to me. As though “I” can decide never to gamble again in the same manner in which one’s sexual behaviors can be changed through, say, surgical castration. “I” make a resolution in one set of circumstances not to gamble but this can be sustained only to the extent that those circumstances never change. Once the circumstances change all bets are off. In my view, only if “I” here was in fact a “thing” able to be commanded surgically [or through medication] such that biologically a new set of imperatives is set in place, would the resolution be sustained with any real degree of certainty.
Otherwise, new experiences and new relationships in a world of contingency, chance and change still prevails.
Exactly. Only if he puts himself in a situation where he literally cannot gamble is “I” here on a secure leash.
In other words, each new set of circumstances requires a new resolution. And, sure, if “I” here was not an existential contraption ever subject to dealing with these new contingencies, a more objectivist sense of self might be possible.
I merely note the extent to which all of this is true in regard to “I” acquiring moral and political values in turn; and then embracing one or another objectivist font in order to reconfigure “I” into [b]I.[/b]
no i’m with you one hundred percent. spend enough time doing philosophy… and doing it right… and you end up at the logical conclusion of nihilism. but this nihilism isn’t rooted in some existential dread or anxiety from the knowledge of meaningless. things are quite meaningful, in fact. rather philosophical nihilism, for me, is a kind of post-wittgensteinian conclusion to the ineffability of sense in the philosophical language game. for years i was part of it, then i got out of it, and from that vantage point i was able to see how it worked more clearly than ever. i see it all the time now; i read a text and immediately recognize how many different ways and to what ends it can be interpreted by other writers/readers who have in mind something entirely different when using such concepts and ideas. the apparent ‘fusion’ of agreement that you see when posters correspond is a state that’s reached not necessarily because what is being said is sensible, but because there is nothing against which its sense and reference can be tested so to be shown to be wrong. it is this frictionless atmosphere that philosophy exists in which allows it such passage, and the scrutiny of the natural sciences can’t touch it (unfortunately). so long as you realize that philosophy is nothing more than play, you’d not invest too much seriousness in it to be disappointed when you discovered you’ve been misunderstood.
the important things in life are handled by the sciences… and if you’ll notice, the ethical problems tend to work themselves out naturally and without much guidance from philosophy. think of it as a natural ‘correcting’ mechanism that works very slowly and over vast periods of time. you’ll note also how both those in power as well as those without are by and large philosophically illiterate. what then is running the show? what then is guiding that great hegelian dialectic of the real being/becomming rational, whatever whatever? it certainly isn’t attributed to philosophy. what it is is what marx had made a point of explaining in so many ways; that the material relations of a society have absolute influence on the engendered ideas that rule an epoche… that ideology does not organize society and its material relations, but vice-versa. that philosophers need only realize that their language is a distorted language of the actual world. so on and so forth.
that being said, the engine that moves progress will always tend toward the greater distribution of a hedonic calculus that works out naturally… kinda like a set of governing rules that oversees society’s development which philosophers can’t quite get at completely, though their business is always to try and describe/explain it. but as said above, these theories always come ‘after the fact’, out of the exiting material relations, and therefore reflect the ambitions and orientations of the theorists themselves who are embedded very certainly in some circumstances that either benefit them or not. as it stands, there are more people than not who are not benefiting from the present circumstances… hence, the forwarding of that correcting mechanism that works above and beyond any philosophical attempt to grasp its nature. marx was spot on when he removed this dialectic from the hegelian metaphysics and put it back into the concrete, social sphere as an expression of real progress… how societies evolve.
so don’t think of marx and engels in terms of ‘philosophical objectivists’ who are trying to persuade philosophers to ‘join them’. that’s for ideologues, not marx and co. if these two did anything, it was to show how despite the ways in which we interpret the world philosophically, history follows a very rational course always trending toward increasing the hedonic margins for the population of the planet. in other words, greater reward for physical labor. i know, its an embarrassingly simple formula and philosophers hate that it’s so easy. they’d prefer to complicate the matter… especially those who profit from the present system.
so forget about what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. the continuum isn’t moving toward righter or wronger, but what is more efficient, cost effective, less wasteful, more distributed, etc. this shit works automatically, bro. you could make philosophy disappear and it would still happen. philosophy is not the source of it, nor can it stop it. there simply cannot be a philosophical narrative that could convince people they shouldn’t want to better their lives… and since the vast majority are struggling at the advantage of a much smaller minority, that mechanism works to resolve the conflict. its like a collective sixth sense, so to speak. these people don’t know the first thing about ‘philosophy’. perhaps because ‘philosophy does not real work (W)’?
yeah so no, my nihilism is not at all what the existential theater has portrayed it to be. it’s no passive resignation to fate or any bullshit like that. rather it’s an active nihilism that invites radical, experimental change if even it puts the world in danger. i have a profound faith in man as a creature that is notorious for figuring out how to make shit work. my nihilism is not a loss of faith in man, but a high spirited casual withdrawal from philosophical floundering. i’m not interested anymore in asking stupid metaphysical questions. been there done that. i mean sure, i too have esoteric thoughts and weird ideas, but i realize that they cannot be talked about clearly… so with them i pass by in silence.
simplify dude. right shoe goes on the right foot, left shoe on the left foot. who was the eastern zen master who said that? i forget.
Well put. And I basically agree. But we live in a world where the objectivists – God or No God – never, ever let you forget their own obligatory moral and political narratives.
All I can do is to yank their intellectual contraptions – their “general descriptions” – down out of clouds and force them to defend their “definitional logic” out in the world of actual conflictng behaviors.
Here though everything depends on the actual set of circumstances that you find yourself in. For example, before and after you have children. Or before and after you find yourself in a situation that is particularly satisfying. The last thing many will want then is to rock the boat.
And of course actual options have to be available to you. And then for most of us you still have to come up with a way of getting the bills paid. Compromise is almost always built into that.
From my perspective, the context and the point of view feed on and then sustain each other. And every individual’s juncture here is going to be his or her own. Maybe others can understand it [or parts of it] and maybe not.
And I still have to contend with the manner in which I construe human interactions in my signature threads.
The big questions never lose their fascination for me. But that’s always embedded in dasein. And, again, the extent to which nihilism provokes a positive or a negative reaction to life itself is derived more from the life that you live than anything that philosophers might encompass didactically.
The crucial factor here is that as a nihilist your options are almost always increased because you don’t have to keep your behaviors in sync with the “right thing to do”.
Though, needless to say, "for better or worse.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
This exposes the extent to which how [for some of us] the more you attempt to think through a situation looking for reason and motive and meaning, the more you actually come to things like dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
The part about “overwhelming desire” seems more in sync with the libido, with instinct, with those deep down inside drives the human brain is notorious for. Just go where they take you, right? Why? Because as soon as you stop to think it all through rationally, to “analyze” it all “philosophically”, the more likely you are to end up in the hole that “I” am in all busted up like Humpty Dumpty.
All I can say here is that this is more or less what happened to me the more I became immersed in existentialism, deconstruction and semiotics. I began to see how my own objectivist frame of mind was largely just a world of words brought together either by God or political ideology.
And, now, as a moral nihilist, that anguish pops up whenever I am confronted with conflicting goods embedded in this:
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
“I” am no longer able to think myself up out of it.
You either come to embody this frame of mind or you don’t. For me, it’s not so much bearing the responsibility of recreating my identity “authentically”, but of recognizing how many variables here are either beyond my comprehension or beyond my control. And that no set of behaviors is necessarily either more or less authentic. The “nausea” is derived from the manner in which I construe “I” as the fractured and fragmented embodiment of dasein.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
In other words [perhaps], another way of pointing to those who, in my view, are able to think themselves into believing in the existence of a “real me” in sync with the “right thing to do”. That way, others can then be judged as more or less “sincere” about living “the good life” to the extent that they live it as you do.
What I call the “bad faith” of the objectivists.
On the other hand [of course], one can then conclude that unless others share this point of view, they are themselves seen by me to be acting in bad faith.
Good faith? Bad faith? Talk about “existential contraptions”!
But, lets face it, psychological defense mechanisms exist above all else to minimize anguish in our lives. Only, as I see it, it still comes down to the actual sets of behaviors that are chosen. What does it mean, when confronting conflicting goods, to claim that one is acting in bad faith? From my frame of mind, it means insisting there is only one obligatory – rational and moral – set of behaviors. But then others can insist that I am then claiming that to the extent others don’t share this point of view themselves, they are acting in bad faith.
Which is not what I am saying at all. If I were, I’d be excluding myself from my own point of view.
This is the part where many come not only to objectify others but to objectify themselves in turn:
Still, I always come back again and again to taking intellectual contraptions/general descriptions such as this out into the world of actual human interactions. What, for all practical purposes, do words such as these mean when describing actual behaviors in conflict?
My point is that to the extent we distant ourselves from objectification, the closer we come to being down in my “hole”…with “I” more or less “fractured and fragmented”.
Then I go in search of the narratives of those who are convinced that they do not objectify “I” [in the is/ought world] but are not in turn fractured and fragmented as “I” am.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
Of course, like all the rest of us, however many factors he took into account, how realistic is it to suppose that he took into account all of the factors there are that can be [or must be] taken into account? Did he take into account the factors that I take into account? How about the factors that you take into account? Or the factors that others focus in on that you and I and he did not think of at all?
In whatever manner we account for our own behaviors, there are surely variables we will have left out. Or include but do not understand as others do. Or do not understand in the optimal manner.
I always come back then to the seeming futility of making claims about the behaviors we choose as anything other than existential leaps. Let alone in making claims about the behaviors of others.
There seems to be no exit from the problematic “I” here. We go back and forth about it, but with no real capacity to come up with a frame of mind that allows us to draw any definitive conclusions.
And even the extent to which this disturbs some more than others is just another manifestation of the conflicting narratives we are able to come up with in explaining “I” to others.
It’s no wonder then that most become objectivists.
In other words, the parts that intertwine in the either/or world. And these include facts able to be established about us and facts able to be established about the world that we interact in.
But even here [in a No God world] we are either able to establish certain facts or we are not. So, just because something is true does not mean we able to convince others of it. And that then precipitates yet more problematic interactions. We act on what we think is true. But: The consequences are in fact what they are however they are in sync with what is actually true.
Okay, but the undeniable facts about our own psychology are still embedded in a profoundly problematic and convoluted “soup” of human interactions. There are facts that psychologists can tell us. Facts that sociologists can tell us. Facts that political scientists can tell us. Facts that anthropologists can tell us. Facts that historians can tell us.
But, given behaviors that we can describe, chosen at a particular time and place, who can really tell us what “our acts manifest the unified purposes of the psyche” means?
Other than the objectivists.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
This is the part that I clump into the either/or world Self. The empirical, demographic, material facts about us that, while open to dispute, we are either able to demonstrate to others as true or not.
But even here there is room for considerable ambiguity. For example, we can display emotional reactions to events that, say, others then capture on film. The film shows us bring angry or happy or sad. But what if we are only feigning this. What if, for whatever personal reason, we believe it is advantageous for others to think that we are feeling one thing rather than another. Same with the things we say, and the behaviors we choose. How are others able to know if we really mean it?
Thus even with respect to “the facts” about us, in a No God world there are any number of contexts in which “I” can go far below the surface.
I only suggest that this may well be applicable to how we have come to understand our own “I” as well. We think that we are being truthful [to ourselves] about the things we think, feel, say and do. But there are so many variables here [going back to our indoctrination as youths over time historically and across space culturally] that we can only understand and control up to a point.
The supposed solidity of our ego is really just countless layers of existential factors coming at us over the years from any number of convoluted directions.
This part:
I mean, come on, seriously, how many of us have really ever stopped to think this through? To consider the implications of it when faced with choosing behaviors out in the is/ought world. Especially in the modern world where [potentially] we have access to countless moral and political narratives. If only through the internet alone.
Or, perhaps, objectivism is derived precisely from that. Faced with so many conflicting frames of mind “out there” in the world, “I” feels the need to pick one and stick with it.
But: Which particular people, in which particular contexts? And the recognition that in it coming down to these people in these contexts, there were so many other possibilities of things having been different had it been other people in other contexts.
Oh, yeah, almost forgot: all this assuming we have some measure of autonomy of course.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
This is basically my own point when I distinguish between [b]I[/b] in the either/or world, and “I” in the is/ought world. Though even in regard to conflicting goods there are any number of actual objective facts that can be determined as true for all of us.
And this, in my view, has got be the “for all practical purposes” demarcation. The things about yourself able to be established and your reaction to things able to be established precipitating particular moral and political value judgments.
But, sure, there is no way for me to then demonstrate that these too are not able to be pinned down as true for all rational men and women. Here all I can do is to invite others to argue that they can be. That this is the case because they have already done so. And that they are able to demonstrate to me why I am in turn obligated to share their assessment.
What the objectivists then do is to insist that, on the contrary, their very own moral and political [and even esthetic] value judgments reflect what is essentially true given the font they have come to embrace as the transcending source one turns to in order to settle any conflicts.
In other words, one is never able to accumulate at one time and in one place all of the indisputable facts about that which constitutes their identity. There are only those variables that, at any given time and in any given place, one is actually conscious of.
And, in my view, the relationship, the responsibility, and the attitude we take regarding human interactions in any particular context is always going to be profoundly problematic. Even in regard to the facts at hand.
Making the part where “I” interacts with others in the is/ought world all that much more “ambiguous, insecure, and insufficient”.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
In other words [as I interpret it] there are objective facts that [b]I[/b] is embedded in. Historical facts, cultural facts, facts derived from our actual situation out in a particular world. We may not understand or express those facts as they are but they are there to be demonstrated as in fact things that are true about us.
Where things get problematic here however is when the facts are what they are but mere mortals are not able to demonstrate them.
As I noted on another thread:
[i]"…even in regard to the ‘fact of the matter’, one may ultimately need God. At least when someone makes a claim that comes down to either believing it or not believing it. In other words, a claim that cannot be substantiated beyond that.
I recall for example the courtroom scene from the film Reversal of Fortune. Sunny von Bülow is hovering like a ghost above the proceedings below. Speculating on what the outcome of the trial might be. Now, there was “the fact of the matter”: Claus is either guilty or not guilty of putting her into an irreversible coma. The jury acquitted him. But was their own decision in fact the right one?"[/i]
In a No God world there is simply no way to get around this even in the either/or world.
This is something that I often point out. Some here see me as this anguished soul barely able to function from day to day. But in the course of living my life from day to day, I, like you, experience no anguish at all regarding the preponderance of the behaviors that I choose. Alone or with others. It is only when my behaviors come into conflict with others in the is/ought world that “I” am likely to experience anguish.
Or in a time of general crisis when our lives are being pummeling in a particularly grim manner.
It’s just that my own anguish is embedded more in the manner in which I construe human interactions from the perspective of the moral nihilist. My anguish revolves more around a fractured and fragmented “I” down in a “hole” that is embedded in conflicting goods derived from dasein: “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty”.
Whereas the anguish of the objectivist is more likely to revolve around a context in which they are convinced the “real me” is in sync with “the right thing to do” but in a particular context things are not going their way. Those who are not “one of us” are prevailing. But at least the objectivist can take comfort in the fact they are on the side of the angels.
“I” have access to none of that anymore.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
This is basically where things get considerably more complicated for me. From my frame of mind, even to the extent that we strive to be “authentic” in the thngs that we choose [in the is/ought world], “I” is still necessarily entangled in all of the many, many genetic and memetic variables that go into the creation of any particular “self”. Deliberate all you wish but there are still going to be any number of factors embedded in the myriad experiences that you have had from the cradle to the “here and now” that you are either not wholly aware of or that were beyond your control.
Starting with the historical and cultural context into which you were thrown, then acknowledging your childhood indoctrination and then accumulating all the particular and unique interactions that you had that nudged or shoved or toppled you into particular predispositions regarding any number of aspects that culminated into who you think you are today.
How here is “I” not largely an existential construct?
Yes, we come to forks in the road where after deliberating we must choose one course of action rather than another. But, in my view, only those oriented towards objectivism are able to convince themselves that [in the is/ought world] one way is necessarily more authentic than another.
Instead, as I see it, the deliberations themselves are just another manifestation of “I” as an existential contraption. And that’s before we get to the part about political economy and conflicting goods.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
This is the part that always comes down to a fundamental question that seems beyond our grasp: is any of this interaction between Sartre back then and Wang and you and I here and now really within our control as autonomous beings?
I merely suggest in turn that the answer to this question is predicated entirely on the answer to the questions, “why is there something instead of nothing?” and “why is there this something and not another?”
Sure, we can speculate endlessly about natural phenomena, human experience and feelings of anguish. But we are seemingly unable to establish that any of this was ever able to be other than what it must be given that “I” has the capacity to opt for an alternative reality.
If we are in fact not detached from the immutable laws of matter having naturally/necessarily evolved into human brains [on this planet] then what reality seems to be to any particular one of us is interchangeable with what it appears to be to anyone else: only how it was ever able to appear.
Thus to speak of a “prejudice” here seems entirely moot.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
From my frame of mind however it is less the part where we go beyond our identity and more the part where “I” is understood only in the context of all those factors in our lives that are either beyond our understanding or control. The part embedded in dasein as an existential contraption. It is the distance here that counts most. And while we can attempt to gather as much information as possible to bridge the gap between the indoctrinated child and the more autonomous adult there are still going to be countless gaps not able to be filled.
In other words, in my view, each individual “I” has his or her own set of reactions to the world around them. Then the question becomes whether or not through disciplines like science and philosophy conflicting points of view can either be reconciled or resolved.
Yes, but only to the extent that we acknowledge “I” as an unimaginably complex and problematic intertwining of genes and memes set down in a particular world understood in a particular way. It’s not so much paralyses as the ambiguity embedded in “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty.” Pertaining by and large to the is/ought world.
Some go further beyond this than do others. But, in my view, that really only takes them deeper into the profound mystery of existence itself. Ever and always assuming some measure of autonomy here.
Okay, but to the extent that one then makes a distinction being living “authentically” and “inauthentically” is the extent to which I will then interject with my own far more nihilistic components.
“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
My point though is that, above all else, in however we react to this particular general description of “a human being” our conclusions must be brought out into the world of actual human interactions. A profoundly problematic existential contraption in which most will eventually confront others who react to the author’s meaning here differently.
And then these “philosophical” interpretations become entangled further in lived lives in which “goals” and “movement” may or may not be in sync with what philosophers like Sartre call “authentic” behavior.
The existentialists themselves are no less entangled in the variables embedded in my own vantage point. “I” as a ceaselessly fabricated and refabricated embodiment of dasein confronting conflicting goods in a world where what ultimately counts in these conflicts is who has the political power to actually enforce one set of behaviors over all others.
No, it involves whatever you have come to believe these particular words put in this particular order mean “in your head” here and now. A world of words. Take them out of your head and employ them in interacting with others and they acquire an actual existential use value and exchange value.
Which in discussions about identity and value judgments in places like this, you are either more or less willing to bring arguments and assessments “down to earth” by noting the manner in which your philosophical conclusions impact the behaviors that you do choose given a particular context out in a particular world understood from a particular point of view.
I do this and bump into a fragmented and fractured “I” tumbling down into the hole that is moral nihilism.
And you?