“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.