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1. Introduction: Existence Before Essence or
Essence Before Existence...
Like Sartre -- although Sartre kept changing ideological labels by
which he wanted to be classified under -- I consider myself to
be a 'humanistic-existentialist', albeit not one subscribing to Sartre's 'existence before essence' premise.
'Well, how can you call yourself an 'existentialist' and not believe in the "existence before essence" premise?', you might ask. 'Isn't that the fundamental premise for being called an "existentialist"?'
Historically, there were numerous philosophers who we now call 'existentialists' -- before, during, and after Sartre's lifetime -- who didn't necessarily subscribe to Sartre's 'existence precedes essence' philosophical premise. Since some were long dead -- Kierkegaard, Doestevsky, Nietzsche... -- and didn't get a chance to react to Sartre's philosophical premise.
I don't think that anyone has a right to speak for the dead in this type of capacity, assuming what they may or may not have believed. If there is one thing that can be said about most existentialists, it is perhaps that they are 'very unpredictable' in their thinking and inclined to go down 'thought passages' easily ignored, and/or purposely avoided, by other more 'orthodox' thinkers.
Thus, to assume -- or to try to 'box in' all existentialists -- by saying that they all subscribe to the philosophical premise of 'existence precedes essence' is to make a careless, bogus assumption. Go back to Philosophy 101.
I, for one consider myself to be a 'dialectic-essential-existentialist' or a 'genetic constitutional existentialist'. By this, I mean that I subscribe to the following theory:
That we are all born with certain unique individual talents and capabilites that no one else on earth can exactly duplicate -- and upon this 'genetic, constitutional foundation', we need to give meaning to our own unique existence in a way that, through hard work, and love/passion for what we are doing, 'actualizes' or 'fulfills' to our maximum 'existential potential' the parameters of our genetic, constitutional foundation as loosely laid out by our 'genetic heritage' and/or 'Creator'.
When we find this 'line of work' that 'fits with our spirit/soul', we will know it because we will come alive -- like we are 'in love' with our work or hobby, which you are -- as opposed to being 'totally self-alienated and estranged' from a type of work that we apathetic towards and/or even despise...but basically 'prostitute' ourselves at, in order to bring a paycheque home to put a roof over our head, pay our bills, and feed ourselves and/or our family...
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From Wikipedia
The proposition that existence precedes essence (French: l'existence précède l'essence) is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence or nature of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence. To existentialists, the human being—through his consciousness—creates his own values and determines a meaning for his life because, in the beginning, the human being does not possess any inherent identity or value. By posing the acts that constitute him, he makes his existence more significant.[1][2]
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The assumption that 'in the beginning, the human being does not possess any inherent identity or value', is shaky at best -- hugely flawed at worst.
Since existentialism is hardly 'one philosophical system' but rather a 'network of similar but different philosophical systems', this seems to be an unwarrented and premature assumption -- especially for someone like Kierkegaard who was a religious philosopher and most assuredly believed in 'the spiritual nature of man', and likewise, for someone like Plato who was perhaps one of the main influencers on all Western religious philosophy, who trumpeted the inherent and constitutional existence of man's 'soul' that gave man's life meaning, direction, inherent identity and value -- that gave man something to 'hang on to' in the face of any and all adversity.
To be sure, we could get into metaphysical arguments about 'when exactly existence starts' but is anyone going to argue that there wasn't something genetically present -- and special -- in Michael Jordan's DNA, in his constitutional makeup, that predisposed him to a game like basketball where he could 'showcase' his immense talents and capabilities -- admittedly mixed with thousands and thousands of hours of hard 'existential' work -- but I could have put in those same thousands and thousands of hours and no one today would be talking about me as the 'greatest basketball player who ever lived'....I would still be playing in school gyms if I was that persistent...
Nor can Michael Jordan do what I can do which is to create and integrate philosophical and psychological theories like not too many men or women alive today.
My point is this: Existentialism starts in our genetics, in our DNA, in our Genetic Potential Self -- and that means 'Essence precedes existence.' I'm onside with Plato and Erich Fromm on this issue; not Sartre. We are all born with unique, individual talents that our Creator gave us to 'actualize'....
If Sartre were alive today, I would ask him how well he would have done trying to 'actualize' his talents as a 'plumber' or an 'electrician' or as a 'hockey player' rather than as a philosopher?
Yes, to be sure, we have the choice to be anything, but it doesn't usually take very long for our friends, our family, ourselves to find out what we are really good at -- if our passion and our talent meet, well, that is what we probably should be doing, and if we work hard in this direction, then the 'sky is the limit' in terms of where we may eventually get to...
Anything significantly less than this and we are probably existentially failing and falling beneath the 'upper potential threshold' of our creative talents and capabilities'....We may finally realize this one day -- maybe in the midst of our 'Post-Mid-Life Crisis' -- when we wake up one morning ...and feel like an 'Insect' or a 'Stranger Within Ourselves'....
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As I have argued over and over again in Hegelian fashion, 'every theory, every thesis carries the seeds of its own self-destruction'. Why? Because the minute you assert a particular point of view, you are doing two things at the same time: 1. you are metaphorically shining a flashlight on something you want your audience to see; while 2. at the same time, anything that doesn't show up in the light of your flashlight is going to be relegated to 'the darkness' of seemingly 'non-relevance', 'non- importance' as you are basically dictating to your audience that what what you don't see in my particular theory or thesis, my particular perspective -- 'doesn't exist', or at least is 'background noise or distraction' that you have no need to pay attention to....It is out of this 'background noise' or 'field of seeming irrelevance' -- that theories and theses eventually self-destruct, because like in Psychoanalysis, and in the 'subconscious dynamics of the psyche', 'what you dissociate and push downwards into your subconscious psyche', if it matters, even if you don't think it does matter, it will come back to 'haunt' you -- as 'the return of the repressed or suppressed or oppressed or dissociated or disavowed or displaced, or transferred, or introjected, or projected, or sublimated...' This is very much the 'essence' of Psychoanalysis... The same basic principle, learned from Psychoanalysis, can be applied to all avenues of life: business, marketing, economics, politics, philosophy, religion, architecture, engineering, science, physics, biology, medicine, civil rights... As soon as one 'class' of people is 'preferentialised' and another class of people is 'discriminated against', you have the beginning of 'social distrust', 'resentment', 'anger', 'rage'...and the potential for 'civil violence' as the 'volcanic fire' of inequality continues to build... I think I heard in a survey the other day, that about 80 percent of people hated their job.... Well, you cannot 'hate' your job within a 'Sartrean field of Nothingness'...only within a 'field of Constitutional and/or Genetic Rootedness that is different than what we are doing, and what we hate'... In order to be able to say that you 'hate' something, you basically need a concept like 'the Self or Soul' -- 'My Self or My Soul' -- in order to be able to say something like 'I prostitute myself' or 'I sell myself to the Devil of Capitalism each morning I go to work and do something for 8 or 10 or 12 hours a day that defies and defiles my Self, my Soul'..... 'Yes, I am making a paycheque, and yes, I am bringing home enough money each week to put a roof over my head, to support myself and my family....but in the process, I am killing my Spirit, my Soul...because I am living a 'fraudulent life'...I am living the life of 'The Stranger'... In order for us to be able to say anything like this, there cannot be a 'Blank Tablet' within each of us, there cannot be a 'Constitutional Void of Nothingness' within us; rather, there has to be something -- I call it our 'Genetic Template' that tells each and everyone of us something like: 'Dave, this is what you were meant to be....and that is what you were not meant to be...' 'Man is both the artist and the object of his art.' -- Erich Fromm Under this 'Essence Before Existence' assumption as opposed to Sartre's assumption of 'Existence Before Essence', humanistic-existential ideas like 'self-fulfillment' or 'self-actualization' or 'individuation' come alive just as their 'bipolar opposite' ideas of 'self-alienation' and 'self- fraud' also take on meaning.... These words would have no meaning if we were all made up of a 'Constitutional Void, a Constitutional Nothingness'... The concepts of 'self-actualization' and 'self- alienation' only take on meaning in an assumptive philosophical world that gives relevance to the idea of a man or woman having an individual 'Spirit' and/or 'Soul'...that we are 'constitutionally born' with...that comes from our 'essence', not our 'existence'... 2. The Essential and Existential Id -- Energy, Thought, Feeling, Impulse, Restraint, Behavior... For The Entire Psyche In 1923, Freud 'deposited' the 'life' and 'death' instincts (from 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle, 1920) inside the 'id'. Is there anything that the life and death instincts would not cover in terms of the roots of human thought, feeling, impulse, restraint, and behavior? This being the case, Freud had to be arguing in favor of all psychic energy originating from the 'depths of the id' which in turn manifested itself from the creation of energy in the body, presumably directly or indirectly from the sun, the air, water, and the nutrients in our food from the earth....all coming together in the mitochondria of our cells....and like what happens in a car engine...'exploding into usuable energy'... Some of this energy is deposited into our 'psyche' in the form of 'psychic energy' -- including 'mental energry', 'feeling energy', 'passion', 'sexual drive', 'assertion', 'aggression', and so on.... 'Life energy' can be defined as any form of psychic (and/or bodily) energy that contributes to the growing life force within us, and/or within the people around us... In contradistinction, 'death energy' can be defined as any form of psychic (and/or bodily) energy that contributes to the decaying life force within us, and/or within the people around us....This includes what will be called 'toxic' and/or 'destructive' and/or 'self-destructive' energy... Thus, if we are to accept this foundational premise which is based on Classical Freudian Theory from 1920 and 1923, 'the id' can be viewed as containing any degree of mixture between life and death energy within it -- some of which is 'dissociated' from and/or by 'The Ego-as-a Whole' (or Wholistic Ego) - and/or consciousness and/or from particular 'Ego States'.... At this point, we have started to extend 'Classical' Freudian Theory from 1920 and 1923 -- significantly beyond its 'normal Freudian Classical Theory limits' and into Melanie Klein territory, into Object Relations territory, and into the type of territory where Freud was starting to move towards the end of his life and his last papers such as: 'The Splitting of The Ego in The Process of Defence' (1938/40) written according to Strachey (and Jones) during Christmas, 1937, dated January 2nd, 1938, and published posthumously in 1940 -- unfinished. Fast forward some 71 years later of psychoanalytic history and evolution -- and you have 'The DGB Model of The Splitting of The Ego' that has been split up like this: 1. The Nurturing-Altruistic Superego, 2. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Selfish) Superego, and 3. The Righteous-Rejecting (Ethical) Superego; 4. The Central Ego Board and/or Therapy Room, 5. The Central, (Mediating) Executive Ego; 6. The Righteous-Rebellious Underego, 7. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Selfish) Underego, and 8. The Co-operative (Approval-Seeking) Underego. Particular types of 'id energy' are more likely than not to be associated with particular 'ego states' -- for example, 'righteous energy' with The Righteous Superego and/or Rebellious Underego...'narcissistic energy' with either The Narcissistic Superego and/or Underego, and 'altruistic energy' with either The Nurturing Superego and/or The Co-operative Underego... 'Superego states' and 'underego states' are divided on the basis of 'self-esteem and childhood upbringing factors': 'superego states' with the 'power of a particular parent' and 'superiority feelings' for example, and 'underego states' with the usual 'lack of power' and 'inferiority/insecurity feelings' associated with being a child... Now, in case I haven't properly done this before, let me now emphasize the difference between a 'dualistic pairing of entities' vs. a 'dialectic pairing of entities'... In a 'dualistic pairing of entities' there is an inherent 'power play' going on, a 'competition for opposing values, needs, and/or wants'...whereas in a 'dialectic pairing of entities' there is some movement afoot for 'negotiation, compromise, democracy, equal rights, peace and/or harmony'... The current NBA owners lockout is an example of a 'mixed dualistic and dialectic pairing of opposing, competing entities -- i.e., the owners vs. the players and their union representives -- in which both entities very much want their own way and as big a slice of the pie as they can get but within the realm of trying to reach as 'favorable' an agreement as each side can possibly arrive at -- and have the other side agree to it. Such a state of affairs -- unpredictability between warring dualistic and/or dialectic entities or factions -- is the usual state of affairs within the human psyche -- as it has been with all of human history...both as it has been felt internally, and as it has been 'projected' externally, through politics, religion, mythology, science, medicine, philosophy, business and economics, and back to psychology... 'Monism' is -- from this perspective -- 'half' of any number of possible 'dualisms'; 'pluralism' is the entire field of possible 'dualistic' and/or 'dialectic' entities, and/or 'triadic' or 'trialectic' entities, etc...and 'multi-dualisms' and/or 'multi-dialecticisms' or 'multi-dialectic' systems are any number of dualistic/dialectic/binary systems (or triadic/trialectic systems, etc.) within a greater, pluralistic field or system... Now, at this point, I would like to put in a plug for one of the earliest and greatest philisophers in both Greek and Western history -- one who is usually largely under-recognized, under-appreciated -- for the fact, that he laid down the essential and existential foundation for some 2600 years plus...of Western dualistic and dialectic philosophy, politics, economics, science, religion, and psychology to come.... Indeed, Anaxamander's concept of 'The Apeiron' practically anticipated the idea of 'Chaos' and 'Chaos Theory' as well as Hegel's dialectic philosophy, Freud's concept of 'The Id', Jung's concepts of 'The Personna' and 'The Shadow', Foucault's philosophy of 'power', Derrida's concept of 'binary opposites' and 'Deconstruction' (of the 'dominant' opposite such that the 'suppressed' opposite can start to come 'alive' again...), and The Gestalt Psychologists and Gestalt Therapists binary concept of 'figure' vs. '(back)ground'... Indeed, I view Anaxamander's concept of 'The Apeiron' as an 'externalization' of Freud's concept of 'the id' or conversely, Freud's concept of 'the id' as an 'internalization' of Anaxamander's concept of 'The Apeiron'. Both are connected to the idea of 'dark, chaotic disorganization, and competition between opposing entities, brimming over the top with energy -- 'binary energy', 'dualistic energy', 'dialectic energy' -- and the potential for 'synergy' -- or the opposite: 'dominance' vs. 'suppression', 'the exploiting' vs. 'the exploiting', 'the victimizer' vs. 'the victim', 'winners' and 'losers' -- not often on a 'fair field' -- one entity coming out on top and into 'The Sunshine', the other entity being 'forced back into the dark', The Background, The Shadows, The Id, The Apeiron... Inequality -- thy name is humanity -- or rather, the lack of it -- as witnessed over 2600 plus years of human history...both externally and internally...inter-socially, politically, economically, legally... and intra-psychically between 'the dominant' and 'the suppressed'...the Ego and the Id, the Personna and the Shadow...the 'figural' and the 'background'....the 'preferentialized' and the 'dissociated'/ 'rejected... Back and forth goes the teeter totter of life... Anaxamander wrote about it in 'The Fragment'.... He was writing about 'Cosmic Justice'... Hegel might have called it 'the dialectic justice of history and evolution'... 'What goes around comes around...' 'The return of the repressed, the oppressed, the rejected, the suppressed, the dissociated, the projected, the introjected, the disavowed... Freud had a 'hang up' -- a complex -- with 'castration anxiety'... It is too bad he couldn't have gotten beyond that... I'm sure it may have reflected a real fear amongst some Victorian boys...including Freud himself perhaps threatened by his own father with 'the removal of his thing, his manhood' if he didn't behave properly... But beyond this, we see the more inevitable 'clash' of 'wills' between parent and child, father and son, mother and daughter, and the child's fear of 'losing his or her parent(s)' as his or her primary source of 'survival' or 'self-preservation' vs. the child's fear of 'losing his or her own self-identity'..... And within this 'existential' conflict between parent and child, we often see a type of conflict that plays itself out 'in the transference' over and over and over again in the course of a person's life -- particularly in a Capitalist System but no less in the Mao Tse Tung regime, or The Lenin or Stalin regime...in fact, in many tyrannical countries much, much worse... But regardless, of what country, what culture, what religion, what economic system, what political system...it all generally, comes back to this: Hegel's classic depiction of 'The Master/Slave Relationship' -- the 'co-dependence of each on each other and/or 'The Master's wish to keep the status-quo with all of its established benefits' and The Slave's wish to break the status-quo in order to re-establish a sense of 'Selfhood', a sense of freedom, a sense of less rigid authoritarianism, a sense of not being exploited, a sense of more balanced 'equal rights', and a sense of 'living one's life the way one wants to live it'.... The problem with all of this...all of the wishes, the desires, the demands...of The Slave, The Exploited... Is that once all the 'chains' have been broken free of... The Scariest Fear of Them All may be still waiting in The Shadows... And that is man's fear of....his own freedom... (Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom) 'The dizzying -- and sometimes paralyzing -- fear of one's own freedom....(Kierkegaard).... Can leave man -- the slave in man -- running for the Master again... To escape the petrifying freedom of his own existence... A famous author -- through one of his characters -- wrote it this way: 'To be or not to be....that is the question...' In order to break free of the slavery we feel on the outside... We need first to break free of the paralyzing anxiety we feel in the face of freedom -- on the inside.... Otherwise, we will look for -- and complain against -- countless Masters, over and over and over again... Smoke and mirrors to 'distract' us from what is really scaring us inside of us... To paraphase and extend Nietzsche... Be careful when you fight Monsters on the outside... Because The Biggest Monster may be lurking inside of you... To run from our fear by keeping ourselves 'busy' undoing 'the many chains of our existence'.... Distracts us from the real problem of facing the fear of our freedom... Like all of those early Charcot, Breuer, and Freudian cases of hysteria... The 'so-called hysterics' for the most part all 'defeated' the therapists... Because through the hours and hours of painstaking therapeutic work of Breuer, Charcot, or Freud when they finally 'uncovered' 'the source of The Nile, the source of the hysterical symptom -- the repressed memory' -- presto! the symptom was gone like magic....it disappeared into the cosmology of life... But then the next session, the client/patient would 'replace' the 'gone symptom' with 10 new ones!! And after treating a hundred such patients....you can perhaps start to see why Freud was getting more than a little frustrated with 'the traumatic memory' theory... The therapist was 'winning all the tedious individual symptom battles'...and still 'losing the therapeutic war'... Like 'Anna O' was being 'held hostage' by her sick father who (non-purposely) took away her every freedom... So too, did Anna O learn the principle of 'identification with the more powerful person'...and she turned the tables on her therapist (Breuer) keeping him busy, hour after hour, day after day, one symptom after another...until one day she looked at Breuer and said in effect, 'Dr. Breuer, I'm having your baby!' That was the end of their sessions...Dr. Breuer went running back to his wife... Wasn't there a best-seller in the 60s.....'Games People Play' by Dr. Eric Berne... We all play lifelong 'transference games'... We suck people into our 'spider webs'.... And then we say, 'Gotcha!' when we have them trapped... And then we move on to our next victim and play the same game... All over again....attempting to re-establish a sense of 'lost childhood self-esteem'... Until we find someone who knows how to play our game better than we do.... And then we go crashing back down into Nietzsche's Abyss... The Black Pit... To nurse our wounds and figure out whether or not... We want to 're-embrace' life or not.... Sometimes we do.... And then sometimes we erect...bigger and bigger... 'Emotional Fortresses'...complete with 'Body Armour'... Until someone can see inside us again... Or we decide to expose our heart again... And start sending out 'Allusions to Immediacy'.... 'Compromise Formations'... Between what is in our heart...and/or our 'id'....or 'Id-Vault'... And what we throw out there as 'illusions' and 'allusions' -- 'smoke and mirrors'... To get the one we most care for...off our scent... To be or not to be...or to compromise between being and not being... The latter path is probably the most common path... Life fully lived...is too intense... So we 'water' it down a bit...or a lot... On a good day, we look in the mirror and are proud of ourselves.... And our accomplishments, and the people we love and are loved by.... But on a bad day -- or in that potentially gruesome 'post-mid-life crisis' period -- we look in the mirror and we see 'The Stranger'.... And we feel ourselves crashing into 'Nietsche's Abyss'... The Black Pit.... Until someone helps us out of it... Or we gather the strength to pull ourselves out of it again... In this regard, my current model of 'the subconscious', from top to bottom, looks like this: 09. The Dream, Fantasy, and Nightmare Weaver; 10. The ('Bound') Id Vault with Transference Complexes 11. The Learning and Transference Memory Template; 12. The ('Boundless') Id; 13. Nietzsche's Abyss (The Black Pit); 14. The Genetic, Symbolic, and Potential Self -- dgb, October 13th, 2011, -- David Gordon Bain |
