Wretched mind, do you, who get your evidence from us, yet try to overthrow us? Our overthrow will be your downfall.” Democritus
Becoming a Being (existential ontology):
We are what we can become. Ours is a process, and our becoming is our ontic possibility of becoming. Human existence is a project, in which past and present are subordinate to future, is the main residence of our existence, because it is the north of our projection of ourselves. “Human existence cannot have a relationship with being unless it remains in the midst of nothingness.” (M. Heidegger - was ist metaphysik?).
Nothingness
Nothingness appears in existentialism, as the placeholder of the possibility. The awareness of anything in the world that is not my own existence (which by the way,cannot be held in consciousness without being nihilized) is an awareness of nothingness, that is, what I, this existence am not and in some cases I could become.
Absurd
We arrive from nothingness to absurd at the moment that we ask for a meaning after we have become aware of the other (trough the prior explained negation). Absurd is a leit motiv in existentialism, specially in Sartre and Camus. It is sometimes possible to overcome absurd, with absurd itself, as Camus says in The Myth of Sisyphus: “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Ethics / Subjectivity / Good faith
Our view of the world is enough to become Truth, because it is based on our facts. What we do with this truth, depends on our good or bad faith, that is, the ability to act as if in our act the entire mankind would be represented. That is enough to prove an act as an ethical one.
Choice
We always have a choice. Existentialism does not stand for any kind of determinism except the one that determines our individual facts (existence)
We choose, and in choosing (in good or bad faith) we define ourselves. Choice is a definition of an existence in the world, towards an object outside of itself.
Choice is all that we have, without confirmation of our act; we never know what was right to choose. The doubt of our acts, together with the contingence of existence, leads to
Angst
The main characteristic of existence itself, when we face our contingence, and the absurdity of our acts and choices:
For Heidegger, it is that trough which fear becomes possible. For Kierkegaard is a desire for what one fears. For Sartre, it is the immediate consequence of facing the possibility of nothingness.
We are what we can become. Ours is a process, and our becoming is our ontic possibility of becoming. Human existence is a project, in which past and present are subordinate to future, is the main residence of our existence, because it is the north of our projection of ourselves. “Human existence cannot have a relationship with being unless it remains in the midst of nothingness.” (M. Heidegger - was ist metaphysik?).
Nothingness
Nothingness appears in existentialism, as the placeholder of the possibility. The awareness of anything in the world that is not my own existence (which by the way,cannot be held in consciousness without being nihilized) is an awareness of nothingness, that is, what I, this existence am not and in some cases I could become.
Absurd
We arrive from nothingness to absurd at the moment that we ask for a meaning after we have become aware of the other (trough the prior explained negation). Absurd is a leit motiv in existentialism, specially in Sartre and Camus. It is sometimes possible to overcome absurd, with absurd itself, as Camus says in The Myth of Sisyphus: “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Ethics / Subjectivity / Good faith
Our view of the world is enough to become Truth, because it is based on our facts. What we do with this truth, depends on our good or bad faith, that is, the ability to act as if in our act the entire mankind would be represented. That is enough to prove an act as an ethical one.
Choice
We always have a choice. Existentialism does not stand for any kind of determinism except the one that determines our individual facts (existence)
We choose, and in choosing (in good or bad faith) we define ourselves. Choice is a definition of an existence in the world, towards an object outside of itself.
Choice is all that we have, without confirmation of our act; we never know what was right to choose. The doubt of our acts, together with the contingence of existence, leads to
Angst
The main characteristic of existence itself, when we face our contingence, and the absurdity of our acts and choices:
For Heidegger, it is that trough which fear becomes possible. For Kierkegaard is a desire for what one fears. For Sartre, it is the immediate consequence of facing the possibility of nothingness.
“
What would be my, how should I call it, spontaneous attitude towards the universe? It’s a very dark one. The first one, the first thesis would have been: a kind of total vanity. There is nothing, basically. I mean it quite literally. Like, ultimately there are just some fragments, some vanishing things, if you look at the universe it’s one big void. But then how do things emerge? Here, I feel a kind of spontaneous affinity with quantum physics. Where, you know, the idea there is that the universe is kind of a void, but a positively charged void. But then particular things appear when the balance of the void is disturbed, and I like this idea spontaneously very much. The fact that it’s not just nothing, things are out there, it means something went terribly wrong. That what we call creation is a kind of a cosmic imbalance, cosmic catastrophe. That things exist by mistake. And I’m even ready to go to the end and to claim that the only way to counteract it is to assume the mistake and go to the end, and we have a name for this; it’s called love. Isn’t love precisely this kind of a cosmic imbalance? I was always disgusted with this notion of “I love the world”, “universal love”. I don’t like the world, I don’t know how I—uh—I’m basically somewhere in between “I hate the world” and “I’m indifferent towards it”. But the whole of reality, it’s just it, it is stupid, it’s out there, I don’t care about it. Love for me is an extremely violent act. Love is not “I love you all”. Love means, I pick out something and—it’s again this structure of imbalance. Even if this something is just a small detail, a fragile individual person, I say, “I love you more than anything else.” In this quite formal sense, love is evil.
“
| — | Slavoj ŽiŽek |
