What do I mean when I claim to be existentialist?

What do I mean when I claim to be existentialist?

From Philosophy textbook:

“Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on Earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this Earth.” Sartre

“My duty as an intellectual is to think, to think without restriction, even at the risk of blundering. I must set no limits within myself, and I must let no limits be set for me.” Sartre

From Wikipedia:

“Kierkegaard's knight of faith and Nietzsche's Ubermensch are exemplars who define the nature of their own existence. These idealized individuals invent their own values and create the very terms under which they excel.”

At this point, I’ve had several people ask me what I mean when I claim existentialism as the philosophical basis for my life. It’s a really difficult question, because it can only really be answered experientially. If you haven’t experienced the epiphany of existentialism – and it’s not one I would recommend – then you can only learn about existentialism; kind of like Gandalf fighting the Balrog – it will lead to a much more powerful and confident you, but you basically have to die to get there. Another metaphor which might help is that of the female orgasm: if you haven’t had an orgasm, you will only know about it from what you’ve read and heard. Once you’ve had one, you know that no description of it can ever come close to capturing it.

And there you find two of my approaches to personal morality: mythology and eroticism.

But what is existentialism? It is, as Sartre suggests, the refusal to accept limits to yourself either from inside or outside. This refusal condemns you to loneliness. Hence one of the foundational principles of existentialism: Loneliness equals freedom. This refusal also condemns you to being misunderstood. Because you refuse to adhere to any standards of morality, many will consider you immoral. Because you refuse to share your deep faith with others, many will consider you faithless (or, worse, you can try to share your faith and others will consider you divine or a guru while perverting your message to their own already established restraints).

As mythological example, let’s use the figure of the Christ.

Jesus clearly refused to accept the limits of his Jewish/Roman society, and he was ultimately killed for this refusal. Let’s take a look at how his refusal went in a Cliff Notes version: first, he rejected the knowledge of his teachers and religious leaders, claiming that he possessed a greater knowledge in himself. Next, because of a shift of his internal compass toward an idea of extreme love, he rejected the economical limits of his society, abandoning even the means to participate in its economy and living instead as a beggar. He repeatedly told those who followed him that they didn’t understand him. In his darkest moments, he left his friends and family in order to be totally alone so that he could rejuvenate himself with the power of such loneliness. Trying to connect to others is spiritually damaging and exhausting, after all.

A key to his loneliness and his attempts to connect is Christ’s casting out of external limits. He throws away religion, family, society, and even basic assumptions about sin and gender. He consciously asks the universe to help him create his own morality and discovers that such morality can only be found within.

Once Christ had preached a while, he realized that his loneliness would never be overcome – even his best followers could not share his internal morality. So, to fulfill the demands of that internal morality, Christ committed suicide for love. His internal morality demanded that the pursuit of love was more important than the external limits imposed by the Jewish and Roman authorities, the external limits imposed by his friends who badgered him to not commit suicide, and, notably, the internal limits imposed by his animal instincts of self-preservation. How could he ignore all of these limits? Was such ignoring a supernatural feat? No. Those who argue that Christ had to be supernatural in order to overcome the limits of the external world and his internal needs insult Christ. He was mundane to the core. But he refused to accept the limitations the world wishes to place on all of us.

The story of Christ ends with the creation of a religion that demands we be like Christ, that we, too, understand that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us – it is the realization that we are in control of our own life destinies just as he controlled his own. This doesn’t mean that we should all kill ourselves to show love; we are not supposed to follow Christ’s lead as if he were creating a new set of limits for us – if we merely replace one set of limits for another, we fail to follow where Christ led. Instead, Christ demands that we think for ourselves, that we feel for ourselves, and that we never create for ourselves any idea of limits. Instead, we must create our own life goals and follow them.

Next: how does Christ show us how to ignore our preacher?