183: Existentialism is a Humanism

Hi, welcome to Classical Stuff. You should know a podcast about classical education, the classical world, old books, philosophy. We talked about a painting once. And a door.

And we talked about a door. No, multiple doors. Multiple doors. Multiple episodes on doors.

Yes. So, you know, that's our vibe. And so, yeah. It's a hell or whatever it's called.

We are three guys who love reading. Oh. Oh. We love doors.

We also love doors. Going through them, closing them, opening them to you, the listeners. Go. Yeah.

Anyway, my name is Graham Donaldson, and I am joined with, I'm joined by AJ Hanberg. That's me. And Thomas Megbee. Hello.

And today we are talking about my favorite existentialism. If you could sound a little less, either less or less miserable. No, you're right. That's not fair.

No. AJ is talking about it. I've never read Thomas. Have you read this before?

Thomas is Reddit because Thomas is speech-related. It was originally a lecture. Yeah. And this is sort of, I don't know if this fits under a, we have a couple of episodes on existentialist thought before you did an episode on Cam.

We did the Stranger. And then we did the mythicistifice, which is, Cam who's, why should I not commit suicide? And then we did a cure for your episode. And we did a cure for your episode.

Which is fitting in an Ura. Yeah. Well, is it my turn to do an existentialism episode? You want to take over?

Yeah. I have notes. Do I have notes? No, I'll use my own notes.

Yeah. That's not fair. You don't have to, but you can just will it into existence. Yeah, exactly.

Because all episodes are meaningless anyway. That's whatever we make out of them. Yeah. That's a great point.

Anyway. It's the point is that you make them. The point is that I endeavor to try to make a good episode because the essence of the episode precedes no, the existence of the episode precedes its essence. I forget that.

No, no. No, no. That's not what a cert or use is. Humans are different.

The podcast is entirely. I did some research boys. Oh my gosh. So let me take you on a journey listener on me trying to figure out what to do for this episode.

So first I saw the sausages made. Yeah. I thought, hey, why don't I read some sartre. That'll be fun.

So I started reading nausea and hoo boy. It was a whole thing. So I said maybe we'll do something else. So I started reading Marco Polo, the adventures Marco Polo, which I will say the first couple chapters are great.

They describe Marco Polo's adventures in the east. And then after that is almost a. Did they find him in the pool? Actually find him?

No, then I never did. Yeah. Anyway, after that it's just a recounting of the cities that he passed through and how they're governed and like their landmarks and stuff. And that I think gets pretty, pretty home for a podcast.

I did an entire episode on Herodotus and Egypt and that's exactly what he did. So look. But yours had water horses. I thought water horses.

That's exactly right. So I thought maybe not this. And then I started working on my unicorn episode, the one on Jengass Khan. And that's, I'm still working on it.

So you're still working on it? Yeah. It's just a really, it's a lot to wrap your head around because they name a lot of names and don't make the genealogies very clear. And so for me to really nail down everything that's happening, it's going to be a big project.

So I worked on that and then I thought maybe we'll do waiting for Godot. And I read waiting for Godot last night actually. It's a wonderful play. But the very conceit of the play is that nothing happens.

And I thought maybe impossible to play out of the podcast out of this because the plot will take roughly two minutes to recount. And basically someone said it best when they said it's a play in which nothing happens twice. There's a part one where nothing happens, then there's a part two where nothing happens. And it's a play based on absurdism, right?

That we are confronted with our lack of meaning, right? They're just waiting. They're two characters, right? There's actually four.

So there's two main ones, Vladimir, who goes, they call him D.D.D. And then Estragon, who goes by GoGo. And then there's two other characters that show up lucky, who is a servant with a rope around his neck and then his possessor, Pozo. Why don't we just do a reading of that?

I mean, we could if sometimes we want to do a double episode where it's a reading. That would be actually, I think, a fantastic couple episodes. It's a Grimden episode that was primarily him reading Wasteland. There was commentary also, but probably three fourths of it was the reading of the poem.

Yeah, I don't know if that was one of our heavy-hater episodes. But this one would be a real joy, I think, to have Reg. Your episode was very good. So it was all a real joy.

We're trying to make good episodes now. Oh, that really was the turning point of the podcast. I mean, that was like the bottom. I don't think it was that bad.

I thought it was fun. I thought maybe where I described doors for 45 minutes. The one we get made fun of when people email us, it's always about the painting. It's always the last judgment is the one that people laugh at.

But the last judgment was so good. It was a great episode. But it's that and Euclid and the door ones. We need to watch it on YouTube because we show the pictures.

You know what I mean? Yeah, the door's one was granted it was a little rough. Okay, so anyway, let me pretty much full circle all the way back to absurdism and by offshoot existentialism. So I ended up back with Jean-Paul Sartre and thought I'd shoot for an essay or an essay that is based on a lecture he did called existentialism is a humanism in which he tries to answer some of the, I don't know, objections that people have about existentialism and explain existentialism in general because it seems like a lot of people don't really know what it is.

People talk about their existentialist crisis all the time and I've had students say it when really what they mean is. I'm stressed. I'm stressed. I'm stressed.

I'm stressed. And they don't know what an existential crisis is. Like what that actually means. And I've used the word admittedly and much to my shame, not fully understanding what existentialism is.

And it's something we throw around at paintings and art and all kinds of things. When what we mean is this person appears to have a lot of feelings and angst. And I think part of that comes from a lot of the language around existentialism. These words like anguish and despair and abandonment and angst.

All of those things are in there but they don't necessarily mean the things we do. And so we attach anything that has to do with those words, angst and abandonment to existentialism. And I think that that's probably an unfair equation, right? It's not okay to equivocate those things.

Yeah. We'll get into it later. I view this as essentially if you are in any way interested in existentialism, you can either get at what it is by reading works of existentialism or just read that. Like I think this is the best introduction to what existentialism is.

It's as straightforward as this philosophy gets. It is nothing. It's not hidden in a story. It's like upfront.

This is what the worldview is. And he compares it to other alternatives. And I forget how long the lecture is. Oh, it's short.

You can read it in a couple hours. Two and a half. So the same way that you're episode a while ago on the Communist Manifesto. If like you're interested in what communism is, go read the Manifesto.

It's really short. It's condensed. That's what existentialism is. It's the most condensed version of what is existentialism actually.

Yeah. I found it to be like refreshingly straightforward compared to some of the existentialist reading you can do, which kind of veils the worldview in a character. Or compared to like the Kierkegaard stuff we talked about before. You'll get kind of lost in what he's trying to say.

This is just like a straightforward. This is what we think. And here's me answering some of the objections that other people have brought up. So Donaldson has not a fan of existentialism.

What are your biggest things? Maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe I had the wrong definition of it in my whole life. I don't think so.

I don't think so. I think maybe your beefs are the beefs that most people have. So name one or two of your beefs with existentialism. And really quick.

It's almost a quiz show. But since Thomas Arden is familiar with the essay, what is existentialism? Yes, me? Yeah.

A philosophy that puts your being at the center of it, Zephyr? That's interesting. Your will is, I'm getting confused with Nietzsche. But the important actions that one does is your willpower and your consent to existence.

Or your rebellion against it. OK, so rebellion against existence with existence being important. Or consent to existence and saying like, I know it's a matrix, but I choose to keep the stake anyway. Like that kind of thing.

OK, so plunging yourself into the matrix. It's pretty good. You're not asking me about the answer anyway. So if I can preface my bad answer, there are only two things that have stuck with me from the essay.

I don't know if you'll actually talk about these. One of them is the phrase existence precedes essence. And then the other one is his story about a restaurant waiter and figuring out what to do in the face of, I think, whether to go to war or not. I'm sure I'm getting details wrong.

Yeah, close. Those two things are definitely in there. So then, so that first one then is what I remember of how he talks about this view. It's the existentialism is the view that existence precedes essence.

What does that mean? It means that you are before you have any meaning. So whereas a Christian perspective, he contrasts it with, I don't know if I'm jumping ahead or if I'm getting it all wrong. But like in a traditionally religious view, essence precedes existence.

You have some type of being. You have some type of definition of what it is to be human before you're born. And then you're born and then you kind of like live into that essence. Whereas under existentialism, you are born, but there's nothing before you, obligating you to do one thing or another.

You must figure that out for yourself. Your existence, your, I breathe and I turn oxygen into carbon dioxide happens before. There's a meaning to why do I turn oxygen into carbon dioxide? And then your goal or the pleasure of existence is your ability to figure that out or forge it for yourself.

I would assume he says that. All I remember is that part of the distinction between others is others say you have an essence before, existentialism says you don't have an essence before. Or you don't have an essence before that dictates how you must live your life. Yeah, that's a pretty good definition.

Okay, so based on these, and audience don't worry, I'm going to clarify all of these things once we get into the essays. I'm just trying to get the feel of two educated mental existentialism is before we dive in. So what are your beefs with the philosophy? What makes you so cranky about it, Donaldson?

You don't. Donaldson, why are you so cranky? Why am I so cranky? The beef is, well one is sort of an observation is, okay, if we are all, if there's existence precedes essence and we're all sort of thrown to this world carte blanche, then how come so many people end up having the same conclusions about right and wrong and good and bad and these kinds of things?

So like that's more of like a logical question or that's like maybe an anthropological question. So one of the beefs is if we define our reality, then how is it that we can have something, we can have something like where the appendix to the abolition of man, Louis talks about the Tao and he says look at all these different cultures who are separated by time and space and language, but are saying relatively general, generally similar, not word for word and not completely synonymous idea for idea, but relatively similar concepts about what human beings prefer and want and have in society. Like the betrayal of friends, right? And so the first beef is sort of like a challenge, a question of like what the anthropological, how would an existentialist sort of answer that observation?

And maybe they have one. The other beef is that it always to me feels like it is an intellectualizing veneer for somebody just to be a punk and not be nice to his mother because he doesn't have to. Because he has no obligation to do it. He wants to be, if he wants to do it, he'll do it because he wants to.

And if he doesn't, it's really just like a complete abandonment to the appetites is my beef with it. Okay, abandonment to the appetites. We're in this down. I'm right now.

I'm going to see if it gets answered. You're the one leading the episode. Why are you taking notes? I feel like we should be taking notes.

Well, I'm hoping that these questions will get answered eventually. And if these are different than the ones he actually brings up. So his lecture that he gave was intended to answer the common objections to exist. Oh, do you want to give yours?

Sorry. Yeah, I don't have the views. My general view is that all ideologies, all philosophies come out of some fundamental truth. I don't think people are fundamentally deluded when they come up with, this is not a beef that I have.

This is just my comment on fair mindedness and listening to people. So I think existentialism gets at something true, but in the same way that we talked about stoicism, it might overemphasize the point that it has to make that. We do have an obligation to make something of our lives, to make something of our birth, and that's not something that's just given to us. So I guess if I have a beef, it's to say it overemphasizes whatever that one thing is.

But I still think there's some fundamental truth to it of there's an anxiety to living. Is my life meaningful? Does it put bounds on that though? Does it say like there are certain things that one ought not do with one's life, even if you've gone into it like full blood?

It does. It does put bounds, although the bounds are strangely established. I definitely don't remember the bounds. I do remember when we talked about your, which one did you say was the one about suicide?

Absurdism. No, it's just that one ends up taking a moral stance, but doesn't really have a foundation for moral stance. It's is rebellion against the absurdity of life lends life its grand nobility. But where do you get your definition of nobility?

Like because if life is completely absurd and there's meaninglessness, then nothing is just wrong. And it doesn't matter what you do. So some point on just like how I do all these things is probably something core at the center of it that is a true thing. So positive, but the negative is that it's overemphasized to the point of saying this is the all-encompassing one thing.

When in fact, you know, I derive great joy from my social relationships, which put obligation on me, which would contradict some piece of existentialism. As I understand it, again, you've read this more recently. Okay, great. Is it like codified a cedia?

Let's dive in. So I think we enough of the preamble. So the objections that he is attempting to answer, there are four that I could glean from this essay. And remember, audience, I'm not, you know, I know philosophy professors, so this is my basic understanding here.

So objection number one that exists existentialism encourages people to remain in a state of quietism and despair, basically finding meaning in a contemplative, resigned philosophy. Right? If all solutions are barred, then we have to regard any action in this world as feudal. And so at least we arrive at a contemplative philosophy, right?

Doing things don't matter. And so we are plunged into thinking a lot, which is bourgeois, right? That's a bourgeois luxury. It's luxurious to sit and think all the time.

And so that is one of the things that the communists would always say about existentialism is you end up being just a thinker on a log and because, you know, doing stuff doesn't accomplish anything. My association is almost the exact opposite in that existentialism is so focused on the creation or the doing of something. I can see why they would say that, but I can now just see that more with like a stoicism. Okay, we'll get there.

So objection number two that emphasizes what is despicable and abominable about humanity for exposing all that is sort of suspicious and base while ignoring beauty and the brighter side of human nature. That's what I agree with. So focus is on negative. It's very dark.

Or that doesn't produce beauty. Okay. So that's number two. Number three is that it overlooks humanity's solidarity, right?

You are alone. And it considers man an isolated being. So we are cut off from our neighbor, right? Is another one of the objections?

That's a part of what I view as the negative of it. Okay. And then number four for denying the validity and reality of human enterprise. Four in as much as we choose to ignore God's commandments and all eternal values, all that remains is strictly gratuitous.

We can do whatever we please and are incapable of finding fault within the points of view of or actions of others. So it basically precludes judgment. We can never judge others based on what they are doing, right? Because we don't have an appeal to some sort of standing.

Exactly. If you are creating all your meaning, then why were you to say that your body is wrong? So those are the four that he is going to attempt to answer with this. I think, from my own opinion, some more successfully and some less.

Is he missing anything in any of your opinion? Well, I think some of yours have gone unanswered. So we'll come back around to your objections after we answer these four. And I think some of these four, like some of your objections are answered in this four.

And then I think some of your other objections are less well accounted for. Okay. So let's get into it so that he thinks he's answered all of Graham's responses, right? I don't think so.

I'm not sure. I think some have gone entirely unaddressed. And full disclosure, Sartre later in his life said he even disagreed with some of the points of view put forward here. Like his point of view developed.

But I don't know that there is any more succinct expression of what existentialism is. I still think it's a great read for any of our listeners. Okay. So one retort.

Well, let's start with what existentialism is, right? So existentialism is, and Thomas, you were pretty close, existence precedes essence, or if you prefer, and some of these are direct quotes, that subjectivity must be our point of departure. And he actually does a really good job of giving you a concrete example of this. So say, Mr.

Allison, you are a, you are a, you make stuff, right? You run a little hardware store and you want to make for yourself a hammer, right? You can see the hammer. You can see the hammer.

You can see if it's purpose. You know what the handle is going to look like. You know what it's going to look like. You know what it's supposed to do at the end.

So as you make this hammer, right? You know what its essence is. You know what it is going to be. There's a plan, right?

And how well you execute that plan is kind of up to your skill. But once it is done, the essence of the hammer has, has preceded the existence of the hammer, right? So for objects that are planning created, that is true, right? Their essence, what they are going to be or what they are meant for, comes before.

He says with humanity, this does not happen, right? Because, and this is, he's not- He's not a risk to tell you. Yeah, he is coming from, and that's just the thing is like the whole notion of Plato's world of forms is upended. There is no form from- The idea of a telos of a human person.

Yes, there is no telos, there's no anything, there's no plan. Right. And you exist because humans are the ones who give meaning, right? We are the ones who give meaning to the things around us.

We name things hammers. We are the ones bestowing meaning on stuff. And more than that, he is an atheist. There are Christian existentialists and we'll get to how they fit in later.

But he says if there is no God- With Kiergard being one of them. Kiergard is one of them and he says even if God were proven true, existentialism would still be a reasonable starting point. You talk to a Christian existentialist in this- In this, yeah, later. He'll talk about how they fit in.

Yeah. So he says even if God exists, that's fine. But he assumes that God doesn't. And so because God does not exist, there is no one making a plan for humanity before man is made.

Right. We sort of pop onto the scene. And we're the smartest. We got the biggest brains around it.

So we are the ones bestowing meaning on everything else. You come into the world, right? You've popped into existence. And what you do with yourself, your nature is up to you.

It is subjective and that you are the one that decides it. Right. So you have to find your own meaning. You have to determine your own morality.

You have to determine your own standpoint. All of that stuff comes after you are in the world. Right. There's nothing that will tell you what your plan is.

And even if it does, you are the one that has to decide where that voice is coming from and is it when you want to listen to. Right. So your existence, right. You being in the world precedes any essence that you have.

And he actually uses the words human nature. Okay. So let me read a couple of quotes. He says, what do we mean by here by existence precedes essence?

We mean that man first exists. He materializes in the world, encounters himself, and only afterward defines himself. Later, he says, thus there is no human nature since there is no God to conceive of it. Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be.

And since he conceives of himself only after he exists, just as he wills himself to be after being thrown into existence, man is nothing other than what he makes of himself. This is the first principle of existentialism. Okay. Thoughts so far?

Makes sense. Again, I think the meaning making of every human has to figure that out for themselves. I think is the stereotype of existentialism. I don't think it's what we mean by existential crises.

I don't know if you're coming back to that kind of the preface that you had. We can talk about that when we get back to how that connects to how people use the word today. But yeah, I think that's kind of the what I think that's a common way. It's well down.

Are there other parts to existentialism that he goes through? I mean, that's the that's the he does stretch it out a little bit. But I mean that is the core. That is the core of existentialism.

You exist and then any meaning in your life is determined by you and granted there might be other sources that can tell you what man should look like. You are the one who accepts those sources or not. Right. So yeah.

Also, does it so is there other any examples and they wouldn't have called it this, but are there any examples of this mode of thinking in the ancient world? Are there ancient existentialists? Because this argument seems to be saying like an individual person sort of invents it after he exists. And I'm wondering if he thinks that that's also true of culture.

Like if you go all the way back to the beginning, is it all something that is made up? Because you know, if you no matter how far back you go in written descriptions about human human existence and where we come from creation myths and all that, even all of those stories are written as if they are sort of finally getting around to it after those stories have existed before them. Right? Like the the any sort of creation myths where they're talking about where human beings have come from have always been with the flavor of like this is this is a thing we've known for a long time and now I'm running it down for us.

Yeah. And I was thinking maybe stoicism is close, but it's really not stoicism. I was in almost the opposite. You have to sort of submit to what to almost it's almost more objectively you have to submit to what objective reality is and like deal with it.

Yeah. The the notion that there are eternal immutable things, a priori things like goodness and evil and truth and beauty and all of these things are are things that meaning that we find and therefore we exist before it's ever in the world. And so the the language and viewpoint of most of the ancients was that there are some things that are eternal and incontrovertible and you cannot undo them and it's how to best adhere to them or deal with them and what things fit into what categories are. Most of it is not we make it all up.

Right. I guess the thought that I have is it always just feels like a weird argument for Sartre to say everybody before existentialists were basing their views of who they were on some kind of elaborate lie or some sort of received tradition and received story to make themselves comfortable. But I'm the person that has like the balls enough to say that those are all fake and it's all just you're it's all about you doing it yourself. Right?

Like the the the beef is that how come it took humanity so long to figure out what Sartre figured out atheism for most of human history. We have we've been adherence to some sort of divine law. I mean even I mean we're talking I'm not talking about Christianity which is was the primary viewpoint for most of the Middle Ages at least in the Western sphere. But we also have Islam we have this is true of anything.

There's Eastern religions like almost everywhere or even animalistic tribal religions. Right? Exactly. There is always some element of divinity and when when in the Enlightenment man was like you know what we can just do without God entirely that is where we had to deal with the philosophical ramifications of no divine there is no eternal to adhere to.

There's nobody making a plan. What do you do in the face of that? And this is this is the genesis of existentialism, absurdism. It seems to be to me to be coming from all of that.

Yeah. And we had we had atheist philosophers in antiquity. That's a good question. I think there are a few there are a few that say that there is no is no God to know.

I mean I'm thinking of Siddhartha Gattamabuda Buddha didn't believe he said if there are gods we cannot know them. He's actually like Gnostic spiritual room. Who's a guy that said you can't step in the same river twice? Her.

Yeah. I feel like he was atheist. But anyway I guess my point being like so Sartre just thinks that everybody leading up to this was fooled. Okay.

I'm not going to get too far into that because we're going to bring in our cleats just so I say that. Not in the same river twice. Sorry just to say one thing. Anyone fit into this mold who essentially any of the great philosophical minds couldn't Sartre just take and say they had to receive something as true and then make that choice to follow with themselves.

Like you're asking who's existentialist Sartre because everyone is existentialist because they know they're going to die. They have to choose what to do in the face of death. And some of them choose to become great. And that's what I associate with existentialism that like pursuit of the best of whatever the thing you go after.

Yeah. So we are like you guys are fine. We can if you guys would like we can talk about how it fits in. But I feel like I should lay more ground where before we talk about how everybody else has to answer the same question the gram was before.

But you are you are absolutely right. That he would say yeah those guys didn't make choices but they had to do the same thing everybody else has to do. And just like you said they pop into existence they have to make choices and they have to figure out what voices to listen to their existence preceded their essence just as your existence precedes yours. Right.

Okay. Okay. We'll come back to that question. Okay.

So let's do a couple more definition. What does subjectivism mean? He says every human's viewpoint begins with subjectivism. To look back at his definition subjectivity must be our point of departure.

So what is that? Well he gives a definition. Subjectivism means on the one hand the freedom of the individual subject to choose what he will be. And on the other hand, on the other hand, on the other hand, man's inability to transcend human subjectivity.

The fundamental meaning of existentialism resides in the latter. When we say that man chooses himself not only do we mean that each of us must choose himself but also that in choosing himself he chooses for all men. In fact, in creating the man each of us wills ourselves to be. There's not a single one of our actions that does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be.

Choosing to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose. Because we can never choose evil, right? We always choose the good and nothing can be good for any of us unless it is good for all. So this is almost reminiscent of Kant's, what we call it, the universal imperative.

Basically what you choose, you are making a statement that this is good for all men. Right. We cannot transcend human subjectivity. You have to choose what you are.

And when you choose what you are, you are basically expressing to everyone around you. This is what everyone should be. And I'm not saying like if I choose to be a carpenter, everyone has to be a carpenter. Obviously society couldn't hold up.

But I think these are moral choices. You can choose to be a hardworking carpenter. And in that you are saying everyone should be hardworking. Just like me.

Right. You can choose to be a lazy bum that thinks hard work is a sham. You are saying that everyone should think hard work is a sham because it is a sham. Right.

That is the quote unquote good you have chosen. Right. There's no such thing as good or evil except as you will it. So when you will you are telling everybody what's good.

And this is one of those ways that he gets around the makes every man an island. Every time you make a choice, you are reaching out to everyone around you. Not just making a choice for yourself but making a choice about what all men should be. What about the experience of people for whom they hate their decisions and are trapped by them and continue to do them but hate them and would never wish their conclusions on anybody else.

But they're so far in the habit or the vice or whatever that and they can't get out of it. I'm not talking about even chemical addiction. Everybody has that experience of you don't want to do the thing but you do the thing and you know that the thing is you wouldn't wish this on anybody else but for whatever reason it's a vice that you have. He would say that that experience doesn't exist or he would say that deep down they're actually really willing it.

I would say the latter. He actually says if you are a coward it's because you have acted as a coward. You have made yourself that. There's no human nature that made you choose this.

There's no like there's a human condition. There's no human nature. You have made yourself the way you are. If you continue to choose those things it's because you have willed.

Deep down in your core there's a will that is saying I choose this. That's the story. Although I think your argument does seem to hold a bit of weight. What about those people who are deep in addiction?

We couldn't bring the chemical part into it where the person who just can't get off heroin who never would want anybody to be on heroin but that's not even what I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of even more like the person who in a social situation can't just stop lying or bragging but is disgusted at himself when he does it and doesn't like the kinds of people and doesn't like the kind of person that he is that still does the thing. Like, Sartre would just say he's choosing this and he's stronger than he thinks he is. And that's actually how he talks about one of the answers one of the things is existentialism, boomy and gloomy and hopeless.

He says no. In fact we are optimistic. Some of the people that say ah the world is the way and I actually skipped over this part because they are only opposite when they're young. Lucky it came out but he said a lot of people say don't kick against the goat.

You know you're looking for eternal life you'll never find it. You poke cows with it. You kick against the goat is trying to go against an unstoppable force. You submit to the government that sort of thing.

He says no. You make of this world what you want it to be. And I think he would say to the person who is in addiction he's like I am optimistic. You can get yourself out of this if you really want to make the effort.

It's like a Nike commercial. Yeah kinda. Maybe Nike is the first real existentialist brand. Just kind of do it.

No but I mean like this because it's very flattering to have somebody say that you have complete autonomous control over your your moral choices. It's empowering. I guess it's optimistic. That's what he's saying.

It's a philosophy of optimism. It's a philosophy of optimism. It's not correct. If it's not correct then it's sugar coated.

I can see that. Any moral failure is then you were fault. He actually says that directly later. I think that will come up in a quote I'm about to read.

First what does anguish mean? People say they use all these words. He's going to define those for us. And so here is anguish.

He's already done subject to subjectivism. He's done existentialism. Here's what here's what they mean by anguish. So this is what they mean.

End quote. A man who commits himself and who realizes that he is not only the individual that he chooses to be but also a legislator choosing at the same time what humanity as a whole should be. He cannot help but be aware of his own full and profound responsibility. True many people do not appear especially anguished but we maintain that they are merely hiding their anguish or trying not to face it.

So they're avoiding their responsibility for choosing what is right for all men. And he says okay what if what's more would ask what would happen if everyone did what I'm doing. The only way to evade that disturbing thought is through some kind of bad faith. Someone who lies to himself and excuses himself by saying everyone doesn't act that way.

Is struggling with a bad conscience. For the act of lying implies attributing a universal value to lies. So if you're like yeah but everybody doesn't act this way. I can do whatever I want to.

You are trying to weasel out of the universal imperative. Right? That what you choose you are trying. You are essentially saying it is good for all men.

And that is what the anguish is. And I think I took away his I didn't read this quote but he essentially talks about he equates it to a general. You are going to have to make decisions for your men. Right?

About what is right? What is wrong. And some of those orders come down to you from above but in that case you have to interpret them. You have to make decisions about who goes.

How they are put in danger. Where they are put in danger. And those choices should cause you anguish as a general. Like for the lives of all these people.

And so as you choose your own life in this world that is the anguish that you feel. The anguish of being absolutely responsible not only for your world but for the moral choices of all men. Right? It is almost like anguish maybe is the right wrong word for it.

It is a to steal a term from C.S. Lewis. It is the weight of glory. It is knowing that you are making these really weighty decisions.

That is the anguish he's talking about. It is not just generally feeling bad that the world is doing in gloomy. It is the weight of decision making. What if your general doesn't care?

Then you are saying all people don't care. And that is a horrible anguish that you feel. But there is no judgment that we can place upon him. Judgments coming.

Yeah. Sure is. Yeah. Okay.

And he also gives the example of Abraham. Right? He got in order from God to sacrifice his child. But he had to make choices when that voice came down.

Was it really an angel? Was it really the voice of God? Is he the kind of guy who is going to make that choice? Is that commensurate with a God who is generally merciful?

He has got all these weird choices to make. But he still has to make them. There is still a subjectivity there. Okay.

Let's go and define abandonment. Abandonment means God doesn't exist. Right? And we bear the full consequence of that.

We are abandoned. That's what he means by that. Okay. Let's see.

So he talks about how when God was originally done away with quote unquote, he, the philosophers of that age are like, we essentially need to fight to reestablish the Eternals because we would still like to have society. Right? So we're going to do away with God but still keep all the morals. Right?

We can still have the same standards of honesty, progress and humanism. And we will have turned God into an obsolete hypothesis that will die quietly out on its own. He says existentialists on the other hand find it extremely disturbing that God no longer exists. For long with his disappearance goes the possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven.

There could no longer be any a priori good since there would be no infinite and perfect consciousness to conceive of it. So we have to deal with that abandonment. And here is where the story of your guy comes in. Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. I forget. He's a student of his. So he comes and he's looking for advice.

And so this student is in a weird position. He's he's seeing the deaths of his countrymen and he feels compelled to go to war. But he I think it was his brother and his father who got killed. And so his mother is she's got only him left.

Right. And so he has to choose between staying with his mother and being her only comfort or leaving his mother risking his own death and going and fighting on the front lines, which he sees as not only helping his country and a universal moral good, but avenging the deaths of his brother and father. Now he knows he could get way late. Once he gets there, he gets stuck in a paper pushing job.

He could be stuck in a desk. No vengeance to be had. He might not even be very helpful. He could get there day one and die.

He knows that. And in so doing he would abandon his mother. But if he stays with his mom, he's abandoning his man. Sartre points out that there is no real good guidance for this.

Even if we apply appeal to Kant, who says, you must make the choice that all men would make and never treat man as a means rather than an end. In both situations, you are treating one group of people as a means and the other as an end. Right. If he stays with his mom, he's treating his mom as an end.

But his countrymen is a means to allow him to stay. Right. If he leaves and goes with countrymen, he's treating his countrymen as an end. And the anguish of his mom kind of as a means to get there, I guess.

So he tries to bring in a Christian perspective and he quotes one Bible verse and he's like, this tells us nothing about how to approach this issue. Yeah. His point is there's nothing in scripture that points us out to us. There is nothing that tells him exactly what to do in the situation.

He has to make the choices. Right. And so there is the only thing he can do is appeal to his own instincts, make his own choices. And even in talking to...

Wait, wait, wait. He's what? Ah, you caught it. Instinct.

He says he appeals to your own instincts. We'll come back to that. Nice catch. And that's the only thing he can do.

And even in appealing to Sartre for guidance, he's already made a choice. He knows what kind of advice Sartre's going to give. I mean, anyone that's starting under Sartre knows exactly what kind of advice he's going to give. It's like, do we want...

Make the choice you're doing, Don? That's the advice that's going to come. You are free. Make the choice that appeals to your own freedom.

Go for it, bud. And that's it. But there is our abandonment. We are in a situation where that's it.

Right? So despair, definition of despair. Very simple meaning. It says, quote, that we must limit ourselves to reckoning only with those things that depend on our will or on the set of probabilities that enable action.

So we are doing only the things that we can will. So we cannot live for hope. We cannot appeal to God. We cannot appeal to anything else, our dreams.

We can appeal to those things which are actualized by our will and that only. Right? It's not about optimism. Right?

We are the sum of our own actions and nothing more in this life. Right? And I will quote, let's see. In view of this, we can clearly understand why our doctrine horrifies many people, for they often have no other way of putting up with their misery than to think circumstances have been against me.

I deserve a much better life than the one I have. Admittedly, I've never experienced a great love or extraordinary friendship, but that's because I never met a man or woman worthy of it. If I've written no great books, it's because I never had the leisure to do so. If I have no children to whom I could devote myself, it's because I didn't find a man with whom I could share my life.

So I have within me a host of untried, but perfectly viable abilities and clinicians and possibilities that endow me with worthiness not evident from any examination of my past actions. In reality, however, for existentialists, there is no love other than the deeds of love, no potential for love other than that which is manifested in loving. There is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. The genius of prus, prus, prus resides in the totality of his works.

The genius of... Prus. You must pronounce this as my calling on Faust. Faust and Proust is not right.

And then Proust. People tell me and I can never remember which it is. Hold on, this is gonna hold on. You keep going.

You keep going. It's found in a series of tragedies outside of which there is nothing. And this is where I wrote down. If you're a coward, it's not your temperament in that way.

It's your own actions. Right? That is despair. The despair is that you have no outside thing to appeal to other than yourself.

You're known to blame yourself. Exactly. No one to blame yourself. And that is despair.

What is it? I stand corrected by the animated... The lady on the internet. Okay.

So a few last notes. And then we can talk about your guys' objections and my own thoughts. So he also says that this is one of the only philosophies that maintain human dignity. We become an actor rather than a subject.

Right? We are not subject to anybody else's will but our own. Right? It is a...

It is reminiscent almost of absurdism where it lends sort of a romantic feeling to life. You are what you will yourself to be. It's undefined to be a subject. That's an assumption I think that he makes.

He also says that you cannot be anything unless you are sort of recognized by another. Right? Through others is how I have sort of knowledge of myself. And so it isn't a lonely philosophy.

And you are talking... Whenever you make a choice, you're making a choice for all men. And there is no universal essence comprising your nature. But we do have a condition.

Like, we will die. Right? There are things common in all men. And he also says, because there is a universality of experience, this one I found weird.

So any man is capable of understanding any human project. This should not be taken to mean that a certain project defines man forever but that it can be reinvented again and again. Given sufficient information, one can always find a way to understand an idiot, a child, a person from a so-called primitive culture, or a foreigner. Right?