A Perfect Example of Misunderstood Existentialism

I came across an article this morning that was written back in March, which turned out to be a perfect example of what causes the perpetual misunderstanding of existentialism. The author, Lynsey Hanley, of course starts off with one of the most overused and misunderstood quotes from Sartre: "Hell is other people."

Let me first start off by saying that Sartre did not mean that other people create a hellish world for me, or that I should go through life only caring about myself. On the contrary, Sartre explains that our awareness of ourselves is contingent on other people. Whenever I reflect on who I am, that reflection is not without my awareness of what others think me to be. Essentially, "hell is other people" means that no matter how much I want to be something, I can never fully be considered as such if another has an opposing view. In that type of situation, I am constantly struggling to find a medium between what I want to be and how I am perceived to be. With Sartre, one has to remember not to get caught up in his dramatic terminology, and instead pay close attention to what that terminology means, rather than what it implies.

Hanley continues by stating: "Being an existentialist requires being satisfied with the absurd and random nature of events, freeing you to create your own life in circumstances that aren't of your own making." Not so much. Being an existentialist does not require a satisfaction of the absurd, and I hesitate to even say that it requires an acknowledgment of the absurd. In Sartre, the absurdity of the world is used to portray the individual's ability to create meaning for oneself, since there is not essential meaning to begin with. In Camus, the absurd lies not in the individual or the world, but rather the individual seeking clarity in an irrational world. To Camus, the world is not necessarily without meaning, but he claims that if the world does have meaning, it transcends the individual's intelligence. One thing that people who are not familiar with the actual philosophy of Sartre, for instance, is that they do not realize that his philosophy is based on ontology, which is the study of being. It does not necessarily say that "one must do this in order to do that," rather it merely describes what is. To the existentialists, the absurd is, and there is no imperative that follows (i.e., be satisfied with). More importantly, the root of Sartre's philosophy is that you always have the freedom "to create your own life in circumstances that aren't of your own making," and being satisfied with the absurd is not a prerequisite.

"I'd like to be an existentialist in the sense of wanting to approach life as though I were a mind-body battering ram, but tend instead to hover at obstacles wondering what the best course of action would be from every possible angle, knowing really that there is no best or worst, simply what is, and must be, dealt with."

Hanley, I hate to tell you, but what you "prefer" is what existentialism actually is. In order to be able to "wonder what the best course of action would be from every possible angle, knowing really that there is not best or worst, simply what is," you must first realize that there are possibilities available to you, and that there is no choice that is better than another; either way, it is your choice.

Another confusion that Hanley states is: "At the centre of this philosophy is the insistence that, while you must think, there's a time when you have to act on what you've been thinking about," which is again, not the case. One point that is stressed by existentialists is that not choosing is still a choice. You can think all you want, but not acting is still a choice.

Her statement, "wanting cheap goods while blaming migrants for low wages, in spouting populist opinions and then berating politicians for the consequences of populist policies, in blaming cakes for obesity and guns for murder," is partly false. Bad faith is one's rejection of one's available choices and the freedom and responsibility of one to choose from amongst those choices. Hypocrisy is not bad faith, as long as one does not reject the choice of being a hypocrite being one's own, but blaming one's obesity on cakes and guns on murder is a semi-appropriate example, since it was up to one to eat the cake or pull the trigger on the gun.

"But here again my inner softy counsels caution. We can't reject the loop-like nature of how individual actions contribute to social effects, which in turn influence individual actions. You can't eat a hamburger by osmosis, but it would be stubborn to deny that capitalism has an interest in getting you to eat more of them than is healthy."

This, though, is bad faith. Our social circumstances do limit the choices available to us, but we still have the ability to choose. Eat your hamburger, Hanley, but don't blame it on anyone else.

Hanley then throws a curve ball into the mix, and I am not sure whether she is now a proponent of what she thinks is existentialism, or is against it: "There are some unfortunate proponents of the law of individual responsibility, who corrupt the essentially optimistic nature of existentialism."

Either way, her concluding paragraph just goes to show her naïveté as she oversimplifies Nietzsche and improperly attributes it to existentialism: "It's not so much that existentialist thinking can't be applied to life's moral greyscale. It's more that the problem with maintaining, or at least refusing to challenge, a popular political culture based on denial and hysteria is that it requires regarding people who are not like you as simultaneously less than human and superhuman. Only the deserving get to be simply human."

Nietzsche is considered an existentialist due to some of the views that he shares with the other existentialists, but his theory on the Übermensch is not one of them.

Thank you, Lynsey Hanley, for adding to the confusion and misunderstanding that plagues existentialism today.