Today we live in a society heavily influenced by the philosophy of
existentialism. A society that believes primarily you alone are fully responsible
for shaping your identity, purpose, and the future you want in life.
We alone get to define who we are and what matters most in our lives. But, if you’re not the person
you want to be and you’re not living the life you want, you have only yourself to blame.
Today, 21st-century scientific research questioning if we really
can be authors of our own life.
Studies into genetics, neuroscience, are indicating we may not have nearly as much
control over our lives and who we are as previously thought. Science is indicating
we may not have what we think of as traditional free will at all.
Does the philosophy of existentialism still make
sense today or does western culture need a new philosophy of meaning and purpose?
Before answering this, let’s do a very quick overview of what
existentialism is and the issues it faces today.
Existentialism dates back to the 19th-century Danish philosopher
Sorin Keirgigard. existentialists believe that the world intrinsically has no objective meaning,
however, through a combination of free will, awareness, and personality responsibility,
we can create our own subjective meaning that’s real.
The term existentialism itself comes from 20th-century philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre,
who is considered to be its central figure.
The basis of Sartre’s existentialism is the phrase ‘existence precedes essence,’
meaning no general account of what it means to be human can be given,
and that meaning can only be decided and constructed through living, or existence itself.
…If God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence,
a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept,
and that this being is man, or as Heidegger says, human reality”
Not only do we get to shape our essence and destiny, but we have a responsibility to do so,
Sartre wrote. If we choose not to pursue meaning and shape our own lives, we live with what he
calls ‘bad faith’. Bad Faith is a phenomenon of accepting that our essence is fixed a certain
way by refusing to pursue alternative options. Simply put, if you don’t have a meaningful life
with sound well-being. It’s primarily your fault since it’s your responsibility alone
to accomplish this. —’
Since Sartre’s writings in the 1940’s more and more scientific studies have emerged
that suggest that we have little say in shaping our identities and our futures.
For example, the field of genetics is finding our genes predispose us to things like mental
health issues, how long we age, our I.Q., how impulsive we are. Genes even contribute to
day-to-day choices we make, like which friends to hang out with or if we become religious.
That means if you are diagnosed with a life-altering condition you can’t control,
like schizophrenia, autism, or for that matter, psychopathy,
you had little to no say in that happening.
Now, you’ve probably heard scientists argue back that our environment and upbringing is
more responsible for the behavior or (nurture) for our actions than our genetics (or nature).
There’s an entirely new branch of science within genetics called epigenetics, which shows how
gene expressions can change throughout one’s life because of the environment one lives in.
However, the nature vs. nurture debate adds little to the argument for our
free will and the manual creation of our identity. After all, on both accounts,
our actions and decisions are still greatly if not fully influenced by outside sources.
An increasing number of scientists and philosophers accept that we
are fully without libertarian free will.
Studies in physics throughout the century appear to indicate
live in a fully deterministic universe, a philosophical topic called causal determinism,
in which each prior event causes the next, whether these events are predictable or not.
If that’s the cause then our thoughts,
actions, and behaviors are fully influenced by prior circumstances.
The philosopher Galen Strawson gives this
a priori argument as to why human behavior is deterministic then:
if one is responsible for what one does in a given situation, then one must be responsible
for the way one is in certain mental respects. But it is impossible for one to be responsible
for the way one is in any respect. This is because to be responsible in some situation
S, one must have been responsible for the way one was at S−1. To be responsible for
the way one was at S−1, one must have been responsible for the way one was at S−2,
and so on. At some point in the chain, there must have been an act of origination of a new
causal chain. But this is impossible. Man cannot create himself or his mental states ex nihilo.
Compatibilism, the philosophy that traditional,
libertarian free will can coexist with causal determinism, has yet to yield a persuasive and
coherent argument that free will as we know it can exist in a deterministic universe.
Even if one doesn’t fully accept that deterministic factors totally bind human behavior,
it’s hard to ignore the increasing external environmental factors that are limiting the
freedom to author our own destiny. There’s the internet with manipulative distractions and big
data, the climate crisis, the increasing wealth and power gap between the top 1% of individuals
and the rest of society, erose of individual liberties and rise of statehood, and much more.
Now, existentialist philosophers agree there are some hindrances to the creation of our
being or essence, something they call facticity. Facticity means there are
objective facts about the external world, like where we’re born, the natural laws,
our height or weight, we can’t change but our consciousness can respond to.
But, the core of existentialism and Sartre’s writings in Being and Nothingness assume consciousness
and free will are still independent of any facticity.
However, most researchers today believe consciousness is mostly, if not fully,
generated from physical processes in the brain, which means consciousness should be
included in facticity. If a surgeon removes part of your brain responsible for critical thinking,
you’re not going to be able to live freely.
If you have a genetic or mental disorder, for instance,
simply willing yourself to overcome it appears to be physically and biologically impossible.
As stated above, we’re all wired with certain genetic predispositions and surrounded by
uncontrollable environmental factors that directly affect how we behave and who we are in the world.
So, if we have little to no free will and research is suggesting
essence appears to precede existence, how are we responsible for shaping our lives
the way we fully desire? Or is existentialism now a dead and illogical philosophy?
Surely the existentialism of Nietzsche and Sartre no longer makes total sense.
It doesn’t appear that we’re a blank slate with libertarian free will
to carve out any identity and future as we please with simple motivation being
the only thing that separates us from achieving the meaning we want in life.
But if we don’t in some part to try to shape our identity,
future, and well-being who will? If we sit back and don’t try, outside
forces will certainly shape our identity and future for us to do what they want.
Forcing or fully relying on some sort of advanced technology or other people to
create the lives we personally want doesn’t seem like a feasible and practical strategy either.
It appears at least for now, we should probably try to do our best to create
a life full of meaning and well-being with what semblance of free will we have.
This coming with the understanding that if fail to achieve your dreams or carving out the life
you want it doesn’t make sense to punish yourself since much of it was already determined for you.
That would mean being an existentialist now appears to requires overcoming all genetic
predispositions, all thought cognitive and emotional thought processes, all environmental
factors early and current, to construct the identity the meaning we want in life.
So, the existentialism of Neitzche and Sartre isn’t fully dead or illogical,
but it needs to be redefined or even renamed for the 21st century.
Sartre pulled from older ideas of Kierkegaard and Neitzche to create his updated theory of meaning
to help people who were suffering post-WordWar II. Like Sartre, we should pull from his ideas
and form our own updated theory of meaning and well-being for this century and its problems.
Perhaps it starts, with understanding that ourselves and other people are in tough
situations not because of their own choosing, but many things far beyond their control.
We should start to have empathy for each other and ourselves that the situations we and others
are in, the things we do, and ideas we believe aren’t fully of our own doing.
Once we begin to accept this revised idea of what it means to be an existentialist and
create meaning, we can work to construct updated philosophies that better society
with higher well-being and more individual meaning and purpose for all.
Let me know what you think these philosophies should be and your thoughts on the current
state of being an existentialist and finding meaning in the 21st century.