This is not an intellectual game. Even if we know what is true – and we don’t – you cannot reduce life to a set of provable realities. Humanity is too complex for that. In the end, it comes down to whether the world would be a better place without religion; and that is a matter of judgment, not certainty.posted by veedubya (241 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
Is a car a crutch? Is a microwave a crutch? A remote control, direct deposit, air conditioning - are those things crutches?I don't know... Let's ask Urban Scout!
Most of those who are making use of this word would be highly confused if required to explain its meaning. For since it has become fashionable, people cheerfully declare that this musician or that painter is “existentialist.” A columnist in Clartes signs himself “The Existentialist,” and, indeed, the word is now so loosely applied to so many things that it no longer means anything at all. It would appear that, for the lack of any novel doctrine such as that of surrealism, all those who are eager to join in the latest scandal or movement now seize upon this philosophy in which, however, they can find nothing to their purpose. For in truth this is of all teachings the least scandalous and the most austere: it is intended strictly for technicians and philosophers. All the same, it can easily be defined.posted by nasreddin at 9:02 AM on September 2, 2007 [6 favorites]
The question is only complicated because there are two kinds of existentialists. There are, on the one hand, the Christians, amongst whom I shall name Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both professed Catholics; and on the other the existential atheists, amongst whom we must place Heidegger as well as the French existentialists and myself. What they have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence – or, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective.
[...]
The word humanism has two very different meanings. One may understand by humanism a theory which upholds man as the end-in-itself and as the supreme value. Humanism in this sense appears, for instance, in Cocteau’s story Round the World in 80 Hours, in which one of the characters declares, because he is flying over mountains in an airplane, “Man is magnificent!” This signifies that although I personally have not built aeroplanes, I have the benefit of those particular inventions and that I personally, being a man, can consider myself responsible for, and honoured by, achievements that are peculiar to some men. It is to assume that we can ascribe value to man according to the most distinguished deeds of certain men. That kind of humanism is absurd, for only the dog or the horse would be in a position to pronounce a general judgment upon man and declare that he is magnificent, which they have never been such fools as to do – at least, not as far as I know. But neither is it admissible that a man should pronounce judgment upon Man. Existentialism dispenses with any judgment of this sort: an existentialist will never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined. And we have no right to believe that humanity is something to which we could set up a cult, after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult of humanity ends in Comtian humanism, shut-in upon itself, and – this must be said – in Fascism. We do not want a humanism like that.
But there is another sense of the word, of which the fundamental meaning is this: Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man to exist; and, on the other hand, it is by pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is able to exist. Since man is thus self-surpassing, and can grasp objects only in relation to his self-surpassing, he is himself the heart and center of his transcendence. There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity. This relation of transcendence as constitutive of man (not in the sense that God is transcendent, but in the sense of self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in such a sense that man is not shut up in himself but forever present in a human universe) – it is this that we call existential humanism. This is humanism, because we remind man that there is no legislator but himself; that he himself, thus abandoned, must decide for himself; also because we show that it is not by turning back upon himself, but always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim which is one of liberation or of some particular realisation, that man can realize himself as truly human.
You can see from these few reflections that nothing could be more unjust than the objections people raise against us. Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means as the Christians do – any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.
- Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism" (1946)
the Levitican laws are pretty ridiculous and it's the height of hypocrisy to simply pick one out at random and try to force it on othersI'm having a hard time understanding what's "hypocritical" about it. Asinine, sure. Idiotic, yeah. Jerky, of course.
sotonohito: In America religion is considered to be the norm, so a lot of people who don't need it do it anyway.This cultural mish-mash 'churchianity' is actually one of the curious aspects of the whole thing. It's one of the pieces of the puzzle that explains why fundamentalists flip-flop between claiming they're part of the silent majority, and claiming that they're part of a small remnant of the faithful that have to help save the world from sin.
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You can't "get rid of" religion as much as you can't get rid of faith in human beings. Every day we walk on earth we exercise faith regularly , for instance faith
that we will eat, sleep and whatelse we regularly do. Then something happens and we discover we don't have much absoluty unvariable anything..maybe today we will not eat, but we are very likely to eat.
To some people this variability is so unbearable they prefer to daydream and imagine that some invisible, omnipotent being is always present and going to help : this is quite a reassuring idea, unfortunately when troubles come the entity rarely shows..and expecially the people that said that the entity was going to help will tell you that
1. you didn't have enough faith (it's your fault!)
2. you did some sin (it's your fault)
3. the design of the entity are misterious (I don't know, it's your problem)
Yet when the things goes well, it's all because the entity loves you so much. Sound much like the politicians taking the good things as their success and the bad ones as failures of system ...very same logic.
Problem is with the people that regularly, systematically exploith the natural faith that human exercise for the purpose of bamboozling them into behaviors they wouldn't ordinarily take (it's a war for god ! if you masturbate you will die ! All for the flag, all for the nation, all the glory of the country ! Freedom is going on !)
posted by elpapacito at 4:37 AM on September 2, 2007 [7 favorites]