the power of choice.

In Sarte's "Existentialism is a Humanism," he addresses the various reproaches to existentialism and argues that, contrary to what many believe, existentialism presents the most optimistic outlook on life. He argues that every individual has the ability to make their life what they want it to be. Our lives are not defined by our situations or circumstances, but ultimately by the actions we take. On page 4, Sarte says “Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.” This is the fundamental idea behind existentialism; that man is in control of his own life. That each individual chooses what he wants to become and becomes that through action. This point, that man is only what he makes of himself, that man creates and defines himself, holds each man responsible for his own life. On page 11, Sarte quotes the typical excuses people offer for failure; “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it…” These excuses, however, hold no ground, because every person can choose what their own life is going to be. That truth, that man makes himself, is a terrifying one. It shows that only you can be held accountable for the things you do or don’t do. According to Sarte, there is no such thing as predestination or a decider (such as god) to place blame onto. There is only you and the choices you make. You control and are responsible for your own life.

            Although the idea that we are responsible for our own lives may be terrifying, anyone who knows that they are in control of their own life has an infinite amount of freedom. They have the freedom to do what they please, to pursue their own interests, to make their own decisions. Often, we don’t know what the “right decision is.” We fumble and stress over what classes to take, what major to pick, what career to choose. We look to other sources; parents, advisors, friends, to make those choices for us. But at the end of the day, each of us has to make a choice for ourself. We are free, because despite what the opinions of those other sources are, the choices you make define you and are ultimately made by you. 

Your decisions affect everyone.

According to Sartre, responsibility is very important. What a man chooses to do, not only affects him, but everyone else as well. He even states,

“…The first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders. And, when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.” (pg.4)

By this statement he is saying, that if any man acts upon his will, it not only will affect his life, but it will affect everyone’s lives around him. A good example of this that Sartre gives is a pupil of his. This young man had a choice to either go off to England to join the Free French Forces, or stay home and take care of him mother. In this situation his choice would affect everyone. If he choice to go to England his mother would surely get sick and not be able to go on with life. But, if he chose to stay home with his mother, he would not be supporting England and all those in need of his help. Responsibility concerns all of mankind as a whole. This is nothing that man can escape. When man is born, this is put upon him and he doesn’t have a choice. Just like when others make decisions it also affect his life. Man is also responsible for whether he is known as a “hero” or “coward”.

Sartre also explains to us what anguish, abandonment, and despair mean.

Anguish is when man is committed to something, and knows that what he does is not only for him, but for everyone. An example of anguish is a military leader. By him making all the decisions of what everyone should do, he feels anguish.

Abandonment shows that God does not exist. I wonder, what would it be like if God didn’t exist? Sartre quotes Dostoevsky, “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.” With this, I completely agree. This image of God is what keeps everyone in order. If he did not exist people wouldn’t fear anything and they would surely go out of control.

Despair simply means that we limit ourselves based on our wills. With despair you learn that you cannot count on a man you don’t know, or know very little of.

These three words have a certain responsibility to them, and I believe this responsibility is necessary to understand. All of mankind makes his own decisions, but he must know that these decisions affect others as well.

Does Pegasus Really Exist?

Well, it depends on what you believe existence is. In Quine’s “On What There Is”, he creates two philosophers named McX and Wyman in order to demonstrate the ontological problem. Quine describes McX’s mind as “elementary”, while Wyman has a “subtler” mind (136).

McX argues that Pegasus must be something because we talk about something when we use the word. He then continues by saying he will never see the flesh or blood of Pegasus because Pegasus is an idea in men’s mind. This creates a problem because when people talk about Pegasus existing, they’re talking about the physical Pegasus, not the idea of Pegasus.

Wyman starts off his argument by trying to make his definition of existence more specific. He limits the word existence to actuality; thus making it necessary for Pegasus to be here in space and time in order to be considered existing. Wyman believes Pegasus is an “unactualized possible” (136). Wyman says “unactualized” because he believes Pegasus is in nonexistence. So you can say McX and Wyman both agree on this point. The “possible” part, however, is the part that makes them disagree. Wyman added the “possible” part because Pegasus is an idea that could possibly exist in space and time.

Quine clearly takes sides with the “subtler minded” Wyman, stating, “Subtler minds, taking the same precept as their starting point, come out with theories of Pegasus which are less patently misguided than McX’s, and correspondingly more difficult to eradicate” (136). This may be true, but Wyman never proves McX wrong; McX seems to have a pretty logical explanation as well. The major difference between the two arguments is the definition of the word existence. Wyman may have a more specific definition to the word existence, but does it really make a difference when you know something that is nonexistent, such as Pegasus, is never going to be in this world? Quine starts the essay by saying the question to “What is there” could simply be answered as “everything” and everyone would accept this answer. After reading “On What There Is”, you begin to realize this question is not as simple as it looks. If there were “everything”, I would choose Pegasus over the train as transportation to Hunter College any day.

Person A: You want the truth, you cant handle the truth. Person B (after reading Nietzsche): Apparently you cant either...

It seems that Nietzsche looks at truth through a microscope, at its most basic level of existence. As he states, man's truth rely on how they apply to man, not how they exist in reality. He states that the truth, how man knows is, is built upon layers upon layers of half truths, falsities, fallacies and deceptions that are so far from the actual truth. To him truth, this is not about perception, or what our minds interpret. This is about what really exist, what really takes place underneath the surface.
He talks about the leaf (pg 91). He states : "...no one leaf is is exactly similar to any other, so certain the idea "leaf" has been formed through an arbitrary omission of these individual differences." I think though to him this is a form of disrespect to what actually goes on in the world. He makes man out to be vain and cocky for assuming that what he knows as truth, actually holds weight in nature. He even more has a problem with man thinking that nature is somewhat indirectly bound to his analysis of the truth. Nature, according to Nietzsche, could care less what man thinks, for it is nature itself, with all its complexities, reactions, wonders, unknowns, and evolutions, that is in fact truth incarnate. He is right when he states (p89) : "Does not nature keep secret from him most things, even his body?"
We might have a soar throat, and say to ourselves we are coming down with a cold. But according to Nietzsche that is not the absolute truth. We are associating the the pain we feel with our predisposed notion of a cold, not for once mentioning, or taking into consideration the things that might have caused your throat to be soar? Maybe its an allergic reaction or a bacteria you picked up eating food. Nevertheless the real truth's lie in nature, not in the association of the thing to the concepts of man. To him, men are blind, and only see face value. He believes man rely's on form, where as truth relies on individuality, something that man ignores. As he states (pg91) "...disregarding of the individual and real furnishes us with the idea, as it likewise gives us the form". To man, truth is a gathering of idea's. To Nietzsche, its a gathering of individuals realities.

Mankinds Needs It

In Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Philosophical Writing”, page 96, quoting, “And as a man binds his life to reason and its ideas in order to avoid being swept away and losing himself […]” This quote is intriguing because he basically stated that men are dependent upon reasoning for confronting truth. Reasoning and ideas are constructed impressions of man and man is used as a template for these conceptions. He uses an example such as trees and plants are anthropomorphic, having human characteristics; trees are masculine, plants are feminine. Human perceived them by applying our own perception, quoting, “[…] would be necessary to apply the standard of right perception i.e., to apply a standard which does not exist”. What is the right perception? Is this perception our own that we constructed or some other higher standing. Mostly people think rationally; they need reasons to comprehend the complexities, it is simply easier to understand when something is relatable or have significant to. What made men perceived the whole world as a humanlike thing? Does this relate to how their altruistic behavior, self-centered, egoistical, desired of importance and purpose to their existence?

“Such seekers contemplate the whole world as related to men”. Men are “artistically creative subjects” and are used as templates for all things. He goes off mentioning language was the initially used to construct these ideas that is later “science”. Basically language was to falsely assert what we don’t know. I think he took a light jab at science setting out it is an illusion that human pursuit for knowledge that is build upon, refined and it is finite. Nietzsche also pointed that science is interpretation to understand the world but we don’t really know. He uses a small example of if someone looking through the microscope or telescope and concluding their findings, but these conclusions are all “products of fantasy”. Back to what I mentioned about perception, science is relative if we subject our own thoughts on others. I think what he summing up is that we don’t really have facts; we make it as facts. Man creates them in a way that these scientific ideas are coherent and don’t overlap with one another. Science is not absolute, its not complete and it is subject to change but it is always refined for clarity. I find it difficult to understand clearly on Nietzsche’s perspective on science, arts and mathematics. He mentions a couple of known figures significant in these fields but…

Extra Credit

For Extra Credit:
Go to the lecture announced below and write a one-page summary explaining both of the problems and the possible solutions discussed. Must be typed and emailed to me by 6 p.m. on Thursday.  Late submissions will not be accepted.

The summaries will be graded for clarity and completeness, and they will substitute for your lowest quiz grade.

Another extra credit assignment that will raise the first exam grade is described in the "Assignments" folder on Blackboard.

                                                               

SPECIAL TALK FOR HUNTER STUDENTS, FACULTY, AND STAFF

COME HEAR RENOWNED EXPERT ON GENDER, RACE AND DEMOCRACY

Carole Pateman

Distinguished Professor of

Political Science at UCLA

President,

American Political Science Association

Two Intractable Problems about Human Rights:

Obstacles to Women's Human Rights and the Right to a Decent Standard of Living

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College

47-49 East 65th Street, Auditorium

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Reception to Follow

Please RSVP to RHRSVP@HUNTER.CUNY.EDU

Moderator: Political Science Professor John Wallach, Chair, Hunter Human Rights Program

Discussant: Assistant Professor of Political Science Robyn Marasco

Co-Sponsored by: Hunter Human Rights Program, School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Political Science, Department of Philosophy, and Women and Gender Studies Program, with the cooperation of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College.

A Limited Truth

Nietzsche contemplates and works to validate the authenticity of pure truth in which arises from the origin of human language. The formatioin of ideas is especially important in Nietzsche's account, which aims to identify what we know as truth. Words, which make up language, are automatically transformed into ideas. These words or ideas, are the forms, in the sense that they act as a guidline and a template, giving us an overall understanding of what is not accounted for, which are the individual distinctions within those ideas. Nietzsche refers to this as "equating the unequal" because the form is not at all equal to the individual though they may correspond to one another, but we could not be sure of that either. Out of this also comes the notion of an idea being its own cause. Surely this can not be correct, considering that the forms encompass all of the various differences in an idea. That particular suggestion implies that these differences do not exist, which is clearly false.

"We call a man "honest"; we ask, why has he acted so honestly today? Our customary answer runs, "On account of his honesty." (p. 91) This exactly illlustrates the concept of an idea being its own cause. In this example, it appears to be an accurate conclusion due in part to the fact that the many ways in which one differentiates honest actions are ultimately the cause of the idea of honesty which language has constructed. Despite this, it is also because of these different actions of honesty that the idea is not exactly its own cause unless every single honest action was considered. On the matter of essence in these ideas that are formed from language, like the one just mentioned, which is the pure truth Nietzsche seeks, there is also reason to doubt such a claim. If an idea is the form, or general account of something, excluding specificity, then there exist many causes. Even implying this conclusion leaves us further from the core of truth and essence. It is not to say that our whole way of life is a foolish array of false accounts, but perhaps that we must not mistaken them for complete truth. Imagine, if language was structured based on the individual rather than the form, it would be much more complex, or so it seems. Would we then be a step closer to truth because each idea could directly connect to and be the cause of the thing itself? The language of nature is complex, one that is indistinguishable to us. In saying that, is it also the case that nature is closer to or as far from truth as we are because the "x" that it knows, of which Nietzsche speaks, is possibly more or less knowing to the essence of truth?