For me, I never knew how much of an existentialist's ideologies I would agree with. Now, I think that I see their point of view more clearly than I ever have before. However, there's still something about existentialism that irks me just a tiny bit.
The notion that, because in the end all human's are subject to the same fate (the randomness of death), you shouldn't worry too much about what goes on in your present life is a dangerously depriving mindset to take on. While feelings like love, or the definition of a family, are simply social constructions, they're still systems that exist and that we live with. To say to yourself that you shouldn't bother with those constructions because they become obsolete at the end of your life, is to deprive yourself of living in the moment, which is just as important as the fate of all humans.
I couldn't imagine living my life without falling in love, without creating my own version of a family, or without achieving what I perceive to be success. To an existentialist it wouldn't matter in the long run, but to me it's about what matters in the moments in which they're happening. It's not fair to sacrifice those experiences for the sake of finishing the race of life early.
I think that, ultimately, existentialism as a form of nihilism is optimistic. You don't have to disconnect completely from the world and reject everything, but rather have to appreciate it for what it truly is and not the perception of it. You have to understand the absurdity of the world before you can create meaning in your life. Kierkegaard, regarded as the grandfather of existentialism, says that what gives meaning to life is the, "leap of faith" that we all take once we realize that there is no inherent meaning in life but decide to live in spite of that fact. I think that existentialism ultimately gives people the freedom to decide what in their life gives it meaning instead of relying on externalities for that.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with what you say here, when we talked about existentialism the first day in class it shocked me at first, but it made more and more sense as we went on. The problem with it is that some of my favorite parts of life are looking forward to things that I care about and reaching for success in school and in sports and those are the things that make me feel the happiest.
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