At the close of my essay The Individual and The Human World, I spoke briefly about the contemporary West–and America in particular–as a place where “individuals determine and create themselves in their own image–rooted in the satisfaction of their own preferences–the sole authors of their lives.”1 This phenomenon, which is admittedly broad and multifaceted, has become hegemonic in the contemporary West. Here I will attempt to explore some of its contours, though certain details will have to be postponed for the time being. As a kind of umbrella term, I will refer to this state of affairs as cultural existentialism.2
The word “existentialism” may be somewhat misleading, though I hope the qualifier “cultural” renders my footing a bit more secure. I have to be careful here. By invoking a formal philosophy–Existentialism–I run the risk of putting too much content, as it were, into what I am talking about.3 Indeed, the philosophy of Existentialism is not explicitly what I have in mind.4 I am thinking more of an “informal existentialism”, which I would argue involves the expression of certain ideas within the mass of society itself, within the wider culture. Although these ideas are similar to those found in Existentialist thinking, I do not mean to suggest a kind of direct-causal link between the two. Rather, I refer to a mere relation of similarity, in which popular ideas have somehow come to mirror many of those articulated formally in Existentialist thought.5
Let me offer a picture. Consider the role that ideas–such as freedom, authenticity, choice, and responsibility–play in American society and culture today. Freedom is in many ways the ultimate value of the American psyche.6 Closely connected to freedom are authenticity and choice–being true to ourselves in our choices and actions–which, in turn, means we are responsible for the things we say and do. There is a sense that we are the authors of our lives–our lives being the summation of our actions over time. Our identity becomes understood in terms of what we do. Themes of self-determination and self-creation are witnessed in popular literature, film, and music; they exist in business and professional life, and in the entrepreneurial spirit of modern capitalism. This picture of ourselves has emerged within the structure of liberal individualism, which places the individual prior to the social and political, abstracting the self from the social context which, in past epochs, provided intelligibility.7 As an abstraction, the individual is emptied of content and is therefore free to define him or herself independently of any criterion.8 This is the organizing principle, which underlies what I am trying to describe as cultural existentialism.
If we turn to the philosophy of Existentialism, this idea is expressed formally by the dictum “existence precedes essence”, which, Jean-Paul Sartre writes, is common to all Existentialist thinkers.9 What this means is that “man first exists: he materializes in the world, encounters himself, and only afterwards defines himself. If man as existentialists conceive of him cannot be defined, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature since there is no God to conceive of it. Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be, and since he conceives of himself only after he exists, just as he wills himself to be after being thrown into existence, man is nothing other than what he makes of himself. This is the first principle of existentialism.”10 Furthermore, Sartre continues, “if it is true that existence precedes essence, we can never explain our actions by reference to a given and immutable human nature. In other words, there is no determinism–man is free, man is freedom.”11 As an atheist, Sartre contends there are “no values or orders that can legitimize our conduct. Thus, we have neither behind us, nor before us, […] any means of justification or excuse.”12 “What is more, to say that we invent values means neither more nor less than this: life has no meaning a priori. Life itself is nothing until it is lived, it is we who give it meaning, and value is nothing more than the meaning that we give to it.”13 Again, I am not suggesting there is a direct causal connection (such as a “trickle-down”) between the thought of Sartre (or other Existentialists) and the wider society or culture of the West. What I am suggesting is that Existentialism and its cultural counterparts are in some ways mirrors of each other, and in many ways differ only to the extent that they are articulated. Explicitly in the former, implicitly in the latter.
Consider cultural existentialism as it relates to personal identity. In the case of self-creation and self-determination, who I am is who I have created/determined myself to be, a summation of my preferences which I have expressed in outward choices and actions over time. Here, the criterion of personal identity is internal to the agent. Thus, when Sartre speaks of “man’s inability to transcend human subjectivity”, adding that “subjectivity must be our point of departure”, he is following the Cartesian cogito to its logical terminus.14 Indeed, large sections of the modern frame itself are indebted to–or logically entailed by–Cartesian outlooks. As a point of contrast, consider that pre-modern understandings of personal identity situated the self within a social context that provided intelligibility.15 On this view, who I am is made intelligible by the field of relations I hold to relevant social structures. I am not merely what I decide to be–I am, rather, son to these parents and this lineage; brother to these siblings; husband to this woman; vassal to this lord; apprentice to this craftsman.16 The criterion of my identity is here external and not internal. Thus, the roles I inhabit largely determine the structure of possibility I exist within, i.e., the set of choices and duties possible for me. In the pre-modern world, I exist within a structure of meaning that I did not create, but was born into. In the contemporary modern world, I must discover meaning for myself. This has led some thinkers to take the “absurdity” of life as a starting point or a given, while others have noted the force with which the individual has come to feel alienated and dehumanized.17
I will continue this preliminary exploration in the future.
Notes:
1. Some would argue that this is not true for everyone, pointing to injustices associated with inequalities such as systemic racism, et al. This may indeed be the case, but it does not affect the point I will be making. Even if such a state of affairs is not equally accessible to every inhabitant of a given liberal democracy, it remains an active end-goal or telos which is built-in to the structure of liberalism. See also my essays, The Individual and The Human World, and Human Action.
2. I have used the small “e” existentialism in past essays, and here I take it up again. The term “cultural existentialism” is, as far as I know, my own coinage. I will attempt to explore what I mean by it in this and future essays. The ideas making up the phenomenon of cultural existentialism are not always clearly articulated or even fully acknowledged. They exist for the most part as theoretical frameworks within the overall structure of the modern frame itself. For an introduction to theoretical frameworks, see my essay Theoretical Frameworks and the Limits of Communication.
3. What I mean by this is that there are many ideas and dimensions within Existentialist thought that go beyond what I am talking about here as merely cultural existentialism.
4. There are many thinkers and ideas associated with Existentialism. Though Jean-Paul Sartre is the most famous, some other thinkers commonly thought of as Existentialists include Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger, as well as writers like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus.
5. How this came about is a question I will attempt to explore in the future. Both Existentialism and its cultural counterpart likely share a common ancestor, no doubt closely connected to the rise of individualism in the modern West.
6. Yet another topic to be explored in the future.
7. This is closely connected to ideas of the social contract and natural rights, such as those found in the work of Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel von Pufendorf, and John Locke. Charles Taylor explores this to some extent in A Secular Age.
8. Perhaps relevant here is my essay, The Good, Liberalism, and the Role of Preferences.
9. For my purposes here I will restrict myself to the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, specifically his work Existentialism Is A Humanism, which offers a succinct introduction to his thought. For a more comprehensive articulation and defense of Sartre’s views, see his work, Being and Nothingness.
10. Although Sartre is using a small “e” to describe existentialism, he is referring to existentialism as a formal philosophy, and not as cultural, as I am attempting to describe here. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is A Humanism.
11. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is A Humanism. Emphasis added.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid. Emphasis in original.
14. Sartre’s philosophy is heavily indebted to the work of René Descartes. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is A Humanism, and René Descartes, Discourse on the Method.
15. This has been explored by, among others, Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue and Charles Taylor, A Secular Age.
16. Some of these relations may indeed be the product of free choices. But what is relevant here is that it is my relation to the social structure which bears upon who I am (my identity) rather than my individual autonomy.
17. In the former, Albert Camus comes to mind. In the latter, Erich Fromm, and to some extent, Jacques Ellul. See Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus; see Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom; see Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society.