Kierkegaard Philosophy Conception of Subjective Truth Analysis Directions: For this assignment, you will need to write two 2-3 page reflection and analysis

Kierkegaard Philosophy Conception of Subjective Truth Analysis Directions: For this assignment, you will need to write two 2-3 page reflection and analysis essays. I would advise you to spend some time writing an outline of your paper before you begin writing; it’s usually a good idea to have a sense of the overall structure of your essay before you begin writing out the details. A good essay will make direct use of the text. Use the powerpoint attached below and the books name are the word document.

Your essay does not need to address each and every question in prompts (though you’ll probably want to take up several of them as you develop your ideas). Take the questions as a jumping-off point for your own thinking in the topic. Remember, these essays should demonstrate your own sustained reflection on the topic, so give yourself some time to turn the issues over in your mind before you begin writing.

Section One: Kierkegaard

Directions: Write a 2-3 page reflection and analysis essay in response to one of the following prompts.

Discuss in detail Kierkegaard’s conception of subjective truth. What is subjective truth? How does it relate to so-called “objective” truth? Why must subjective truth serve as the basis for a meaningful life?
What are the basic characteristics of the so-called aesthetic mode of existence that emerge in Either/Or, Vol 1? What does the aesthete live for? In which sorts of activities does the aesthete engage? Discuss the importance of boredom in Kierkegaard’s account of the aesthetic life. How does the aesthete fend off boredom? How does the aesthetic life finally breakdown? Why does it lead to despair? Is Kierkegaard correct in implying the aesthetic life is empty, and leads ultimately to despair? How does the ethical life provide an exit from the aesthetic?
Describe the basic features of so-called the ethical mode of existence as described in Either/Or, Vol. 2. Why does “Judge Wilhelm” use marriage as the model for the ethical life? Why is it claimed that a true self is only possible once a person has entered into an ethical existence? Does “Judge Wilhelm” succeed in showing that the ethical life is superior to the aesthetic life?
Explain the so-called religious mode of existence, as described in Fear and Trembling. How does Kierkegaard understand the significance of the Abraham and Isaac story? What does Kierkegaard mean when he uses the phrase “teleological suspension of the ethical”? How does the religious life move out from, and perhaps supersede the ethical life? Does the religious life, as described in Fear and Trembling, really just amount to amoral religious fanaticism?

Kierkegaard Book: Soren Kierkegaard, The Essential Kierkegaard Princeton University Press, ISBN: 0-691-01940-1

Section Two: Sartre

Directions: Write a 2-3 page reflection and analysis essay in response to one of the following prompts.

1. Sartre: Existence and Essence

Explain Sartre’s claim that, in the case of human beings, “existence precedes essence.” What does it mean to say that existence precedes essence? How does Sartre justify this claim? Explain Sartre’s paper knife example. What sorts of implications follow from the claim that existence precedes essence? Does an ethic or moral philosophy seem to follow from Sartre’s claim? Why or why not? If so, then what sort of ethic emerges?

2. Sartre: Responsibility: Anguish, Abandonment, and Despair

On account of human beings’ responsibility for their lives, Sartre claims that human experience involves 1) Anguish, 2) Abandonment, and 3) Despair. What does Sartre mean by each of these terms? How do these three conditions follow from recognition of our responsibility? Do you find Sartre’s discussion plausible and compelling as an accurate description of the human condition? Why or why not?

Sartre Book: Jean-Paul Sartre, Essays in Existentialism Citadel Press, ISBN: 0-8065-0162-6 Directions: For this assignment, you will need to write two 2-3 page reflection and analysis
essays. I would advise you to spend some time writing an outline of your paper before you begin
writing; it’s usually a good idea to have a sense of the overall structure of your essay before you
begin writing out the details. A good essay will make direct use of the text.
Your essay does not need to address each and every question in prompts (though you’ll probably
want to take up several of them as you develop your ideas). Take the questions as a jumping-off
point for your own thinking in the topic. Remember, these essays should demonstrate your own
sustained reflection on the topic, so give yourself some time to turn the issues over in your mind
before you begin writing.
Section One: Kierkegaard
Directions: Write a 2-3 page reflection and analysis essay in response to one of the following
prompts.
1. Discuss in detail Kierkegaard’s conception of subjective truth. What is subjective truth?
How does it relate to so-called “objective” truth? Why must subjective truth serve as the
basis for a meaningful life?
2. What are the basic characteristics of the so-called aesthetic mode of existence that
emerge in Either/Or, Vol 1? What does the aesthete live for? In which sorts of activities
does the aesthete engage? Discuss the importance of boredom in Kierkegaard’s account
of the aesthetic life. How does the aesthete fend off boredom? How does the aesthetic life
finally breakdown? Why does it lead to despair? Is Kierkegaard correct in implying the
aesthetic life is empty, and leads ultimately to despair? How does the ethical life provide
an exit from the aesthetic?
3. Describe the basic features of so-called the ethical mode of existence as described in
Either/Or, Vol. 2. Why does “Judge Wilhelm” use marriage as the model for the ethical
life? Why is it claimed that a true self is only possible once a person has entered into an
ethical existence? Does “Judge Wilhelm” succeed in showing that the ethical life is
superior to the aesthetic life?
4. Explain the so-called religious mode of existence, as described in Fear and Trembling.
How does Kierkegaard understand the significance of the Abraham and Isaac story?
What does Kierkegaard mean when he uses the phrase “teleological suspension of the
ethical”? How does the religious life move out from, and perhaps supersede the ethical
life? Does the religious life, as described in Fear and Trembling, really just amount to
amoral religious fanaticism?
Kierkegaard Book: Soren Kierkegaard, The Essential Kierkegaard Princeton University Press,
ISBN: 0-691-01940-1
Section Two: Sartre
Directions: Write a 2-3 page reflection and analysis essay in response to one of the following
prompts.
1. Sartre: Existence and Essence
Explain Sartre’s claim that, in the case of human beings, “existence precedes essence.” What
does it mean to say that existence precedes essence? How does Sartre justify this claim? Explain
Sartre’s paper knife example. What sorts of implications follow from the claim that existence
precedes essence? Does an ethic or moral philosophy seem to follow from Sartre’s claim? Why
or why not? If so, then what sort of ethic emerges?
2. Sartre: Responsibility: Anguish, Abandonment, and Despair
On account of human beings’ responsibility for their lives, Sartre claims that human experience
involves 1) Anguish, 2) Abandonment, and 3) Despair. What does Sartre mean by each of these
terms? How do these three conditions follow from recognition of our responsibility? Do you find
Sartre’s discussion plausible and compelling as an accurate description of the human condition?
Why or why not?
Sartre Book: Jean-Paul Sartre, Essays in Existentialism Citadel Press, ISBN: 0-8065-0162-6
Jean-Paul Sartre and
Existentialism
Background: Introduction to Existentialism
• “Existence” is commonly thought to be a very old philosophical topic
• Plato’s divided line, for example
• Metaphysics = study of fundamental reality
• Ontology = study of being
• Existentialists think that philosophy, at least as far back as Plato, have
been fundamentally mistaken about existence (especially, the
existence of human beings)
• Existentialists hold: we need to think differently about human beings
in order to understand our existence
Existence, continued
• Main error of the philosophical tradition: Human beings are a special
kind of substance with fixed properties (i.e. with an essence, a human
nature)
• Natural science does not exhaust all possible thinking about human
beings
• Moral philosophy is also insufficient (there are features of human
existence that are not easily translated into ethical categories)
• Traditional thinking about human beings are stuck in the mind set
that human beings are fundamentally things
Existentialism and Authenticity
• Existentialism introduces a new way of thinking about human beings
• It will focus on the concrete lives of human beings, rather than in our
disengaged theorizing
• It will bring serious philosophical analysis to hitherto overlooked (or
misunderstood) features of human existence: moods, inward passion,
authenticity, everyday tasks, the individual as individual, boredom,
alienation, anxiety, to name a few basic themes
Key Forerunner: Søren Kierkegaard
• Key concept: “The Single Individual”
• “The single individual is higher than the universal”
• Kierkegaard emphasizes the singularity of existence
• Existence: passionate commitment
• The relevant standard: authenticity
• Authenticity: being one’s own person; being truly responsible for who
you are; owning up to who you are
• Authenticity is marked by inward passion; by a “leap of faith”
Key Forerunner: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
• Nietzsche famously proclaimed: “God is dead”
• The “death of God” means not primarily that God
does not exist (though Nietzsche was a passionate
and committed atheist), but rather that people no
longer believe in God (see, The Gay Science, Section
125)
• The “death of God” raises the specter of nihilism
• What happens to a society that stops believing in
God?
• Ivan from The Brothers Karamazov: “If there is no
God, then everything is permitted”
• Nietzsche was also a critic of traditional morality,
and sought to create new values centered around
creativity, “joyful wisdom” and “healthymindedness”
Immediate Background: Phenomenology
• Sartre’s existentialism is influenced by a relatively recent
development in philosophy: phenomenology
• Phenomenology is a way of doing philosophy that begins with
consciousness (what it is like to have experiences of such and such a
character)
• Phenomenology pays careful attention to the content of one’s
experiences, and is not concerned with the metaphysical status of
one’s experiences
Phenomenology: Edmund Husserl
• The founder of phenomenology Edmund Husserl
• Husserl wanted to get around knotty
metaphysical issues and return our attention “to
the things themselves” (i.e. the actual objects of
our experiences)
• Husserl noticed that all our experiences have
intentionality built into them (all our experiences
are about something)
• The task: carefully describe one’s experiences
(from mathematics to everyday life)
Phenomenology: Martin Heidegger
• Husserl’s most famous student was Martin Heidegger
• Heidegger radicalized Husserl’s method and turned
his attention to careful description of human beings
(Dasein, “being there”) in our “everydayness”
• He claimed that engaged action and not abstract
knowledge is our fundamental relation to the world
• This insight led to him meditate on topics like:
moods, the idea of a “world,” “thrownness,” and
morality
• Key concept: authentic resoluteness (similar to
Kierkegaard)
“Existentialism”
• Existentialism will be a philosophy of concreteness; it will emphasize
radical human freedom; we are free to create our own values; this
will generate various kinds of critics: especially, religious critics and
political critics (whether they be bourgeois or leftist)
• Sartre attempts to defend existentialism in this piece (sometimes
titled “Existentialism is a Humanism”)
• Four Common Objections against Existentialism
• 1. It leads to despair (or quietism)
• 2. It overemphasizes morbid themes; it is too pessimistic
• 3. It is anti-social and anti-political; it overlooks the community and
values of solidarity
• 4. It is a form of extreme moral relativism
Essence and Existence
• Sartre begins his defense of existentialism by clarifying what he
means by the term ‘existentialism’
• Sartre’s major claim: existentialism is really just a modern version of
humanism
• Humanism: based on the notion of human dignity and freedom
• Humanism is sometimes considered a “religion of humanity”
• William Blake: “All deities reside in the human breast”
• Human beings, therefore, are the center of our philosophical concern;
we are the source of values and of our religious and ethical notions
The Three Basic Claims of Sartre’s Existentialism
• 1. Existence precedes essence
• 2. Each is responsible for all
• 3. Everyone is condemned to freedom
Essence and Existence
• For most things, essence precedes existence
• Before a house gets built, we need a blueprint
• Before an artifact, like a pen knife comes into existence, there needs to be
a preconceived design
• The dominant way of thinking about human beings akin to thinking about
objects, things, or manufactured items
• On this account: we are all endowed with a particular nature (or essence)
• We are all born into this universal nature (human nature)
Human Beings: Essence and Existence
• Traditional accounts of human nature all assume that essence
precedes existence
• In religious philosophy: Human nature is created by God; before God
created human beings, God had an idea of ‘human nature’ which was
then brought into existence
• This idea of being created by God also carries with it a normative view
of what we ought to do
• Even in secular (Enlightenment) philosophy there is such a thing as
‘universal human nature’ which determines what sort of life is
appropriate
The Existentialist Reversal
• Existentialism, by contrast, claims that first we exist, and then we
come into an essence, based on our subjectivity and choices
• From this, we get a radical sense of responsibility
• “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself”
• Choice is an absolute expression of who one is; choice, also, is
unescapable
• There are no excuses; we can’t hide our choices within a “theory” of
human nature, psychological or otherwise
Freedom and Responsibility
• “Man is at the start a plan which is aware of itself, rather than a patch
of moss, a piece of garbage, or a cauliflower; nothing exists prior to
this plan; there is nothing in heaven; man will be what he will have
planned to be. Not what he will want to be”
• It is not enough to “think” one is a certain way; or “wish” one has
certain traits
• Subjectivity is revealed through your actions/choices, and not your
mere “thoughts”
“Each is Responsible for All”
• “When we say that man chooses his own self, we mean that every
one of us does likewise; but we also mean by that that in making this
choice he chooses for all men”
• We always choose what we take to be good, so when we act we are
making a statement to the effect: This is expressive of my values, and I
take ownership over it; furthermore, you should think like me because
what I’ve chosen is the best possible course
• Behind this reasoning is the idea that we must actively affirm our
choices and not pretend like we are indifferent or merely making a
“random” and “insignificant” choice
Anguish
• One consequence of our radical freedom to choose is anguish
• There is no external authority that could “justify” or “excuse” us of
our choices; we are ultimately responsible and cannot say “I choose
this because it was determined by someone else”
• “The man who involves himself and who realizes that he is not only
the person he chooses to be, but also a lawmaker who is, at the same
time, choosing for all mankind as well as himself, can he not help
escape the feeling of his total and deep responsibility”
• The anguish of choosing for oneself and for others: a military officer
Forlornness, or Abandonment
• “When we speak of forlornness, a term Heidegger was fond of, we
mean only that God does not exist and that we have to face all the
consequences of it”
• If God is not there giving us orders, then what are we to do? We must
decide for ourselves
• We are “condemned” to this kind of groundless freedom; we are
“thrown” into a world we did not create and yet one for which we are
responsible
Sartre’s student
• Two mutually excluding principles (devotion to his mother or desire
for revenge)
• Either/Or choice: This choice would define the student’s existence
• Heidegger would call this “taking a stand” on one’s existence
• Sartre: There is no “right” way to act; there is no way to “justify” an
answer for why one is better than the other
• Ethics cannot decide either; it’s too abstract (you can reverseengineer the “outcome” of your ethical thinking by begging all the
important questions)
• The student must decide: What kind of person am I to be?
Existentialism and Dignity
• Kant: human dignity lies in our freedom
• Kant: humanity exists as an end in itself; human beings are persons
and not things
• In the 20th century: momentum toward treating human beings as
objects; breaking down the distinction between animals and humans;
behaviorism in psychology denies, or plays down, inner experience
• B.F. Skinner: “Beyond Freedom and Dignity”
• Sartre: Existentialism restores human dignity and affirms: choice,
responsibility, freedom
• “We are what we do”
Three Final Moral Objections to Existentialism
• 1. “Moral anarchy”
• 2. No grounds for justifying (or condemning) anything
• 3. It is a frivolous philosophy
• 1-3 all turn on the question of moral relativism
Responses
• To the “moral anarchy” charge: Under existentialism, one cannot
simply do whatever one wants (that would be mere caprice)
• “For us, man is in an organized situation in which he himself is
involved. Through his choice, he involves all mankind, and he can not
avoid making a choice…”
• “Doubtless he chooses without referring to pre-established values,
but it is unfair to accuse him of caprice. Instead, let us say that moral
choice is to be compared to the making of a work of art”
• Sartre often echoes Kant on this point
No grounds of justification?
• To the second objection: in one sense it is true (each moral/existential
framework can be internally consistent) (p. 362)
• But: there is a standard and it is authenticity
• The one ground for condemnation is inauthenticity or bad faith
• Against the charge of frivolity: Existentialism is stern and earnest
Despair
• One final consequence of our radical individual freedom is what
Sartre calls “despair”
• Despair: we are only in control over what we do, not what others do
• So, we should not stake ultimate hope in other people; we need to
take matters into our own hands and not assume that the world will
sort itself out
• It also means we should not become obsessed with what “others” do;
we are only responsible for our actions, and the predictable
consequences of them
Despair, continued
• Sartre: We must focus on those things about which we can choose
• Sartre favorably quotes Descartes: “Conquer yourself rather than the
world”
• Sartre: We must also take into account probabilities in our actions; we
cannot know how others will choose
• Sartre is always pushing us to realize that we are often freer to choose
than we may realize
Existentialism as a Humanism
• For Sartre, there is no human “nature,” but there is a human “condition”
• Humanism: Striving after goals (personal, political, social, etc.) in a selfconscious, authentic way
Bad Faith
• Existentialism, according to Sartre, is the one philosophy that fully
affirms radical human freedom
• The one “vice” of existentialism is not owning up to our freedom; to
make excuses
• This denial of one’s own freedom is bad faith
Patterns of Bad Faith
• Much of human motivation is organized around bad faith
• Key idea: human beings have a tendency to treat as “objective”
(natural, determined) that which is fundamentally “subjective” (free,
endowed with the capacity for self-creation)
• Something exists objectively when it exists “in-itself”
• Something exists subjectively when it exists “for-itself”
• Humans exist as both in-itself is marked by our biology, psychology,
historical epoch (insofar as we cannot control these things)
• The sum total of aspects of human beings outside of the realm of
freedom: facticity
Bad Faith
• We often seek to include aspects of ourselves that we choose as parts
of our facticity
• This makes us “victims of circumstance,” “pawns of history,” etc. and,
above all passive and unfree
• Sartre’s two examples: the waiter and the woman on a date
(described in the section “Play Acting”)
• Neither of these cases involve outright self-deception (Sartre is a critic
of Freud’s concept of the unconscious)
• Rather: they involve treating consciousness (the way one sees
oneself) of human subjectivity (or choice) as if it were a thing
Bad Faith, concluded
• Bad faith is a choice in how one frames one’s being-in-the-world
(namely, as a passive thing)
• Sartre: Character is not destiny
• Character is expressed, and made real, through our choices
The Aesthetic Life: Living in the Moment
•
•
•
•
A life of pleasure-seeking (giving oneself over to pleasure)
Moment-by-moment living (seeking heightened moments)
“Stand back, laugh, and have a good time” would be an appropriate motto
“Freedom” from commitment, from obligations to others, even from
principles in general
• Closest thing to principle: avoid boredom
• “Boredom is the root of evil; it is that which must be held off…Boredom is
the demonic pantheism…it is to be annulled by amusing oneself—ergo,
one ought to amuse oneself” (Either/Or, Vol. 1)
• Begins with perhaps innocent pleasures (music, fine wine, etc.), but
culminates in the seduction of another person (Diary of a Seducer)
The Aesthetic Life Breaks Down
• There is an existential contradiction in the aesthetic life (not a logical
one); it is not a viable way of life
• The way Kierkegaard describes it is: the aesthetic life lead to despair
• The aesthetic life, lived to its fullest, becomes, for most people, a moral
nightmare
• “The power of such a seducer is speech, i.e., the lie” (Either/Or, Vol. 1)
• To move beyond this moral crisis, the self turns away from the aesthetic
to something “higher,” to the ethical life
The Ethical Life (Either/Or, Vol. II)
• As we’ve seen, the aesthetic life breaks down in moral horror and
revulsion at the cruelty of seduction (the ultimate expression of the
aesthetic life)
• Notice, this is not a logical refutation, it is an existential one
(seduction cannot be (most) anyone’s existential/subjective truth)
• The aesthete is “terrified” out of the aesthetic life and is (already)
thrust into the realm of “responsibility”
• The form of life that Kierkegaard emphasizes in contrast to the
aesthetic life is a married life
The Ethical Life: Living with Commitment
• We feel ourselves to be freer when we act on moral principles and
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