The Burden of Freedom

Oh, Dostoevsky.. How many times have I tried to read your “Crime and Punishment” and given up? This week we read excerpts from “Notes from the Underground” and “The Grand Inquisitor” which were much easier to get through and rather enjoyable. Especially the latter which had me choking up at the end. Dostoevsky seems to write with characters who have a particular philosophical view, but do not necessarily reflect those of Dostoevsky (who is apparently a Christian). 

First up was an bit from “Notes From Underground” where the narrator discusses free will versus determinism.  In this reading, Dostoevsky seems to argue that rationality and science have deprived us of our free will. A rational person wouldn’t choose anything which may end up hurting him, therefore his actions are all dictated by this rationality.  In this way they would be limited.  So in order for man to be truly free, he would need to make choices independent of rationality, even if it might end up hurting him in the end.  There seemed to be confusion in class on what Dostoevsky calls the most advantageous advantage, but I believe this is precisely it. Where typically advantages consist of “prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace,” (40) the most advantageous advantage is freedom. For Dostoevsky says that “man everywhere and always, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he wished and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated” (43). When trying to understand this in my head it seems a bit contradictory. Is Dostoevsky saying that in some cases, the most advantageous advantage would end up being a disadvantage because it proves to be injurious? 

Our next reading was “The Grand Inquisitor,” a parable from The Brothers Karamazov.  In this reading the rationalist, atheistic Ivan explains the story of an old Cardinal (The Grand Inquisitor) and his meeting with Jesus Christ to his naive christian brother Alyosha. In this parable, the Cardinal explains how Jesus has done something horrible to people. By allowing them to free, that is to decide for themselves what “right” and “wrong.” The Cardinal’s argument in this story is that men can’t be happy and free simultaneously, so what Jesus did wasn’t truly in their best interest. He left his followers alone with their conscience with only the image of christ as their guide. This has confused them greatly, and their freedom to decide good and evil will drive them to misery. To me this parallels Nietzsche’s belief that conscience is a bad thing. With this in mind, the Cardinal has taken it upon himself and the church, to take on this enormous burden of conscience. He has given his followers happiness and has decided good and evil for them. The church has taken away their freedom and he believes it to be in their best interest, and now he is upset that Jesus has returned. Has Jesus returned to stop the Cardinal after all his efforts to make them happy? Does Jesus wish to give the people their freedom back? It is revealed by Ivan near the end of the story that the Cardinal doesn’t really believe in god, but loves humanity so much that he is willing to take on this burden disguised as a believer. The only thing that Jesus does throughout this conversation (If you can even call it that when only the Cardinal is speaking) is give him an ambiguous kiss on the lips.

So is it true that man can either be happy or free? I believe that one could have this free will and still be happy, but I can certainly see why the Grand Inquisitor wanted to take this burden upon himself and the church. Don’t we humans want to be free though? No matter how convincingly rationality and scientific study will tell me that my life is predetermined, something inside me insists that I make my own decisions. This seems to be one of the underlying themes of existentialism: Freedom versus Fate.

Dosteovsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” has reminded me of a poem by William Blake called The Everlasting Gospel.  I’d like to leave you with a few lines from this poem in the hopes that you might read the whole thing and understand the parallels that I see.

“THE VISION OF CHRIST that thou dost see

Is my vision’s greatest enemy.

Thine has a great hook nose like thine;

Mine has a snub nose like to mine.

Thine is the Friend of all Mankind;

Mine speaks in parables to the blind.

Thine loves the same world that mine hates;

thy heaven doors are my hell gates.”

- William Blake -

I Had This Exact Same Blog In A Previous Life

This week was interesting. I got the chance to nervously present a section on Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality.  It was a difficult task to completely comprehend the material, my section on Bad Conscience in particular. I read through it many times, as well as interpretations of the text online, but I kept having new revelations on the material, even 10 minutes prior to the presentation. 

Nietzsche can be a bit ambiguous in my opinion. I was unaware, for instance, that he was writing with a sarcastic tone when he referred to “free will.”  Apparently Nietzsche would be a proponent of determinism, as demonstrated by his theory of Eternal Recurrence.  What a heavy topic eternal recurrence is. It makes theoretical sense that if time is infinite, then eventually our lives would repeat themselves. He asks us to imagine that at some point in our life, some demon comes down and tells us we will live our entire life over again exactly how it was. The question is would this information please you or cause you despair. Personally, the idea is frightening for I have experienced some things that I would never want to go through again. But at the same time there are the pleasantries i’ve experienced in my life. For me, this information is simply an opportunity to re-evaluate your life, perhaps change the way you live, and also to change the way you appreciate your past. 

One thing that’s daunting, however, is the idea that your life really is predetermined.  That everything you have done and everything you were going to do, was going to happen regardless of any choice that was made. I’ve been in arguments with my brother about free will versus determinism and it typically seems like an endless debate.  Does it really make a difference if we choose our actions or were destined to make those actions?  One might argue that if everything is predetermined, then what is the point of getting out of bed if you have no choice?  But then if you followed up on that though, would you have been destined to come to this conclusion, or did your belief influence your choice of staying in bed all day? Either way the end result is the same, it becomes a frustrating brain exercise.

Finally I would like to talk a bit about morality and this bad conscience Nietzsche describes. First off, he makes the bold claim that there are only two types of morality, that of the Master and Slave. Master moralists consider their own virtues to be what’s good, and everything that’s weak, poor, and ugly to be bad. The slave moralist on the contrary sees everything that the master moralist considers good to be evil, and good is to be compassionate and selfless. My problem with this, is that it is hard for me to believe that the history of morality can be clumped in to two categories.  There is much more to morality than two “cliques.”

My favorite part of Nietzsche this far has been his theory of bad conscience. The very thing that makes the human animal such miserable and cursed creature. The fact that we have this conscience that obstructs our animal instincts. Sometimes I like to think i’ve experienced this bad conscience. Every time I make a statement and think to myself, “wow, that sounded egocentric.”  Why should that bother me? Why shouldn’t I be egocentric? Why should my conscience tell me it’s wrong to be selfish, when my instincts beg for it. Nietzsche calls bad conscience a sickness, and he gives it a bad rap, but there is some promise in it. Like the title of one of his books, Nietzsche wants to move beyond good and evil. Although it might seem like he prefers the natural human, I believe Nietzsche believed that man would eventually evolve, and have no need for morality. Would the next step in man’s evolution be the ubermensch? If so when will this  next step take place?  It’s been over 100 years since his death, yet we still seem stuck in this “bridge” phase.

Oops... I think we just murdered God.

Finally back to somewhat familiar territory as we move from the Christian Kierkegaard to the atheist Nietzsche, who’s intelligence inevitably led to his insanity which scholars still debate.  He is most famously known for his line “God is dead” and of course the “Ubermensch” (overman) which is mainly what we focused on this week.  We read a bit from “The Gay Science” and “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” which introduced to us his philosophy on the death of God.  As I understood it, Nietzsche is describing the death of the Christian god, which after time will christian morality from ruling our lives. In the future the belief in god will become less and less, allowing humanity to overcome the prison we have made for ourselves by clinging to Christian morals that are still engrained in our society. Although god is dead, Nietzsche believed that it would take a long time for god’s death to be accepted by people, for “This tremendous event is still on its way still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men.” 

We also read about the Ubermensch.  It is his concept which could replace the void of god.  The Ubermensch is the next step in the evolution of man. As man was once ape, the ape is nothing but a primitive being and soon Man will be a primitive being to the Ubermensch.  To me the Ubermensch is something to be strived for but can never be reached.  He does not follow herd mentality, his mentality is individual and unique.  When I consider this, it becomes unfathomable.  How could a person possibly stray from the herd and act in a completely unique manner?  I enjoyed how Nietzsche explained that we are like “No shepherd and one herd.”

There are so many people in the world that I believe individuality is nearly impossible. As soon as we communicate our thoughts, they no longer become individual and Nietzsche addresses this in his writings when he discusses consciousness. To Nietzsche, consciousness arose from the need to communicate.  If a man were living in isolation in the woods, it would perhaps be possible for him to not have consciousness, for he could be a beast acting on his own animalistic passions and needs. Consciousness was something that came out of societal needs to communicate for survival.  For Nietzsche, consciousness is a bad thing, a sort of curse that has fallen on man.  The only form of consciousness, or rather self-consciousness to exist in the Ubermensch is that of the will to power.  The will to power is merely the strive to become a better person, the best type of man that can be achieved, the ideal man. The Ubermensch would be above self-consciousness as he is above man.

Our final reading and class discussion was about Nietzsche’s view on “truth,” which was much more befuddling than I initially thought.  In the Twilight of the Idols, he accuses Socrates and other wise thinkers as being unhappy. Is it truly worth it to analyze your life and the world around you if it just makes you “sick”? Nietzsche then argues that morality goes against the nature of man, and confines his passions.  Should a man be able to tell you how you ought to be morally?  In my interpretation, Nietzsche says no, that we should instead act on our own passions, which christian morals have imprisoned. Our passions are our nature, but morality has told us that we mustn’t do this or that.  We mustn’t have sex with those we find attractive, we should find one person and remain faithful to him or her.  Nietzsche insists that “there is only perspective knowing.”  Therefore morality would be a perspective too, right?  If so then we simply need to change our moral perspectives.  Sex is a passion which exists beyond marriage, and I find that acceptable. Now can I act on this passion without feeling guilty?

Let's Get Ethical, Ethical.

Three dialectics, the holy trinity, the ego the id and the super-ego. What is the fascination with the number three?  In the last class discussion we mostly talked about the importance of Kierkegaard’s three dialectics; the Aesthetic, the Ethical, and the Christian.  Though he doesn’t necessarily say it, he puts a heavy emphasis on the fact that the Christian dialectic is the most gratifying.  Although god can not be understood objectively, the passionate faith of god, the never-ending struggle of faith in god is what drives a man through life according to Kierkegaard. At least that was how I interpreted it.  That a man would be happiest through his passion in life.  A true Christian is very different to Kierkegaard, for he says that it is easier to become a true Christian when not already a Christian.  Many can claim to be christian’s yet not truly have faith in the idol,  therefore not truly be a christian.  It is the passionate exertion of faith, the true worship of an idol that makes someone a Christian.  This leads me to wonder how Kierkegaard would feel about someone’s faith in other idols.  Such as Krishna or Buddha.  Would this person be a Christian to Kierkegaard?  Perhaps i’m misinterpreting the writings, but to me it seems that the honest passion of faith is what truly matters to him.

The Aesthetic life, the Dionysian pleasures of art, beauty, wine, and women would soon bore a man. For an aesthetic, there is no good or evil, no morality, for he lives only to please himself in the moment. One could live an aesthetic life in ignorance for many years (perhaps a lifetime) and be happy, if they never realized the lack of meaning.  Once he looks back on his life and realizes it was meaningless, however, he would seek a different road, the road of the ethical.  An ethical life is rational.  It follows an objective morality.  There is purpose in an ethical lifestyle, and many would be content for a lifetime.  But the ethical too is flawed.  Though it has meaning, the ethical life is lacking the awareness of sin.  Once a person glimpses the fact that they are living in sin, they must move on to a better dialectic. The revelation that you are a sinner, that you are guilty (as Camus would suggest) throws a person in to despair.  What can you do with this knowledge of sin, with this despair?  One can repent, and passionately give their life to God.  You may kneel to god’s infinite power, and you must simultaneously fear him while trusting in his benevolence.  The relationship with god however is not objective for that cannot be proven.  What matters more is the direct relationship a person has with god.  It is not reading about the holy trinity and believing it as fact, for the holy trinity is a paradox.  God cannot be man and more than man at the same time.  Instead it is how one interprets the concept of the Holy Trinity and the concept of God.  The passion one exerts to the faith in it.

I know we haven’t quite read Nietzsche yet, but as I was partaking in my seemingly aesthetic lifestyle, I was discussing with my friend the concept of Ubermensch.  During our conversation I asked him if the Ubermensch (overhuman) could actually exist.  He replied by saying that I missed the point entirely.  The Ubermensch is something for people to strive for.  It is a never-ending attempt to become a better man than one is at the current moment.  To me this is strikingly similar to Kierkegaard’s passion for God.  Through passionate faith in god, one strives to become a better person.  One would follow the morals of God and attempt to repent for his sins.  His life would change for the better. 

I Don't Believe In Zimmerman

What’s that old bible verse?  Judge not, lest ye be judged?  There is a lot of judging going on with our dear friend Jean from Camus’ novel “The Fall.”  In class on monday, we finished the fall and began diving in to the mind of Kierkegaard, our existential papa.  What I gathered from the Fall and from the class discussion is that Jean makes the bold claim that everyone is guilty.   We are all guilty, not simply by doing evil, but by not doing anything to stop evil.  This would mean that we are guilty for the deaths of starving children, or the witches hung in Salem.  Our compassionate friend Jean confesses that all of humanity is guilty.  Therefore, there can be no justice if everyone is guilty.  Jean, although very judgmental,  is judging himself as he is also a part of this wretched humanity.  

Jean claims that god is out of style and unnecessary for moral judgements.  This reminded me of a Sartre quote from The Flies that goes something like “Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.”  So if god is not there to judge our morality, who is?  Someone needs to fill the void, and our dear friend Jean steps up to the plate.  He chooses to do what pleases himself.  He takes the path of hedonism and begins to be cruel to those he at one point tried to help to promote his own self-image.  In the end, he realizes that it doesn’t matter if he treats people good or bad because it is always in his self interest.

I have to admit Kierkegaard was difficult to comprehend.  Maybe I was a bit too tired, or maybe it’s something I need to read a few times to fully understand but I did have a bit of trouble.  Luckily I was able to talk to people in class about excerpts that confused me.  Kierkegaard proposes that boredom (not money) is the root of all evil.  Boredom is what caused Eve to bite the forbidden fruit and boredom caused man to build the tower of Babel.  Humans murder out of boredom.  Kierkegaard is a Christian and I was a bit cautious when I began to read his writings but he surprised me.  His argument for God was one that actual made sense, and this is coming from an atheist.  Kierkegaard states that man could never understand “God.”  He says that one cannot prove his existence or disprove his existence.  The very act of trying to prove he exists is doubting his existence in the first place.  The existence of god is a matter of faith, and it can’t be proved.  He says that essence entails existence.  A criminal does not exist, a person exists and that person is deemed a criminal.  So for God to be proved, his existence would need to be assumed, right?  Kierkegaard concludes that faith alone is all that counts.

Lastly, I would like to talk about a comment a student made about the concept of God.  He told a very relevant anecdote about his grandfather who continues to tell people the santa exists.  Santa’s existence is the “Spirit of giving” and we give it human features so it is easier to relate to.  Perhaps we do the same thing with God?  There is definitely something to our existence that cannot be understood.  We can label it as the universe, as god, as brahman, as the absurd, but it cannot be denied.  If giving this incomprehensible thing human qualities that allows people to understand it better, then perhaps I’ve been too rash in my judgement of religion  (i can be a bit intolerant).  My only confusion is why people insist on calling Kierkegaard a Christian.  Isn’t he beyond that narrow label? 

When An Ego Slips, It Falls

This week we had two readings, an excerpt from The Myth of Sisyphus, and several pages of The Fall, both by Albert Camus.  The Myth of Sisyphus was quite entertaining if not a bit depressing relating the greek myth of the King Sisyphus to the absurd hero.  Sisyphus was condemned by Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill, but the boulder would inevitably fall back down and he would have to repeat this straining task.  Camus seems to insist that man is similar to Sisyphus in that we all live an absurd life of work, sleep, eat, bowel movement, that repeats and repeats until our inevitable death.  Now Camus claims that once man realizes his inevitable death, he has two options: Suicide or Revolt.  But revolt against what?  Our class discussion led me to the conclusion that the revolt is against the absurd.  Camus made an interesting point about how we are always looking forward to the next day in our life.  He says that one day when we hit 30 and realize that we are still looking forward to the future, we acknowledge our place in time.  Here I am at 22 years old and I can remember a time when I was younger wishing to be older and not much has really changed.  Surely things are not better than they were when I was younger, yet I imagined they would be.  Of course there are things to look forward to in the future, but I think the point is to enjoy your present life and take control of it, for one day you will die, and there’s no use in crying because you shattered the glass on your iphone.  That would be absurd.

Next, we had the fall, a story of a “judge-penitent” named Jean who speaks to the readers as if we were a ‘dear friend.‘  This man is not as he initially appears and is an interesting character.  He tells the story of how his life was a humble one in which he always did noble deeds for others selflessly.  But he later reveals that he has begins to understand that all his noble actions were indeed done for his self-image.  Jean’s generosity and self-image was fabricated.  His first realization of this was in the fact that he tipped his hat to a blind man after helping him cross the street.  As the blind man could not see him tipping his hat, our friend Jean was purely doing it for his own self image.  Every action was self-interested even though he led himself to believe it was sheer generosity.  This realization causes a drastic change in his life, and Jean becomes the opposite of the good natured man he once was.  He realizes he truly hated all those less fortunate people he had tried to help in his past life.

In many ways I related to this character. I’ve mentioned before in this blog that I am overly aware of my own ego.  Oftentimes I think of things I say or do and realize how self centered I am.  Even this blog is layered with the “I” in considering how I will be perceived by my peers who read this.  But is this necessarily a bad thing?  Our image is what we are, and I must remind myself of this.  It is our place in society, and I believe that without it, we are being inhuman.

Finally I would like to end with something I heard discussed in class.  I believe Thad mentioned that there is an important difference between the human animal and the animal.  Some might call it a blessing, but others could see it as a curse.  Is it our degree of self-awareness or is it the ability to think rationally?  

Everything is True and Nothing is True

This week I had the opportunity to read a short but great Novel called The Stranger (L’Étranger).  What an amazing read, though it had me wishing Sartre had written a fiction novel (I stand corrected by the all knowing internet that he has in fact written at least one fiction novel).  Meursault seemed to be a relatable guy with his disdain for the cops.  I laughed inside several times at his conversations.  His indifference to marrying Marie and his honesty in telling her he would have married any girl who asked him.  Overall I found him to be a compelling character and I was rather surprised that many students in class found him to be such a detestable guy. 

Seeing his reaction to the death of his mother was not all that strange, though I now realize that this is the point of the character. He is a stranger.  To me he is perfectly understandable.  Meursault’s rant about death in the end of the book was brilliant.  Knowing his belief system I can understand that to him his mother’s death was just another inevitable thing that would have happened in his life regardless of his actions.  Being that he wasn’t religious, his mother’s body was just a lifeless body, so he didn’t understand the need to see it before the burial.  

I will have to disagree with those who claim he had no emotions or empathy.  For one, he asks Raymond to hand him the gun while approaching the Arab so Raymond doesn’t carelessly shoot the Arab.  Another reason is that Meursault continues to bring up his mother throughout the book, and mentions things she used to teach him.  One of these teachings that his mother passed on to him was that one could get used to any situation after a while.  This teaching is put into action when Meursault spends time in jail, he quickly becomes used to it. He also mentions that “Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about” (Camus, 113).  I believe that the fact Meursault continues to bring up the memory of his mother is enough to show that he truly cared for her. It is simply because he doesn’t talk as much about his emotions as normal members of society that the others get the impression that he never cared for her.

Lastly i’d like to mention the trial.  This was the most absurd sequence in the book in my opinion.  As Meursault himself noted, the trial almost seemed as if it wasn’t even about him, because he was hardly taking a part in it.  The lawyer and the prosecutor took precedent, with the lawyer even going as far as referring to Mersault in the first person.  “I killed a man” said Meursault’s attorney.  Minor incidents of the way Meursault acted at his mother’s funeral were the basis of the prosecution’s attacks against him.

When the prosecutor asks Monsieur Perèz if he’d seen Meursault cry at the funeral, Perèz says “No.”  When asked by Meursault’s attorney if he had seen Meursault not cry he again answers “No.”  This leads Meursault’s lawyer to conclude about the nature of this trial that “Everything is true, and nothing is true” (Camus, 91).

Why was Meursault given such a rough sentence?  It seemed to be more for his indifference to the world than for the crime he committed.  To him, it seemed like a simple case, he shot a man.  Meursault now realizes how insane it is that these men will now have control over the rest of his earthly existence.  For what? Because he doesn’t feel it  necessary to look at his mother’s body?  Because he chooses to smoke and drink coffee at his mother’s funeral service? Because he enjoyed his life the day after his mother’s burial with a woman he was attracted to?  Or is it because he shot an Arab as the sun shined a painful light in to his eyes?

It seems to me the crime he is being punished for is indifference.