Kevin Aho - Existentialism - An Introduction

This book could not have been written without the teachers who first introduced me to existentialism. The initial exposure came from my parents, Jim and Margaret Aho, whose bookshelves were filled with the works of Camus, Kierkegaard, Kafka, Sartre, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Rilke, and Nietzsche (though strangely, nothing from Heidegger). For them, the only thing that mattered in life was ‘ being true to oneself, ’ and without their encouragement and dog-eared copy of The Brothers Karamazov — which I read during winter break of my freshman year in college — I may never have changed my major to philosophy and fallen so hard for existentialism. They have followed and supported my path from the ski slopes of Utah and Wyoming to the urban canyons of Manhattan to the sub-tropical swamps and beaches of south Florida. They have also read, commented on, and edited early drafts of this book, and their sharp and incisive feedback throughout the process has been invaluable. My brothers, Ken and Kyle, have also been my teachers, showing me what genuine acts of self-creation are through their music, art, and bold adventures in the mountains.

There were also a number of influential professors in college and graduate school who exposed me to different aspects of existentialist thought, including Carl Levenson and Paul Tate at Idaho State University; Agnes Heller and Bernard Flynn at the New School for Social Research; Bernard Harrison at the University of Utah; and Stephen Turner, Ofelia Schutte, and Joanne Waugh at the University of South Florida. But of all the teachers I've had over the years, the most important and enduring has been Charles Guignon. Indeed, this book was originally conceived as a co-authored project, and many of the ideas were developed over lengthy conversations with Charles over the past decade. His intellectual guidance and friendship have been a steady presence, and this book could not have been completed without him. Of course, with that said, any scholarly and interpretive errors in the book are mine alone.

I also have to acknowledge the consistent institutional support at Florida Gulf Coast University and my warm and supportive colleagues, especially Margaret Hambrick, Glenn Whitehouse, Jim Wohlpart, Sean Kelly, Mohamad Al-Hakim, and Donna Henry. They helped to create a pluralistic and open intellectual space where I could freely pursue my own research projects and integrate them into my teaching in existentialist-themed courses like ‘The Philosophy of Death and Dying,’ ‘The Tragedy of Technology,’ ‘Existential Psychotherapy,’ and ‘Phenomenology of the Body.’ I have also been blessed with wonderful students who have taken my courses over the years, including Ashley Levy, Ellie Levy, Jonathan Wurtz, Paul Smith, Jon Morheim, Adil Mughal, Jameson Yingling, and Natalie Worebel. I am especially thankful to Adil Mughal and Diana Ruiz for helping me to compose the selected bibliography for this volume. And I am indebted to Ariel Ruiz i Altaba for his generosity in once again allowing me to use his artwork for the cover of a book. This particular image is appropriately called ‘Choices’ from a powerful collection of his entitled Traces .

The editorial staff at Polity Press has been nothing less than superb throughout the process. Sarah Lambert, Pascal Porcheron, India Darsley, and Emma Hutchinson were consummate professionals; they were consistently supportive of the project and always timely and thoughtful in their responses to any questions I had. Emma, in particular, was especially helpful as the project neared completion. Eric Schramm's detailed and rigorous copyediting saved me from a number of stylistic and technical embarrassments. And three anonymous referees for Polity offered extensive and insightful comments for revisions that sharpened the manuscript.

Finally, there is an inexpressible debt of gratitude to Elena Ruíz. In many ways, our relationship reflects the enduring cross-cultural power of existentialist thought. A Latina born and raised in Mexico City and a small-town mountain boy from Idaho came together at the University of South Florida in Tampa, and our connection flourished and deepened over late-night discussions of Nietzsche, Camus, and Kierkegaard. She, more than anyone I know, is an incarnation of what matters in existentialism, living with sense of committed passion and intensity, accepting the inescapable frailty of the human situation, and attentive to the suffering of others. This book is dedicated to her.

One of the difficulties in writing a book about ‘existentialism’ is the word itself. It is an ‘ ism ’ that gives the misleading impression of a coherent and unified philosophical school. The word was officially coined by the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel in 1943 and quickly adopted by his compatriots Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. But many of the major twentieth-century figures, such as Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus, rejected the label, and nineteenth-century pioneers like Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche had never heard of it. Indeed, the representative figures are anything but unified in their views. There are secular existentialists like Sartre, Nietzsche, and Camus whose philosophies are informed by the ‘death of God,’ but there are also prominent theistic existentialists like Marcel, Paul Tillich, and Martin Buber. There are existentialists who claim that we are radically free and morally responsible for our actions, and others, like Nietzsche, who contend that the idea of free will is a fiction. There are some, like Kierkegaard, Beauvoir, and Sartre who maintain that existentialism is a form of subjectivism, while others, such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, reject this equivocation and posit the centrality of intersubjectivity or being-in-the-world. And there are figures who argue that our relations with others are invariably mired in alienation, self-deception, and conflict, but there are also those who develop notions of mutual dependency, selfless love, and genuine communion with others.

Yet, given these conflicting views, there are clear indications of a new philosophical orientation emerging in modern Europe, centering specifically on the question of what it means to be human. As early as the seventeenth century, French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal introduced the phrase ‘logic of the heart’ ( logique du coeur ) in an attempt to give an account of the affective mystery of human existence that traditional reason and logic could never access. In one of the first expressions of modern existentialism, Pascal writes:

Let man, returning to himself, consider what he is in comparison with what exists; let him regard himself as lost, and from this little dungeon, in which he finds himself lodged, I mean the universe, let him learn to take the earth, its realms, its cities, its houses and himself at their proper value. … Anyone who considers himself in this way will be terrified at himself. (1995, 199)

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Kierkegaard would take Pascal's experience of existential isolation and terror and develop an entire philosophy around it, stressing the importance of the singular and concrete passions of the ‘existing individual’ over any abstract or objective truth. A generation later, Nietzsche was promoting the ideals of ‘life philosophy’ ( Lebensphilosophie ) that emphasized the incalculability of human experience and the inchoate forces of life that could never be explained by appeals to reason. In the 1920s, Heidegger was introducing his own ‘existential analytic’ or ‘analytic of Dasein,’ and his contemporary Karl Jaspers was developing a ‘philosophy of existence’ ( Existenzphilosophie ), both of which engaged the inexpressible freedom of the individual and the human conditions of anxiety and death that defy rational apprehension. Thus, long before the word ‘existentialism’ was officially introduced in 1943 and the uniform of black sweaters, black pants, and cigarettes populated the cafés of the boulevard St. Germain in Paris, the core ideas of the movement had already been articulated. This helps to explain David Cooper's remark that “none of the great existentialist tomes contain the word ‘existentialism’ ” (1999, 1).