Philosophy Now

ISSUE 145 AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2021

Philosophy Now

a magazine of ideas

Angst
Bad faith
Coffee

Existentialism and Daily Life

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Editorial

Existing in the World

When most of us think of existentialism, we imagine agree that people should live authentic lives, but they might
a bunch of broody French intellectuals in rollneck
sweaters, sitting around a table in a café on Paris’s do so with their fingers crossed behind their backs. Isn’t there
Left Bank, smoking Gauloises and drinking endless coffees as
they stare into the abyss within the human soul. And this is much more to living well? Here it gets fuzzy. Despite the best
broadly accurate, but there is more to it than that.
Existentialism continues to be the most popular and best efforts of, for instance, Simone de Beauvoir (see her Ethics of
recognized school of philosophy, and we get complaints if we
don’t publish an issue about it at least once every couple of Ambiguity) it is probably fair to say that there is no widely-
years. You are holding that issue.
accepted existentialist system of ethics. Sartre made clear his
Existentialism started not in France but in the previous
century in Denmark, with the highly unorthodox Christian belief that philosophy cannot in the end tell you what to do.
thinker Søren Kierkegaard. He introduced the idea that in our
journey through life we have the opportunity to make a ‘leap Wanting it to do so is another example of denying your own
of faith’, to commit to a belief even though the evidence isn’t
there. Most later existentialists were not religious, but the freedom.
hero making a commitment, or sometimes making a
disastrous mistake, is a recurrent theme of existentialist novels Maybe we can gain some clues about existentialism’s impli-
and plays. Existentialism, in contrast to much preceding
philosophy, insists that existence precedes essence. In other words, cations by considering how its proponents have lived and
there is no such thing as an immutable essence of a human
being. Instead, first of all we exist. At birth we are thrown into loved? Sartre may not be the most shining exemplar in this
a universe that doesn’t much care about us, and we have to
make the best of ourselves – individually and in relation to regard; Sam Kelly’s article exposes his drug-induced halluci-
one another – as we go along. We define ourselves by our
choices and we have to make those choices without complete nations and morbid fear of seafood. Life it is, pretty it ain’t.
information. Our unlimited freedom is actually a burden, for
there is no avoiding choices – even doing nothing is a choice Annabel Abbs explores Simone de Beavoir’s love of hiking,
– and no escaping moral responsibility for what we do. The
awareness of this causes a state of angst or anxiety. The which was altogether more wholesome and took her and her
temptation to deny our own freedom, to pretend that we are
mere cogs in a machine, mere products of our environment or ideas out into the fresh air. This issue will also introduce you
mere puppets of determinism, is therefore strong and
widespread. Sartre condemns this, calling it ‘bad faith’. He, to some less well-known existentialist thinkers. One of them is
and other existentialists, call on us to live lives which are
authentic – meaning that we see our human predicament with the African-American writer Richard Wright, who escaped
clear eyes and do not shirk the burden of our freedom. Yet
looming over this is an awareness that while our projects and from his own hard life for a while to hang out with Sartre, de
values and commitments matter to us, they do not matter to
the universe. Our lives are brief and our carefully-laid plans Beauvoir, Camus and their friends in 1950s Paris. He wrote a
liable to be upended in an instant by casual chance. Albert
Camus called this the ‘absurd’. novel called The Outsider, and brilliantly portrayed the

It might be useful to divide existentialism into a descriptive alienation he knew so well. The Norwegian mountaineer and
part – understanding ourselves and our absurd pretensions
and unbearable, unshirkable freedom in a cold uncaring existentialist Peter Zapffe was by all accounts quite a cheerful
universe – and a prescriptive part – a guide to how we should
live. To the descriptive part people tend to nod along and say person, but his prognostications outdid even those of Sartre
“Yeah, I know what you mean, life is a bit like that isn’t it?
Especially on Mondays.” By contrast, people tend to be less for sheer gloominess, as you can read here for yourself. Greg
convinced by the prescriptive part. If pressed, they might
Artus considers the Look of the Other, which is bound to be

important for a sociable species like humans. Afik Rashid

writes amiably on another key concept – the splintering of

personal and social identity.

The high noon of existentialist thought may have ended,

but many people continue to find that existentialism resonates

with literature and movies of all kinds, and sometimes with

real life too. In particular, the idea that meaning and values

are not sewn into the fabric of the universe but that we must

invent them for ourselves has become ever more widely held.

So, how appropriate that this issue also contains readers’

answers to our last Question of the Month competition,

which asked: “What is the most fundamental value?” What

would your answer have been? Rick Lewis

Sartre had a morbid fear of seafood © SUDZIE 2005 CC LICENCE 4.0

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 3

Philosophy Now ISSUE145
August/September 2021

Philosophy Now 56 DETAIL OF MURAL IN EAST BERLIN BY WALTER WOMACKA
ANNE CONWAY
43a Jerningham Road, Editorial & News 46
Telegraph Hill, RICHARD WRIGHT BY GORDON PARKS
London SE14 5NQ 3 Editorial by Rick Lewis General Articles
United Kingdom 6 News by Anja Steinbauer
Tel. 020 7639 7314 7 Shorts Matt Qvortrup 30 Jonathan Edwards on Spiders
[email protected] John Irish reveals Locke’s surprising
Existentialism & Life influence on a hellfire preacher
philosophynow.org
8 The Adventures of Jean-Paul Sartre 34 Taylor Swift’s Liar Paradox
Editor-in-Chief Rick Lewis Sam Kelly sees existentialism in action Theresa Helke on four kinds of paradox
Editors Grant Bartley, Anja Steinbauer
Digital Editor Bora Dogan 11 Kierkegaard: Young, Free and Anxious 38 The Stoic’s Lacuna
Book Reviews Editor Teresa Britton Gary Cox analyses angst existentially Alex Richardson asks if Stoics can be activists
Film Editor Thomas Wartenberg
Assistant Editor Alex Marsh 14 We’re All Existentialists Now 42 Would Kant Have Worn a Face Mask?
Greg Artus on the Look of the Other in Todd Mei speculates about his PPE policy
Design Grant Bartley, Rick Lewis, Sartre, Heidegger & Merleau-Ponty
Anja Steinbauer Reviews
Marketing Sue Roberts 18 The Yomps of Simone de Beauvoir
Administration Ewa Stacey, Alex Marsh Annabel Abbs goes hiking with Simone 54 Book: Just Deserts: Debating Free Will
by Daniel Dennett & Gregg Caruso
Advertising Team 20 Existentialism from an Reviewed justly by Stuart Jeffries
African-American Perspective
Jay Sanders, Stella Ellison Roger Karny has a different Outsider in mind 55 Book: Good Sport
[email protected] by Thomas H. Murray
22 No Hats on Sunday Reviewed sportingly by Dan Ray
UK Editorial Board Afik Rashid looks at identity with Camus
56 Book: Why Women Have Better Sex
Rick Lewis, Anja Steinbauer, 25 Zapffe for a New Political Age Under Socialism
Bora Dogan, Grant Bartley Cameron Hendy on voluntary extinction by Kristen R. Ghodsee
Reviewed sociably by Amber Edwards
US Editorial Board 20
58 Film: Brimstone & Treacle
Prof. Timothy J. Madigan (St John Thomas R. Morgan splits reality in two
Fisher College), Prof. Teresa Britton
(Eastern Illinois Univ.), Prof. Peter
Adamson, Prof. Charles Echelbarger,
Prof. Raymond Pfeiffer, Prof. Mas-
simo Pigliucci (CUNY City College)

Contributing Editors

Alexander Razin (Moscow State Univ.)
Laura Roberts (Univ. of Queensland)
David Boersema (Pacific University)

UK Editorial Advisors

Piers Benn, Constantine Sandis, Gordon
Giles, Paul Gregory, John Heawood

US Editorial Advisors

Prof. Raymond Angelo Belliotti, Toni
Vogel Carey, Prof. Harvey Siegel,
Prof. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Cover Image by Ron Schepper

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4 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

some of our

Contributors

Gary Cox

Gary Cox is an
Honorary Research
Fellow at the University
of Birmingham, where he
completed his PhD on Sartre in
1996. He is the author of over ten
philosophy books including How
to Be an Existentialist, The
Existentialist’s Guide, The Sartre
Dictionary and How to Be Good.

COVER BY RON SCHEPPER Theresa Helke
SIMON & FINN
Theresa Helke teaches
at Smith College in the
USA and Barwaaqo Uni-
versity in Somaliland. She
earned a PhD at NUS/Yale-NUS
College in Singapore, and served
in the Peace Corps in Benin. She
was born in the UK and grew up in
the USA, Switzerland, and Austria
as a third-culture kid.

8 Terence Green

Regulars Poetry, Fun & Fiction Terence Green lives in
the sleepy seaside vil-
27 Question of the Month: 10 Sartre Poem lage of Eastbourne, New
What’s The Most Fundamental Value? Alasdair Macdonald takes responsibility Zealand. By trade, he is,
Read readers’ most fundamental answers inadvertently, an historian. By
23 Simon & Finn Melissa Felder degrees, he is a political philoso-
44 Interview: Michael Hauskeller 24 The Myth of Sisyphus pher. He likes to pluck away at the
talks with Annika Loebig about guitar, bang away at the piano,
death and meaning Joe Crocker mythologises poetically take delight in flowers and pre-
49 Philosopher’s Café Guto Dias tend he can still play football.
46 Brief Lives: Anne Conway 64 Freedom & Responsibility
Jonathan Head on Restoration reincarnation Melissa Felder
Cora Cruz’s heroine lives out some searching
50 Letters to the Editor domestic existentialism Melissa Felder is a
53 Philosophy Then: Existentialism in Iran writer and
23 humorist/illustrator
Peter Adamson & Hanif Amin Beidokhti based out of Toronto,
60 Tallis in Wonderland: Canada. Melissa explores issues
relating to art, philosophy and the
The Riddle of the Sphincter environment. She has been a reg-
ular contributor to Philosophy
Raymond Tallis gets to the bottom of things Now since 2013. More of her work
66 Philosophical Haiku: Lyotard is available at simonandfinn.com

ripped apart by Terence Green

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 5

News • Templeton supports Church, shock news
• Big Data is Watching Over You
• Judith Jarvis Thomson

News reports by Anja Steinbauer

PHOTO © ISTOCK.COM/PHONLAMAIPHOTO Ethics of AI in Health X-Phi of Religion global populations. However, ethics con-
Artificial Intelligence, particularly cern have arisen as it also holds data from
machine learning combined with Big Not much external funding is available for individuals who may not have given their
Data, shows vast promise in helping to philosophical projects, as most university- consent, such as the Uyghurs in China
diagnose medical conditions and recom- based philosophers know only too well. and the Roma in Eastern Europe, as well
mend the best treatment options. But However, Ian Church, assistant professor as other ethnic minorities. Computational
what about privacy; what about the safety for philosophy at Hillsdale College in biologist Yves Moreau (Catholic Univer-
of individual patients? What of overview Michigan seems to have lucked in. The sity of Leuven) focuses his public criti-
by doctors with decades of training and Templeton Foundation, whose vision cism on China: “China is pursuing, and
experience? Two years of work by twenty includes “infinite scientific and spiritual trying to export, an authoritarian political
experts has now resulted in a guidance progress,” has offered Church a grant of model based on surveillance technology,
report published by the World Health just under $2.5 million to fund a three- including genetic surveillance of minori-
Organization outlining six key principles year project titled ‘Launching Experimen- ties. Researchers, database curators and
for the ethical use of AI in healthcare set- tal Philosophy of Religion’. Church com- science publishers should not be com-
tings. While the document comments ments: “It’s an extremely exciting time to plicit in this model – absolutely in no
favourably on the potential of AI in treat- be doing philosophy, especially from a way.” Science historian Veronika Lip-
ing patients especially in under-resourced Christian perspective.” He explains that he phardt, sociologist Mihai Surdu, both at
areas, it warns that AI should not be used and his experimental philosophy (‘x-phi’) the University of Freiburg, and geneticist
as an easy substitute for traditional treat- colleagues are aiming to explore how rele- Gudrun Rappold at the University of
ment methods, and that authorities should vant contexts, such as the news, inform our Heidelberg have recently published their
consider carefully where it’s use is appro- moral judgements: “Why is it that the research on genetic studies about the
priate. The WHO document is intended world might seem to contain so much Roma. “It is extremely doubtful that such
as a foundation on which governments, pointless suffering? Think about how we studies were always done with people’s
developers and regulators can build their learn about the world very commonly: via fully informed consent,” concludes Lip-
practices. The six principles it proposes the news. Frequently, the news is report- phardt. Representatives of the European
are: protecting autonomy; promoting ing on tragic events and then cutting to a Society of Human Genetics published an
human safety and well-being; ensuring commercial break where you learn about a opinion piece in January 2021, stating:
transparency; fostering accountability; new fabric softener. You’re just jumping “We would like to see an end to collabo-
ensuring equity; and promoting tools that around and learning about terrible suffer- rations between academic and clinical
are responsive and sustainable. ing and moving on. There’s no broader institutions worldwide and institutions in
context. That might suggest that this way countries carrying out widespread, uneth-
The doctor will see you now. of reporting on the world might make it ical DNA collections and/or analysis.” On
seem more dangerous, evil, and pointless the other hand Walther Parson, curator
than it actually is.” of another forensic database (EMPOP),
warns: “Judges anywhere in the world rely
Forensic Database Controversy on robust forensic data. Excluding data
from minority groups could bias statistical
The Y-chromosome Haplotype Reference evaluations in forensic reports – to their
Database (yhrd.org) has had an online disadvantage.”
presence since 2000. It is a very useful
tool, and has in many ways been a great Judith Jarvis Thomson
force for good. It is widely used across the
world to help solve sex crimes and settle The ground-breaking American ethicist
paternity issues. Scientists from universi- Judith Jarvis Thomson died recently, aged
ties as well as crime laboratories have 91. For most of her life Thomson taught
uploaded data to it, so that it now contains philosophy at MIT. She was involved in
more than 300,000 anonymous Y-chro- developing and extending the famous
mosome profiles, demonstrating how par- ‘Trolley Problem’ discovered by Philippa
ticular genetic markers are indicators of Foot in 1967. (Should you shift the points
male lineages in more than 1,300 distinct

6 Philosophy Now l August/September 2021

Shorts

so that a runaway trolley kills one track Philosophy Shorts
worker on a siding rather than five guys
working on the main line?) However, by Matt Qvortrup
Thomson’s best-known piece of work is an
essay she wrote in 1971, ‘A Defense of More Songs About Buildings and Food was the title of a 1978
Abortion’. In it she invented an unusual album by the band Talking Heads. It was about all the things rock
and famous thought experiment. As the stars normally don’t sing about. Pop songs are usually about varia-
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it: tions on the theme of love. Tracks such as Rose Royce’s 1976 hit
“imagine that while we sleep a group of Carwash are the exception.
music lovers stealthily attach to us a
famous violinist who is suffering from an Philosophers, likewise, have a narrow focus on epistemology,
ailment, and we uniquely can keep him metaphysics and trifles like the meaning of life. But occasionally the
alive for roughly nine months, as he con- great minds stray from their home turf and write about buildings
valesces. The question is: may we detach (Heidegger), food (Hobbes), tomato juice (Nozick), and the weather (Lucretius and Aristo-
the violinist, causing his death? Thomson tle). This series of Shorts is about these unfamiliar themes; about the things philosophers
argues that we may, since our negative also write about.
rights have been violated and no one has
the right to use another’s body, even to Philosophers on Listening
save his own life. Of course, the analogy
here is limited to cases of non-consensual Are you listening? Okay, right. Here rather anyone who listens is fundamental-
impregnation, such as those resulting from we go! ly open. Without this openness to one
rape.” Thomson’s violinist story is said to Philosophers are a verbose lot. Most another there is no genuine human rela-
have shifted the focus of abortion debates of them, it is fair to say, prefer to speak tionship.”
somewhat from the question of person- rather than to listen. But sometimes they
hood of the foetus towards the rights of are humble and come to their senses. (The Other Side of Language, p.8).
the mother. It also (like the Trolley Prob-
lem) concerns the ethical distinction Søren Kierkegaard, though he too Hence, as the psychoanalyst Jacques
between killing and letting die. wrote a lot, confessed he had “less and Lacan concluded, “to listen to someone,
less to say… became silent, and began to to hear his [or her] voice requires on the
SMITHSONIAN listen,” and at this stage, “discovered in listener’s part, an attention open to the
the silence the voice of God” (The Lily of interspace of body and discourse” (quot-
the Field and the Bird of the Air, p.19). So ed in The Responsibility of Forms, p.255).
the Danish existentialist was rather in Sadly, many people don’t like to listen
agreement with Shakespeare’s Falstaff because they are set in their ways and
that, “it is the disease of not listening, don’t want to be challenged. “Good
the malady of not marking, that I am words scarcely find any listeners,” wrote
troubled withal” (Henry IV, Part Two). St Augustine in The City of God. But by
not hearing others out, we deprive our-
But what does it mean to listen? selves of the insights of our fellow citi-
Fundamentally, we need to under- zens. The medieval philosopher
stand that, in the words of Roland Marsilius of Padua (1275-1342) realized
Barthes, hearing “is a physiological phe- this when he urged those in power to lis-
nomenon. Listening is a psychological ten. For:
act” (The Responsibility of Forms, p.245).
Listening is a social phenomenon in a “..the less learned citizen can sometimes
way that mere hearing is not. This, of perceive something that should be cor-
course, is not a new idea. Immanuel rected with regard to a proposed law even
Kant too believed that “not to see will though they would not have known how
separate you from things, not to listen to discover it in the first place”
separates you from other people.”
Gemma Corradi Fiumara is perhaps (The Defender of the Peace, p.80).
the most perceptive of the contemporary
philosophers of listening. Author of The Okay, enough of my words; now over
Other Side of Language: The Philosophy of to you. In the words of Lacan, “perhaps
Listening (1999), her work centres I should simply listen to you in silence?”
around listening with an open mind: (Écrites, p.131).

“Openness exists ultimately not only for © PROF. MATT QVORTRUP 2021

the person to whom one listens, but Matt Qvortrup is Professor of Political
Science at Coventry University.

August/September 2021 l Philosophy Now 7

Existentialism

The Adventures
of Jean-Paul
Sartre

Sam Kelly says Jean-Paul Sartre was the Hunter S. Thompson of existentialism.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) is is a crushing weight. We live in anguish He also believed a person is “nothing
perhaps the most famous expo- and despair because every success and else but the sum of his actions.” So what
nent of existentialism. His philos- every failure rests squarely on our shoul- were the sum of Sartre’s actions? How did
ophy asserts that human beings ders. The core of Sartre’s existentialism he choose to define his existence?
are cursed with the impossible burden of is that human beings are ‘condemned to
having to make decisions without any be free’. First, as a writer. He wrote a great many
higher justifications. There is no God or books: philosophical treatises, novels,
other transcendent force to dictate what Sartre further explained that people lie plays, screenplays, journalism, art criti-
they should do with their lives. Human to themselves, hoping to escape the curse cism, psychological studies, and biogra-
beings are alone, and, born without an of free choice. They pretend their choices phies. He was enormously prolific, an
essence, are forced to define themselves have been made for them and thus are out unstoppable book-making machine who
through their own actions. Since we have of their control: “I can’t do what I chose sought to share his ideas with the world
the sole power to determine our actions, because I have a family, I have a job, I through every conceivable means. Even
we can (and should) be judged on what have responsibilities, I have to earn when his health deteriorated in the 1970s
we choose to do with our freedom. This money…” Sartre called this sort of atti- and he became almost totally blind, he
tude ‘living in bad faith’. continued to generate new material with
the help of a reel-to-reel tape recorder.
CARTOON © PAUL WOOD 2021 PLEASE VISIT WOODTOON.CO.UK
In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature. A prestigious honor
without a doubt; but he turned it down.
Despite having spent his entire career as
an author, he decided to renounce liter-
ature because just writing is not enough.
He could not allow words to act as a sub-
stitute for active commitment in the
world. As an existentialist, he believed
free choice implies the responsibility to
act. And he was a social activist who
championed a variety of leftist causes. He
played a prominent role in the fight
against French colonial rule in Algeria,
denouncing the French government’s use
of internment camps and torture. He
became so vociferous that a paramilitary
organization targeted him for execution.
More than once, militants tried to blow
him up by detonating bombs at the
entrance to his apartment building.

He was also a passionate advocate of
Marxist ideals. He said capitalism was a
trap, a machine designed to suck people

8 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Jean-Paul Sartre
by Gail Campbell

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 9

Existentialism

in and convince them they needed to buy commercial goods, Sartre Poem
but in reality the accumulation of possessions is unnecessary.
They’re an encumbrance, an excuse not to live an authentic life. You condemned me to be free, Jean-Paul.
Sartre embraced Marxism because he thought it allowed people You were what you did,
to stop focusing on money and increased their freedom to con- the author of yourself,
sider other possibilities. He even met with the Marxist icons transcending every moment
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. While he could not entirely with each choice, and
support Castro because of the Cuban government’s persecu- what you chose for yourself
tion of gay people, he was enormously impressed by Che Gue- you chose for all humankind
vara, who he praised as “not only an intellectual,” but also the - for me! –
“era’s most perfect man.” to be able to choose to do differently
from what you might have wanted
And then there were the drugs. Sartre believed a man was me to do,
defined by his actions; yet his actions included taking massive even if I am inauthentic,
quantities of uppers, downers, and everything in between. The and choose,
biography Sartre: A Life (1987) by Annie Cohen-Solal describes in bad faith,
that during a typical day, the philosopher would smoke two packs to delude myself
of cigarettes and several pipefuls of tobacco, drink more than a that I have no choice,
quart of alcohol (wine, beer, vodka, whisky…), gulp down two because I cannot face the anguish
hundred milligrams of amphetamines, several grams of barbitu- of choosing.
rates, fifteen grams of aspirin, plus coffee, tea, and who knows There are no excuses.
what else. He was bursting with ideas that he was desperate to No! None!
share with the world, so he popped pills and drank coffee to I cannot say, “It was not I.”
increase his focus and enable him to keep writing at a breakneck I did, I am.
pace without the need for rest. Once he finished writing, he was
too revved up to sleep, so he would swallow barbiturates to knock © ALASDAIR MACDONALD 2021
himself out. When he finally awoke the next day, he’d pop more
amphetamines to cut through the fog of sleep, so he could once Alasdair Macdonald is a retired secondary school Head
again write obsessively all day and into the night. But produc- Teacher. His first degree was in Natural Philosophy and
tivity wasn’t the only reason he took drugs. He deliberately Mathematics. He subsequently did a Masters in Education.
sought to break the shackles of conventional thinking and open After he retired he attended classes in Philosophy at the
his mind. He wanted to embrace the unlimited freedom of being, Adult Education Department of the University of Glasgow.
to experience life in a radically different way. That’s why he
injected mescaline, longing to undergo a new adventure that ever he was alone. As he said in a 1971 interview: “After I took
ordinary life could not provide. The good news is he succeeded. mescaline, I started seeing crabs around me all the time. They
The bad news is he got more than he bargained for. followed me in the streets, into class. I got used to them. I would
wake up in the morning and say, ‘Good morning, my little ones,
Mescaline is one of the most potent hallucinogens ever found how did you sleep?’ I would talk to them all the time. I would
in nature. It was legal at the time and regarded as a safe entry say, ‘O.K., guys, we’re going into class now, so we have to be
point into the world of psychedelics. Users would consume it still and quiet,’ and they would be there, around my desk, abso-
orally, either in powder form or in gel capsules, and the effects lutely still, until the bell rang.” Finally, after spending a full year
would last for an average of ten to twelve hours. But Sartre with the crabs, he feared he was having a nervous breakdown,
scoffed at the notion of starting with a small dose as a prelimi- and decided to see a psychiatrist. “I began to think I was going
nary test. He obtained a massive quantity of mescaline in liquid crazy, so I went to see a shrink… We concluded that it was fear
form and injected it directly into his veins. He shot up with a of being alone, fear of losing camaraderie of the group” that
huge dose of one of the strongest psychedelics to occur in nature, caused him to see the crabs. Once the doctor diagnosed the
then waited to see what would happen. reason for their presence, the crabs suddenly went away, in an
instant. They had been with him for so long that he actually felt
His bold experiment quickly transformed into a nightmare. a sense of loss when they disappeared.
The drug triggered his repressed fear of sea creatures – crabs,
lobsters, and octopuses. He began to perceive that there were In the end, did Jean-Paul Sartre succeed in defining himself
crabs with sharp claws all around him, surrounding him, crawl- through his books, social activism, and drug use? Well, he was
ing over his body; not just for a few hours, and not just for a few a household name in France when he died, became the most
days. He injected so much mescaline that the effects of the drug well-known philosopher of the Twentieth Century, and at his
lingered for an unbelievably long time. And long after the drugs funeral 50,000 people followed his coffin through the streets of
wore off, the crabs remained. They followed him everywhere Paris. So it would appear that the answer is yes.
he went, crawling over objects, swarming him. He understood
they were figments of his imagination, yet every morning when © SAM KELLY 2021
he woke up, the crustacean hallucinations were waiting for him.
Gradually, he became accustomed to their presence. He even Sam Kelly is an author focusing on history. His upcoming book is
came to think of them as friends, and he spoke to them when- entitled This is Human History on Drugs.

10 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

ON CLIFF EDGE © DIEGLOP 2014

Existentialism

Kierkegaard:

Young, Free & Anxious

Gary Cox considers the problematic side of freedom, from the edge of a cliff.

Many of the central themes and concepts of existen- died in Copenhagen aged just 42, possibly due to a paralysing
tialism – freedom, choice, responsibility, bad faith, spinal ailment caused by a fall from a tree in his youth. His funeral
anxiety, despair, and absurdity – originated in the was a lively affair, his followers protesting that the established
writings of Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), in such Danish church had no right to take possession of, or to sermonise
ground-breaking works as Either-Or (1843), Fear and Trembling over, the body of a man who had so vehemently opposed it.
(1843), The Concept of Anxiety (1844) and The Sickness Unto Death Although a Christian and a learned theologian, Kierkegaard was
(1849). Existentialism is undoubtedly as much rooted in far from being an unquestioningly obedient member of the flock.
Kierkegaard’s militant, idiosyncratic Christianity as it is in the He was an eccentric maverick who found himself continually at
‘God is dead’ proto-existentialism of Arthur Schopenhauer and odds with orthodox Christianity generally and the Danish State
Friedrich Nietzsche. But his radical views on faith, religious Church in particular. Kierkegaard was also repulsed by the then
commitment and the individual, and his rejection of a conformist, dominant philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, with
passive, rationalist, dispassionate, inauthentic approach towards its focus on grand, abstract historical processes rather than on
the religious life and the infinite, make him a true existentialist. individual, concrete human beings. In opposition, Kierkegaard
Here we’re going to briefly look at his concept of anxiety. developed a philosophy of the individual, who does not experi-
ence him or herself primarily as a part of the grand sweep of his-
Kierkegaard (whose name means ‘churchyard’ in Danish),

DANGER SIGN © MICHAL OSMENDA 2008

12 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Existentialism

tory, but rather as a free, anxious, mortal being struggling to dis- choice not to jump, a choice he is free to replace at any moment
cover any purpose to her absurd, tragic existence. For with a self-destructive decision. His anxiety is precisely his
Kierkegaard, to exist, and therefore to have a relationship with awareness of the ease with which he can spontaneously over-
the infinite – with God – is like riding a wild stallion. Unfortu- turn the self-determinations that he wishes would permanently
nately in his view, most people ‘exist’ on their journey through fix, define, preserve, and protect him.
life as though they’d fallen asleep in a hay wagon.
If all this sounds far-fetched, then consider that people choose
Crucially, Kierkegaard recognises that anxiety, angst, to destroy themselves in various ways all the time, not least by
anguish, or dread (whichever term you prefer) is central to the choosing, in the face of despair, to hurl themselves from heights.
human condition as it is lived and is suffered by every human Certainly, the flimsy psychological guard rails that we continu-
being. To understand the true nature of anxiety is therefore to ally construct do help keep us on the straight and narrow, and
understand a great deal about being human. we work hard to convince ourselves that these guard rails are
real, independent entities – features of our prudent character
Firstly, although it is certainly related to fear in various ways, or our naturally cautious nature, and so on. They serve as guard
anxiety must be clearly distinguished from fear. In The Concept rails against anxiety in general; as comforting smoke screens
of Anxiety Kierkegaard argues that fear is a person’s concern put up in freedom, through which our freedom does not see
about what threatens him from outside – from a myriad threats itself as starkly as it otherwise might. If a man on a cliff edge
to life, limb, livelihood and happiness over which he has lim- focuses, for example, on what he likes to believe is his strong
ited control. Anxiety, on the other hand, is a person’s concern instinct for survival, then he distracts himself from the thought
about what, so to speak, threatens him from inside, from within that he is free to jump and the anxiety that goes with that recog-
his own consciousness. An anxious person is concerned about nition. However, all such self-distraction and self-evasion, all
what he might choose to do given his freedom to choose. He is such faith in inner guard rails, freedom-limiting factors and
troubled by his own freedom and spontaneity; by the awareness fixed personal characteristics, is what existentialists now call bad
that there is nothing whatsoever preventing him from choos- faith. Although existentialists tend to despise bad faith – it being
ing to perform a foolish, destructive or disreputable act at any the denial of our true, free nature – a degree of bad faith appears
moment, other than his choice not to perform it. “Hence,” says vital for sustaining well-being, and even sanity.
Kierkegaard, “anxiety is the dizziness of freedom” (p.61). To
be anxious is to be bewildered by one’s own freedom; to be wor- The example of the anxious person on the tall building or
ried and disturbed by the realisation that one always has many cliff has become famous in existentialist circles, not least because
options in any situation and must continually choose one option it has been reformulated by various existentialist philosophers
or another. Not choosing is not an option because choosing not who came after Kierkegaard, most notably Jean-Paul Sartre.
to choose, or choosing to do nothing, is still a choice. Sartre, who was heavily influenced by Kierkegaard, calls the
anxiety we experience whenever we consider dangerous experi-
This dizziness of freedom is most clearly manifested in the ments in freedom ‘the vertigo of possibility’, saying that “con-
sensation of vertigo. Kierkegaard takes the example of a man sciousness is frightened by its own spontaneity” (The Transcen-
standing on the edge of a tall building or cliff. The man fears dence of the Ego, 1936, p.100). And in Being and Nothingness
he might fall over the edge, that the safety rail or the ground (1943), Sartre embroiders Kierkegaard’s example by imagining
might give way, that someone might push him off, and so on. himself walking along a narrow precipice path without a guard-
Greater than his fear of falling, however, is his anxiety that he rail. Sartre argues that although his vertigo is not the fear of
is free to jump if he decides to – that his not jumping is an ongo- falling, it initially announces its onset through fear as he finds
ing choice which he might abandon at any moment in favour himself reflecting on all the circumstances that could cause him
of jumping. He experiences this anxiety, the threat of his own to fall over the edge. He begins to take evasive action. He keeps
freedom, as vertigo, an overwhelming giddiness. The drop as far away from the edge as possible and watches where he puts
obsesses him, the void seems to beckon him down; but really it his feet. He shapes his conduct according to a motive of sur-
is his own freedom that beckons to him – the very fact that he vival. In adopting this motive, however, it becomes increasingly
can always choose to go down the quick way. Vertigo is dread clear to him as he moves forward that he must keep on re-adopt-
of this alarming and persistent possibility, and all our alarming ing it, without there being any guarantee that he will do so. He
possibilities produce in us a psychological state akin to vertigo. rapidly becomes anxious about his future conduct, his future
That is to say, what a person overlooking a sheer drop dreads self. What if he loses concentration, or decides to run? What if
is not the possible inadequacy of the physical guard rail, but his future self abandons the motive of survival that has preserved
that he ultimately lacks a psychological guard rail to prevent him him until now, and he decides instead to step into the void? It
from choosing to climb over and plunge to his death. If it appears is possible, and it is his dread of that possibility – dread of his
on the face of it that his dread is of the void itself, this is because future self and his inability to determine its choices – that con-
his vivid awareness of the void immediately forces him to con- stitutes his vertigo, his anxiety, his Kierkegaardian dizziness of
front his own possibilities, his own dreadful existential freedom. freedom.
The void is the occasion of his dread, but not its source.
© GARY COX 2021
Interestingly, if the man fancies he has a fixed psychological
guard rail that prevents him from choosing to jump, then he is Gary Cox is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of
deluding himself – in existentialist jargon he is resorting to bad Birmingham and author of over ten philosophical books, including
faith – because whatever psychological barrier he possesses is the best-selling How to Be an Existentialist and the recently pub-
merely a flimsy construct consisting of nothing more than the lished How to Be Good. All his books are published by Bloomsbury.

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 13

Existentialism

We’re All
Existentialists Now

Greg Artus contemplates (dis)embodiment, Zoom life and social media,
through the ‘Looks’ of Sartre, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty.

In this past year of severe restrictions on physical social part in the exchange of ideas and feelings. If both language and
interaction, everyone seems to have been made starkly ideas are abstract, non-physical, then communication shouldn’t
aware of the importance of what some existentialists would be affected by one’s bodily presence. Yet we have found that it is
call Being-with-Others. A social life conducted through affected. We have found that we miss the bodily presence of others
screens has shown people how impoverished life is without the more than our dominant paradigm suggests we should.
physical presence of others. The popular expression of this has
been through the language of ‘hugs’: everyone talks of missing However, phenomenology and its offspring existentialism
hugs and other physical contact. together provide a stream of philosophy in which various thinkers
have emphasised the role our embodiment plays, and it can be
People seem surprised by the way this lack of other bodies has argued that the past year has provided ample experiential evi-
affected us. Perhaps this is because before this year of disembod- dence they’re right. So a comparison between the thinking of
ied socialising we had been seduced by a view of ourselves as pri- prominent practitioners Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre,
marily minds who interact with one another through language and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, may not only help us understand
and ideas. This view has dominated Western thought at least why we have felt so bereft at having to live our lives through
since Descartes, but perhaps even since the ancient Greeks. On screens, but also provide us with insight into why online life is
such a view, it should not matter whether the interaction occurs so different from real life, and even explain some of the more
in person or through a screen, since the body plays no essential toxic aspects of life lived through the social media lens.

Martin Heidegger The Look of Life
by Clinton van Inman
Let’s start with Sartre’s exploration of how the ‘Look of the
PORTRAIT © CLINTON INMAN 2021 FACEBOOK AT CLINTON.INMAN Other’ is constitutive of our self-consciousness. He says it forces
us to step back from what we’re doing and reflect upon our-
selves as the object of another’s appraisal.

Sartre developed his discussion of ‘the Look’ because he was
unhappy with Heidegger’s conception of our fundamental exis-
tential condition as Mitsein, translated as With-Being or Being-
with-Others. For Heidegger in Being and Time (1927), Others –
other people – are present in or a given with every experience
we have. The meaning we see in everything is shot through with
the presence of Others, such that Others are constitutive of our
very Being. For example, just to see a pen is to see an entire world
of other consciousnesses, because it is to see a world of language,
of writing, of communicating, of teaching, of making notes and
recording, of manufacturing, of industry, of commerce... it is, to
borrow a phrase from Ludwig Wittgenstein, to see an entire form
of life – a world constituted by ‘Us’. Heidegger sees this presence
of Others in all our experience as proof against the Cartesian
solipsistic possibility that we can doubt the consciousness of
others – the so-called ‘problem of other minds’. For Heidegger,
Others are the ground and condition of our every conception of
the world, and thus constitutive of our very Being. We simply
could not experience the world as we do if there were not other
conscious beings with whom we have created our world of mean-
ings, so our world is a With-World. Being is Being-With.

In Being and Nothingness (1943), however, Sartre argues that
this account is not enough to overcome the problem of other

14 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Existentialism

minds. His reasoning is that, although Heidegger has shown us my most basic existential condition is that of a body-known-by-
that the existence of other consciousnesses is a precondition of Others. Thus I discover myself in the Look of the Other, in that
our own Being, such an approach does not enable us to prove I am reflected in it in such a way as to enable self-reflection. The
that any particular one of these Others is conscious. He has shown Look enables me to step back from what I’m doing and see myself.
that there are other consciousnesses, but he cannot show me that
you are conscious. Consequently, Sartre wants to see Others not This self-awareness, however, sets up a conflict within me.
in terms of how ‘they’ constitute of my world, but in terms of The conflict is the result of my trying to define my subjectivity
particular encounters. It is my encounters with particular, con- through the objectifying gaze of Others. On the one hand, I am
crete, embodied Others, not an immersion in a generalised world viewing myself through the Look of Others; but on the other
of Others, that facilitates my self-consciousness, and hence my hand, I am viewing myself through my own eyes. I am a sub-
Being. And for Sartre, it is the Look of the Other that is central ject, but also understand myself as an object for other people. I
to this encounter. And what’s more, it is the Look of the embod- am caught between the Look of the Other and the Look of
ied Other viewing my body that enables my self-reflection. myself which their Look has enabled me to have. Hence, unlike
Heidegger, for whom my relation to others is Mitsein – being-
Sartre’s famous illustration of the Look is his example of the with – for Sartre, my relation to Others is one of conflict, as I
jealous lover. Suppose I am a lover who, for whatever reason, try to find myself in the view they have enabled me to have of
is consumed with jealousy about my lover’s activities, and so myself. This conflict is what I am.
I’m spying on her through a keyhole. I am completely immersed
in what I’m doing. My attention is focussed entirely outside of Furthermore, for Sartre, the Look of the Other means that my
myself on the task in hand, and I’m not thinking about me but fundamental condition is characterised by shame, guilt, and pride.
about the object of my attention. I am entirely unreflective; I’m I grasp the Look of the Other as an evaluative gaze. The reason I
just doing. In this mode, I am what Sartre calls a body-for-itself am forced out of myself when spying on my lover is because I
– a physically embodied doer, immersed totally in its active know that the Look is judging me. This judgemental aspect of the
engagement with the concrete world of activity, focussed only Look of the Other is the source of my self-reflection, and I am
on the purposes to hand. But then I notice that someone – some ashamed to be an object to some other subject. Hence to be human
Other – is watching me as I spy on my lover. This Look of the is, by definition, to be fallen. To exist is to exist in shame.
Other snaps me out of my immersion and forces to me to see
myself from the outside, so to speak. Under this withering Look As an account of the ground of self-consciousness, Sartre cap-
of the Other, I am brought face to face with the fact of what tures well the role of the body as constitutive of the self: to be is
I’m doing and how it must look to Others. Now I am no longer to be a body-as-known-by-Others. It makes self-awareness a
focussed outwardly on my task, but am focussed inwardly, on gradual coming to be as one lives and acts under the objectify-
myself, viewing myself and my actions as another might view ing Look of particular Others. Hence it makes self-awareness
me. I am no longer focussed on my lover, but reflecting upon the result of being embodied amongst Others over time, engaged
what I am doing and how it looks. Thus I become what Sartre in bodily activity with them, rather than the result of being-with
calls a body-for-Others; an engaged body that is an object of the generalised ‘Otherness’ of Heidegger. And in characteristi-
scrutiny and evaluation by another body-for-itself – an Other cally gloomy Sartrean style, it is a self-reflectiveness whose core
who is engrossed in watching me as I watch my lover. is shame, guilt, pride, and conflict. The Others are detached
from me, viewing me as object from a distance. They are not
Sartre does not want to say that the self-awareness I am forced with me, but are simply focussing their crushing gazes upon me.
into is simply one where I now just know what my action was and
how it’s seen. It is rather that the Look of the Other forces me Perception & Engagement
to understand myself differently ontologically, or as a different
type of thing: as an object for another subject. Indeed, for Sartre, But we must ask of this picture, How do I come to see the Look
of the Other as judgemental? When I’m in my garden and notice
CARTOON © CHRIS GILL PLEASE VISIT CGILLCARTOONS.COM FOR MORE. a bird, dog, or cat watching me, I don’t imagine them to be morally
judging me. I am not ashamed or otherwise objectified under
their gaze. Any shame I feel is shame under the Look of other
human subjects. So why is the Look of other people so different
from the look of mere animals? Here, I feel, Sartre’s account
misses something important, and the account of Merleau-Ponty
is more apposite. I will also try to show how the difference between
the two accounts can tell us something important about why we
missed the bodily presence of others during lockdown. It may
also reveal something interesting about how the world of social
media differs from the real, embodied, human world.

In The Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Merleau-Ponty
develops a picture of our engagement with Others that’s closer
to Heidegger’s notion of Mitsein than to Sartre’s story. It has
its roots in his wider thesis that our sense perception is com-
plex, meaningful, and transcendent.

The third of these terms is the most important for our pur-
poses, but it will help to briefly explain the other two. By saying

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 15

Existentialism

EXISTENTIAL STATES © JACK CLARKE 2021 To Think self to something not distinct from one. Merleau-Ponty gives
the example of feeling a piece of soft cloth; we adjust our touch
To Suffer to the task in hand and feel it gently, not grip it tightly or roughly.
But there are many illustrations of our adjustment to the world.
To Hide When we sit on a rickety-looking chair, we lower ourselves gin-
gerly into it, rather than flop into it as we would a big comfy
Series of conceptual self-portraits by the artist Jack Clarke: “Taking sofa; or a sound may be too indistinct for us to hear clearly, and
inspiration from the works of Francis Bacon, I aimed at exploring self, we may have to strain to hear it; or an object may be too small
to see, so we go closer; a light may be too bright for my eyes, so
but more importantly the emotional representation of self over the I squint; an object may be too heavy to easily lift, so I strain…
period of lockdown.” For more, visit: jackclarkeuk.myportfolio.com For Merleau-Ponty, if we contemplate our experience, we can
see that we are engaged with a world that is not us – one that has
that our sense perception is complex, Merleau-Ponty means that its own structure and direction, to which we must adapt and syn-
we do not experience atomic units of raw data, but only experi- chronise ourselves. The world pushes back at us, and so cannot
ence anything at all in the context of a complex experience, for be merely our own mental construction.
instance seeing a single colour against a background. Even a single
dot on a page stands out as a dot only against the white background This understanding of the world’s transcendence has deep
of the page. So, rather than taking in the world in pieces and assem- implications for our relation to other minds, in that when we
bling it in our experience, we actually perceive complex patterns, engage with Others, we can take up and influence their pro-
first on the model of figure-background. We take in whole scenes jects, and they ours. When I converse with you (and I do mean
and patterns as relations between their different parts. converse, not simply question and answer: question and answer
is not a conversation), I say something which changes your pro-
This naturally leads on to the next claim, that the perceptual ject, your direction of thought, which leads you to say some-
field is experienced as meaningful. The meaning is not overlaid by thing in response; which in turn leads me to take up this new
us mentally after the perception, but is given in what we see. This project; and so on as we let the conversation meander, both of
is because, even on the basic figure-background model, any scene us along for the ride. Hence, when I engage with others, I am
we experience must have an organisational unity to it: one thing not merely observing their behaviour, as a Cartesian idea of us
is behind another; something is in the distance, or within reach… as simply minds might have us think. Rather, we shape each
Meaning is built into what we experience through the senses. other’s projects, and thereby both become part of a single pro-
ject which is our joint creation. I could only do this if you’re
Furthermore, our relation to the world is to something tran- another consciousness with your own projects. So Descartes’
scendent – to something that is not me. We can see this in the problem of other minds does not fit the facts. Moreover, Mer-
way we continually adjust ourselves to it: one cannot adjust one- leau-Ponty’s account stresses the role of our embodiment in
our relations to each other. Taking up each other’s projects is
often an embodied relation. So, for example, when two people
dance together, they will not do it very well if they try to watch
each other and follow each other’s moves on the stimulus-
response model. Their dancing would be stilted and would not
flow. No. To dance properly, two people must synchronise their
movements into the same rhythm, as if they were both trying
to harmonise with a third term called ‘the dance’, which is cre-
ated by them both as a shared project. The dance exists not in
either or both of them; but between them in their bodily har-
mony. Here to some extent, they become one.

This embodied transcendence shows itself in so many areas
of our lives; in sports and games, when teams find those rare
moments when they become a single, harmonious unit; in music,
when a group of musicians hit the same groove, or a choir finds
that perfect harmonious balance; at work, when people become
completely synchronised in a single task; or in everyday life, when
we walk together in silence, or gaze at the same view, or join in
conversation together, or cook together, or share a joke, or simply
hang out together doing very little. In all these examples, the syn-
chronisation is not in the head – it is not mere thought – but is a
bodily relation between us. And as we find the same flow, the
same style, the same rhythm and tempo, the reflective mind
recedes as we embrace the simple joy of synchronising with the
Other, transcending each other’s subjectivity to make genuine
contact with them and find solace and comfort in that oneness.

16 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Existentialism

CARTOON © PAUL WOOD 2021 PLEASE VISIT WOODTOON.CO.UK This is very different from Sartre’s world of conflict and tive that they may want to speak, no synchrony of posture. It may
shame, driven as it is by the Other’s remorseless, judgemental, be that this is why we've found online socialising, teaching and
detached Look. In embodiment, we can transcend the isolation working so isolating in itself – because without the physically
of our subjectivity. We find each other. In this sense, Sartre’s embodied presence of Others, it is all but impossible to transcend
view seems an impoverished account compared to Merleau- our subjectivity in the non-verbal ways normal embodied life
Ponty’s. For Sartre, the body constitutes our self-awareness only allows. Through a screen we are unable to synchronise and find
by being the object of Others’ detached gaze; whereas for Mer- harmony and rhythm with others, so much of the joy of other
leau-Ponty, the body plays a more complex role in shaping our people is denied to us. We’re just words and a face.
self-awareness and our connection with particular people. For
Merleau-Ponty the body and Others can be a source of solace The world of social media commentary is perhaps even more
and connection as well as a source of shame and objectification. alienating. Here, the conversations are not even spoken, but
written. There is not even an expression to see, or a tone of
Disembodied & Detached voice to hear. There are no people, only words. There is no way
We can begin to see why life lived through a screen – a life that to synchronise or harmonise with others, or transcend the gulf
is essentially disembodied – is so different from normal, embod- between us that embodied being-with makes possible. Meanings
ied human life. When conversing online, all we have are the words are difficult to discern because so much of the meaning and style
of others, and perhaps a view of their facial expressions; but all of a conversation is carried by the embodied relation between
the other elements of a live conversation are stifled. One cannot two speakers. In this sense, a proper social media conversation
easily read the subtle cues and signs that would normally lead to is difficult, if not impossible, to have.
one person letting another talk, for instance. Generally, one
cannot find the harmony and synchrony that a live conversation On social media, the exchanges usually amount to no more
can make possible – found in the hesitant pauses, the thoughtful than statement-judgement-statement, as if everyone is reduced
silences, the subtle inflections of voice and expression, the into- to being the shell of a human being rather than being an actual
nation, the bodily mirroring of each other’s postures, the fact that person. This is far closer to Sartre’s nightmare world of shame,
you can both be looking thoughtfully off into the same distance guilt and pride under the Look of a detached and judgemental
as you consider the next contribution to the shared conversa- Other than it is to Merleau-Ponty’s being-with. So it would
tion... A conversation develops a style, a rhythm, an atmosphere seem that the past year, in which we all have suddenly and with-
almost, which is visceral and is the consequence of being together, out realising it become existentialists lamenting the lack of
embodied in a shared space in a shared situation, synchronising embodied being-with, has provided strong evidence that Sartre’s
movements and mind to transcend the gulf between you. A con- account only captures one aspect of the way our self-conscious-
versation can be intense, easy and relaxed, strident, angry, seri- ness is grounded in our embodiment. The bare, detached Look
ous, flippant; but none of these things are necessarily in the words of the Other isn’t enough. Rather, it is only because we can
spoken, but in the way you are together. They’re not abstract, become bodily synchronised in shared projects together that
but concrete, grounded in physical relations. we can come to find a common frame of reference in which the
notion of judging one another can make sense. So whereas for
Online, some of this synchrony can be retained, but so much Sartre the Look of Others is the ground of our condition of
of it is lost. It’s difficult to read the Zoom room: nobody knows shame, for Merleau-Ponty our embodiment can also be a source
quite when it’s their turn to speak, silences are not allowed, no- of the connection, strength and succour that is necessary for
one really knows who’s looking at whom, there can be no quiet human flourishing. Through our synchronous transcending of
asides to the person next to you, no subtle signals from the tenta- our subjectivity we can become a harmonious whole with others,
and share the simple joy of being the same as others yet differ-
Hey, this isn’t so bad! ent. This is what we have all missed this past year, since we can
do it only by being embodied in the same physical space.

This may also explain why social media exhibits its more toxic
aspects. Social media is disembodied minds articulating mere
words under the detached, judgemental, and baleful Look of an
amorphous Other. It results in living either in pride or in shame
through the detached and objectifying Look of the Other, with
none of the solace, nuance, understanding, transcendence, or
possibilities of connection that full-blooded, embodied being-
with can provide. Sartre describes this world quite well; but the
past year has shown us that Merleau-Ponty was probably closer
to the truth regarding normal, embodied human existence. If
Merleau-Ponty describes Being-With-Others, Sartre could per-
haps be said to describe Being-Unwith-Others. The shrill, judge-
mental tone of so much social media would certainly seem to be
a bad case of Being-Unwith-Others. It’s a fairly toxic place to be.

© GREG ARTUS 2021

Greg Artus is a lecturer in Philosophy at Imperial College London

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 17

Existentialism

The Existential Yomps Of

Simone de Beauvoir

Annabel Abbs follows Simone de Beauvoir’s thoughts over the horizon.

Afew years ago I bought the book A Philosophy of Walk-
ing by Frédéric Gros (2014). This entertaining
volume featured a parade of thinkers for
whom walking was profoundly important:
Thoreau, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Kant; even Gandhi,

Kerouac and Rimbaud made appearances. Walking,

Gros suggested, was a condition of their work, an enabler

for their thinking. In their walking lay the genesis of

many of their philosophical ideas. There was just one

thing: the book didn’t include any women. But what really

infuriated me was his failure to mention the pre-eminent

female existentialist, Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986).

I could almost forgive Gros’s oversight if Beauvoir had

been less of a walker. But the tramping of Simone de Beau-

voir puts most of the other walking philosophers to shame.

The legendary daily stroll of Kant around his home town of

Königsberg is almost quite literally a walk in the park com-

pared to the perilous, almost reckless hikes of Beauvoir. I

know because I walked some of them while researching my

own book on walking and thinking.

Few people know about Beauvoir-the-hiker. We usually

think of her sitting in Parisian cafes alongside Sartre, a chic

turban on her head and a cigarette hanging between her fin-

gers. This is not my Beauvoir. I found my Beauvoir – the wildest

of hill walkers – in her letters, memoirs, and novels. Here it Simone de Beauvoir in 1945
became blindingly obvious that walking had played

a pivotal role in Beauvoir’s own existential journey

of becoming. Indeed, careful readers of The Second

Sex (1949) will notice that the physical prowess she

gained from hiking informs much of this ground-

breaking feminist manifesto. Her feminist philos-

ophy was tested and nurtured in the hills as much

as it was elaborated and expanded in her Paris

apartment.

The same goes for her ideas of freedom and

responsibility. Beauvoir began her lengthy walks

by closely studying French military terrain

maps, allegedly for hours. She believed that the

simple act of plotting a hike was a vital step in

finding freedom, and lamented how few

women felt able to organise a long hike on their

own. Walking alone was another significant

step, and Beauvoir noted how few women had

the confidence to be on their own, least of all

in remote, unpeopled landscapes. Walking

alone for Beauvoir meant taking full respon-

sibility for her safety and her material needs.

She had never been so utterly dependent on Calanques, where Simone walked, by Annabel Abbs
herself – and she relished it.

18 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Existentialism

Beauvoir started hiking after arriving in Marseilles as a young I also think that it was here that she finally cast off all notions

school teacher. Having no family or friends to occupy her, she of God, since she had found an alternative transcendence in

decided to spend her weekends walking. In an old dress and a nature. This is expressed eloquently in the first volume of her

pair of canvas espadrilles, and a basket of bananas and buns on memoirs: “I was no longer a vacant mind, an abstracted gaze

her arm, she set off to explore the surrounding countryside. but the turbulent fragrance of the waving grain, the intimate

Here in the hills and white cliffs surrounding Marseilles her smell of the heather moors, the dense heat of noon or the shiver

feelings for nature bloomed (they weren’t shared by Sartre, of twilight… I was as vapour in the blue airs of summer and

who claimed to be allergic to chlorophyll). Beauvoir felt that knew no bounds.” It was here that she grasped the full mean-

women and nature share a unique bond which could enrich ing of being.

their lives, if only they let it. Now please can someone write a book about walking female

As her confidence grew, Beauvoir’s hikes became increas- philosophers?

ingly ambitious. She frequently hiked for 12 hours, often cov- © ANNABEL ABBS 2021

ering 30 kilometres in a single day. Her walks were ‘expedi- Annabel Abbs is the author of Windswept: Walking in the

tions’, she claimed, each one ‘a work of art in its own right’. footsteps of remarkable women, an exploration of the effects of

Later, her expeditions began to follow a pattern. After any walking on female thinking, just published by John Murray Press.

rejection, failure, or other bruising experience, she

would pack a rucksack and disappear to walk her dis-

tress out. In her memoir, The Prime of Life (1960)

she claimed that long walks preserved her “from

boredom, regret and several sorts of depression.”

But they were also redemptive: they re-calibrated

her in a way nothing else could.

After leaving Marseilles, Beauvoir took hiking

holidays, either with a friend or lover, or more often

on her own. She walked often for a week, occasion-

ally for three weeks. Mountains were her preferred

landscape – the emptier the better. But she also

had an affinity for trees and woodland. She slept

rough, on benches and in barns, and carried a felt-

covered water bottle full of red wine. She often

hitched a lift to start points, then fended off attack-

ers and molesters along the way. Nor did she

escape brushes with death: a tumble into a remote

crevice and pursuit by a rabid dog were two occa-

sions where her mortality raced before her eyes.

These experiences were critical tests of her self-

reliance, proof of her autonomy. She was

immensely proud of her independence and her

capacity for walking, crowing repeatedly of how

far and how high she had climbed.

Yet she never made grandiose statements

about walking and philosophy. Quite the

reverse. In a letter to Sartre from an Alpine

hike she wrote, “I’m not doing much thinking.

I’m blissful.” In another letter she declared

that she had not “a thought in her head apart

from flowers and beasts and stony tracks and

wide horizons.” But to omit Beauvoir from

any book on walking and philosophy on the

basis of these two quotes would be a huge

mistake, because it was while walking alone

in forests and hills, pushing herself to her

physical extremities, that Beauvoir first

realised she could flee neither from her free-

dom nor her responsibilities – that she was Simone with her sister and father, 1926.
answerable entirely to herself. As a woman
alone, she felt this more acutely than any of her male peers, Simone is on the right

I think.

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 19

Existentialism

Existentialism from an
African-American Perspective

Roger Karny takes another look at liberty and alienation.

The New York Times called the 1953 novel The Out- He’s free! Free to start a new life and re-create his identity.
sider by African-American author Richard Wright How much more existential than that can you get?
(1908-1963) “prophetic… a book people should
ponder”. The Outsider’s protagonist, Cross Damon, Jean-Paul Sartre believed that ‘existence precedes essence’.
is an African-American intellectual who majored in philosophy In other words, Sartre explained, “Man is nothing else but what
at the University of Chicago. Victimized by white oppression, he makes of himself.” You are responsible (and empowered) to
he is melancholy, a ‘lover of ideas’, brooding constantly over create who you are, continually. Similarly, Damon believes he’s
his emotions and analyzing his life circumstances. (Wright “like a writer constructing a tale.”
thinks his own deep, psychoanalytic thoughts through Damon,
and it comes off well.) Married while still young without really The author, Richard Wright himself fled the U.S.’s racial
knowing what he was getting into, Damon holds a low-paying inequality and hatred, and FBI surveillance, to live in Paris,
job at the local post office on the south side of Chicago. He is where he wrote this book. There, besides Sartre, he hob-
now estranged from his wife, who refuses to divorce him, and knobbed with Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir, and other
has unknowingly taken up with an under-aged girl. The girl noted authors, such as Andre Gide, Arthur Koestler, and
threatens to take him to court for statutory rape if he doesn’t Gertrude Stein. They all influenced his way of thinking. The Out-
divorce his wife and marry her. To finance his out-of-control sider speaks from an existential framework about the oppression
life, he has to continually take out loans, thus putting himself of black people and the resulting violence and crime – some-
in unending debt. What to do? thing no black writer had tried to do before.

Well, fortuitously (or not) Damon climbs aboard a Chicago Alienation and the quest for personal freedom are two main
train that crashes horribly, killing many passengers but leaving existential themes, which Wright explores in this novel. So
him unharmed. He comes up with the idea of making it look as although in New York Damon does seemingly have complete
if he himself has perished so as to escape his problems. Every- freedom from his old identity, he finds that he is imprisoned
one, including his family and the authorities, believe the ruse, inside the new identity he has created. He cannot risk telling
and he slips away from it all to New York City and seemingly anyone about his real situation, and must fabricate a believable
a brand new life and identity. past for himself. Therefore, he’s alienated from society, from
all who have known him, and really, from himself as well. He
New York, back in the day feels this alienation particularly after witnessing his own funeral
and watching his family mourn him. His faked death in a sense
becomes real to him. He experiences the existential ‘dread’ of
which Søren Kierkegaard wrote. From this, and other harrow-
ing experiences which follows, he intuitively learns what it means
‘to be or not to be’ – to be alive! But he pays a price for his free-
dom and knowledge too – a loss of purpose and integrity.

So maybe he’s too free. He must make alone many more deci-
sions than other people do with support. He is in effect forced
to decide for himself and by himself what is good or evil, and
therefore must bear the consequences alone too. As Sartre
claimed, “Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us, in a
luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse.
We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I
say that man is condemned to be free.”

Along with Damon’s disengagement and isolation comes an
avoidance of reality. He seeks refuge with the Communist Party;
but finds they are devious, cynical, power-hungry, cold, and
vicious. They take him in just to indoctrinate and use him. He’s
caught in many traps and crossfires. He feels compelled to murder
four people: a friend in Chicago who discovers he’s not really
dead; a fascist, negro-hating landlord; a Communist leader who
the landlord was in a death struggle with; and a second Commu-
nist leader. But he’s not a savage, killing indiscriminately. His rea-

20 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Existentialism

Richard Wright by Gordon Parks1943 Assessing Existentialism

sons make sense to him and arise from the situations that con- Is existentialism the answer to all humanity’s difficulties? Or is
front him. The revulsion planted in him by people who want to it maybe just helpful in some instances?
enslave him, remove his freedom, psychologically or socially,
drives him to it. The fascist landlord’s death is almost a given, as Coming into vogue after the Second World War and the
this man hates negroes and had already threatened Damon with immediate defeat of right-wing totalitarianism, mass national-
a gun. But why kill the two Communists? The situations force ist movements, and their organized murder and hatred, exis-
him to do so, as with the friend who could have exposed his ruse. tentialism sought to provide a philosophical alternative to mass
ideologies: looking within and using one’s own intelligence and
Wright himself was associated with the Communist Party free will to roll out a life in the midst of the chaos and farce. How-
for quite a while. He was familiar with its methods and ideol- ever, today, perhaps, that attitude has mutated into a danger-
ogy. When in 1940 he wrote Native Son, he saw the Commu- ous individuality where the person is all that matters. People
nists as having an answer not only to the on-going oppression act as they alone see fit, and the community is really subservient
of African-Americans but also to the plight of all underclasses. to their wants. Furthermore, many existentialists purport to be
In Native Son, a leftist attorney, Max, is the only white person atheists, and the freedom they seek to create in themselves leaves
with any shred of political power who’s willing to defend pro- no room for faith in a greater being. This was condemned early
tagonist Bigger Thomas in court after Thomas is driven (also on by the Catholic Church, and later Communists rejected the
by circumstances) to murder a white woman. Max delivers a idea of elevating the individual over the Party. In fact, the
moving argument before the judge, condemning white society’s Catholic existential philosopher Gabriel Marcel once
oppression of blacks, but to no avail. Bigger Thomas dies in the denounced Sartre as a ‘systematic blasphemer’ and ‘corrupter’
electric chair, a victim of hatred, greed, and mob psychology. of youth due to his ‘pernicious lessons and most poisonous
But by the time he wrote The Outsider, Wright saw Commu- advice’! So, not all existentialists are atheists; existentialism has
nism in a very different light. As for existentialism, Wright is had its Christian side too. Its earliest proponent, for instance,
brilliant in his use of it in this book to illustrate the African- Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), was a Danish Christian, albeit
American plight in the early-to-mid-twentieth century. one who eschewed orthodoxy in favor of free-thinking. Fyodor
Dostoevsky, the author of such early existential works as The
Ralph Ellison employs existentialism to this purpose too, in Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment alongside Notes
his 1952 novel Invisible Man. Due to his friendship with Wright, from Underground, was a Russian believer. Richard Wright him-
Ellison came to regard Kierkegaard and the Russian existential- self grew up inside the black church, but then later cast a dubi-
ist novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky as important influences. Ellison’s ous eye on much of its teachings and even the existence of God,
invisible man lives in what he calls ‘a hole in the ground’ in the coming across as an agnostic or even atheist in the two cited
basement of a building. He feels the humiliation that Dosto- novels. Moreover, existentialists have had equally great dispar-
evsky’s character feels in Notes from Underground (1864), that ity among themselves as to what the philosophy really means.
character also claims he lives in a ‘stinking’, ‘musty hole’. Elli-
son portrays his unnamed character’s existential anguish in terms So where does this leave Cross Damon, anti-hero of The Out-
of his ‘invisibility’ within white society. No one even cares to sider? He’s an African-American facing mid-twentieth-century
acknowledge his presence, even his existence. The character says white bigotry, misunderstanding, and hatred. Nevertheless, he
he’s invisible “simply because people refuse to see me… because strives in his own way to be an acknowledged human being in
of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come a system that only wants to make him less than one. He’s highly
in contact with.” It is “a matter of a biochemical accident to my intelligent, coerced into unacceptable circumstances, yet decides
epidermis.” The man finds this world ‘absurd’, as Camus, to create himself, and secure for himself some manner of self-
Wright, and other existentialists have also labelled it. He must respect and dignity – even though he believes he must kill, lie,
find some way to be true to himself to live in such a world, and and break all societal norms to do so. Is it a Christian way to
act so as to gain some measure of freedom... live? Decidedly not, at least on the surface. Yet Damon is forced
to exist under demonic pressures not of his own choosing, and
must make choices outside the box of white society, and of dog-
matic, stale, myopic Christianity, both white and black.

An introductory note to Wright’s 1945 autobiographical novel,
Black Boy, quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes: “It is so much easier
to consign a soul to perdition or to say prayers to save it, than to
take the blame on ourselves for letting it grow up in neglect and
run to ruin. The English law began, only in the late eighteenth
century, to get hold of the idea that crime is not necessarily a sin.
The limitations of human responsibility have never been prop-
erly studied.” Is it possible that, to a just God, Damon, like Bigger
Thomas, must be judged in ways that only God can judge?

I don’t know. I’m not God. And I don’t want to be.

© ROGER KARNY 2021

Roger Karny is retired, occasionally writes, and lives near Denver,
Colorado, USA

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 21

Existentialism

PHOTO © AFIK RASHID 2021

No Hats on Sunday

Akif Rashid asks Albert Camus why so many people around
him are unhappy and confused, and what to do about it.

Itend not to live by very many adages, but I am inclined to a madding masses: No one really seemed to be happy. Whether
witticism once in a while. One of the lines close to my heart they were coming out of a cinema, buying a nice winter jacket,
is by Henry James: “I’ve always been interested in people, or going into a food coma in McDonald’s, most people seemed
but I’ve never liked them.” And to be foolishly honest, few to carry a shy scowl. How could time with friends and family lead
people are as interesting and unlikeable as my fellow citizens of to such discontent? Were their pants too tight? Was the McFlurry
Pakistan. Because of this, I’ve developed quite the habit of people machine broken? Well, if I had to hazard a guess, I would think
watching (it’s okay as long as you don’t use binoculars; that is it’s a common condition of most Pakistani folks that we, as a
frowned upon). In fact, just the other day, I was roaming around people, have a shattered sense of identity.
a shopping mall in my monopoly man top hat, pretending to be
richer than I am, when I saw one common feature amongst the Code switching is a common enough feature of multilingual
people, and particularly so when there’s so many refractions of

22 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Existentialism

the self to be projected out to the world. Take an ordinary uni- his wife scolds him; we can smile at co-workers whom we find arro-
versity student in Pakistan. He’ll project one aspect of self when gant and unlikeable; we can say thank you and tip that incredibly
out with the lads; another for more polite company; a more slow waiter who brought the wrong soup. Within the futility,
reserved, religious one with his family; and he’ll considerately within the facsimile and façade, we forge function and that some-
hold back signs of affection in public. The way he speaks with what stable form of the familiar. To nihilists such as Friedrich
someone who prefers Urdu would be different from with some- Nietzsche, it would simply be a matter of choosing the devil you
one who enjoys conversation in English. These ‘sociolects’ split prefer: “In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, many
and splinter with each iteration of identity, and scarcely seem eat him. Now choose” (Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 1879).
to coexist within one consciousness. In the end, we see a man
whose head is bent under the weight of his innumerable hats. Yet if one should strive for a more purposive existence – or
rather, if one should rebel against the absurdity of existence by
This broken consciousness leans toward absurdity; and to way of living – then what can one do?
those who think like the French-Algerian philosopher Albert
Camus (1913-1960) this might seem to be a great reason to end Perhaps one can look to Camus’ Le Premier Homme (The First
it all. Although Camus had a flair for the dramatic – he once Man, 1960), and the dislocation the protagonist Jacques experi-
asked “Shall I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?” – he did have
some rational bases for his nihilistic solutions. How would this by Melissa Felder
artist-philosopher view the lives of postcolonial, colour-con-
flicted, self-unsure Pakistanis? SIMON & FINN © MELISSA FELDER 2021 PLEASE VISIT SIMONANDFINN.COM

Perhaps one could compare our life to the story of Sisyphus,
who was condemned by Zeus to push a rock up a hill repeatedly
every day for eternity; it is a life of routine broken down into
well-worn steps and repetition. For example, at any given family
gathering, I have a mental checklist of those people I need to
greet, in what order, and with what degree of warmth. The ges-
tures have become robotic. But I must wear the hat of a dutiful
son or cousin on those birthdays and weddings, mustn’t I?

This same drudgery can be found in businesses, government
offices, and prisons. Sisyphus’s rock is mass manufactured. This
should be unsurprising. After all, in Camus’ The Plague (1947),
the disease, an existentialist metaphor for life, is allegorically
likened to a public official who was “a shrewd, unflagging adver-
sary; a skilled organizer, doing his work thoroughly and well…
But it seemed the plague had settled in for good at its most vir-
ulent, and it took its daily toll of deaths with the punctual zeal
of a good civil servant.”

Carrying on with the similarities between Sisyphus and my
social life, once I have pushed the rock of formality up the
mount, it tumbles back down to the start, and I begin anew with
the next function. Yet how sweet is the halwa or pink tea when
your tongue is numb to its taste? Our fate and our frustration
share one core feature: both are inescapable. However, the true
nature of the tragedy is not in the paradox that success’s reward
is only ‘more of the same’, but the fact that man chooses to
repeat himself. One can see this aspect of our nature nicely
summed up in a 2015 song by the American rapper Kendrick
Lamar. ‘Institutionalized’ deals with the fact that while his suc-
cess has afforded him the ability to be a prisoner of birth no
longer and escape the gang culture of his hometown, the pres-
sures of society keep driving him back: “Institutionalized, I keep
runnin’ back for a visit,” he raps in the song’s chorus.

General culture has shaped people’s selection of hats in Pak-
istan in what some may call a more insidious manner: the trilby
for the working week, a prayer cap on Fridays, the snap-back on
Saturdays, and with sweet relief, we let the sun tan our bald spots
on Sunday. These roles are inescapable, someone might say. In
his book Games People Play (1964), Eric Bernie argued that we
define social activities, and even the disliked roles help us to feel
fulfilled: the alcoholic man does not feel like he’s had enough until

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 23

Existentialism

ences while being alone. Within this novel Camus seems to that vital truth would not be through history or religion. He might
argue for a sort of ahistorical innocence (certainly the history shun those as placebos, placeholders, or plain old excuses. The
that does appear is rather dubious and destructive). But in an rebellion here is not against a fascist regime or totalitarian pro-
interconnected world, including an internet filled to the brim paganda, but against the paranoia that results in conformity.
with niches and tropes, Camus’ Outsider/Stranger from his
novel of that name might be eponymously demonstrating the The desire for belonging is a natural impulse. As is laziness.
most honest way to coexist with the absurd. After all, it would But any person of reasonable intelligence and self-awareness
be a shame to let mass communication create one mass person- could not be content with simply fitting in. Success in those terms
ality. According to Camus, there is no absolute Truth, but there is to be unnoticed. Yet if the individual recognizes himself,
are truths. This makes truth more individualistic, since each becomes his own lynchpin in (or against) the absurd, then the
person may define their own truth, and so their own being. next step is to express himself. Success in those terms is to be
unconcerned about the consequences. But if the average Ahmed
Pakistan is a land that has defined itself by its negatives. We strays from the worn-out path, he might find a balm for his itch
are a people who are not Indian, not Hindu, not British, not sin- for freedom. The wind in his hair could cool a burning doubt.
ners – who are not sure of anything about ourselves, really. But
before the ‘we are’ can properly form itself, there needs to be at To sum up this long-winded proposition, I offer the only
least a few ‘I am’ statements in the mix. Compare this with line you really needed to get the point: “But what is happiness
oppressed African Americans who said ‘I’m black and I’m beau- except a simple harmony between man and the life he leads?”
tiful’, or the LGBTQ+ community, who declared ‘I am here and (Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 1967). For a fair point well
I am queer’, and thereby established their communities. As Camus made, hats off to you, Albert Camus, sir.
might put it, ‘I rebel, therefore we are’. A land that was conceived
in comparatives and relatives needs a sprinkle of truth. For Camus, © AKIF RASHID 2021

Akif Rashid is the author of Encounters, a collection of short stories,
and is an eternal student of the arts.

CARTOON © ALEXEI TALIMONOV 2021 The Myth of Sisyphus

"One must imagine Sisyphus happy"
(Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus)

The gods condemned Sisyphus to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity. Camus argued that this symbolises the human condition, true for all of
us: the world is without meaning, and our lives are inescapably absurd. The point is to embrace the struggle with it, and to live without falling
prey to despair, or hope, including in the supernatural.

I brace for balance when I work the stone.
Its weight is what I want against my shoulder.
It is my burden. It is all I own.

The grip, the heave, the angle, and the groan.
I wrap my arms around it like a lover.
I am in balance when I work the stone.

At long last hope and hopelessness are gone.
My fate is mine to steer, to scorn or hold to.
My work. My burden. Everything I own.

The leap of faith forsaken, I have grown
aware. There is no angel and no ogre.
Only struggle and the balance and the stone.

And when I fall again, I fall alone.
My fate waits at the bottom with the boulder.
My rock. The burden I will not disown.

The steep track back, to start again. The known.
The undeluded effort. My place holder.
I find my balance. It is shaped in stone.
I lift my burden, consciously. My own.

© JOE CROCKER 2021

Joe Crocker was given a copy of Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus sometime in the 1970s by his student flatmate. The arguments still resonate.
During lockdown he succumbed to the muse and has had several poems published, mainly in Snakeskin, Light and New Verse News.

24 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Existentialism

Zapffe For A New Political Age

Cameron Hendy thinks it’s about time we all stopped.

Do you recall the first time that blade cleaving everything; but he who is tyranny of existence? Zapffe was obvi-
you stumbled across Peter to wield it must grasp the blade and turn ously not a man who wished to be mis-
Zapffe (1899-1990) – assum- the one edge toward himself.” understood. His creed in The Last Mes-
ing that you ever have done? (The Last Messiah, 1933, translated by Gisle siah is: “Know yourselves – be infertile and
I do. His antinatalism – the idea that the Tangenes, Philosophy Now Issue 45) let the earth be silent after ye.” Zapffe chal-
human race should stop reproducing – was lenges us to contemplate the absurdity of
new to me at the time; simultaneously Burdened with an intellect capable of suffering in order to reach a more lucid
exhilarating yet terrifying. Reading introspection in a world full of suffering, position regarding the need to procreate.
Zapffe’s essay The Last Messiah was almost it follows that the average human must He argues that human existence itself is
epiphanic – an intense moment that rep- necessarily develop coping mechanisms. an excruciating, insurmountable source
resented the crystallisation of my own neb- Zapffe divides these mechanisms into iso- of suffering which should be deliberately
ulous philosophical position at the time. lation, anchoring, distraction and sublimation avoided. No consideration nor any
– small acts of necessary and sometimes exogenous factors may serve to amelio-
To read The Last Messiah is to experi- wilful resistance against the irrepressible rate the misery of humanity - but we
ence déjà vu, and revisit thoughts that anguish of being. But these views, in could avoid perpetuating that misery by
tend to arise spontaneously due to the Zappfe’s deeply pessimistic perspective, choosing not to have babies.
essential nature of human existence. Per- are mere sticking plasters on the gaping
haps this is the best indicator of the fact incurable wound of human suffering. However ideologically pure this posi-
that Zapffe touches upon a topic that tion may be, however rationally consid-
seems instantly familiar to most of us: the How then, should one face into the ered, it is a position that defies very basic
inescapable, sometimes unendurable
nature of merely being alive. For many ANTINATALISM IMAGE © ANDREW WRIGLEY 2021
readers the position Zapffe articulates
may also feel the epitome of all philo-
sophical taboos, defying the conventional
assumption that continued human exis-
tence is morally desirable.

Zapffe, an eccentric mountaineer, who
was also Norway’s greatest existentialist
writer, presents a beautiful, haunting view
of existence. In essence he says that
humans are a tragically over-evolved
species, having developed a vastly more
powerful intellect than that needed to
survive in the biological sense. This bio-
logical aberration exceeds the parameters
of consciousness within which we would
otherwise have been as content and inno-
cent as the other higher primates. As
Zapffe himself puts it:

“Whatever happened? A breach in the very
unity of life, a biological paradox, an abom-
ination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of
disastrous nature. Life had overshot its tar-
get, blowing itself apart. A species had been
armed too heavily – by spirit made
almighty without, but equally a menace to
its own well-being. Its weapon was like a
sword without hilt or plate, a two-edged

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 25

Existentialism

Peter Zapffe nal world may under certain conditions haps hypothetical) children will be unam-
by Andrew Wrigley exert an ameliorating influence on the biguously better than your own – and that’s
experiences of individuals: in other words, an assumption that was almost implicit in
tenets of the human psyche. It is true that something might happen to significantly the West for a couple of centuries at least.
we are composed of matter capable of per- reduce human suffering. Life might get Perhaps we find ourselves falling into the
ceiving itself – similarly, it is even trivial better. Does taking a broader view help trap of exceptionalism, naïvely believing
to acknowledge that many of us feel a deep, us deal with Zapffe’s conclusion, either (or more realistically, naïvely hoping) that
primal desire to have children. These feel- for or against? no matter how dire the social conditions
ings often conflict with colder, yet perhaps become, we and our own family will be
seemingly more cogent interpretations of As you may expect, a simple solution to exempt from the worst effects: that we will
our urges to perpetuate our genes. such a dense problem does not exist. For be able to raise children who will lead
several reasons we can even expect that the healthy and fulfilling lives. Indeed, it
Zapffe explores the idea of the ultimate average human life will become worse over would be difficult to find many parents
negation of consciousness as an internally the coming decades. Taking but a few who would argue the contrary – indicat-
motivated process. Indeed, the notion that examples from the developed world, we ing that this optimistic perspective might
our hyper-developed and self-referential can lament the rise of mental illness, real be a survival mechanism itself, serving a
perceptual machinery, the human mind, wage stagnation, political polarisation, similar purpose to the other modes of
might lead us to our deliberate destruc- opioid addiction, and climate degradation. comforting human self-deception Zapffe
tion, is common enough. But shouldn’t It is becoming exceedingly difficult to jus- describes. Despite the facts, children con-
we analyse the intrinsic potential for pain tifiably assume that the lives of your (per- tinue to be conceived and raised – some of
alongside the other aspects of Zappfe’s them presumably born to parents who
antinatalist recommendation. We must have read The Last Messiah and agree with
also consider the possibility that the exter- its central premise! These parents, we
might assume, are also acutely aware of the
doom-laden geopolitical trends of our age,
and reasonably expect their progeny to be
impacted negatively by at least some of
them. Is this not a paradox?

Ironically, the act of raising children
probably serves as the ultimate distraction
from any tendency towards existential
reflection. The initial sleep deprivation, the
interminable cooking, washing, the drudg-
ing housework, are things that consume
inordinate amounts of mental energy.

The Last Messiah interrogates the
ostensible paradox of continued human
existence, also adequately explaining how
this paradox is perpetuated. All else being
equal, it is easy to read Zapffe and agree
with him – but it is excruciatingly hard to
apply his conclusions to yourself. I expect
that many of his persuaded readers do not
remain staunch antinatalists for long,
despite the increasingly incontrovertible
evidence that we should be. Perhaps there
will always be elements of our fundamen-
tal nature more durable than the tendency
towards self-reflective self-destruction. In
any case, our species survives, and looks
to go on doing so no matter how forebod-
ing the clouds on the horizon. We read
Zapffe, we agree with him that human
existence is better brought to an end, and
then we go and have children of our own.

© CAMERON HENDY 2021

Cameron Hendy is a writer living in
Central Victoria, Australia.

26 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

? ?

Q uestion of the Month ?

What Is The Most

Fundmental Value?

Our readers give their thoughts on values, each winning a valuable, if random, book.

Is this a trick question? Obviously the answer is love. There’s While modern dictionary definitions for love refer mostly to feel-
much to be said for courage, empathy, faith, honesty, industri- ings of affection and attachment, the philosopher Erich Fromm
ousness, loyalty, tolerance, wisdom, and other values; but these val- describes love as a decision and an action rather than a state of
ues are secondary to love and are expressed best when in service to being. Echoing these universal, unconditional, and active aspects
it. Indeed when they are not in service to love, such values become of love, I use the word ‘love’ to mean ‘caring and respect for all
undesirable. German soldiers often fought for the Nazi regime with life, of which we are a part’.
great courage. Heroin dealers may be very industrious.
Love is my most fundamental value because my other core values
Some languages use different words to distinguish between the – community, non-violence, tolerance – derive from it. Love com-
loves we have for our children, our parents, our spouses, our friends, pels us to conduct our lives with regard to the wellbeing of ourselves
or even our pets. The Abrahamic faiths claim that love for God is and of others. So although love is universal, it still allows for strong
the greatest expression of love. Yet love for God is false if it excludes bonds of community. We each have finite energy and finite time
love for people. This has been well expressed by the Torah, by the on Earth, and it makes sense that we tend to devote most of our
Apostle John, and by John Coltrane, among others. St John writes resources to those closest to us. Love goes hand in hand with com-
“If someone says, ‘I love God’, and hates his brother, he is a liar; passion and benevolence; when we hold love as a core principle,
for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can causing or ignoring harm becomes painful, and giving joy becomes
he love God whom he has not seen?” (1 John 4:20). fulfilling. Love is practiced through empathy and tolerance; we seek
to understand and accept those around us, looking beyond our dif-
The purest love is unconditional and all encompassing. But to ferences to our commonalities. Love can also manifest as curiosity
unconditionally love is an awesome obligation. It would means about the world, which can lead to knowledge and growth. Lastly,
that we are required to love even the likes of Hitler and Stalin love is the bridge that connects each of us to the rest of existence
(even though we may be obligated to kill them for the sake of and creates a sense of belonging. This is a powerful anchor that
other people). Loving our family and close friends while merely enables each of us to find personal purpose and meaning.
liking or just tolerating others may be the best most of us can
actually do… but those are steps on the journey. And as with other IRMAK UZUMCU
journeys, the steps, not just the destination, are important. And BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
the steps we take on the journey to love are steps which also
express the other values, such as courage, loyalty, wisdom and Enlisting the help of a trio of Western philosophers, I will
more. Yet unless they are associated with the fundamental value attempt to make a case for compassion as our most funda-
of love, these values are diminished. mental value, which itself contains many core values.

HOWARD ISAAC WILLIAMS Schopenhauer believed that all living things are driven by a
SAN FRANCISCO will to exist. This will is a blind drive manifesting as insatiable
desires, leading to conflict and suffering. We all share this suf-
This question presupposes a hierarchy of values, and the fering. It is our mutual link. He proposed that compassion – lit-
answer ultimately depends on one’s vision of the world as erally meaning, feeling with – was a way of transcending our
one thinks it ought to be. These are themselves value judgments. painful position. Schopenhauer advocated self-denial as a rem-
As such, it is not possible to define the most fundamental value. edy to the problem of suffering, essentially encouraging a with-
Instead I present here my most fundamental value: love. drawal from desire, and hence life. On another level he held in
high esteem expressions of compassion via contemplations of
There is a long history of attempting to define love. In Daoism, existence through visual art and music. Music he considered to
first written down in the seventh century BC, one is encouraged be a pure expression of the will; in its company we share and
to love the world as one loves oneself. In the fourth century BC, soothe our pain.
the Chinese philosopher Mozi developed the concept of ‘ài’ or
universal love, arguing that there should be no degree or condi- Nietzsche although greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, turned
tionality in love. Ancient Greeks had at least four different types from his pessimism and said YES to suffering, as something to over-
of love, among which agape was unconditional, spiritual or divine come. Nietzsche heads a frontal attack on the Christian church,
love. This passed into Christian ethics as the highest form of love. charging it with crippling humanity with a life-denying agenda.

What Is The Most Fundamental Value? August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 27

?? ?

The vaunted compassion (or ‘pity’) of the church actually served, among many others. But, the most fundamental value in my esti-
he said, to displace nobler values and turn people against life-affir- mation is trust. A person needs to have trust in him- or herself
mation through fear and guilt. Although much of his writing is bru- as well as in other people. By ‘trust’, I mean the narrow meaning,
tally polemical and can be interpreted in many different ways, Niet- of being able to rely on yourself or others to satisfy all your basic
zsche revitalises compassion into a positive position where we can needs, and perhaps more than basic needs. Without trust, human
act, as a compassion for our fellows to rid him or her of illusion and relations would decay into chaos. For example, in business deal-
follow a life-affirming path. Yes, we suffer, but yes we can stand up ings the buyer must trust that he or she is paying a fair price to
to existence. The will to power, he encourages, is first power over the seller and that the goods or services will be provided as
oneself, and power to suffer and overcome with others. intended. When I renew my subscription to Philosophy Now, I
trust that I will receive my copies. When a person seeks medical
Compassion is, I think, a reciprocal activity. In the terminol- or dental treatment, that person must trust that the service
ogy of Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘being-with-others’ is where we can find provider will do their job properly and the service provider must
freedom with others through a fundamental commonality, a trust that they will receive payment for the service provided. A
shared experience. For Sartre, an objectification of the victims married couple must have trust in their faithfulness to each other
of suffering without compassion for them would rob them of as well in their individual abilities to contribute to the marriage.
their freedom. When a person does something, that person must trust their abil-
ity to do it. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.
I hope these philosophers have helped shape a picture of com- Human activities and transactions are based on trust, and without
passion that is constituted of equality, care, authenticity, courage and such trust, society would collapse, TRUST me!
empowerment. We must however watch for those who come wear-
ing a mask of compassion, but whose judgemental, divisive projects, BRIAN FRASER
built from resentment, aim only to attain power over others. WINNIPEG, MANITOBA

RUPERT HAINES ‘Values’ refer to ‘the beliefs that people have about what is
MOUNT MAUNGANUI, NEW ZEALAND right, wrong, and most important in life, business, etc.
which control their behaviour’ (Cambridge Business English Dic-
The most fundamental value is respect for human rights. tionary). In short: values are beliefs that control behaviour.
We are by nature social animals. We are conceived in soci-
ety, born in society, raised in society, live, work, play, are cared There is no basis for assuming that certain values are universal
for, love, and commune, in society. Only in society can we reach or an innate part of human nature. There is no gene for justice
our potential. Only in society can we find our greatest happiness. for example. For theists there is a moral lawgiver; but those who
Since we live in community, we must have good relations with do not adhere to this view must determine their own values,
others. A great teacher of ancient times said that we should love exposing them to conventionalism and thus to relativism.
other people as we love ourselves. That would be wonderful.
Unfortunately, it is sometimes beyond us to feel love for our However, I believe there is a way forward. Primatologist Frans
neighbors. We would have to be angels to love everyone at all De Waal showed that non-human animals also know morality
times, and we are far from being angels. At times we are selfish, and show empathy. We may therefore assume that this behaviour
envious, covetous, lazy, fearful, prejudiced, resentful and angry increases their chances of survival. Humans probably also sub-
(just for starters); so we need rules to regulate our behavior. We consciously choose values that increase the group’s chances of
cannot always have our own way; we must consider others – their survival and consequently their own. This leads us to the question
feelings, their needs, and above all their human rights. of which value contributes most to our survival.

Everyone has certain inalienable rights: ‘life, liberty, property, Beliefs in the importance of authenticity, honesty, integrity,
and pursuit of happiness’ is a common list, but not exhaustive. For justice, kindness, and respect are beautiful and can guide
you to have a right means everyone you meet has an obligation to behaviour in ways that contribute to a positive self-image, a
act in accordance with it. You have a right not to be killed deliberately coherent sense of self, a good feeling in others and prevent suf-
or even through negligence, and everyone who meets you is obli- fering. Many of these values overlap: authenticity and honesty,
gated not to deliberately kill you and to be careful not to do so acci- kindness and respect – the one sometimes cannot be separated
dentally. Actually, it is a little more complicated. Killing someone from the other. It is therefore difficult to pick out one value as
to prevent greater evil – say an equal or greater violation of human the most fundamental. Empathy is a start, but useless if it does
rights – is justified. This qualification, though, is still based on rights. not lead to constructive behaviour. In my humble opinion, active
responsibility – caring for other living beings and for the planet
The theory is neat; but cold theory seldom motivates us to do as our home, and putting this care into practice, whether on a
what we ought. My having an obligation means nothing unless small or large scale – is one of the most important values, as it
I feel the weight of it and acknowledge the constraint on me. I can alleviate suffering and contribute to our very survival.
call this ‘respecting the right’. Since human rights are the basis
of our morality and observing them makes human society possi- CAROLINE DEFORCHE
ble, respecting them is our most fundamental value. LICHTERVELDE, BELGIUM

JOHN TALLEY The most fundamental value would need to be the one that’s
RUTHERFORDTON, NC most vital in creating an optimal world. For the purpose of
the question, I am assuming an optimal world to be one where
Iwould tend to think of fundamental or basic values as being every person lives free from destructive behavior by others or
honesty, friendliness, charity, faith, loyalty, security, creativity

28 Philosophy Now August/September 2021 What Is The Most Fundamental Value?

?? ?

self. My first instinct was to assign kindness, empathy, or the like Arete: What do you mean, Socrates, by ‘the most fundamental
as the most fundamental value. However, that seemed too naïve. value’? I can think of many different values, all of them equally
If everyone treated others with kindness, would the best possible fundamental. Take integrity, for instance – to speak and act in
world necessarily be created as a result? accordance with one’s beliefs.
Socrates: I see. So are you saying you would praise someone for
No matter at what point I begin, or what direction my train acting in such a way more than if they acted in contradiction to
of thought took me, the value I kept ending up with was self- their beliefs?
worth, meaning ‘believing oneself to be worthy of living a good Arete: Absolutely!
life in the world’. Without self-worth, all other values become Socrates: Even if their beliefs are what you would find morally
meaningless because there is no driving force to encourage the reprehensible? Take the example of a tyrant who genuinely
practice of those other values. believes it proper to be a violent despot, and so is definitely acting
in personal integrity, according to your definition. What then?
Having true self-worth has nothing to do with other people. Arete: Well, of course a leader ought to be kind and treat others
True self-worth means believing one’s own person is enough. compassionately.
Comparisons, jealousy, competitions, et cetera, contradict self- Socrates: So it would appear that integrity is not necessarily or
worth. But self-worth is also not selfishness, because selfishness always a good thing. And even when it is, it is only so in the pres-
necessitates comparing one’s self to other people. If someone has ence of other values.
attained true self-worth there would be no need to take away Arete: Yes, kindness and compassion are necessary.
from anyone else. Furthermore, if I have self-worth then I could Socrates: If that’s the case, then they may well be more funda-
reasonably hope that everyone else should too. mental values than integrity. Tell me, friend, how do you define
compassion?
For me, as simple as it sounds, an optimal world is a kind world. Arete: I think most people would agree it’s a sympathy you show
But people often do need a springboard from which to be gracious towards others’ suffering, together with a motivation to relieve
with others. Self-worth could serve as that point of departure. that suffering.
Socrates: Then the more sensitive you are to another person’s
PHILIPPA LIEBER distress, and the more you alleviate that distress, the more com-
RAPPERSWIL, SWITZERLAND passionate you are.
Arete: That seems only logical.
There is no single fundamental value, for it all depends on Socrates: Then take as an example our tyrant again. His rule is
the type of life or society you wish to build or live in. Iin over, and he now sits in a court awaiting sentence for his crimes.
practice, societies might even discover their own fundamental Is it not true that a judge who sees compassion as the greatest
value by working backwards – by defining what is important and value could end up administering a weak, unsatisfactory form of
then agreeing on the single value that needs to be in place to justice by being unjustifiably merciful to him?
make that society function. Arete: I suppose. But a good judge will apply not too much, not
too little, but a just amount of compassion.
The most fundamental value in any given system is the one Socrates: So could it be that the most fundamental value is not
that if taken away would make all other values impossible. If I a fixed feature or trait, like integrity, compassion, or kindness,
value art and music, yet live in a society that is completely and that the good way of behaving in each situation will be acces-
opposed to freedom of expression, then having a thriving music sible to us by learning to distinguish the just from the unjust, the
scene might be a problem. If I value a loving marriage but I am good from the bad?
opposed to compromise, I will spend many miserable nights Arete: But, Socrates, how could we ever reach a consensus on such
alone on the couch. This may not indicate the single most fun- matters? How could the way I distinguish the just from the unjust
damental values for art or marriage, but they are often key, and be the same as everyone else’s? What is just? And what is good?
if taken away, other things of value may not be possible at all.
The scribe in service that day then ran out of ink, but rumour has
The twelfth century Jewish philosopher Maimonides is well it that the questions raised by searching for the most fundamental value
known for promoting the protecting of one’s health, because if were only beginning.
one does not have one’s health, one cannot fulfill any other com-
mandment and cannot serve God. While Maimonides himself RICARDO ALMEIDA
argues that belief in God is the single most fundamental value, EDINBURGH
it’s hard for a dead person to believe in God!
The next question is: Can Eating Meat Be Justified?
If you go deep enough down the rabbit hole in any system of
values you will find a foundation stone, something whose Please justify it, or not, in less than 400 words. The prize is a
removal would cause the whole system crumbles. That doesn’t
mean the universe ends; it just means that a new fundamental semi-random book from our book mountain. Subject lines
value is needed which would yield an adjusted system of values
– as happened in the Enlightenment. should be marked ‘Question of the Month’, and must be

It might be challenging to drill down to the fundamental value received by 18th October 2021. If you want a chance of get-
upon which any system is built, but I believe it will be there.
Thank God I have my health, so I’ll keep digging, because I value ting a book, please include your physical address.
the search for truth, and I value the tools that will help me dis-
cover it.

JOEL DININ
MILWAUKEE, WI

What Is The Most Fundamental Value? August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 29

© JOHN LOCKE AND JONATHAN EDWARDS BY VENANTIUS J PINTO 2021. TO SEE MORE ART, PLEASE VISIT BEHANCE.NET/VENANTIUSPINTO

30 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Jonathan Edwards on

Spiders

John Irish reveals the surprisingly Enlightened views of a hellfire preacher.

On July 8, 1741, the parishioners at the Congrega- all that unusual; Harvard had a similar curriculum. For Yale,
tional Church in Enfield, Connecticut, were in for however, this would all change in 1714 when Jeremiah Dummer,
a real treat. They were going to hear a sermon from a London agent for the Massachusetts and Connecticut colonies,
a visiting minister, one of the leaders of the First procured a major donation of books for the university. This col-
Great Awakening, a religious movement which had begun in lection was full of works of the new learning: the gift introduced
1738 and was now sweeping across the American colonies. That the Yale students to the thought of John Locke as well as other
address would go on to become the most famous sermon asso- Enlightenment thinkers, such as Clarke, More, Shaftesbury,
ciated with this movement, and the most famous work from that Stillingfleet, Tillotson, Defoe, Bayle, even an English transla-
minister, if not the most famous sermon in American history. tion of the Qur’an.
The minister was Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), one of the
leaders of the ‘New Light’ movement, and the sermon was titled The collection had two major effects: first, it introduced the
‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’. It would embody all Yale students to Enlightenment thought, and second, it caused
the characteristics of sermons preached from New Light minis- a radical shift in the curriculum. The purpose of the university
ters: strong emotional appeal, descriptive language, and a mes- would no longer be the preparation of young men for the min-
sage designed to get people back into the church from fear of istry; instead, it would now serve a much larger goal of a liberal
eternal damnation. In those senses, it was a pretty standard education. One particular thinker who greatly benefited from
sermon for the place and the time. Indeed, Edwards hardly got the gift was the young Jonathan Edwards.
a peep out of his own congregation a few weeks before when he
delivered the sermon there. But when he delivered it at Enfield, Edwards has been described as America’s first and most orig-
the congregation was so distraught and overwhelmed with emo- inal philosophical theologian, and arguably the first American
tion that they asked him to stop before he had finished it. He philosopher. He was a student at Yale when the Dummer books
and the local minister then went into the congregation and tried were donated. He graduated in 1720 and spent the next two years
to comfort individuals who were overcome with grief. in graduate study there, taking a Master’s degree in divinity.

The most famous part of the sermon includes a vivid anal- Edwards had always been drawn to the new learning. He was
ogy involving a spider: exposed to the ideas of Locke early on, and was fascinated by
Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), a classic
“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a in empiricist epistemology and psychology. According to the
spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is American colonial historian Perry Miller, reading Locke’s Essay
dreadfully provoked; His wrath towards you burns like fire; He is of “had been the central and decisive event of [Edwards’] intellec-
purer eyes than to bear to have you in His sight; you are ten thou- tual life… he read Locke and the divine strategy was revealed to
sand times more abominable in His eyes as the most hateful ven- him...God works through the concrete and the specific” (Jonathan
omous serpent is in ours. You have offended Him infinitely more Edwards, 1949, pp.52-3). Edwards embraced the philosophy of
than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet ’tis nothing but the new learning and believed it was a way for God to reveal him-
His hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.” self more clearly to his followers. He found no inherent conflict
(Sermons & Discourses 1739-1742, pp.411-412) in the doctrines of the new learning with those of Christianity.
Instead, Locke and Newton fired his imagination; it may be said
Thoughts & Sources that Locke fueled his knowledge of philosophy, and Newton
Believe it or not (and it’s probably hard to believe after that fueled his knowledge of science. Edwards found Locke’s con-
excerpt), Edwards was both a child of the Enlightenment and a cept of natural cause and effect attractive because it implied uni-
follower of the empiricist philosophy of John Locke (1634-1704). versal design, and he seemed ready to settle upon the Lockean
concept of sensation as the source of what the mind knows.
Edwards graduated from Yale University, which had been
founded just in 1701. At the time it was a typical university, Locke’s Empiricism
teaching a standard curriculum, comprised mostly of foreign John Locke is considered the founder of the British ‘empiricist’
language and Biblical studies. Since a major goal of early uni- school of epistemology, which largely emerged as a counter to
versities was to churn out ministers for the church, this was not the European ‘rationalist’ school of Descartes et al. Empiricism
believes that there’s no knowledge in the mind that does not

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 31

STEVE HILLEBRAND, U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE land. Dudley finished the letter requesting further articles of
anything from North America ‘observed in nature worthy of
have its origin in our sense experiences. In Locke’s own words, remark’. Edwards had jotted down a few observations two years
“Whence comes [to the mind] all the materials of Reason and earlier in his journal, ‘On Insects’, on the behavior of a particu-
Knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from Experience: lar type of ‘flying spider’ that existed in North America that had
In that, all our knowledge is founded” (Essay, II.I.2). caught his eye. Edwards opens his letter to the Royal Society
with the explanation that he’s noticed a certain kind of spider
The general idea is that knowledge of the world originates from exhibiting an unusual behavior: it appears to fly ‘though they are
something external to us. True knowledge, that is, must be expe- wholly destitute of wings’. He says that he was very curious one
rienced. Locke spends the entire first book of his Essay attacking day, so ventured into the forest and found a number of these
the idea of innate ideas – ideas you’re born with – which he viewed little creatures and spent the entire day following them around
as an absurd notion: ideas are not in the mind when we are born, and sketching notes about their behavior.
they are put there via experience, and so we must gather what
knowledge we can from our perceptions. The mind is formed in What Edwards discovered was interesting, but more impor-
a way that allows us to sort through our different experiences, store tant was what this event revealed about him. His observations
them, and retrieve them when they’re needed, recombining them reveal a complex thinker who is very much enamored with what
mentally when necessary, and this is how learning occurs. This nature has to offer. For Edwards, to experience nature was to
concept was a fundamental idea within Enlightenment thought, experience the divine. “Resolving if possible to find out the mys-
and played a heavy role within the scientific community during teries of these their amazing works, and pursuing my observa-
the Scientific Revolution, since for empiricists, observation and tions, I discovered one wonder after another” (Writings, p.164).
experiment are the primary vehicles to knowledge. Thus, nature provides both knowledge and wonder. He ends the
letter with the statement, “I don’t desire that the truth of it
Edwards on Spiders should be received upon my word” (p.166). His observations are
‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ was not Edwards’ only not to be viewed as gospel. Instead, he encourages others to test
foray into the world of spiders. About twenty years earlier, on the knowledge he has gained through these informal experi-
October 31, 1723, Edwards had also written about spiders, but ments. The fact that Edwards is performing observations and
with a different impression of them, to a different audience: soliciting testing of them demonstrates the strong Enlighten-
“They are some things that I have happily seen of the wondrous ment bent in his approach to knowledge, derived from Locke
and curious works of the spider. Although everything pertain- and the new learning. However, in keeping with the Puritan
ing to this insect is admirable, yet there are some phenomena worldview, nature also has a purpose, and that purpose is revealed
relating to them more particularly wonderful” (Scientific and through God: “Wisdom of the creator in providing of the
Philosophical Writings, p.163). The younger Edwards had com- spider… so excellency secure to all their purposes… the exuber-
posed a letter that he hoped would be published by the Royal ant goodness of the creator, who hath not only provided for all
Society of London in their Philosophical Transactions of the Royal the necessities, but also for the pleasure and recreation of all sorts
Society. Jonathan’s father, Timothy Edwards, had earlier received of creatures, even the insects” (p.167). This reveals the teleologi-
a letter from Paul Dudley, who had published an article in the cal or purposeful nature of the universe. God’s purpose is revealed
Philosophical Transactions on observations on plants in New Eng- not only through the Bible, but through the works of nature,
and this revelation is available for all to discover. So for Edwards,
science and religion work together in providing the truth to
humans about God and their own natures.

Lockean Spider Connections
What I find interesting about these two spider references, sep-
arated by almost twenty years and what appears on the surface
as different goals, is the fact that both can be connected to the
new learning, and to Lockean empirical philosophy specifically.
Both texts can be interpreted as influenced by Lockean psychol-
ogy and methodology.

The ‘Spider Letter’ provides probably the more obvious con-
nections to Locke. Here Edwards first poses a question that has
come about as a result of an ‘abnormal’ occurrence in nature,
observed by numerous folks: How can spiders fly? He then goes
about attempting to answer the question by using the scientific
method of observation. It is also interesting that he goes out
into nature to do so. Nature is seen as a viable source of infor-
mation about the world, so the Bible is not the sole source of
knowledge. Edwards is advancing an important empirical char-
acteristic of knowledge here. Knowledge is gained through the
scientific method and observation. Another important observa-

32 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

tion to take away from the ‘Spider Letter’, is the significance of Philosophical Haiku LYOTARD © BRACHA ETTINGER 1995
the order and structure of the universe. An important element
of science is that theories be falsifiable through testing them; JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD
and because the universe is ordered as well as observable, we
can test our theory. Another aspect Edwards extrapolates from (1924–1998)
Lockean epistemology, is that observation connects all aspects
of our being to the event. As well as intellectual knowledge, we Grand Truth is interred,
feel the emotional connection: we receive pleasure from the Multiplicity sovereign.
experience of observing the spider and seeing the wonder of the Charlatan or sage?
universe. So Edwards’ experiment is not one of simple rational
observation, but it also includes an element of emotion as well. Seeking to rival the incomprehensibility achieved by many twenti-
eth century Anglo-American philosophers through their use of
What might not be as clear are the influences of these Lock- mathematics and formal logic, twentieth century European
ean ideas from the ‘Spider Letter’ upon ‘Sinners in the Hands philosophers adopted the more straightforward approach of simply
of an Angry God’. But I think there are definite connections being incomprehensible. The champion of them all was Jean-François
between the two documents. Edwards knows that intellectually Lyotard, the evangelist of postmodernism. He wrote as if he believed
speaking, his audience is aware of their inferiority to and depen- himself to be a divine oracle, and his minions have tended to write in
dence on God. This belief is part of the fabric of Puritan soci- the same impenetrable way ever since.
ety. They’re told it from birth, and hear it weekly in sermons
and various other places. But the goal of the sermons from the Lyotard recalled how as a child he considered various careers: histo-
First Great Awakening was to get individuals to feel what it was rian, writer, artist, and Dominican monk. It’s a shame he didn’t become a
that they already understood rationally. They knew they were monk – the unfathomable mysticism of the Dominicans would’ve suited
sinners – but they needed to really know it. Via Locke, Edwards him. But in the end he studied philosophy and literature, despite which he
is well aware that until one experiences something, it will not seemingly never learnt the art of writing well or expressing himself clearly.
strongly resonate as knowledge. I can see a plane crash on the
news, and I can think to myself, ‘That could happen to me.’ In 1979 his eulogy for the Enlightenment (or the ‘modern age’) was
However, I don’t get nervous till it hits home when I’m on a published, entitled La Condition Postmoderne: Rapport sur le Savoir
plane which suddenly drops about twenty feet in the air. It makes (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge). Here he claimed
the airport safely, but I think, ‘‘We could have crashed, I could that since the Enlightenment the modern age has been marked by a
have died!’’ Similarily, in his ‘Sinners’ sermon, Edwards is trying misguided faith in ‘grand narratives’ – theories such as scientism or
to bring home peoples’ experience of their dependence on God’s Marxism, which claimed to offer over-arching truths about reality. That
grace by making the experience real, first, by using an analogy age, he said, was over, and the postmodern age has begun: an age
everyone has experience of – the spider – and second, by using marked by, in his words, ‘incredulity towards grand narratives’.
visual language that clarifies to the listener the nature of their
utter dependence. Edwards is making the audience feel the According to this view, there are no absolute truths, there are just many
dependence that they already know rationally. Without this different ways of knowing the world, none superior to the others. Science
experience, there can be no real knowledge for them. Once the may claim the contrary; but it is wrong, and arrogant to do so. In this way
experience has registered, the mind can then organize and pri- Lyotard opened the door for every type of New Age swindler to assert the
oritize the information. Thus Edwards is drawing on Lockean legitimacy of any claim, no matter how absurd, for no one has a monopoly
psychology to hit home the spiritual message. (this point is on the truth. Postmodernism represents an astonishing nadir for scholarly
derived from Kimnach, et al, Jonathan Edwards’s ‘Sinners in the endeavour – behind the façade of learning and the imprimatur of the
Hands of an Angry God’: A Casebook, 2010). academy, postmodernists effectively commit licensed fraud, passing off
the most execrable and meaningless hogwash as profundities.
Two works, separated by twenty years, written by one of the
most influential Puritan theologians and philosophers during I think it’s safe to say that we now live in post-post-modern world.
the First Great Awakening, both show the strong influence of But of course, that’s just my humble opinion, and heaven forbid I should
Lockean thought. These documents reveal to us that religion impose it on anyone.
and science are not inherently or necessarily in conflict with
each other. If a thinker like Edwards can embrace both aspects © TERENCE GREEN 2021
into his Puritan worldview, it’s possible for the rest of us, too.
Terence Green is a writer, historian, and lecturer who lives in
‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ is probably the most Eastbourne, New Zealand.
read sermon in the American literary canon, but without the
proper context of the entire scope of his writings, it is easy to August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 33
misinterpret both this sermon and Edwards’s overall philosoph-
ical and religious views.

© DR JOHN P. IRISH 2021

John P. Irish teaches American Studies at Carroll Sr. High School
in Southlake, Texas. He received a Doctorate in Humanities from
Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He enjoys watching
the different types of spiders that live in his backyard.

Taylor Swift's

Liar Paradox

With the help of renowned logician Taylor Swift, Theresa Helke introduces four
fundamental paradoxes: the Liar, Epimenides’, the Truth-Teller, and the No-No.

Taylor But more than a shallow pop issue, Swift’s Statement con-
‘Would I lie cerns a deep philosophical one: that of ‘ungrounded’ sentences.
I shall use Swift’s lyric to introduce four famous paradoxes: the
to you?’ Liar, Epimenides’, the Truth-Teller, and the No-No paradoxes.
Swift I’ll also argue that while one might think Swift’s Statement is a
version of the Liar paradox, it is in fact a version of the Truth-
TAYLOR SWIFT © GLENN FRANCIS 2019. CREATIVE COMMONS 4.0 LICENSE Teller paradox, and, when conjoined with another sentence,
forms a version of the No-No paradox. In short, Swift’s ‘liar’
paradox is not the Liar, but it is nonetheless a paradox.

Getting Started
To show that Swift’s Statement is not a version of the Liar para-
dox (which I’ll introduce in a sec), I need to define two terms
and acknowledge three assumptions.

Definitions:
A liar: someone who says only false things; and
A truth-teller: someone who says only true things.

One could examine the paradox with a different set of defi-
nitions: for example, a liar is someone who says some true things
as well as some false things. But I leave that examination to some-
one else.

Consider the following statement: Assumptions:
“All the liars are calling me one.” First assumption: Any sentence is either true or false. So for exam-
ple, ‘I’m in Geneva’ is either true (yes, I’m in Geneva), or false
It’s a lyric. The singer-songwriter Taylor Swift sings it in (no, I’m not in Geneva). It can’t be neither true nor false: either
‘Call It What You Want’ from her album Reputation (2017). In I’m in Geneva or I’m not! It also can’t be both true and false: I
doing so, Swift states that all liars are calling her a liar. We shall can’t both be in Geneva and not be in Geneva. In logic, we call
call this statement ‘Swift’s Statement’. this assumption the principle of excluded middle. That is, any sen-
tence has a truth value, and if the sentence is false, then its nega-
One might think that the lyric refers just to some personal tion is true. So if ‘I’m in Geneva’ is false, then its negation ‘I’m
spat. Au fait listeners may suspect that Swift is taking aim at NOT in Geneva’ is true.
Kanye West or Kim Kardashian West. Such listeners will know
that the then-husband-and-wife claimed that Swift had done Second assumption: The set of ‘liars’ isn’t empty – there is at
something which she denies doing (namely, approve a lyric). least one liar. This is important because otherwise ‘All the liars
are calling me one’ would be vacuously necessarily true. In a
world where there are no liars, obviously, there are no liars who
aren’t calling Tay a liar. In such a world, we’re not in a position
to point at any liar and say ‘See? She’s not calling Tay a liar’. So
in a world where there are no liars, it’s not possible for ‘All the
liars are calling me one’ to be false. It must therefore be true.
For Swift’s Statement to be false, there must be at least one liar
who isn’t calling Tay a liar. So, to keep things interesting, we’re

34 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

taking the set of liars to contain at least one liar. And if we’re “All Cretans are liars.”
considering the world mid-2021, this seems like a reasonable
assumption. Let’s call this ‘Epimenides’ Statement’. Depending on the
circumstances, Epimenides’ Statement can be false. This hap-
Third assumption: in the universe within which we’ll be con- pens if there’s at least one Cretan who isn’t a liar who also isn’t
sidering the truth value of Swift’s Statement, people are either Epimenides. Indeed, in this case, Epimenides is speaking falsely
truth-tellers or liars, and not both. So, if you say something false, – he’s lying – in saying that all Cretans are liars.
you’re a liar. And if you say something true, you’re a truth-teller.
Moreover, if it’s false that you’re a liar, then you’re a truth- Things work similarly when it comes to Swift’s Statement.
teller; and conversely, if it’s false that you’re a truth-teller, then Depending on the circumstances, ‘All the liars are calling me one’
you’re a liar. might be false. In this case, Swift is a liar (from our definition),
since there is a liar (other than her) who isn’t calling her a liar.
So much for definitions and assumptions. Let’s turn to the
paradoxes. Since this scenario gives us a non-paradoxical reading of Swift’s
sentence, we might wonder whether we can devise a scenario
The Liar Paradox
The Liar paradox arises from the sort of statement which reads: Epimenides
the
“This sentence is false.”
paradoxical
Here, we have a sentence referring to itself and saying it’s Cretan
false. We shall call this statement the Liar Statement. It is para-
doxical because if the Liar Statement is true, then the Liar State-
ment is false. And if the Liar Statement is false, then the Liar
Statement is true.

Now, for any sentence S to be a version of the Liar paradox,
it has to satisfy what I’ll call the Liar Paradox Biconditional
(LPB), like this:

‘Sentence S is true only if S is false.’

Therefore for Swift’s statement to be a version of the Liar giving us a non-paradoxical reading in which we take Swift to be
paradox, it would have to be the case that if it were true, then a truth-teller. In other words, can we make Swift’s Statement a
it would be false; and if it were false, then it would be true. So, version of the Truth-Teller paradox? The answer is yes.
if Swift’s Statement satisfied the LPB, that would make it a (non-
identical) twin of the Liar Statement, since the Liar Statement
is also true if and only if the Liar Statement is false.

However – unlike in the case of the Liar Statement – it’s not
true that Swift’s Statement is true if and only if Swift’s State-
ment is false.

Assume that Swift’s Statement is true. In other words, sup-
pose that all the liars are calling Swift a liar. But because they’re
liars (and we’ve defined a liar as someone who utters only false
sentences), it’s false that Swift is a liar. So she’s telling the truth
– which is consistent with our assumption that Swift’s State-
ment is true. In uttering her Statement, Swift is speaking the
truth. So we see that if Swift’s Statement is true, then Swift’s
Statement is true. So we’ve disproved one conditional which
makes the LPB, namely, that it’s not the case that if Swift’s
Statement is true, then Swift’s Statement is false. So Swift’s lyric
is not a version of the Liar paradox.

Epimenides’ Paradox The Truth-Teller Paradox
The Truth-Teller Statement is :
One might think that Swift’s Statement is a version of the con-
tingent liar, otherwise known as Epimenides’ paradox – and one “This very sentence is true.”
would be right, inasmuch as Swift’s Statement can just be plain
false. Let’s look at that now. What makes it remarkable, indeed paradoxical, is that there
seems to be no way to tell whether the Truth-Teller Statement
Epimenides’ paradox arises from a sentence which, suppos- is true or false. To quote Chris Mortensen and Graham Priest,
edly, was uttered by the Cretan philosopher Epimenides:

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 35

Kim Returning now to Swift’s lyric. We can get a version of the
Kardashian Truth-Teller paradox if for example we suppose that no one is
saying anything except Swift and Kanye West, and West is
saying:

‘Swift is a liar’

KIM KARDASHIAN © DAVID SHANKBONE 2009. CREATIVE COMMONS 3.0 LICENSE. Let’s call this ‘West’s Statement’. But Swift is still saying
Swift’s Statement, ‘All the liars are calling me one’.

Note that to be a liar, a person must speak, and again, here
we’re assuming only Swift and West are speaking. Now, either
Swift is telling the truth – Swift’s Statement is true – or she
is not – Swift’s Statement is false. If she’s telling the truth,
then West is lying, and Swift’s Statement is indeed true. But
if she’s lying, then West is telling the truth, and Swift’s State-
ment is indeed false, since Swift is not calling herself a liar
even though she is one. So in this scenario, Swift’s lyric is
similar to the truth-teller sentence, in that if Swift’s State-
ment is true, Swift’s Statement is true, but if Swift’s State-
ment is false, Swift’s Statement is false, and moreover, there
seems to be no way to determine which hypothesis – ‘Swift’s
Statement is true’ or ‘Swift’s Statement is false’ – is true. To
use the technical term, Swift’s Statement is ungrounded. That
is, there’s nothing to make it true. It breaks what in logic we
call the thesis of truth-maker maximalism, according to which
‘If a sentence is true, there’s something which makes it true’.
Instead, here, the ungrounded Swift’s Statement is a version
of the Truth-Teller paradox.

“Indeed, it seems hard to see how there could even be anything Taking Stock
to choose between the hypotheses. More particularly both
hypotheses seem to be consistent: from neither hypothesis does With the liar paradox, we saw that one can consistently assign
there appear to be deducible a contradiction” (‘The Truth Teller neither truth nor falsity to the Liar Statement ‘This sentence
Paradox’, Logique et Analyse, 24, 1981, p.381). In other words, is false’. If we assign truth, then the Liar Statement suggests
whether we assume that the Truth-Teller Statement is true, or that the Liar Statement is not true but false. If we assign fal-
whether we assume that the Truth-Teller Statement is false, sity, then the Liar Statement suggests that the Liar Statement
we can’t derive a confounding conclusion such as ‘the Truth- is not false but true. And we saw that in the case of the lyric
Teller Statement is both true and false’. ‘All the liars are calling me one’, it isn’t that, it’s not that one
can consistently assign neither truth value. In other words –
Contrary to the liar case, to be a Truth-Teller paradox, a and to remove the double negation – one can consistently
sentence S need not satisfy the LPB. Rather, it needs to satisfy assign one truth value. Indeed, we saw that if we assign truth
the Truth-Teller Conjunction (TTC). This conjunction is the – if we have reasons to say it’s true – then Swift’s Statement,
logical connective which in plain English we read as ‘and’. Here’s ‘All the liars are calling me one’, confirms that Swift’s State-
the TTC: ment is true.

If S is true, then S is true; and if S is false, then S is false. Next, with the Truth-Teller Paradox, we saw that one can
consistently assign, not neither but each truth value. If we sup-
So it won’t be that the Truth-Teller Statement is true if and pose that no one is saying anything except West and Swift,
only if the Truth-Teller Statement is false. Rather, it’ll be the and West is saying ‘Swift is a liar’, Swift, in singing her State-
case that: ment, could be either telling the truth, or lying. Yet from nei-
ther hypothesis – ‘Swift is telling the truth’, or ‘Swift is lying’
If the Truth-Teller Statement is true, then the Truth-Teller – does there appear to be deductible a contradiction. This
Statement is true; and makes Swift’s Statement ungrounded.
If the Truth-Teller Statement is false, then the Truth-Teller
Statement is false. Swift’s ‘liar paradox’ therefore appears to be not an actual
Liar paradox, but a scare-quoted liar paradox. In other words
and despite the words in the lyric, it’s not a Liar paradox but
a different paradox. We’ve established that it can be a version
of the Truth-Teller.

36 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Kanye (iii)? We might rule them out too, because each of them
West would imply that the sentences (S1) and (S2) mysteriously
diverge in truth value, despite their being perfectly symmet-
KANYE WEST © DAVID SHANKBONE 2009. CREATIVE COMMONS 3.0 LICENSE. rical. We appear to have ruled out all four possible truth-
value combinations. So (S1) and (S2) both look like
respectable sentences, but take them together and there
seems to be no way either of them can be either true or false.
This is the No-No paradox.

Perhaps one of them (but not both) can be found to be true
by bringing in some relevant additional fact from the world –
a so called ‘truth-maker’. Rather than go down that rabbit hole,
let’s remain focused on Swift and West. Here, taking Swift’s
Statement and West’s Statement together, we have a No-No
pair of sentences. One way of paraphrasing Swift’s Statement
and West’s Statement is as (SS) and (WS) respectively:

(SS): ‘(WS) is false’
(WS): ‘(SS) is false’

In the final part, we’ll consider whether Swift’s Statement If Swift is speaking the truth, and saying that ‘All the liars
might be one of a pair of sentences in a fourth paradox. are calling me one’, Swift is essentially saying that West’s
Statement, ‘Swift is a liar’, is false. West, in calling her a liar,
The No-No Paradox is telling a lie. After all, from our assumption, she’s speaking
Having established that Swift’s Statement is a version of the the truth. Likewise, if West is speaking the truth and saying
Truth-Teller paradox, one might go a step further and ask ‘Swift is a liar’, West’s essentially saying that Swift’s State-
whether here we might also have a version of the No-No para- ment is false: Swift, in saying ‘All the liars are calling me one’,
dox. Spoiler: we do! is telling a lie. After all, from our assumption, West is speak-
ing the truth, so Swift’s a liar. Swift’s Statement is false.
The No-No sentences – plural! – we’ll call (S1) and (S2).
Together they are: So we can see Swift’s Statement is analogous to (SS), and
West’s Statement to (WS). But then we end up with the No-
(S1): ‘(S2) is false’ No problem: It can’t be that (SS) and (WS) have the same
(S2): ‘(S1) is false’ truth value, but we can’t choose which is true and which is
false: we can’t choose between (ii) and (iii). It must be that
There are four possible truth-value combinations for (S1) one is true, but – contra the thesis of truth-maker maximal-
and (S2): ism, according to which, if a sentence is true, there’s some-
thing which makes it true – there doesn’t seem to be anything
(i) both are true; that makes either true. Suppose (ii): that (SS) is true and (WS)
(ii) the first is true and the second false; is false. The reading is stable – we don’t reach a contradic-
(iii) the first is false and the second true; tion. But it’s stable also when we suppose (iii); that is, that
(iv) both are false. this time (SS) is false and (WS) is true. And there’s seemingly
nothing to help us choose between the two pairs of truth-
However, in the case of No-No sentences, (i) and (iv) are value assignments.
ruled out because if (S1) is true, then it must be that (S2) is
false; and if (S1) is false, then it must be that (S2) is true, so Conclusion
they can’t both be either true or false. But what about (ii) and As we’ve seen, Swift’s lyric makes reference to a deep philo-
sophical issue: we can devise sentences which are consistent
but whose truth is ungrounded. Swift’s Statement – ‘All the
liars are calling me one’ – is such a sentence. It might be true,
and it might be false, but there’s nothing which seems to make
it true, and nothing which seems to make it false.

Except, perhaps, one’s allegiances? Whether one chooses
to find Swift’s Statement true or false – whether one chooses
to side with the (Kardashian) Wests or with Swift – perhaps
depends on whether one is a Swiftie or not.

© DR THERESA HELKE 2021

Theresa Helke is a Lecturer in Logic and Philosophy at Smith
College in Massachusetts.

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 37

The Stoic’s Lacuna

Alex Richardson explores the ethical cavern at the centre of Stoicism.

“What is up to me, what is not up to me?” – Epictetus

“You can’t control the weather, you can’t control other people, you can’t Epictetus
control the society around you” – Dr Michael Sugrue questioning

There is a fault line running through Stoic philoso- the statesman and the philosopher! Mere froth! Do you, O man, that
phy. This faultline was present in its ancient Greek which nature requires of you, whatever it be. Set about it, if you have
and Roman origins, but in the modern world it has the means... and don’t hope for Plato’s commonwealth.”
become pronounced. The faultline is that, despite
the protestations of its founders and some of its advocates today, Where does this tendency towards quietism come from?
Stoicism can lead to political quietism – a withdrawal from the To answer this question, it’s useful to situate the ideas within
sphere of political life, and public life more generally, exclu- their concrete social context. In this case I follow the analysis
sively into the realm of the individual and personal. My argu- of Ellen Meiksins Wood in Citizens to Lords (2008):
ment is that this tendency towards quietism is a foundational
flaw in Stoicism which co-exists uneasily with much more pow- “as polis gave way to empire, the main arena of philosophical reflec-
erful and useful Stoic meditations on self-mastery as a prereq- tion shifted. The sphere of civic action and deliberation receded,
uisite of virtuous intervention in the world. bringing into focus the private individual... While there was certainly
a place in Stoicism, especially in its later Roman form, for civic duty
Before we examine this issue, it is worth mentioning a caveat. and political activism, [they] located human happiness not in the polis
Since it was not designed with doctrinal coherence in mind, it but in the individual’s inner resources”
is no denigration of Stoicism to observe that, taken as a whole,
it is sometimes self-contradictory. As a tradition which is fun- Stoicism developed, then, in the social context of the decline
damentally eclectic and epigrammatic rather than a systema- of the polis (Greek city-state) and therefore a decline in engage-
tised philosophy, Stoicism is perhaps more like the Upanishads, ment in the political sphere. In this context, a philosophy which
the Bible, or perhaps like horoscopes: an alphabet soup of ideas centred on ‘the individual’s inner resources’ to the practical exclu-
from which we can draw numerous, sometimes divergent, con- sion of all else was likely to gain popularity, since the individ-
clusions. At one moment Stoicism appears to promote vigor- ual’s inner resources appeared to be the only show left in town.
ous action in support of natural justice, at another time, Zen- While the polis had provided a viable arena to influence the world,
like passivity. As such, there are permanent problems with its being swallowed up in grander political machinations left the
describing Stoicism as a myopically apolitical worldview: it is monolithic Roman Empire as the practical political unit, which
easy to find quotations to the contrary, and one can cite the was too vast for most civic action to meaningfully affect. A phi-
deliberate action in the political sphere of its best-known names: losophy in accordance with this new world, such as Stoicism,
Epictetus the philosopher, Seneca the orator, and the Stoic seemed to align with the way the wind was blowing, and there-
Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. And these most famous fore appeared highly relevant, perhaps even consolatory.
Stoics were not the only ones who pursued a great deal of action
in public life. Virtually all did. But this is not an impediment How does this same idea percolate through to the world today?
for my argument, for reasons I’ll mention later.

Becoming Silent
Marcus Aurelius is perhaps the best-loved of the Stoics, with
his Meditations (c.180 AD) often promoted as a manual for daily
living. In the Meditations, Aurelius returns again and again to a
comprehensive fatalism, which asks us to “Love and desire that
alone which happens to you, and is destined by providence for
you; for, what can be more suitable?”

This position flowed from Stoic metaphysics: they saw nature
as ordered through a Logos or divine organising principle, so
why not accept what’s divinely logically ordered for you? But
Aurelius at times goes further, to single out ambitious political
goals as foolish:

“How very little worth, too, are those poor creatures who pretend

to understand affairs of state, and imagine they unite in themselves

38 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Ryan Holiday is a popular contemporary author on Stoicism one work for one outcome over another?
who pleads strongly for its compatibility with progressive poli- However, very few people have read or practiced Stoic philos-
tics. He claims the view of Stoicism as recommending resigned
acquiescence to injustice is a mistake, and provides quotations ophy as a form of nihilism, in which you don’t care one way or
and explanations to back up his argument. But as I’ve said, Sto- the other how the future unfolds. Rather, as I mentioned, all the
icism is frequently self-contradictory: for every line the Stoics major Stoic thinkers acted for what they saw as the public good
gave us which seems to motivate action, it is quite possible to in political life, and did not simply give up on it. Yet this proba-
horse-trade a quote which points towards a maddeningly beatific bly owes more to the palpable inhumanity of taking a nihilistic posi-
passivity. Consider Epictetus: “Seek not that the things which tion than it does to Stoicism implying an inclination towards inter-
happen should happen as you wish but wish the things which vention. Like the radical scepticism of David Hume, nihilism is
happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of not something that could really be lived day-to-day. In Hume’s
life” (Enchiridon). In other words, learn to like whatever is the words, a man is compelled to “amidst all their philosophy, be still
case and stop wanting it to be otherwise. a man.” Perhaps this is also what happens to Stoicism when con-
sidering its own recommendation of Zen-like acquiescence.
Holiday wants to get as far away as he can from this under-
standing of Stoicism; and understandably so, since it amounts Yet despite what Holiday argues, even at the level of pure tex-
to an abdication of the moral responsibility to combat unnec- tual exegesis there is no escaping the reality that multiple Stoic
essary suffering. There is a sense of wanting to both have his authors at one time or another promoted utter acceptance of the
cake and eat it here, as the Stoic both attempts to transcend the world as it stood, and regarded attaining this attitude as the pin-
world through total indifference and counsels us to improve the nacle of self-mastery. Holiday’s most convincing arguments are
world through our choices and actions. Here is Seneca, argu- concrete and historical – he points out the Haitian revolution-
ing for both passivity and action within the same passage: “The ary Toussaint L’Overture’s admiration for Epictetus [see last
true felicity of life is to be free from perturbations; to under- Issue, Ed], or the adoption of Stoicism by the painter Eugene
stand our duties toward God and man; to enjoy the present with- Delacroix. But this only reinforces the argument that Stoic
out any anxious dependence upon the future” (Letters from a thought operates with the pick-and-interpret quality of most
Stoic). Holiday might argue though that this is in fact coherent; ideologies. Depending on historical context, different ideas can
that Seneca is merely telling us to take emotion out of our be drawn from it for the purposes of the moment. And in Ancient
response; to be satisfied with what we have, but to work for Greece and Rome, the decline of the polis led to an fixation with
social improvement nonetheless. But even this makes little sense. what the private individual could do in their personal life at the
If it’s rational to be indifferent to outcomes, on what basis would cost of what could be achieved collectively in the public realm.

Ovid Amongst The Scythians
by Eugene Delacroix, 1859

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 39

Modern Stoics?
Peterson, Birbalsingh and Willink
by Gail Campbell, 2021

Modern Stoicism should ‘Set our house in order before trying to change the world’.
It’s possible to read this as Peterson saying that we should first
Let’s now look at how Stoicism is operating today. In today’s world take care of our lives, then attend to the social world through
an analogous process to the decline of the polis and its require- politics; but in fact his proposition is a more radical one. As he
ment for political engagement has been taking place for many argues, it becomes evident that Peterson believes that an ideal
decades. Neoliberal thinking has meant a huge shift away from politics would probably be an emergent result of the mass take-
collective identity and public life, towards the private efforts of up of personal responsibility. Epictetus might agree: “Thou
individuals within markets. Accordingly, we would expect to see a wouldst do good unto men? Then show them by thine own exam-
renewed emphasis on what the individual can do in isolation. ple what kind of men philosophy can make, and cease from fool-
ish trifling.” In Peterson’s view, a world of people setting their
One of the pre-eminent examples of individualist thought in
popular discourse today is Jordan Peterson’s decree that we

40 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

house in order would tackle many socio-political problems, and find ourselves, where palpable victories from collective action
the problems that remain are considered natural and immutable. appear so thin on the ground. If one type of activity doesn’t seem
This includes economic inequality, which Peterson believes is to be bearing fruit (unless you take the historically zoomed-out
the result of the law of distribution known as the Pareto Princi- view), it would indeed seem sensible to jettison it in favour of
ple: “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will the kind of ‘sweat-of-thy-brow’ striving Birbalsingh holds in
have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has high esteem. But how bizarre such a view would have looked
will be taken away.” (The Bible) In other words, wealth and power during, say, the 1960s, as the Civil Rights Movement chalked
naturally accumulate in the hands of a few exceptional individu- up victory after victory through mass unity in the communities
als at the top. and the streets. How misread Epictetus’ and other Stoics’ posi-
tions would have seemed; and how impoverished and feeble this
Dr Michael Sugrue puts this same point forward with conception of what is within our power to affect.
admirable honesty and bluntness in a popular lecture on Aure-
lius. He claims that Stoicism teaches us that the social structure Another popular figure embracing a politically conservative
is ‘not our problem’, and that “if God, or nature, or whatever vision of Stoicism is the former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink, who
is controlling the world makes you a slave, then be a good slave.” produces a podcast on the theme of ‘extreme ownership’ – that is,
Again, Epictetus counsels the same acceptance of the social taking as much personal responsibility as possible. One of Will-
order, asking us to “Remember, therefore, that whenever you ink’s most viewed videos is a speech where he exhorts his viewers
suppose those things that are by nature slavish to be free... you to respond to misfortune with the mantra “GOOD!” Anything
will be hindered, miserable and distressed, and you will find that befalls a person can in some sense be seen as an opportunity.
fault with both gods and men.”
Unlike classical Stoicism, Willink follows the focus on the pri-
Peterson’s thought dovetails with the Stoic view that there vate individual to its logical extreme when it comes to politics.
is an underlying natural structure to the world, and in human Asked why he doesn’t comment on current affairs, he responded
life in particular. This idea is easily appropriated to political that it fundamentally doesn’t matter – that most people are con-
conservatism, and it appears as a conservative leitmotif in many cerned with their lives, their businesses, paying off their mort-
historical periods. But the pertinent point is that the political gages, and so on, and like Birbalsingh, he doesn’t believe that any
sphere is a largely arid terrain for human effort because it is cir- of those issues are best addressed in the collective sphere. The
cumscribed so tightly by rules we don’t have the power to affect. idea that peoples’ ability to pay off their mortgages might be influ-
Since attempting to subvert those natural rules can only end in enced by the political management of the economy, and that it’s
failure or disaster, it is better not to try, and instead to turn our something in our collective power to affect, rather than some-
attention to improvement in our personal lives. thing we are simply confronted with, like the weather, is nowhere
in his worldview. His Stoicism is one that has shrunk down radi-
In various forms the ‘set your own house in order first’ (or cally to the level of the private individual.
in Peterson’s phrase, ‘tidy your bedroom’) principle has become
enormously popular, and is used regularly by the right as a This is echoed in another figure modern Stoics hold in high
cudgel with which to beat the young and politically active. One esteem, the entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. Vaynerchuk, in a
of its passionate advocates is Katherine Birbalsingh, ‘Britain’s recent speech, follows Willink in trying to blot out the wider
strictest headmistress’, who has an interesting take on social jus- world as an arena worth considering: “The second you actually
tice. Her basic perspective is that social inequality exists, is seri- genuinely stop blaming anything, and the second you start taking
ous, and is wrong: “Of course the world is run by an old boys on 100% accountability is the second you start getting happy”.
network, and of course it’s not fair,” she says. Where she dif-
fers from the left is that she discourages wasting energy on trying Birbalsingh, Willink, Peterson, and their co-thinkers are
to change this state of affairs. “Do what’s in your means!” she entirely correct in their view that one must attend to reality as it
cried in one speech at a meeting of teachers, exhorting the mem- is rather than as we wish it to be, and face the limitations of all
bers of my profession to focus on addressing inequality at the human endeavour squarely. Where their version of Stoicism fal-
micro-level, where we can have real impact, instead of day- ters is in the unwritten implication they have taken from this,
dreaming about systemic change. This is how I think the Stoic’s which is that the space for deliberate and successful intervention
political paradox is being answered today: not with an utter in social affairs is so severely cramped that we are better off just
acquiescence to injustice – which is rare – but with a radical doing what we can in our personal lives. At the extreme, this ver-
shrinking of the scope of what can be attempted. It’s as though sion of Stoicism would have us literally resign ourselves to exis-
a dragon has arrived to terrorise the village, and Birbalsingh tential threats facing the globe, climate change being the key cur-
recommends that, rather than banding together to kill it, every- rent example, a good instance of this attitude being Roy Scran-
one acts within their means to make their homes fire-resistant. ton’s Learning To Die In The Anthropocene (2015). Here Scranton
argues that the best course of action for humans in the face of cli-
Since the onset of neoliberalism from the Eighties onwards, mate change is to accept it, and thereby die with dignity. But this
the whole idea of collective action has steadily eroded in the sort of view is as unrealistic as perspective of the teenage utopian
public mind. Accordingly, collective action has vanished from who believes money could be abolished tomorrow. While the
the gamut of viable interpretations of Stoicism, to the point utopians need to put their feet on the ground, the Stoics must lift
where it is attacked in principle, as a sort of adolescent shirking their heads and widen their view to include collective action, which
of gritty hard work and the day-to-day grind to improve things. makes possible what isolated individuals could never achieve.
But it’s not the fault of collective action as a category, it’s a myopia
encouraged by the specific historic circumstances in which we © ALEX RICHARDSON 2021

Alex Richardson is a History teacher in Croydon.

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 41

Would Kant Have Worn
a Face Mask?

Todd Mei says yes, as a duty of practical reason.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is famous for his moral phi- You Say ‘Freedom’, I Say ‘Freedom’
losophy of the Categorical Imperative. With rigorous logic
he argues that we should treat other people as ends in Opponents of mask-wearing laws tend to cite the right of indi-
themselves, not merely as means to our own ends. He viduals not to be subject to unnecessary or coercive restraint.
builds on this to say that we have certain duties towards our- Political philosophers call this right ‘negative liberty’. Such mask
selves and others that must be performed regardless of extenu- opponents allege that requiring mask-wearing constrains an indi-
ating circumstances. Prominent among these duties are not vidual’s freedom.
lying and not committing suicide. These can be seen as duties
to preserve the moral, reasoning person, and the natural, human One problem with the negative liberty concept is that it does-
creature respectively. n’t help us determine for what ends our freedom exists. This lack
tends to reduce freedom to trivial motives relating to preferences
It seems clear that if Kant were alive today he would endorse or desires. Here one has to do a lot of work to include ends that
wearing a face mask during pandemic conditions. First, doing so benefit both oneself and others. To compensate for this lack, one
would help preserve one’s own natural being. Second, it would can add a proviso: freedom of action should be allowed only in
help to protect the natural being of others, as well as respecting so far as it does not disadvantage or harm others. Do those who
others as moral, reasoning persons who recognise the same obli- insist on their right to not wear a mask take this proviso seriously?
gation towards you. Finally, recognising the first two obligations Probably not.
and fulfilling them would be a form of respecting yourself as a
moral, reasoning being. But apart from these implications, is By way of contrast, we saw that Kant understands what it means
there any more that we can gain from Kant concerning this issue? to be human in terms of our capacity to reason and so recognise
certain obligations we have towards ourselves and others.
Yes. Some people, such as American anti-government activist
Ammon Bundy, claim that rules requiring masks are a form of This is significant for how Kant conceives freedom. He does
tyranny. Kant’s distinctive understanding of morality and free- not take the absence of restraint on action to be the essence of
dom can help show why this is confused at best. freedom, largely because such freedom can contradict our capac-
ity to reason. For instance, due to questionable influences, we
Morality vs Legality might freely act in ways that cause us harm – a rash act motivated
Kant understands morality in terms of duties that we owe to our- by lust, for example. Instead, Kant conceives freedom as acting in
selves and others. Recognising when a duty is required of us accordance with what is either rationally necessary (in terms of
involves the use of reason to grasp a moral law that might guide duties) or permissible (in the absence of a duty). While this view
our actions. For instance, we follow the duty not to lie not because may seem constraining at one level – because it implies the reali-
of fear of punishment; rather, we use reason to discover that if sation that we have to act in one way and not another – it presumes
we did not have a general constraint against lying, we could never freedom is predicated not on the individual acting alone, but on
know when the truth was being spoken. Allowing for an excep- the individual in relation to others who share the ability to reason.
tion to this duty can create a slippery slope where the truth- So where does this put the view that decries mask-wearing?
asserting role of speech becomes impossible.
If I am accurate in my characterization of Kant’s moral phi-
The use of reason, for Kant, is a way of individually deter- losophy, those who say mandating mask-wearing is ‘tyranny’ are
mining what we ought to do based on necessary and universally confused about what it means to be a capable human. It means
true moral laws. In fact, in rationally apprehending the moral being able to reason about how we should act towards others. The
law, legal and conventional rules become redundant. If we ratio- end of Kant’s notion of freedom is respect for all rational beings.
nally understood why it is important to help those in dire medi- In contrast, the negative view of freedom, in lacking in this impli-
cal need, we would not require Good Samaritan laws. Con- cation, is silent here at best. In practice, its end is self-absorption.
versely, we often find that even when there are legal regulations, This is apparent even if we do grant that one has a right not to
those abiding by them may not understand the reason for their wear a mask, for one person’s freedom in this respect would effec-
existence, and so may follow them only out of fear of sanctions. tively curtail the freedom of others who are medically vulnera-
ble, for instance. If we follow Kant, we realize there is an obliga-
So how might this conception of morality and reason help us tion to respect others just as we respect ourselves.
better work through the public controversy over mask-wearing?
© TODD MEI 2021

Todd Mei is former Head of Philosophy at the University of Kent and
now works as a philosophical consultant for businesses at Philosophy2u.

42 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Immanuel Kant doing his duty
by Stephen Lahey 2021

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 43

PORTRAIT PHOTO BY CRISTINA PASCU-TULBURE In what feels like a cosmic foreshad- – die one day, the loss is really minimal,
owing of the problems we would because all that life is still there – that life
Michael face only half a year later, Michael of which I’m a part.” On this basis
Hauskeller published his book The Hauskeller suggests a change in perspec-
Hauskeller Meaning of Life and Death in the plague- tive away from the perception that we are
free autumn of 2019. I spoke to him the only subject that really exists in our
Professor of Philosophy about the ever-present question of how world, so that “everything else is kind of
and Head of the to find meaning in life even when we’re dreamland, as it’s in my perception, in my
facing the end of it. imagination, and what is really real is me
Philosophy Department and nothing else. It seems to me that only
at the University of “I don’t think we have thought very if you think that, then death is the great-
Liverpool, talks with much about dying ourselves during the est evil.”
Annika Loebig pandemic, because our own death usual-
about death and ly seems as abstract as the deaths of In the modern world, transhumanists
other people,” Hauskeller tells me dur- are at the forefront of defending this
democratising meaning. ing our Zoom meeting. “Death has to belief that death is the greatest evil.
strike close to home to be perceived as According to their logic, death makes it
real. There are millions of people dying impossible for us to live a really good life
every year. You might think, of course, since death undercuts our ability to live
that every individual death is a tragedy, meaningfully. So the transhumanist view
but you cannot care about sixty million is that society should advance technolog-
people dying while also living in a fairly ically to overcome mortality. Their goal
happy and content manner. There’s a is to leave the human condition behind;
huge tension there. On the one hand it’s to transform beyond it.
impossible to care about every life, on
the other, you know and want others to “Transhumanism used to be part of a
think that every single life is important.” very niche philosophical cultural moment
One way of coming to terms with the in the early 1990s,” says Hauskeller. “But
inevitable end, Hauskeller suggests, is to today, it’s very much mainstream, and in
extend our concept of self to other peo- the outlook we take as a society, we very
ple and sentient beings, perhaps even much live in the transhumanist world
the whole world at large: “If you don’t today in terms of what we want to achieve.
see yourself as ontologically distinct, The highest priority for transhumanists is
torn out of this world as a separate thing to find a way to abolish death, or rather,
which when it dies is gone completely, death through aging. We cannot hope to
but rather as a part of this whole world make people completely immortal in the
which continues to be, then in a way sense that they can never die. No material
you also continue to be.” According to object is completely indestructible, so
the ‘deprivation account’, the badness of there will always be a possibility of being
death is rooted in the fact that it destroyed; but we can at least try to physi-
deprives you of all the good things in cally restructure ourselves in such a way
life. Seeing our own life and death as that we no longer have to die through the
part of existence itself, however, can biological process of aging. It seems to me
remind us that the world will continue that this is completely misguided,” he
having all the good things we experi- objects, “because if you don’t find ways to
enced, and did not experience, even live a meaningful life now, with the limit-
after we cease to exist. “There will be ed lifespan that you have, why would you
laughter, there will be love – just not for be able to live a meaningful life just
you,” Hauskeller explains. “But you are because your life gets indefinitely extend-
ultimately not that important.” ed?” No matter how many digits we add
to our age, we will always be confined to
“I find solace in the fact that I know who we are. If death did undercut the
it’s only my life that will end, and that meaning of life, this would imply that no
somehow I share the life of others. So if I one has ever lived a meaningful life. A
look at my children, or other people who perhaps more pragmatic question to ask
are happy, or walk my dog and see my would be: How can we try to live mean-
dog playing, then I see myself reflected ingful lives in spite of death?
in them. I’m sharing my life with them,
so that when I – this particular individual “Personally, I don’t think you need to
be or do something really great in your

44 Philosophy Now August/September 2021 Interview

Interview

DEATH IN LIFE IMAGE © ANDREW WRIGLEY 2021 life, like being a great artist, or being Kurosawa’s film Ikuru
someone like Mother Teresa who does (1952), who is suffer-
a lot of good for other people, or being ing from terminal stom-
a scientist who finds a cure for cancer, ach cancer. With only one
or anything really momentous. No, I year left to live he quits his job
don’t think that’s necessary. I think and decides to redeem his mediocre life
most people can live a meaningful life if by taking up the cause of a slum neigh-
they find something they’re interested bourhood. She writes: “At the least, the
in, that engages them, if they connect calamity of disease can clear the way for
with other people; if they have love in insight into lifelong self-deceptions and
their life and things to laugh about. So failures of character.”
to be the right kind of understanding of
meaning, I think the concept of mean- Hauskeller concurs: “If you get diag-
ing in life needs to be democratized – to nosed with a fatal disease, and you know
be accessible to everyone.” you’re going to die within a year, this
can help you reflect on what’s really
Our aversion to accepting meaning in important in your life and make you do
a finite life and the subsequent desire to things that you hadn’t considered doing
extend it at all costs also influences the before. Therefore that suffering, the
way we approach dying and disease. The prospect of death, not only acquires
successes of medicine have removed us so meaning itself, but also opens the door
far from our biological fate, that death is to discovering meaning in your life.”
often seen as a failure of treatment rather
than an inevitable reality. As Susan Son- Hauskeller believes that our respect
tag wrote in Illness as Metaphor (1978): for life should extend to seeking a mean-
“Disease, which could be considered as ingful existence all the way to the end. If
much a part of nature as is health, we realise that we have to die, then we
became the synonym of whatever was should find out what it means for us to
‘unnatural’.” In his 2014 book Being Mor- die well: “It’s important how we die, and
tal, surgeon Atawul Gawande explores where we die, because where is also part
how medical advances have changed our of the how. We have been discovering –
relationship with dying and suffering. He if we didn’t know before – how impor-
tells stories of patients approaching their tant community is, how much we really
end of life and the kinds of questions are social beings. That is also important
they’re faced with, as well as wondering for our understanding of dying. When
about the true purpose of medicine and people die alone in hospital with their
palliative care: Is medicine supposed to loved ones at home not being able to
prolong or maintain our quality of life? visit them, that makes us realise what a
How much suffering are people willing horrible thing that really is. It’s good for
to endure before life stops being worth us to realise that because, of course, the
living? And how much meaning can we tendency of modern dying is to hide it
find while suffering? from us as much as possible.”

“Meaning is not necessarily connect- Nearly half of reported deaths occur
ed to the good things in the sense that in hospitals instead of at home or sur-
suffering is bad and therefore prevents rounded by loved ones. If we want to
you from having meaningful lives. It ensure our lives remain meaningful until
depends on how we integrate that suffer- the end, thinking about living well has
ing into the whole of our lives,” to blend into thinking about what it
Hauskeller argues: “Suffering is not bad means to die well. The preservation of
as such, but only suffering that has no meaning is a lifelong quest, even if it
purpose. So as long as you can integrate ends with death. “We need to accept
suffering into your life story, as long as it death as a natural part of life,” says
is not for nothing, suffering can actually Hauskeller. “Dying is a natural part of
make your life more meaningful, even if living, and dying well is part of living
only by helping you reflect on your life well.” PN
and what you really want to do.”
• Annika Loebig is a writer and journalism
In Illness as Metaphor, Sontag tells us student at the London College of
about the sixty-year-old civil servant in Communication.

Interview August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 45

Brief Lives

Anne Conway (1631-1679)

Jonathan Head looks at the life and thoughts of an early animal equaliser.

Could I be reborn as a horse in a future life? Or could I have Anne Conway eventually made Ragley Hall into the centre for
been a horse in a past life? a network of thinkers that reflected her broad range of expertise.
These might seem like strange questions to some, but they The most significant member of this intellectual circle came into
were nevertheless answered in the affirmative by the seven- Conway’s life in 1670: the physician, writer, and alchemist Fran-
teenth century philosopher Anne Conway. In her only published cis Mercury van Helmont. They were introduced by More, who
work, Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690), was striving to help Conway find a cure for the migraines that had
Conway proposed a radical view of nature that’s only now in the afflicted her since her youth. Although van Helmont was unable
process of being rediscovered. to help Conway medically, they also began a close intellectual
friendship. A particular area of interest for them was Jewish Kab-
Life, Briefly balism, which at the time was often taken to offer ancient teach-
Anne Finch was born into a wealthy family in London in 1631. She ings that could encourage a rapprochement of sorts between
was the daughter of Sir Heneage Finch, a former Speaker of the Christianity and Judaism. In addition to discussing philosophical
House of Commons, and Elizabeth (nee Cradock). Little is known and theological matters at length, both Conway and van Hel-
of her childhood, but from her early correspondence in young mont took the scandalous step of converting to Quakerism,
adulthood it appears that she had a voracious intellectual curiosity, which had an active presence in the area around Ragley Hall at
with wide-ranging interests in philosophy, religion, science, and the time. Conway hosted numerous major figures from the early
languages. In 1650, she began exchanging letters with the Cam- Quaker community, including William Penn and George Fox.
bridge philosopher Henry More, with whom she discussed numer- She died in 1679, and in her will requested a simple burial in the
ous topics, including the new philosophy of René Descartes and style of the Quakers.
the Platonism that More himself espoused. Anne and More had
been introduced through her half-brother, John Finch, who had Although she published nothing during her lifetime, Conway
studied under More at Cambridge. More’s role as a philosophical left behind notebooks that contained various philosophical
mentor for Anne soon developed into that of a close friend, and reflections from the last few years of her life. It was van Helmont
they would remain in frequent contact for the rest of her life. who brought these notes to posthumous publication as the Prin-
ciples: first in a Latin translation in 1690, then in an English trans-
In 1651 Anne married Edward Conway, who would later be lation of that translation in 1692, the original notes apparently
the First Earl of Conway, and soon settled at his home of Ragley having been lost.
Hall in Warwickshire. Their only child, Heneage, died of small-
pox in 1660, aged only two. This text was unfortunately largely ignored until the final
years of the twentieth century – the first modern translation of
WHITE HORSE PORTRAIT © DAVIDJRASP 2018 the Principles appeared in 1996 – but now Conway’s philosophy is
commanding growing attention on the part of scholars. Though
unfortunately rather short, and at some times rather cryptic, the
Principles is full of fascinating arguments about the most funda-
mental metaphysical questions, including the nature of God and
the soul. Throughout the work, Conway constructs a radical phi-
losophy influenced by Platonism, Quakerism, Jewish Kabbalism
and other sources. Here, I will focus on one strand of her philos-
ophy: namely, her claim that human beings can be reborn as
other animals and other animals can be reborn as human beings.
We call this ‘transmutation across species’.

Snakes & Ladders

So how does Conway argue for her view concerning transmuta-
tion across species? First, she claims that the form which crea-
tures are born into, be it a horse, a human being, a fish, or what-
ever, is reflective of rewards and punishments ordained by God:
“there is a certain justice in all these things, so that in the very
transmutation from one species to another, either by ascending
from a lower to a higher or by descending in the opposite way,
the same justice appears” (p.35. All references are to the edition
of Principles edited by Coudert and Corse, published by Cam-

46 Philosophy Now August/September 2021

Brief Lives

bridge University Press in 1996). Anne Conway and friend spirit gaining ascendance over the previ-
We can think of created species as ously superior human spirit. If that
by Samuel Van Hoogstraten, person then dies with the beastly spirit
forming a hierarchy, ordered by their rel- still dominating, then that spirit enters a
ative sophistication, with humans at the c.1662 new body in line with its new image. Or,
top. Since humans are more similar than going the other way, if a horse acts in a
any other animals to God, and closeness your body is not an intrinsic part of you, so ‘good horse’ manner – such as being obe-
to God is a good, then being born as a it is possible that you can lose the body you dient to its master or having a steady tem-
human being can be thought of as a currently have and be reborn in another perament – that suggests that the beastly
reward. On the other hand, we can think one. In fact, for Conway, your identity is principle spirit has been overcome, lead-
of being reborn as a lower animal – one constituted by a unified system of spirits ing to the possibility of the horse being
which is less similar to God – as a punish- under the command of a principal spirit reborn in a higher form in the next life.
ment. So, Conway argues, it is possible (we can think of this system as our soul).
that a human being can be punished for The principal spirit determines the form Conway does not really give us a sense of
immoral actions by being reborn as a that the creature as a whole takes: “it rules how often she thinks transmigration across
horse: it is right that an individual who has over that body and has the ability and free- species occurs, but she does think it is
become a ‘brute in spirit’ takes on the dom to shape the body according to its something we have direct experience of
shape of a ‘species of beast’ in their next own ideas and inclinations” (p.36). taking place: “Among animals… worms
life (p.36). Contrariwise, a horse could be change into flies, and beasts and fish that
rewarded for its good behaviour by being Crucially for Conway’s theory of feed on beasts and fish of another species
reborn as a human. transmutation, there can be power plays change into their nature and species”
between the spirits that make up you, (p.34). We may find this apparent evidence
How is it, though, that creatures can be with the result that your principal spirit of Conway’s theory of transmigration
reborn in this way? Conway states that can change. If a human being, for exam- dubious, but we are also offered philosoph-
ple, begins behaving in a manner that sug- ical arguments that do not rely on any kind
gests that they have given in to their ani- of empirical observation.
malistic desires rather than acting in a
rationally-balanced manner in line with Conway begins her arguments by stip-
what God wills, this reflects a beastly ulating the existence of God, “who is
spirit, light, and life” (p.1). God creates
the world as an act of his own free will, but
there are some restrictions on what he can
create. In particular, God can only create
other spirits, not things made up solely of
matter. This claim is based on what we
might call a ‘communication’ model of
divine creation, according to which cre-
ation involves God communicating his
own attributes to a created realm that is at
least partially exterior to him. An implica-
tion of this model is that God cannot
create anything utterly alien to his own
nature. So as “spirit, light, and life,” God
simply could not create dead matter:
“And since every creature shares certain
attributes with God, I ask what attribute
produces dead matter, or body, which is
incapable of life and sense for eternity?...
There can be no dead reality of which he
is or could be a part” (p.45). So, Conway
concludes, all things in creation must be
living spirits. (You may be wondering,
what makes up our body and other physi-
cal objects? Conway states that these
things are composed of condensed spirits –
spirits currently existing at a lower form
of ethereality than the spirits that make
up our soul. As an analogy, think of how
water vapour can condense into both a
liquid – water – and a solid – ice. Conway

August/September 2021 Philosophy Now 47

Brief Lives

is arguing that essentially the same thing can happen to spirits.) Summary & Conclusions COMIC © GUTO DIAS 2021. PLEASE VISIT FACEBOOK.COM/PG/GUTOZDIASSTUDIO
A further implication of the nature of God, Conway argues, is So Conway argues from the nature of God to three main claims
that buttress her overall argument for transmutation across species:
that all creatures are created with the same original status. We
might call this the ‘original equality’ of creatures. Conway claims 1) All created beings are essentially spirits, currently differenti-
that all things are made by God ‘from one blood’, so that “in ated according to a hierarchy of different forms of natural life.
their primitive and original state [they are] a certain species of 2) All creatures had the same original status in the hierarchy,
human being” (p.31). which is higher than the status they currently enjoy (unless
they’re human).
Again Conway relies upon a supposed implication of the 3) All created beings will attain such a higher status again.
nature of God to argue for this position. As part of divine justice,
it is only fair that all creatures are created with the same oppor- The argument structure is such that if you accept her starting
tunities to become closer to God and are not put at a disadvan- premise of the absolute goodness and justice of God, and if you
tage compared to other created beings. It follows that all crea- agree with the supposed implications she draws out from that in
tures are created with the same status and capacities. Moreover, terms of what he creates, then you have good reason to accept
it would also not be fair if all creatures were created at the lower transmutation across species. Though there are additional
end of the hierarchy, for this would essentially be punishment claims that Conway draws upon in establishing this theory, her
without a crime; and so creatures are created high up in the hier- reasoning from the nature of God forms the main bedrock of her
archy, as ‘a certain species of human being’ (presumably mean- argument. Thus, you can go a long way to rejecting Conway’s
ing, as creatures with the kind of rational capacities that distin- argument for transmigration simply by denying that God exists;
guish human beings from other animals). or, if you do believe that God exists, by denying that she has cor-
rectly characterised God’s nature or the implications of that for
However, when we look upon nature, we see all sorts of dif- creation. For example, you could question her communication
ferent kinds of beings. The only explanation for this fact, given model of creation, according to which God can only create
the original equality of all creatures, is that many beings have beings who share his essential attributes to some extent. It would
fallen from their original state due to divine punishment. But seem like quite a limitation on God’s power for him not to be
given that they all fell from this higher status, it must at least in able to create something as unlike him as ‘dead matter’. It is a
principle be possible for them to attain that state again, as a problem if we wish to affirm divine omnipotence, as many main-
human being. Thus there must be a process of transmutation by stream theists would wish to do. But Conway’s communication
which spirits can both descend and ascend through the hierarchy model is just one of a number of assumptions built into her argu-
of forms of life – the process I described above, in which spirits ment that we may wish to question.
can shape unified systems that form creatures around them.
Although you may be unconvinced by Conway’s argument, it
We’re still left with the question of whether in fact these spir- is still worth noting that the view of nature she offers substan-
its can and will attain their original status. It could instead be the tially emphasises the interconnectedness of all things in a
case that some spirits fall into the lower forms of life and never manner reminiscent of recent ecological theories. According to
return to the summit again. It could also be the case that spirits Conway, human beings are such an intrinsic part of nature that
can only fall down the hierarchy and never ascend. However, we might have lived through many different forms, including as
Conway offers us a final argument from the nature of God to say other animals, plants, and even as inanimate objects such as rocks
that spirits can and must endeavour to return to the state from (which are to Conway spiritual beings). Furthermore, given the
which they have fallen. Given the perfect goodness of God, he original equality of all things, human beings should be humble
would only punish us for our own benefit. Given that what is about their status in the world. Not only do we have a role in
good for us is to become closer to God, it must therefore be that helping the rest of creation to realise its destiny in becoming
any punishment we undergo will have the ultimate purpose of closer to God, we could also easily become those things that we
facilitating this ascent. So, divine punishment will ultimately at the moment have the power to mistreat and misuse. Such a
have a restorative function, and the punishment of rebirth in a perspective stresses the need for human beings to ensure har-
lower form is only a temporary, limited penalty that allows for mony among all creatures and to adopt a much more careful
growth in character, which in turn prepares us for further devel- approach to the environment than we currently have. This mes-
opment beyond the state in which we previously found our- sage is potentially of great significance as we look to face the
selves: “At this time [of divine punishment] every sin will have its environmental challenges that are to come.
own punishment and every creature will feel pain and chastise-
ment, which will return that creature to the pristine state of Regardless of whether you’re persuaded of transmigration
goodness in which it was created and from which it can never fall across species, I hope that I have at least convinced you that
again because, through its great punishment, it has acquired a Conway’s work offers us many interesting arguments that merit
greater perfection and strength” (p.42). For Conway, the nature our attention as philosophers today.
of divine punishment ensures that the creature is morally devel-
oped to such an extent that they will never descend to that form © JONATHAN HEAD 2021
again. The punishment is therefore only a temporary but neces-
sary setback on the spiritual journey to become close to God Jonathan Head is Lecturer in Philosophy at Keele University. He is
again, and its nature guarantees that spirits will eventually trans- the author of The Philosophy of Anne Conway: God, Creation
mutate back to their original higher human status. and the Nature of Time (Bloomsbury: 2020).

48 Philosophy Now August/September 2021



Letters

When inspiration strikes, don’t bottle it up.
Email me at [email protected]
Keep them short and keep them coming!

Fat is an Ethical Issue DEAR EDITOR: An African chief once everybody. Although foetuses are depen-
said to Rita Hayworth, “Madam, if you dent on their mothers’ bodies, it doesn’t
DEAR EDITOR: In her article on ‘The were fat and black, you would be irre- seem that they are their mothers’ bodies.
Ethics of Fat Shaming’ (Issue 144), sistible!” Local culture determines the Consequently the ‘autonomy’ argument
Charlotte Curran tries to prove that body shape admired. Some fat people for aborting a foetus doesn’t stand,
judging people’s fatness is immoral. We are energetic and public-spirited high because the right isn’t afforded to the
live in a time when we overconsume, achievers. Also, obesity is not always a foetus, while claiming it for oneself.
producing tons of poor quality food in choice, as some fat people feel hunger
ways that are harmful to the planet. more than thin people, may have a lower KRISTINE KERR,
Therefore, everyone should be conscious metabolic rate, and may unconsciously GOUROCK, RENFREWSHIRE
about the amount and quality of food make fewer movements. However, obe-
they eat, and contribute to more sustain- sity has increased lately. Prepared foods Animal Rights & Wrongs
able living by controlling how and what are full of fat, sugar, and salt to make
they eat. And though fatness can stem them tastier, and modern inventions DEAR EDITOR: In Issue 144 there was a
from health issues, it is also undeniable encourage us to burn fewer calories as discussion about animal rights. For my
that there are many people who are we move less. Unfortunately, obesity money, one of the best ways of evaluat-
indeed ‘lazy’, or ‘don’t have self-control’ causes premature disability and death. ing the correct approach to an issue is to
with eating. A good example are children Therefore health care professionals and see how its moral and practical aspects
who don’t think about their diet. governments have a duty to combat it, balance. If we really put animals on the
without in any way ‘shaming’ or deni- same moral level as humans, then the
I remember sitting in the London grating fat people. implication is that we should spend as
tube when two seriously obese young much money, time and emotional energy
women walked into the carriage, each ALLEN SHAW on what we perceive to be their needs as
carrying a massive bag from McDon- LEEDS we do for humans. This would include
ald’s. They ate two burgers before we pursuing legal cases to do with alleged
reached the next station! Without pres- Life, Language & Logic mistreatment; and appointing social
sure from family, friends, society, many DEAR EDITOR: I note that the writers of workers and solicitors for every few
people would not even try to face the the piece on ‘Abortion and Artificial thousand of at least those species we con-
problem of bad eating. Moreover, there Wombs’ in Issue 144 use the term ‘preg- sider complex enough to feel distress.
is a range of scientific evidence that eat- nant people’ instead of ‘ pregnant This is impractical, so a general principle
ing well improves mental well-being and women’. I applaud the use of gender that it is wrong to harm or kill animals
helps in fighting health problems. neutral language in a gender neutral sit- without good cause has to stand in it for
Believing that people can often find in uation, but there is nothing gender neu- it. It is not always honoured in practice,
themselves enough motivation without tral about pregnancy. nor is there a universally-agreed defini-
any social pressure to change their way tion of what constitutes ‘good cause’, but
of living sounds naïve to me. LESLEY GREAVES, that’s equally the case with humans.
WARMINSTER, WILTSHIRE
Looking at the younger generation in The principal bone of contention is
London, I can hardly see anyone who in DEAR EDITOR: I thought Lee and vegetarianism. One could defend killing
the times I grew up (thirty years ago), Bidoli’s ‘Abortion and Artificial Wombs’ animals for food on the grounds that not
would have been described as ‘slim’. in Issue 144 was on the far-fetched side every human’s metabolism is the same,
The paradigm of fitness has changed: when it came to full ectogenesis (full and many could not switch to a vegetar-
not many adults these days resemble the pregnancy in vats). To be fair, they did ian or vegan diet without medical prob-
standard anatomical representation of a admit this. However, their article lems, whether physical or psychological
human body from the 1990s. Putting reminded me of some thoughts I’ve had (possibly arising from lack of content-
aside aesthetics and health, we are wit- on abortion that to date nobody I’ve ment). Those who have become
nessing this planet dying, so sustainable asked has refuted, although they’ve dis- veg(etari)ans for moral reasons are for-
eating should be a priority. The only agreed: If a person claims they can do tunate in that their ethical convictions
way to achieve that is through growing what they want with their own body – coincide with their ability to make the
social pressure. ‘respect for bodily autonomy’ – then dietary changes.
surely they must afford that right to
HANNAH ZALEWSKY Otherwise, even if animals can’t
LONDON morally be placed in quite the same cate-

50 Philosophy Now l August/September 2021