Abstractions

To be taken out of context. The tree that finds itself still amidst a wind of colorful rain. The petrichor of youthful bliss. In bloom; the belle of the ball. Footprints in a sandy aisle; those white petals drizzling in my mind; those vines grappling at your tendrils– a travesty. Sorrow emerges from the ground of uprooted soil; the stains of wet paint calcified on your bedrock.

What have those words given me? A thunderstorm. A sunset. A horizon. Sight; sighs. A crown of ink. These hands. To have the ground underneath rumble words of betrayal. A thin film of soapy residue, bubbling in a vacuum.

And what did Plato really mean by the good? What were Nietzsche's dancing stars? Why Darwin when in the end, you lose? Lost without a cause, body without embodiment– the wind whispers the screech of your mind's window.

I know better than your impermanence; your non-cyclical metamorphosis. Angry or tragic? No either/or within the choice of the same problem. What else? I'll take twenty! Find me in the lost and found. I'm locked in a cage of two-toned sunburst Fender Starcasters, showroom paranoia in a downtown ceiling, meteor dressing in disguised metaphors. "Only a god can save us"*; no, we are already saved. Grace calls us to melt our hearts into a photosensitive gaze.

While modernity fabricates clothing with meaning, martial arts with feeling, philosophy with religion– you betray these words with those words. You hear my words as those words (those threats to stupid action), dumbfounding. No world can console a worldless phenomenon.

Rows of light, rivers divide, cast a spell on the sensuous tonight. More-than-human, with human, witholding your cards, keeping your faces on. Traverse, travel, journey along with the key, put her in your lock and never let go.

The gap widens above, in the sky. A slit of time, a ripple in distance, stretched to a gape. Agape is foreign, out of this world, but this world passes away; it was coming up, crashing down and turning inside out what remained of my core. My rootedness is in my stretching–we were a stretch: different, separating, becoming new immanently.

My legs are adventitious, mobile, kinetic; just as you wander into loves, I wonder at the world you've shaped and left behind.

You creep into my thoughts; I want to trap you! You, me, any outstanding grudge on who should be responsible for all this mess. My! My! Can a philosopher be ruled by love?

I am a rising tide without a shore to crash into. My thoughts are filled with sea shells and crumpled receipts; my pockets aren't lined with anticipation anymore, just reminiscence and my phone.

I want to say something but I'm paralyzed by your indifference to my wanting to say something.

Philosophy is a kind of poetry; our existence is poetic; commit to the flames my romanticism, my ideation, my existence, poetically and with every burning intent.

My life is now ambient; light embers kindle the sparks of little moments that contribute to the background aesthetic.

The drone of life hums along until from out of nowhere you're stuck with the simple realization that life's terrors come from its farness above us, ready to obliterate our life, and turn it into a state of groundlessness.

Show me a philosophy of life, I'll show you a theology of death. The distractions in-between have become apparent.

You held on, I leaped. You harden not my heart, I seek a new one. Renew in me my faith in your goodness. The heart rules the sight, the mind rules the magic, Your love persists even when I fall out of it. My prayer is a call. What calls for prayer is a calling. To focus attention on the inner life, bustling, rumbling, shaking, beating, living, dying, recycling. My heartbreak is no coincidence for prayer; in fact, prayer constitutes such possibility for a heartbreak. For my heart cannot break if not for it becoming soft– open to being of all kinds: Being-in-love, being-in-the-world, being-towards-death, being-broken-hearted. It is only in You that may make my heart anew, to build up, to edify my base, to prepare for fallen time to fall away, and contemplate goodness; this is my salvation– I am saved out of love and it is through love, a good love, that I may gaze into the world again and disclose the being-toward, being-with, being-for. Immortality through You; with open arms, I leap.

In losing you do I realize how much you're worth; lingering doubt for the lies of the star studded sky. But now, I leave you as you did me, to go and do something else. We've lost each other, we were always present but not anymore. We lost our essence**, and endure no longer.


* From "Only a god can save us"
** from the roots of the german word for essence: [Wesen] as derivative of "sein"– being, enduring as presence.

What is Philosophy?

Part 1: An analysis of the question "What is Philosophy?" 

The question "what is philosophy?" is a question that is not as easily answerable as the question "what is biology?" or other fields. This is so because the answer is defined by the person who describes it to you, generating an impression of his worldview. Indeed, asking a biologist what philosophy is compared to a physicist will tell you more about the speaker than the field. The wider sense of the word found in the context "what is your philosophy?" sparks a similar response to the question "what is philosophy"? Whether it's "I don't take any advice from no one!", "Yolo" or "life is suffering", you indeed are given an example of philosophy rather than a definition. Indeed, our western oldest instant of philosophy puts this example on a pedestal: when Socrates is speaking with Euthyphro regarding the nature of piety, Euthyphro tends to only give examples such as doing whatever the gods are doing. And so can this be applied to our current predicament: "what is philosophy?": "White dudes in their armchairs and ivory towers", "a never ending field of asking why?", or "people with no jobs". Ironically, philosophy as professed by many philosophers, are acutely aware of the problem with defining their field.

The most vague and catch-all definition for philosophy is that philosophy is the "love of wisdom" which is really just a translation of the Greek terms: philo- love, sophia- wisdom. Saying this standard definition of philosophy doesn't really say much other than (again) revealing something about the person. 

Is the question "what is philosophy?" then, merely a litmus test to find alike minded people or to find people to persuade? Another inadequate definition that's popular is "learning to ask the right questions", which slightly probes deeper into the question. However, that would mean all the experts competent in their field would become full-fledged philosophers by the snap of a finger. These language games don't help, detracting us away from knowing more about philosophy itself. 

After a few rounds of giving one's definition of philosophy then subsequently finding it inadequate, frustration settles in. And perhaps by proxy, relativism would start sneaking in: "philosophy is just everyone's opinions that aren't better than any other really, it's all just relative". In the face of relativism, I take a step back from cranking the wheel for ideas of what philosophy is. 

When do we feel the need to ask the question "what is philosophy?". What kind of situations and contexts arise to reflect on a field that is hard to define but easy to cite examples of? I imagine many would tend to reflect on "the thinker" statue. What philosophers do is "think". But what does it mean to think? If anything, shouldn't philosophy be the resilience to stop at dubious propositions and confusions, consider further the notions we take for granted? Is this thinking? 

Perhaps as a result of all the confusion building up from all the examples and counterexamples considered, we may be losing sight from the point of reflecting on the question "what is philosophy?" We're expecting a concrete answer but are left with more questions. If we don't like the question "what is philosophy?" perhaps we should look at it a different way. Maybe we should approach the question more as a demonstration of itself. Maybe the question itself is the answer.

The question "what is philosophy?" itself points to philosophy is without having to go towards a definition or cite examples of philosophy. This ends up with the conclusion that the answer to "what is philosophy" ends up being what is philosophy?

Part II: Lessons from the 20th century

The answer posed to the question "what is philosophy?" with "what is philosophy?" will likely cause several negative responses; ones of anger, confusion and impressions of empty pretentious BS. And all those are so, even I had cringed at my own response. But on reflection, I stuck with it for a reason. And if a person does the same, will get to walk along with my journey through this puzzling tautology. 

I drew inspiration for this kind of response from the 2 greatest thinkers of the 20th century: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger. 

The philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein in his early career is centered in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a treatise of philosophical logic, ultimately arguing for anti-philosophy— being against the enterprise of philosophy itself. Here Wittgenstein makes the bold statement: "whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent", alluding a polemic against philosophy. The treatise is a work of philosophical logic that was intended to "solve" philosophy. Here, Wittgenstein takes logic as an idealized "language" to see how it interacts (if at all) with the world. Throughout the argument, we come to realize that a lot of the philosophical statements of the past may merely amount to linguistic confusion. What interests me most about this treatise is that he shows the limits of language (and hence the limits of philosophy) by describing the world of facts not through explanation, but primarily through showing or pointing. 

So the confusing tautology: "what is philosophy? what is philosophy?" can be traced back to Wittgenstein's priority of showing or demonstrating rather than try to categorize a concept, especially something like "philosophy". 

The philosophy of Martin Heidegger, on the other hand, inspired me in terms of his later works on the nature of language. For Heidegger, "language is the house of being", a place where man and being connect with one another. But Heidegger would stress that they are not separate entities. Rather, man discloses being— "man is the Shepard of being". With all these profound statements, Heidegger focuses less on polemics and brute force philosophy idealized by Wittgenstein, but rather puts a different spin on the idea of "showing" what something is for what it is. That is, leaving behind our preconceived notions of "philosophy" and instead, let the encounter with the sentence "what is philosophy?" expand our horizon of being. While this is arguably harder to grasp, Heidegger's approach allows us to approach the question of "what is philosophy?" less as a question to be answered but rather a question to be explored. 

Heidegger's early works also deal with expressing some sentiments of anti-philosophy, but mostly aimed at the branch of philosophy called "metaphysics". This field of inquiry primarily deals with the big questions philosophy is stereo-typically satirized for (as well as glorified by our hipsters): what is everything made of? Where do we come from? What is reality?. For Heidegger, the Western field of philosophy has overplayed their alleged "progress" from their rather antiquarian notion of "being". From Plato onward, the established dogma of how to define being was related to the idea of forms. This was taken up by the Christians later on and has culminated in the notion of being as "creature" or a "subject" of God. This kind of approach to being from an essence related to its ideal form to a creature of God was called by Heidegger as "ontotheology" (onto-being, theo-god). For Heidegger, since Plato, ontotheologic confusion was the reason for the stagnation of explorations into the question of being. 

These sources of inspiration provide lessons from the 20th century on the question "what is philosophy?" by their engagement with trying to define what philosophy was and shouldn't be. But we don't come to understand their arguments by simply reading it. Rather, Wittgenstein and Heidegger demonstrate and show what philosophy is for what it is, in their own ways. 

Part III: What is philosophy? 

Insights from thinkers that we've come to label as "philosophers" are all well and good but doesn't it fail to truly solve the problem of the question "what is philosophy?" Aren't I simply just showing you different ways to approach the question? At the end of the day both approaches: trying to define what philosophy is through definition or examples; and the 20th century philosophy-inspired "showing" and "encountering" the question; end up in the same opinionated conclusion. But when you think about it, philosophy really does express opinions. The enterprise of philosophy, as I said previously, is the irony that it is aware of the fact that it expresses opinions, some even going so far as to claim that all fields express opinions. Opinions are grounded on different assumptions that give rise to different worlds that we as human beings can incorporate. Our mere ability to posit the question "what is philosophy?" is symptomatic of our philosophical nature as human beings. Upon introducing the question "what is philosophy?" one already has taken an opinion on what philosophy is. Asking the question aloud merely allows us to connect our notions of philosophy with others who themselves, when asked the question, ask it to themselves, and thus taking another stance on what philosophy is. Thus, I still believe that the best answer to the question "what is philosophy?" is the tautologous "what is philosophy?"; whether or not someone actually takes the smart-alec route and says it aloud as a response or lets it resonate within himself and encounter the question on its own terms is all the same journey but on different paths.

I end with a quote by the philosopher David Lewis:

"One comes to philosophy already endowed with a stock of opinions. It is not the business of philosophy either to undermine or to justify these preexisting opinions, to any great extent, but only try to discover ways of expanding them into an orderly system" (Lewis, 1972) 

4/18/2019

Thought I'd take a stab at poetry before I turn 22.

4/18/2019

You are my friend,

who rules as a queen should—

justly

You who provides strict rules you decree for others

and hold up for yourself.

This providence builds your kingdom.

A friendship with you is a sought-after association with royalty.

Even though we don't see eye to eye,

I still believe in foresight,

though I creep in the shadows,

I remain within,

searching for a clearing.

You are familiar with me

though only within shades of grey,

blurred between roses and those castle walls.

I am your fuzzy friend,

whom you love as your favorite feline,

but whom you come to despise for my faculty of freedom

to abide or to turn away,

conscientious or unconscious,

fated or destined

I am your subject

whom you subject to expectations.

You are my subject,

to whom I hold as a subject of fascination.

We are our subject,

who we are about, acting on other objects.

They are our subjects,

thrown under your citadel

To be your friend, I slip out of the dark

into your light

Chasing you but chasing my tail,

Trying to escape this hermeneutic circle

You are my friend, but always are the monarch,

always hiding between your majestic law

But always residing in its fixed architecture.

I hope to one day unearth my structural foundations,

so firmly grounded in soil so impotent,

and be a friend beyond those measured with a grain of salt

whose friendship is the exception that affirms the rule in plenitude.

Underway

Under way

Muddy steps on hidden footpaths

through forests upon forests full of tall trees,

climbing the heights of dreams to no relief,

 striding along instead to blend with the scenery;

treading, pacing, being–

there.

No blazing trails, 

only petrichor.

The dew dripped and dried

leaving behind damp and doused,

dipped and drenched, 

Da-sein.

Stumbling on a clearing

feels like a missteppe

followed by a quiet trot coming to a stop.

Shifting weight 

from body to embodied immersion

in a river–the body of water 

always underway.

Oh how we think we think thoughts most provoking!,

marching onwards with a steady gait.

But only when memory unlocks its gate

to what's most important–

letting nature speak,

through worlds beyond and beneath–

concealed, covered in bloodied soil

of those fallen leaves,

drifting wind

bustling along, 

hovering over ground,

mixing with dust's short ascent–

lingering, dwelling, dancing

being

On Death Cab for Cutie's Northern Lights

I found myself clicking on a notification on Twitter today from a performance of the song "Northern lights" by Death Cab for Cutie on James Corden's Late Late Show. Northern Lights is a song from their 9th studio album "Thank You for Today". I remember loving the song a lot when it came out, particularly with the addition of guest vocalist Lauren Mayberry from Chvrches. Her voice fits the synth-pop esque soundscape that this song was conveying so well. Along with the Ben Gibbard style of songwriting ("I remember your silhouette, on Dyes inlet), I came to appreciate the new sonic energy that Dave Depper and Zac Rae have contributed to the new Death Cab sound. The call and response of Zac Rae's cold and shimmering piano melody contra Dave Depper's persistent and similar (dare I say synchronized?), yet wavy guitar have added an additional synesthetic experience of what I think I would experience watching Northern lights up in the northern parts of the world. And this "co-led" melody that Zac and Dave deliver fits perfectly well on the well-established style of Ben Gibbard's fingerstyle alternate picking technique (like in the song "El Dorado"), Jason Mcgerr's idiosyncratically mesmerizing drumming and Nick Harmer's driving and tenor-voiced bassline glistening with a beautiful chorus effect. 

I didn't really notice this impact much on the studio version, unfortunately. I thought it was the magical wizardry of producer Rich Costey, who I thought made a similar glossy 80s like contribution to the previous studio effort, "Kintsugi", that made the songs sound like this (like in "Everything's a ceiling"). Now that I'm re-listening to the studio version, I really get to hear and understand more how the band had thought of the development of the songs at a more personal level. Not only are Zac and Dave adding their own spin, they are also in dialogue with Death Cab for Cutie's entire discography. In this live version of Northern lights, I can appreciate the icy desolate landscape that Zac Rae's background drony synth pick that I can only describe as "transcendental" or "out of this world" before I'm reluctant to admit that his backdrop brings about the "northern lights" that this song draws from. It fades away in the chorus but comes back in the second verse, and now I'm inclined to admit that the desolate feelings emphasized in the lyrics of the verses leading up to the profound yet terse chorus: 

"Northern lights,

filled our skies.

Empty nights, 

synchronized"

Not only is this chorus emblematic to the staple we know with Death cab (distance, longing, etc.), it also speaks of the sort of "Cosmic loneliness" that the philosopher Emil Cioran had described as distinct from personal loneliness. And all this without any visuals! Only the music, thought in motion, and the lyrics that clues us into the world that are these "northern lights"! 

When Ben Gibbard sings:
"I'll never be that close again, to your lips and perfect skin
as the tide receded into the unknown"

This transitions to cosmic loneliness, only to be broken by a bridge–a recapitulation of the first line that set this landscape up and gave it meaning: "I remember your silhouette, on Dyes inlet". That builds up with a small bass solo run by Nick Harmer, speaking tones from the sonic landscape– to sing the reluctant refrain once more:

"Northern lights,

filled our skies.

Empty nights, 

synchronized"

Call me crazy but I can't help but feel that it's sung differently–not in the lyrics, but in the meaning! I can feel my own input, a visualization I can only describe as my spirit moving with the music, soaring through the skies, through the Northern lights! It's in my participation with and interpretation of the music– my involvement and engagement– that I get to immerse myself in the cathartic but also transcendental experience of "Northern Lights". 

And even with the lack of Rich Costey and Lauren Mayberry in this live performance, I can't help but fill in the rest with my own imagination. The song has already left me some room to dwell in the moment of unity the song's chorus keeps making me sing. And every time I do this act again–listening to the song, I am begun anew with significance, maybe pertaining to my personal life at in one moment or simply engaged in listening in another. As I dwell, I disclose more concealed truths not just to the song but to me and my being-in-the-world– now fused with the world of Northern Lights. But isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Well, I'm pretty sure I've already passed that trying to uncover more than the usual review that sticks to how well something corresponds to indie pop songwriting. 

Rough sketches: Problems of the Medicalization of Psychology

I started my first job (ever) as a medical scribe last month. Two days ago, I finished training and am awaiting my very own "solo" scribe shift, where I go rounds with a doctor in the ER and write his chart for him. These shifts were 8 hours long from 2 pm- 11 pm, 2-3 times a week. My experience there was very novel and fascinating. This was a world that I had always thought about living in theoretically. It was quite a different experience seeing it with my own eyes. And so the shifts were immersive for me, despite it appearing run of the mill for everyone else. I brought along some baggage with me for my mind during idle times. These were the questions that I've thought about regarding the Philosophy of medicine. I thought that the ER was the event for wrestling with the problems of the philosophy of medicine the most. To see things firsthand in real life gave a unique perspective.

Among the various thoughts that arose in me as I shuffled through from room to room with a clipboard in my hand, the problem I dwelt on the most was my encounter with the psych patients, if we were to give them enough decency to call them that. And it's particularly problematic because it appears that the medical field hasn't gotten over Descartes. I dwelt and I dwelt on this. I thought to myself, maybe I'm not even over Descartes, as I used to be his most ardent supporter in high-school. The past cringy twitter bio "Cogito ergo sum", still paralyzes me when it comes up to this day. I've since become an anti-Cartesian and then realized most of modern philosophy indeed has become so as well. And yet there's this Cartesian foundation inherent in the medical field. The fact that people who come with issues of the brain are divided into Psychiatry and Neurology patients, the classic Cartesian dualism applied in real time.

But enough with this fanaticism with Descartes. The problem of psychiatry, philosophically, isn't just about this apparent parallel. Medical decision making is a unique skill that takes into account ontology, epistemology and ethics all without realizing it. Many say that Medicine is the most "human science" as it deals with humans face to face. However, it's clear that medicine is neither a science nor a humanity. Medicine is a discipline in itself, one that appears practical but really is a lifestyle of investigation into the core of what it means to be a human. Perhaps I can't speak of psychiatry, but the way that the emergency department handles psych patients, in general, is quite problematic. If every staff member in a hospital acts itself out authentically, the most paradoxical contradiction of inauthenticity is in forced restraint of psych patients who are deemed to pose "a danger to themselves or to others". There's something about that that doesn't appear right, and the mood shifts immediately from calm to anxious. Clearly, it isn't an empathy of the rather anxious patients that poisons our mood. Rather it is in the mere act of carrying it out that we feel uneasy, the most unlike ourselves. And that kind of uneasiness forces us to inauthentically follow protocol, to submit to "the one". In feeling that mood in an altercation that occurred in the hospital, I began to ponder what kind of problems arise from them.

The medicalization of psychology has a history of ethics. Those that we have deemed "twisted" and "abnormal" not from physiology, we have cast and labeled psychotic. Governments all over have decided to "treat" these people through medicalization. It has now become quite standard for people to have "psychiatrists" for a multitude of problems. All from depression to schizophrenia. Government mandate leaves the healthcare sector as the executors of its will. This kind of angle is very unique. For the government's decision to medicalize is unlikely to have come from doctors advocating for Freud. Really, the agenda, wherever it came from or wants to go, has dictated the scope of how medicine treats these people.

This can yield to a litany of skepticism for those interested in seriously considering the metaphysics and epistemology of mental disorder from both sides. Questions flung around varying the "how can we know?" dogma will likely confuse the two fields that have received mental disorder as a problem to be treated. Ontologically we may ask, what is mental disorder? Epistemologically we may ask, how can we know if what we're looking at is mental disorder? Trying to answer a question with an epistmeological foundation will likely yield very unfruitful results vice versa.

Considering the question ontologically while trying to fit it in the medical discipline is to try to fuse the horizon of illness with this new notion of mental illness. It has been categorized in a paper that we can see illness as an "unhomelike being-in-the-world" (Svenaeus, 2014), which when considered can be quite revealing. However, trying to fuse that with metnal illness is quite problematic. If we switch over to epistemology, we would come across the problem of other minds and trying to get at the "other's" perspective. How can we know if a person we suspect as having mental illness is feeling an "unhomelike being-in-the-world"? Psychiatrists and psychologists alike can delve into this problem of quantification and diagnosis to try to bring out evidence for such a thing. But can we agree with this sentiment for those patients that aren't aware of their condition?

Things may be clear with cases like depression but fusing illness with other mental illnesses are going to take more legwork. It is the task of the physician to take the patient qua patient, and try to reveal what is wrong with the patient that causes this "unhomelike" feeling. The question of mental disorder as an illness brings back to the fundamental question about what illness is. Are risk factors of breast cancer really worthy of a diagnosis for a patient to be treated? This crosses boundaries as well from metaphysics to epistemology.

Clinical medicine may not think about this at the moment, but all these problems are dealt with when medicine is being practiced. It is the event itself. I find the problem of the medicalization of psychology very revealing to me because it exposes this unexplored horizon of medicine. Many of the problems have not been worked out, and the philosophy of medicine is a relatively young field. Even more so, my aspiration to be a doctor is unlikely to benefit from armchair theorizing about how medicine should be run. But I still think it's what makes the field of medicine so rich and laden with philosophical problems worthy of investigation. Medicine has a history that as a collective reveal not only the result of political compromises or Cartesian commitments. Rather, medicine engages with the questions of philosophy from the angle of a tradition that itself has its own philosophical problems. And this particular truth, this disclosure of being, that's left behind as it's revealed and at the same time perpetuates and adapts is why the task of thinking is itself to reveal being. It's not only philosophy of medicine, but rather a philosophy as a way of life.

Perpetual Draft: Living Dangerously: Existentialism reconsidered

"What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?" 

- Søren Kierkegaard 

        Kierkegaard, a theologian and voracious writer in his day, is widely considered by most people to be the "father of existentialism". This quote comes from his Magnum Opus "Either/Or". Kierkegaard's pseudonymous author (fictitiously named "A") of the first part, the "either", or the "aesthetic", considers the dubious nature of objectivity and indirectly invites the reader to consider the slipperier and much more unpaved path of subjectivity. This foundational turn in thinking away from the then dominant Hegelian "scientific" approach of the time and towards the priority on the individual's own subjective notions and personal experience is what many consider the "ground" of existentialism. Kierkegaard's later pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus would say "Subjectivity is truth".

        From this viewpoint, many newcomers to existentialism– both amateurs and academics alike– may use this lens when examining the history of 20th-century thought associated with Kierkegaard's objections and stance. This would lead many to group together the writings of Sartre, Camus, Heidegger and like-minded thinkers with Kierkegaard against the "scientifically" oriented philosophers of the time (neo-Kantians, Hegelians, Cartesians). However, the identification of this movement is potentially a serious misinterpretation of these writer's ideas grouped into the genre/mood of "existentialism". If one biases himself with this perspective when looking back, he might turn towards calling existentialism simply a glorified "relativism" where everyone's perspectives are simply a manifestation and anchor of the culture of the time. 

       However, there are positives in looking at the structure of thought related to the fundamental ideas Kierkegaard had preached. Except, he didn't really begin this movement of thought. Arguably, almost two centuries prior, the mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal, a contemporary of René Descartes  (arguably began the whole scientific systematic doubt built into the philosophical attitude of "rationalism"), should be considered the first "philosopher" associated with the ideas of existentialism. 

"Custom is our nature"

        Cries Pascal who also invented the calculator. Opposed to Descartes' quest for a method to certainty about the existence of the outside world (which ultimately led to a proof on the existence of God in the rest of the meditations you probably didn't read), what isn't talked about in seminar is Pascal's analysis of the dangers of systematizing Christianity throughout the world. At this point in the 17th century, the foundations of uprooting the custom of the time through theological beliefs towards a more scientific view begun rolling. And yet, Pascal himself also was a staunch defender and supporter of the newly formed scientific method. This turn towards the reliance on Science for answers to small functional questions and its overeager interpretation towards a "theory of everything", was preached by another thinker ahead of his time: "Friedrich Nietzsche". 

"God is dead. and we have killed him"

        Nietzsche's madman in Zarathustra laments. Nietzsche is also considered to be one of the "existentialists" and arguably came to the same conclusion as Kierkegaard in regards to the "Herd/Crowd" that tempts inauthentic behavior conforming to society. All these parallels despite Kierkegaard being theistic while Nietzsche arguably atheistic in origin. 

        If one has read this far into existentialism, the glaring contradiction in ontological belief should be enough to raise alarm to the chaos of trying to contain these great thinkers into the small close-minded Parisian notion of Existentialism that another philosopher many decades later "Jean-Paul Sartre" had coined in his "Existentialism is a humanism" public address.

"Existence precedes essence"

       Sartre declared as the tag-line for existentialism. It basically asserts the priority of one's own existence and its subjective potential to be anything one wills as the basis for finding "truth" as opposed to "essence" or the objective facts about us. Sartre will go on to assert his famous notion of radical freedom as an extreme culmination of his thesis.

        Sartre's attempts at popularizing existentialism backfired on what his main goal in defining existentialism was. Many thinkers/philosophers at the time rejected the label despite being associated with "existentialist beliefs". Among them, Sartre's friend and contemporary "Albert Camus" of "the Stranger" fame. What Sartre gives us is indeed a very shaky attempt at trying to capture the common qualities of many profound ideas that come to be vaguely associated with the "existentialist movement". In addition, the timing was both a blessing and a curse. With existentialism coming into vogue in the post world war II era, many are biased towards dismissing existentialism simply as a "post-war mood" not to be taken seriously in today's more stable and more technologically advanced society. 

        And all these misunderstandings of existentialism aren't simply unfounded because of a philosopher's nitpicky biases, they're completely understandable considering that the fundamental tenet of existentialism relies on bias itself: "subjectivity". However, existentialism should be reconsidered further in its proper place in the history of thought. What exactly was Sartre responding to, and why was it urgent for him to issue a public address on what Existentialism is then later deny having written it? 

        Underlying all these questions comes one philosopher also inaccurately labeled an existentialist– Martin Heidegger. Heidegger was a philosopher at the time of Sartre. Many of the French existentialists (Sartre, De Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty) had read excerpts of his work and were deeply influenced by them. Heidegger's importance in understanding existentialism's pivot towards prioritizing the individual originated from a well considered and thought out reaction against– Edmund Husserl. Although still influenced by the "rationalistic" tradition, Heidegger considered Husserl's novel method of Phenomenology revolutionary.

        Husserl, tried to bridge the idealism of the Hegelians and Neo-Kantians at the time with a "scientific" attitude unlike the kind of systematic doubt and rationalization that originated with Cartesian thought. He came up with phenomenology and its slogan to "return to the things themselves". Heidegger thought this approach to philosophy as revolutionary but found it too idealistic and lacking. Heidegger thought that while "returning to the things themselves" is a revolutionary concept, ultimately phenomenology should really be focused on the everydayness of the human being and its relationship with the world (as opposed to the analysis of a mind as disembodied and distinct from the world). 

        While existentialism has a shakiness in its definition, it still remains a useful term to signify embracing the history of thought that pointed towards those doubtful of the foundations of the rationalistic tradition. Seeking answers to what it means to be from many gods, to one God, to modernizing technology and back to many gods. Heidegger thinks that this all is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means "to be". A society relates to itself and tries to perpetuate this relation from taking a stance on what it means to be. When a human being embodies the dogmas of society, one ultimately takes a stance on what it means to be, all loaded with inherited goals, fears, attitudes, etc. Existentialism, like many movements or schools, reveals and also necessarily conceals.

        Nietzsche famously said to "live dangerously" and I think that should really be the slogan of Existentialism if it were to persist and be true to what unites these thinkers. Existentialism isn't an ethics* nor is it grounded in it (it really isn't a humanism). Rather, it is a way to follow Socrates' advice to "know thyself" and one's condition, the fact that is common to all human beings– our existence. Existentialism first grounds oneself in the everyday– to not cast away emotions, goals, etc. but rather to be aware of them in addition to whatever one decides to pursue in life. From there we take a stance on what it means to be. There are many dangers about this kind of living. For one it is ultimately the human being that must take this stance and must not rely on others, an ideology, etc. So in a sense, anyone who proclaims himself as an existentialist that follows existentialist principles makes him really a pseudo-existentialist (I'm looking at you rick and morty bandwagoners). Another danger is the fear of the potential consequences of thinking existentially. One may come across the anxiety-inducing "existential crisis" or follow the train of thought towards "nihilism". Being afraid to deal with this face to face tempts inauthenticity and conformity on taking a stance one doesn't actually want to take.

And so ideally, you would not commit yourself to existentialism. If we take existentialism as a mood, the existentialist attunes himself to the mood of society, wherever he may be. Really, that's what a philosopher is; what a philosopher should be. There's a lot of heavy baggage with movements like existentialism, rationalism, thomism, etc. Sometimes they're baggage that we can't justify carrying for where we're headed, wherever we go as individual philosophers. But we at least should take the ideas in mind. Movements are so named historically not because we are "done with them" or "solved them", rather they mark an important point in the western canon. A voice that revealed a part of our being that we inherit. And as we march forward in time, we must embrace that history, even if the truest revelation of our being in the present means to stand firm and resist it. "Live dangerously".

* although it can be an application of it– check out Simone De Beauvoir's "Ethics of Ambiguity" for an idea of how an existentialist ethics may look like.

Things cut from the article:

A fundamental attitude that questions the prevailing thought while at the same time, loading the word with the idea of "existence", etymologically originated in the greek word ek-sistence meaning "to stand out". For what it means "to be", what it means to exist, is what defines existentialism and not merely a "post-war mood" where "subjectivity" reigns supreme. Surprisingly, this misunderstanding– the reign of opinion stemming from subjectivity, is the kind of prevailing mood of today with the whole "fake news" ad hominems thrown from both sides. Facts are thrown out as a source of knowledge, and opinions that are perceived as powerful– often the ones loaded with provoking strong feelings– prevail. Labeling existentialism as this kind of thinking does the true meaning behind existentialism injustice.