This Country And Province

EXISTENTIAL ANGST

An excellent “cri de coeur” from one in the throes of existential angst, that deep alienation experienced on the recognition of the absurdity of one’s existence. His place of abode is a “fractured place,” it is broken and provides no sanctuary. He despairs of the efficacy of prayer, of belief in a higher being which falters in the face of his atheism, of his powerful unbelief. The outcome is a horrifying uncertainty in which, powerless to extricate himself, he rotates slowly, plaintively asking, “WTF Are We Doing?”

Since such existential angst characterizes the modern predicament – a post-metaphysical era in which belief in any higher power has gone into the bin – it is a good question. The short answer is that what we are doing is trying to find some meaning in that post-metaphysical era, one which of necessity requires that we individually confront the fact that we are here today and will most certainly be gone tomorrow. But what forms will that search for meaning assume? Two possibilities emerge: (1) Nihilism (Latin: “Nothing”), the view that there is no such meaning, and (2) Existentialism, the view that meaning exists but we must create it for ourselves.

(1) Nihilism: Can one be a committed nihilist without self-contradiction? To say that life has no meaning, however, precludes even its own utterance since, paradoxically perhaps, the assertion itself is a claim to meaning, albeit that there is no meaning to existence. So what does one do if one is a committed nihilist? One either does nothing – one turns one’s face to the wall – or one engages in random (usually violent) acts to at least proclaim the fact that one exists, if nothing else. One thinks of the child- murderers Leopold and Loeb as belonging in this category.

(2) Existentialism: Since it presupposes some prior concept of human existence, the view that man creates himself has a variety of expressions depending on the content of that concept. But while the content may vary – one thinks of Kierkegaard’s (“The Melancholy Dane”) God-centered existentialism, Sartre’s boot-strap existentialism in which man creates himself as “Being” (“L’Etre”) out of Nothingness (“Le Neant”), Gabriel Marcel’s “elan vital,” that vital spark which animates us all, Wittgenstein’s self-referential “language games,” and Heidegger’s “authentic existence of the Self” achieved in the face of the self-nullifying presence of others – existentialism’s constant is the need to respond to the incontrovertible fact of one’s existence. This entails the need respond to others – how else is one to respond? In a word, the existential predicament entails the need to communicate.

But that’s just what we’re doing on Bitch. By responding to others we are attempting to give meaning to our existence. Of course, some succeed more than others.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!