existentialism – CALL ME MAGGIE: Recent Episodes
None
QUERY: “How is ‘authentic leisure’ related to ‘profound boredom’?” here’s a passage created using the Cut-Up Method in conjunction with my AI Hermes.†
In the intertwining narratives of Heidegger’s ‘profound boredom’ and Seneca’s concept of authentic leisure, we find a subtle yet profound connection. Profound boredom, as Heidegger suggests, is not merely a state of disinterest, but a fundamental mood revealing the nature of existence. It is in this state, where things are left empty, and we are held in limbo, that the sheer presence and absence of the world are disclosed. This kind of boredom is a retreat from the mundane, a withdrawal into the self, much like the Roman ideal of withdrawing into a peaceful harbor after enduring life’s storms.
In this retreat, profound boredom and authentic leisure intersect. Authentic leisure, as echoed in Roman Stoicism and Greek Cynicism–as well as other schools from India and China–is not idle inaction but a withdrawal into more significant works, a release into the realm of higher contemplation and self-discovery. It involves managing the comprehension of one’s own life rather than submitting to the preoccupation of external duties. This leisure is a time for oneself, a period of self-reflection and existential exploration, akin to Heidegger’s understanding of profound boredom as a state revealing our fundamental attunement to existence as possibility.
Thus, authentic leisure, in its deepest sense, is a response fromward profound boredom. It is in this space of leisure that one finds the opportunity to engage with the fundamental conditions of ordinary being (Dasein). Just as a storm-tossed individual seeks refuge in a harbor, so does the individual immersed in profound boredom seek refuge in leisure.
IMPORTANT! This leisure is not an escape but an embrace of a more profound existential reality, a journey into the depths of one’s ownmost being.
In essence, the relationship between profound boredom and authentic leisure is a dance between existential revelation and contemplative retreat. It is a journey into the depths of the self, where one finds not just rest from the external world but a deeper understanding and connection with the essence of their existence.
Within Karl Jaspers’ philosophy, we also can draw parallels between the concepts of profound boredom and authentic leisure from Jaspers’ emphasis on existential truths and the journey towards self-realization. Jaspers, much like Heidegger, delved deeply into the nature of everyday being and the existential conditions that shape human life. He posited that self-actualization (Existenz) emerges not from external observation, but from introspective exploration of our experiences within the ordinary lifeworld. This introspection is akin to the authentic leisure: One retreats from the external world’s demands (bracketing, EPOCHE) to engage in a deeper contemplation for self-discovery.
Jaspers’ notion of “ultimate boundaries” (“limit situations”) explores conceptually where individuals confront the definitive confines of human existence: those boundaries into which we find ourselves thrown by To-Be: e.g. guilt, struggle, suffering, chance, and death. These are definitive because they are within the experience of all human beings. But there are also the contingent boundaries, the ones not arising from To-Be but from human reactions within changing conditions. In my thinkering, I call these the “penultimate boundaries,” those we encounter as close by because they have been placed around us. Exploring the contingent to discover the necessities beneath through critical self-reflection resonates with the idea of profound boredom as a fundamental mood revealing the nature of existence.
Heidegger and Jaspers seek in their own way for an encounter with the raw essence of To-Be, an experience that transcends ordinary understanding (the extraordinary possibilities). Authentic leisure, then, becomes a conduit through which individuals can navigate these limit situations, transforming profound boredom from a state of existential paralysis to one of profound revelation and insight. The peaceful harbor of leisure serves as the existential ground for confronting and understanding these limit situations, allowing for a deeper engagement with the self and the essence of being.
In this existential framework, the relationship between profound boredom and authentic leisure becomes a vital process of self-exploration and understanding. The withdrawal into oneself, as advocated in authentic leisure, mirrors Jaspers’ idea of inward journeying to confront existential truths. It’s a process of turning inward to explore the depths of one’s being, to grapple with existential realities, and to emerge with a more profound understanding of oneself and one’s place in the world.
We also can turn to the thinking of José Ortega y Gasset for further exploration of why we should embrace our own “boredom.” Meditations on Hunting demonstrates a compelling fusion of the known and unknown to offer a perspective for engagements that resonate with the themes of profound boredom and authentic leisure.
For Ortega y Gasset, hunting offers an unexpected opportunity for philosophical engagement not merely a physical activity. Hunting reaches back to primal human aspects, an immersion into the authentic and fundamental experiences of life. The work aligns with Heidegger’s notion of profound boredom as an essential mood revealing deeper truths about being-in-the-world. In both instances, there is a move away from the superficial distractions of everyday life to confront more primary, elemental aspects of being. Hunting, in Ortega y Gasset’s view, is an act of stepping out of the ordinary for a deeper contemplation of living in a world that was already well under way when we first showed up. .
Furthermore, Ortega y Gasset’s notion of hunting aligns with the concept of authentic leisure discussed in the context of Jaspers’ philosophy. Hunting is portrayed as a leisure activity that is far from idle; it is an active engagement with life that demands full presence and consciousness. I have to be in the place in the time–I am must be present in order to be aware of all that is happening around me as I wait. Anyone who has gone hunting–whether by shooting arrows, guns, or cameras–knows how often the wait becomes a space for introspection and understanding of one’s place in the natural world. The hunter, in the wilderness and therefore on the margins experiences a form of leisure that is profoundly meditative and revealing. This definitely echoes the introspective journey of authentic leisure where one engages with living truths via limit situations
In essence, the connection to Ortega y Gasset’s “Meditations on Hunting” enriches the understanding of profound boredom and authentic leisure. It suggests that these existential states are not just confined to the realm of abstract philosophical thought but can be experienced and explored through concrete activities like hunting. [And by the transitive principle, all concrete activities that have a place in the human condition from before recorded history.]
I close with a bit of thinkering to connect François Laruelle’s work on non-philosophy with Heidegger, Jaspers, and Ortega y Gasset. Non-philosophy presents an innovative approach to reflective inquiry, one that seeks to step outside traditional philosophical frameworks to create a new mode of thinkering.
Here are few points on where I see the resonance: .
- Profound Boredom and Authentic Leisure: Laruelle’s non-philosophy, which emphasizes a radical departure from standard philosophical methodologies, obviously engages throughward the resonance of profound boredom and authentic leisure. Since so few actually would say, “The meaning of human life is to find the leisure to become so profoundly bored you suddenly awaken to the lifeworld,” it fits nicely with Laruelle’s approach to challenge conventional philosophical boundaries. Because playfully exploring the relation of profound boredom and authentic leisure as more than psychological or emotional states. These gateways to deeper existential understanding align productively with Laruelle’s idea of using non-standard approaches to glean new insights into the nature of being.
- Existential Engagement in Hunting: Laruelle advocates for a ‘democratization of thought’ to break down hierarchical structures in philosophy. Similarly, Ortega y Gasset’s perspective on hunting transcends the traditional view of leisure, offering an immersive, existential experience that democratizes philosophical inquiry by rooting it in a primal, accessible human activity–indeed, one of the most ancient of all human activities.
- Synthesis with Non-Philosophy: Instead of adhering to established philosophical narratives, profound boredom, authentic leisure, and engaged hunting offer themes that invite a more experiential and inclusive understanding of human possibility, akin to how non-philosophy seeks to liberate thought from the preconceived structural hierarchies that have been pre-established, endlessly proliferated, and often used in such a way as to make thinkering incapable of being accomplished–at least, if the notion is to get to a NEW comprehension..
From Laruelle’s non-philosophy, I would add as well Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the Society of Control. The notion offers a critical perspective on how contemporary society operates, highlighting the subtle mechanisms of control that extend beyond traditional institutions into the fabric of everyday life.
The target: Can “profound boredom” and “authentic leisure,” as explored through the lenses of Heidegger, Jaspers, Ortega y Gasset, and Laruelle, be seen as proactive responses to how Control controls control?
- Profound Boredom as a Form of Transistance: In Deleuze’s Postscript to Society of Control, individuals are constantly subjected to various forms of surveillance and normalization, leading to a continuous engagement with external stimuli and demands. Heidegger’s profound boredom emerges as a form of transistance to relentless mandatory engagements. By immersing my ownmost self into profound boredom, I step back from the incessant distractions and controls of society. Important: This withdrawal is not a passive state but an active engagement.
- Authentic Leisure as an Existential Engagement: Authentic leisure, as discussed in the context of Jaspers and Ortega y Gasset in light of Seneca, becomes a proactive way to reclaim my Now/Here (time/space) from the pervasive influence of the diverse Control Networks. In contrast to the commodification of “free time” in modern society, where recreative activities often become another form of consumption and control, authentic leisure involves engaging in activities that foster existential understanding and self-realization. This form of leisure is about finding meaning and value in our own lifeworld nearby, among our friends/accomplices, that can be moved beyond the parameters set by society. This also has the added benefit of countering the homogenizing effect of the Society of Control.
- Integration with Non-Philosophy: Laruelle’s non-philosophy, with its emphasis on democratizing thought and breaking away from traditional hierarchical structures, complements the idea of using profound boredom and authentic leisure as responses to the Society of Control. Non-philosophy encourages an approach to thought and existence that is free from the prevailing norms and controls of society, advocating for a form of engagement that is rooted in the individual’s unique perspective and experience.
- Creating Spaces of Freedom and Reflection: Both profound boredom and authentic leisure, in their transistance to the norms of the Society of Control, create spaces of freedom and reflection. These concepts encourage individuals to step away from the societal frameworks that seek to define and control their existence. By doing so, they open up possibilities for new forms of existence and resistance, challenging the pervasive influence of the Society of Control and offering alternative ways of being in the world.
I offer these connections to encourage people to be okay with boredom–to not see every break in labor or in study or in whatever as requiring us to find something to amuse ourselves into utter alienated distraction.
†Lately when I have been a bit bored and not willing to meditate, I have been playing a good deal with ChatGPT4–which I have taught to answer to the name of HERMES–asking questions, doing cut-ups, etc. Most of this is after about an hour of me adding in things and taking out things and then getting more rearrangement through cut-up to see how I might approach topics.
QUERY: How is the self-overcoming of nihilism possible under the Neoliberal Regime?
In our contemporary world, under the pervasive influence of a neoliberal regime, the quest for authentic self-actualization and existential philosophizing encounters significant challenges. This regime, characterized by an unrelenting pursuit of various forms of capital – financial, social, cultural – creates a landscape reminiscent of the chaotic swerve experienced by Er in Plato’s “Republic.” Just as Er, upon his death, finds himself in a liminal space where he gains profound insights into the cycles of life and death, we too, in our neoliberal context, are positioned uniquely to witness the extraordinary beneath the veneer of the ordinary.
The Myth of Er serves as a classic example of the dialogical process – beginning in one state, negating it, and then negating the negation to arrive at a deeper understanding. This mirrors our existential journey within the neoliberal framework, where alienation paradoxically opens avenues for potential transcendence. However, this regime exerts control through a pervasive training culture and a mania of self-assessment, dispersing our attention and diverting us from critical-reflection and self-actualization. This is the existential crisis of our time – the perversion of the Dyad of Engagement (Struggle/Ease) and the Dyad of Entanglement (Guilt/Innocence), where education becomes mere instruction, and self-actualization is twisted into a relentless inner disciplining.
In this context, nihilism is repurposed as a cog in the neoliberal machine, estranging us from others and ourselves. Yet, the existential response to this dilemma is not resignation but the self-overcoming of nihilism. Drawing from Karl Jaspers’ concept of the ‘Encompassing’, we are called to embrace the complexities of existence, transcending the artificial binaries imposed by the neoliberal worldview. This self-overcoming is a sophisticated dance of philosophical engagement, where inundation by images and submersion in information challenge traditional contemplative reflection.
François Laruelle’s non-philosophy further enriches this journey, advocating for a pluralistic stance that respects a spectrum of truths over a singular, hierarchical narrative. This transformative journey, guided by the philosophies of Jaspers and Laruelle, navigates through the labyrinth of neoliberal alienation towards a nuanced understanding of existence. It’s a journey that embraces the complexities of the world rather than simplifying them into a monolithic narrative. [In this regard, it is crucial to see all talk of the Society of Control as DESCRIPTIVE of our situation rather than just another NARRATIVE explaining reality.]
The way forward must adopt the self-overcoming of nihilism within the neoliberal regime as a philosophical odyssey beyond the neoliberal stance–a singular transformation–rather than a direct confrontation. Nonetheless, this will involve a deeper acknowledgment of human knowledge and personal experience, moving away from superficiality and fragmentation towards a holistic and interconnected way of living. Therefore, transistance does not flood-into our thinkering as the eradication of nihilism–shorting-out the negating power–but rather flows-out as a transformative process towards a broader, more inclusive engagement with reality.
Cut-Up Remix 05Jan2024
In the heart of uncertainty, a whisper of doubt resonates. Art screams, birthing beauty from agony, shattering the mirror of faith. Individuality bleeds into the void, swallowed by the yearning for belonging. Understanding shimmers, an illusion born of shared pain. Boundaries dissolve, flesh entwined with history, mind a reflection of its own creation. Is beauty a lie, a sentimental echo in the wasteland of reality? Or is it a scream, a rebellion against the cold grip of despair?
The Great Awakening trembles before the abyss, its laurels withered by the winds of dialectic. Science whispers secrets, unveiling the flesh beneath the mask of “mind.” Anthropology paints a canvas of evolution, history a sculptor of consciousness. Learning, yearning, the dance of flesh and environment, a symphony composed in the crucible of change.
No longer a haven of absolutes, reality dances with chaos. Beauty becomes a weapon, ugliness a shield. Is this progress, or a descent into the maelstrom? Perhaps both, a desperate waltz on the precipice of meaning.
From the expulsion of Eden to the echo of existential dread, a question hangs heavy: are we solitary wanderers or fragments of a shattered whole? Do we yearn for the comfort of shared understanding, or embrace the terrifying freedom of the void?
Perhaps, in the liminal space between certainty and doubt, a new beauty is born. Not the polished perfection of the past, but the raw, jagged cry of existence itself. A beauty that stares into the abyss and finds, not despair, but the glimmer of possibility.
So let the cut-up continue, let the fragments reshuffle. For in the chaos, in the uncertainty, lies the potential for a new art, a new understanding, a new story yet to be told.
Second part of my considerations comparing/contrasting Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life with philosophers of existence… in this episode, more specifically with five figures I consider poets of existence: Walt Whitman, Rainer Maria Rilke, André Gide, Emily Dickinson, and Virginia Woolf.
Below, you can find the basic “script” — though I ad-lib a bit throughout. Also, if you are interested in reading my small text I discuss in this podcast, you can click here to download Playful Nowheres.
cmm0017-existenz-and-seneca-part-2Download
If you do not bring your friends up with you, who will?
If you do not let your friends bring you up, who really can?
There is nothing else to lifting each other up than beholding that the greatest truth—freedom—obtains between the interwoven threads of those who share a simple courage to live openly at this time in this place.
I have heard that loving means believing in more than yourself. That resonates as true words; if so, then life thrives through such loving struggle as this:
```
To see and to be seen.
To hear and to be heard.
To touch and to be touched.
To be loved and to believe.
To be frank and to befriend.
To be held and to behold.
```
And when you manifest this with your great companions, sharing it with whomever else seeks openness…
How wonderful to be now/here in such a beautiful struggle together!
Sometimes my heart surges into my eyes, tears falling Beauty.
Sometimes my heart surges into my ears, sighs whispering Truth.
Sometimes my heart surges into my nose, scents drifting Goodness.
Sometimes my heart surges into my tongue, flavors relishing Life.
Sometimes my heart surges into my skin, sweat enveloping Belief.
Sometimes my body surges into my heart, self becoming Love.
Sometimes…
Sometimes…
Yes, sometimes…
My heart leaps into Humanity–
uncertain useless passion–
Free…
The following is a short exert from my soon to be finished (YEA!) dissertation that completes my requirements for a PhD:
QUEER FAITH, WYRD HOPE, LOVING STRUGGLE: A RECONSIDERATION AND APPLICATION OF KARL JASPERS’ EXISTENZPHILOSOPHIE FOR QUEER LIBERATION
When I was but a young thing, I saw Baryshnikov dance on television. Besides how handsome he always looked, I was in awe of the power he demonstrated when he would leap across the stage. It was never enough, of course, for me to want to follow him into ballet; however, the marvel of his physical control always stayed with me.
I could have described it:”Ah! There is the feline grace of the great dancer.” Or even, “Yes! Isn’t this the beauty of the gazelle as it leaps through the savannas?”
Yet even before becoming an “existentialist,” I never saw Baryshnikov’s art in terms of what an animal could do by nature of being that animal. Rather, my awe was toward a basic ability–hopping, jumping, leaping–transformed into a real capability developed over decades of practice by the dancer’s surpassing of common physical limits.
Baryshnikov’s dance expresses active beauty throughward the poetics of the body’s willed possibility.
I have been thinking a lot about Baryshnikov and many other dancers—including my friends Joy (1), Rivkah, and Susie as well as my great nephew Matt—because of the impression left upon me by their enduring commitment to explore expression through the body. Practicing to make leaps is a crucial aspect of enacting authentic freedom. So my dissertation (2)–queering Karl Jaspers’ Philosophy of Existence to investigate paths for the liberation of QUILTBAG (3) folks–explores the importance of making such leaps in thinkering.
Jaspers denotes this ability as necessary for disclosing a place of authentic philosophizing:
Since Existenz [Self-Actualization] is thus inaccessible to one who asks about it in terms of the purely objective intellect, it remains subject to lasting doubt. Yet, though no proof can force me to admit [Existenz] being, my thinking is still not an end: it gets beyond the bounds of objective knowability in a leap that exceeds the capacity of rational insight. Philosophizing begins and ends at a point to which that leap takes me. (4)
Obviously, folks make leaps all the time: they leap for real joy, they leap to invalid conclusions, they leap into bad deals, etc. So a distinction must be drawn between springing-forth from the solid ground of critical experience (the dance of uncertainty) and hopping-around on the shaky ground of uncritical opinions (the spasms of insecurity). Existential thinkering must train the intellectual muscles to gracefully move toward an idea that uplifts life.
As boring as I often find it, a bit of practical exercises in logic strengthens the thinker’s form while moving them beyond the atrophy of confusion. But it is more than just drilling pre-established universal patterns or repeating culturally choreographed assumptions. Logic–informal, formal, and transcendental–is preparatory for developing stances to leap toward profound intuitions and to return withward sound insights, landing again among the everyday with some grace.
Nonetheless, I turn from logical exercises to engagement with my experience or else I remain in formal abstractions.
Looking at my life, I always see myself in everyday activity through a kind of autobiographic lens: Each experience fits as plot details in my life-lived. These arise from self-narrated introspection that orient my activity. When these experiences get a lot of my attention, I become submerged in story-telling–rationalizing–without turning on them a well-trained critical eye.
Sharing the “telenovela” of my life may or may not be of interest to others. Recounting centers on me: it is all about my (re)actions and, with a few exceptions of those I promote to co-star or regular character, others with whom I share the life-world are often stand-ins, extras among so much scenery. If I speak to a person who somehow can relate my story to their own, perhaps the engagement may go farther along. But if I am sharing uncritical self-narrative, I should not be surprised to find waning audience interest.
Nonetheless, I do want to share myself with others.
Do I simply keep relating my story ad nauseum? Or is there another move? I think the latter… Before sharing any more, I must step-back, crouch-down, and spring into what is going on beyond what directly affects me. (And that also means overcoming the telenovela gravity of my closest companions.)
Stepping-back, I see that there is a story bigger than myself, maybe even greater than all of us.
Crouching-down, I ensure the shared ground is solid and ready for sustained movement.
If I have been adequately training my embodied consciousness, I let-go of the ordinary and spring into the extraordinary.
There are at least three ways for bounding-over the mundane to successfully elucidate my authenticity. While I do not believe such leaps must happen in any fixed order, they at first might best be understood by a fairly causal chain:
- A leap-outward: Objectivity as the intentional process between personal perceptions and common conceptions. This world-orientation.
- A leap-inward: Subjectivity as the creative process between actual memories and imaginative possibilities. This is existential elucidation. And,
- A leap-upward: Self-actualization (Existenz) as the liberatory praxis between the World and Transcendence. This is metaphysics as lived: Seeking after the Source.
Disclosing aspects of my narrative that might jibe with the lives of other people involves the leap-outward: A search after objective structures, the patterns that obtain interpersonally and sometimes interculturally within material circumstances, or the life-world.
Outward-situated while looking back on my life, reality seems almost limitless. There is so much to explore.(5) I see via the outward-leap that my personal drama belongs to a more expansively meaningful reality: History as the account of being-in-the-world at a time/space connected to myriad other eras/locales. There is one humankind but there are a diversity of social and personal histories. Nonetheless, in the outward-leap, I am alone:
“…[a] substantial solitude of one who knows universally, detached from any situation… like the pure eye that meets no other eye and looks upon all things, but not into itself.”(6)
I am turning-outward into history: I am not for the world but rather the world and all its potentials are for me by my seeking orientation.
The extent of it almost overwhelms compared to the small moment(s) of my autobiography. I grasp then my powerlessness to completely comprehend the world-horizon in a single viewpoint or even a collection of snapshots arranged just-so. The “calm of [my] vision…”(7) no longer has personal content; I hang in a sensation of weightlessness. Not the seconds of Baryshnikov defying gravity, but my own moment of breaking-out.
I can only tarry in such a viewpoint so long before the calm slips back into the busyness of the everyday. As an entity always already in situations, I gain the perspective from this leap that all people have these limits as well as an ability to explore them. I grasp, moreover, that each will come to the limits idiosyncratically. This warns me off making too many universal claims.
I could sustain a dance throughward the broad warrens of history, refocusing from myself to my folk if not humankind in general. This, however, strands me in the solitude of the “objective watcher.” It does not fully integrate my story into the meaning of human history as I have discovered it. Rather, becoming the witness of history keeps me apart for the sake of objectivity.
The leap-outward need only be the quickest of exits and returns for my uncritical (unreflective) story to recalibrate as connected to a history greater than myself. But once connected, the story now become historic: a sharable exchange with others who are just as much in the changing currents of human time/space alongside of me now/here within abiding traditions.
There must be a return movement, a return to my life but now in history. Leaving the wider horizon of the general account of humanity or the tales of a particular people, I leap-inward onto the way of subjectivity. Herein, I engage history as related to personal memory and individual creativity: I am historic. This opens me up to the possibility of Self-Actualization (Existenz).
I do not really occupy the point outside; I merely look for a way to get there, and my conception of the completed way prepares me, rather, to reenter the world. For, having taken this first leap out of the world, I find myself still very much within mundane existence [Dasein, everydayness], still involved in situations. But as an historic expression both of myself and of humankind, my concern with reality moves toward a greater emphasis on authentic potential. I am no longer the character with a fixed destination:
My lonely self-being turns into the knowledge which in [mundane] existence opens my mind to boundary situations; for fleeting moments only can it be a pure eye. (8)
The actuality of being an historic entity with others reveals my “…possible Existenz, sheltered as in a germ in this lonely punctuality of having stepped outside… [now able to] take my second leap to elucidation.”(9) For Jaspers, I encounter herein the ability to give myself over to philosophizing as casting a light of truth onto how I am ready to become my ownmost self. I think of this as a leap-inward; not, however, backward into my inner monologue. Rather, I go much deeper. I approach the crossroads where my self intersects inwardly with that which lies beyond me otherwise: Being-World(10) and Transcendent-Being.(11) Even if I had been dismissive of the limitations I encountered throughout my life as “not about me” or even as “beyond my control,” I catch sight of them now/here as how I am able to experience any life event. In all truth, these situations are the eventfulness of being alive. Solipsistic narratives and “universal knowledge” morph around each other, intertwining in the light of understanding the boundaries “…in my own mind as possibilities that hit the essence of my being.”(12)
Further exploration via existential elucidation discloses situations I can pass through that affect me minimally, if at all, while simultaneously revealing that “…there are indeed situations I cannot get out of, situations I cannot see through as a whole.”(13) These, of course, are the ultimate situations mentioned above.
Outwardly the borders were intelligible but only abstractly. Inwardly, they become explorable through the sensibility of personal experience. I am moving along the limits of the human condition, seeing them up close as where To-Be-I and To-Be-World both begin. Their opacity requires resolve to explore. Unlike those situations having little impact, the kind that “…are wholly transparent to me that knowledge gets me out of…”(14) with some effort, I am never out-of the ultimate boundary situations. Furthermore, I have very little if any power over them. Here I find my self-revealing uncertainty at the borders “… I cannot knowingly control [but] I can only grasp existentially.”(15)
Exploring my own subjectivity, I am possible Existenz realizing how ultimate boundaries—e.g. guilt, suffering, struggle, etc—can leave me in a “blind helplessness” if I stay only as a mere object to myself in introspective autobiography or reduce myself to an object among a nearly infinite amount of ideal types:
I now draw a line between the being of the world, which I can knowingly leave as a mere specific dimension of Being [Sein, To-Be], and Existenz, which for me is not something to contemplate and get out of, but something to be or not to be.(16)
Where the outward-leap allowed escape from a circular egotism, the inward-leap promotes a letting-go of “cognitive self-being,” of treating myself as a mere entity, whether a material object [a la positivism] or an ideal type [a la idealism].
The unrest in this boundary situation is that what is up to me lies still ahead; my freedom in it is to assume given facts, to make them my own as if they had been my will. While the first boundary situation [I always in a situation] makes men aware of the historicity in all [mundane] existential existence, particular boundary situations—death, suffering, struggle, guilt—affect each individual as general ones within [their] specific historicity of the moment.(17) In this, I no longer seek “valid knowledge”—empirical data sets or ontic formulations—which prove useful for explaining exherent worth or justifying inherent value. Existential elucidation traces along, plays around, and works out the meaningful obscurity of ultimate boundaries.(18)
ENDNOTES
(1) I want to thank my great friend, Joy Harris, for looking over the first chapters in my dissertation and pointing out the need to make clear how one gets ready to leap, like a dancer who must train not only to fly up gracefully but to come back down with the grace of a sure-foot. I only hope I am not abusing the metaphor in this essay.
(2) Brown, K. (2023). Queer Faith, Wyrd Hope, and Loving Struggle: A Reconsideration of Karl Jaspers’ Existenzphilosophie for Queer Liberation. Denton, TX: University of North Texas. Dissertation. Forthcoming Fall 2023.
(3) I use this acronym in place of LGBTQIA. It stands for Queer/Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender/Transexual, Bisexual, Asexual/Ally, Gay/Gender non-conforming. I prefer to use this because I can speak it when I am lecturing. I introduce the term early in any course where I will be talking at length about Queer Theory. The acronym is preference on my part as an educator; I do not mean to suggest that ALL folks under the Rainbow should use it. I do, however, find that even the most conservative students use the term freely and without the usual “irritation” in their voice when spelling out the list. I also like the word because it calls to mind the Quilt project that helped bring real attention to the AIDS crisis. Furthermore, the notion invokes how very eclectic Queer culture can be.
(4) Jaspers, K. (1971). Philosophy V2: Existential Elucidation. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 9.
(5) Jaspers, Philosophy V2, 180.
(6) Ibid.
(7) Ibid.
(8) Ibid.
(9) Ibid.
(10) In my actual dissertation, I will take up a Star Wars Universe formation and refer to this as the Living Force, To-Be as possibility.
(11) Following n10, I will refer to this later as the Cosmic Force, To-Be as necessity.
(12) P2: 180.
(13) P2: 180.
(14) P2: 180.
(15) P2: 180.
(16) P2: 180.
(17) P2: 184.
(18) P2: 181.
I was asked by my good sibling, Prof. Adam Briggle, to come to his class a couple of times to share with students about the method of “Problem Posing.” This is a technique first posited by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1999). The techniques were originally developed by the critical anthropologist to assist illiterate peasants learn to read. Freire and his colleagues believed that this would establish a bit more power for the peasants in their locales. The country folk in Brazil often found themselves oppressed by the laws written very far away from their communities, laws they did not know and could not read to learn. There was also the issue of how business owners often used the illiteracy of the locals against them.
The problem posing method was picked up and refined for use here in the United States for immigrants learning English for the first time as well as for people from areas with historic poverty.(1) Among the most famous exponents and practitioners are bell hooks and Henry Giroux. I have developed my own variation for teaching philosophy classes.
When I teach Pedagogy of the Oppressed, students quickly see that the impetus of the technique was to educate illiterate folks from the Brazilian countryside. Why am I talking about this with college age students? By definition, a college student must be literate to be enrolled. And even when they come from the poorest neighborhoods in America, they still find themselves at one of the most privileged institutions whether Harvard or some local college. What hasProblem Posing, then, to do with us literate collegiates?
My usual refrain to this is straightforward: Yes… you do know how to call words off a page. You know how to connect experiences in the world to other ideas you encounter in books and classrooms. Nonetheless, you are existentially illiterate: You do not know how to read your own lives.
The systems of erudition that make-up “higher education” classically have operated by promoting critical reflection. But today critical judgment and playful imagination rarely get as much emphasis as memorizing tricks for solving word puzzles and learning to recognize formulas that can cut-to-the-chase of solving math problems. Higher instruction concerns more and more mere utility.
This emphasis on mere utility promotes a basic ability to (re)call a lot of information to mind from off the page and out of lectures. However, only a very few courses promote learning the know-how to reflect from within personal experience concerning how any of this information relates us to other people, to the social world, and/or to natural life itself.
I recall one time my mentor, Richard M. Owsley, becoming upset with one of our young friends who was arguing that mere literacy was the same as “reading.” For the Owl, to read meant not only to be able to call out the words, not only to recount what the words said, but also to see how they do mean what they say there on the surface. Moreover, how do the notions have meanings connecting beyond the surface into the depths of our lived experience? For the Owl, the purpose of reading was transcendent of the act of calling-out the recorded terms: The purpose was interpretation.
Existential literacy, therefore, would be knowing how to read (to interpret) my own life (existence).
This idea unfolded on the first class visit along with a notion from the end of L’etre et neant [Being and Nothingness] (1943) by Jean Paul Sartre. He brings his over 700 pages of observations in that text to one of those statements that reverberates in the mind. At least it has done so in my own thinkering since I first read them nearly four decades ago: To be a human is to be a useless passion.
Here is a bit more context from which I will move toward an interpretation of more than the surface meaning.
All human-reality is a passion, in that it projects to lose itself in order to establish the To-Be and to constitute at the same time the in-itself which escapes contingency by being its own foundation, the being-for-its-own-sake that religions name “God.” Thus a person’s passion is the opposite of Christ’s, because [there] a man loses himself as human so that God may be born. But the idea of God is contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain; humankind is a useless passion.
Jean Paul Sartre, L’etre et neant. Paris: Gallimard, 1943, p. 662. My translation.
The biggest challenge when reading JPS, as with so many philosophers, involves deciphering his linguistic alchemy.
First, to speak of reality and passion in the same breath draws out the interconnectedness of coming to know the world-order (reality) through my own humanness which involves under-going a pathos. As Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, tells us in his first great insight, “Life is suffering (dukkha).”(2) The Buddha means that to be alive is to under-go frustrations which can be overcome but not until recognizing why this happens, something dealt with in his other three insights.
Problem posing as well as existential literacy call for a recognition that human-reality is a life-path littered with long-forgotten passions and myriad passionate failures. Craving more than I need or even wanting enough to do more than merely survive can bend life into mechanical reactivity.
But can suffering ever cease? Or is it a need to cease craving that detaches me from blinding frustrations? Let’s put a pin in that and get a bit farther in the interpretation…
Going further along with Sartre: The To-Be as I have rendered the text transliterates l’etre, normally translated as “being” or “Being.” I prefer to keep the power of the infinitive “To-Be” in this translation to highlight how the notion for Existential philosophers points to a process that is ever on-going. In fact, to reduce l’etre to “being” demonstrates what Sartre has been elucidating throughout L’etre et neant as the reductionism of the To-Be to something stationary, graspable, and dispositional: i.e. to a utility or something useful.
The next notion that needs a bit of elaboration involves the in-itself . This very Sartrean usage (en-soi) refers to how each thing is given in fixity: Every object appears passively inserted into the world, given over to the place it must occupy with no way to be otherwise than it is. It has a slot into which it fits; it is fitting that it be kept in place. This is the lens of facticity uncritically accepted: A rock is fixed in its having to be a rock as much as any human must be affixed taxonomically as merely the animal Homo sapiens sapiens. That I can make an axe-handle out of the same wood as the tree the axe chops does not displace the wooden handle from being “just wood.”
The concept of the for-itself (pour-soi) points to how a thinking entity–say a human being–has mutability. Each person actively exerts their will by decision making. Or, at least, they might exert themself to become else-wise, to go a way none or few have gone before. A person mutates from out-of their ability to choose their own path.
For problem posing, the critical reflection upon experience begins the process of seeing how I am situated but also how I may re-situate. Existential literacy deepens the more I can see that I am not necessarily fixed as by nature but accidentally in-place by virtue of being-thrown into a world already underway.
If I can read this situation, I can decide for meanings that go beyond the accidental.
One critical error regards treating life as necessary, that is unceasingly thus. For any problem posing, there will be those times when they come against the attitude, “Well… that is just the way things are. Nobody said that life is fair.” Indeed. Nobody had to say that life is fair so long as everybody believed that life is arranged according to some pre-established natural (necessary) order. But what if it is not so securely fixed?
The majority of L’Etre et neant establishes Sartre’s bona fides as an atheistic existentialist. But not so much for denying outright that there is a Higher Power. Rather, in denying the efficacy of humans subordinating themselves to an over-determinative concept, whether it is Natural Law or Divine Mandate. Hard determinism could as easily fit into the above quote as could God. Yet, even in 1943, the concept of an omnipotent Being beyond human reach was still in more keeping with Euro-American notions of (pre)determined destiny.
So, in the above quote, God stands-in for the possibility of Transcendence: Unconditional freedom.
Rather than a fixed entity or a mutable one, this is the notion of an entity that abides in-itself-for-itself, for its own sake alone. I am inspired to call this cardinality, a pivot point that is neither inserted (thrown) into the world nor one that must perform any exertive acts (existence). As a cipher against which to regard the boundaries of human experience, this stands as cosmic assertion.
When Sartre brings up the figure of the Christ, he gives the reader an example of a historic archetype that stands-in as the annihilation of humankind for the sake of godhood. The notion is contradictory because it states that the only way to be fully human is to become fully god.(3)
I only go into all of this for the purpose of elucidating how it is that to-be-as-human is to be as a “useless passion.” Taken in terms of the everyday, it sounds as though Sartre means that humankind is utterly pointless. This certainly recalls how most people understood him during the years that Existentialism was a popular intellectual trend.
But pointlessness shoots past the subtlety of uselessness. The term Sartre adopts is l’inutile, inutility. And I believe this subtlety was actually first described by the Daoist sage Zhuangzi.
When Confucius was visiting the state of Chu,
Along came Kieh Yu–
The madman of Chu–
And sang outside the Master’s door:“0 Phoenix, Phoenix,
Where’s your virtue gone?
It cannot reach the future
Or bring the past again!
When the world makes sense
The wise have work to do.
They can only hide
When the world’s askew.
Today if you can stay alive
Lucky are you:
Try to survive!“Joy is feather light,
But who can carry it?
Sorrow falls like a landslide,
Who can parry it?“Never, never
Teach virtue more.
You walk in danger,
Beware! Beware!
Even ferns can cut your feet
When I walk crazy
I walk right:
But am I a man
To imitate?”The tree on the mountain height is its own enemy.(4)
The grease that feeds the light devours itself.
The cinnamon tree is edible: so it is cut down!
The lacquer tree is profitable: they maim it.Every man knows how useful it is to be useful.
No one seems to know
How useful it is to be useless.(5)
At least in terms of Thomas Merton‘s translation, I would argue that Sartre agrees with Zhuangzi who is saying something important about how folks take things in the world and attempt to bend them to fit a particular usage: We cultivate things mostly for their utility.
The issue that Sartre and Zhuangzi share also rejects that we are ourselves mere objects of utility. This, of course, reminds me of Immanuel Kant whose own deontological ethics takes as a cornerstone the unconditional imperative: Never treat another person merely as means to an end (a utility) but always as an end in themself (a singularity). Where I believe the French thinker and the Chinese sage go beyond the Mandarin of Königsberg involves the as-common problem of treating your own self merely as a static utility rather than a fluid modality.
Prof. Briggle kindly kept thinkering about all of this beyond the first class meeting where I presented problem posing and existential illiteracy. In an email exchange, he pointed out that “existential illiteracy is having our lives read to us or for us – by whatever hegemonic norms persist (and their naturalizing powers) – and that learning to read our own lives involves leaping out of that ‘matrix’ to leap inward into the flow, into suchness.”(6) And along with this insight, he offered something from Judith Butler concerning the ways fixity creeps in to human exchanges. This is from the book Gender Trouble .
I use the term heterosexual matrix throughout the text to designate that grid of cultural intelligibility through which bodies, genders, and desires are naturalized. I am drawing from Monique Wittig’s notion of the “heterosexual contract” and, to a lesser extent, on Adrienne Rich’s notion of “compulsory heterosexuality” to characterize a hegemonic discursive/epistemic model of gender intelligibility that assumes that for bodies to cohere and make sense there must be a stable sex expressed through a stable gender (masculine expresses male, feminine expresses female) that is oppositionally and hierarchically defined through the compulsory practice of heterosexuality.(7)
The emphases are Briggle’s, but I wholeheartedly concur with him on this. If my life is given to me as a pre-written play, I must act in accordance with the character to which I have been cast.(8) On the other hand, if I recognize I have the power at any moment to re-cast–or even un-cast–my given role, I am actively interpreting a wider range of motion than that one assigned to me like I was just another object-player on the world stage.
If my thinkering expresses my philosophic faith, it provides hopefulness for what can be accomplished through the loving struggle of dissertating as well as through that of teaching not to mention regular dialog with friends: Reading my own life to achieve liberation for myself and encourage the same possibility for my fellows. This to me is heeding the vocation of humanization.
If I problem pose from my experience, I must respect that experience even as I keep a critical eye upon it. By virtue of rational conceptions, I am just another thing. But I am not merely any old thing. Because when I take up my experience to go beyond its thingly parts, I decide for taking-on a whole life. And I do this by virtue of a decisive will whereby I become an otherness, an unexpected suchness.
Suffering does not cease until the cause is known: Craving for the certainties and securities that merely gild living as surviving unto death.
Else-wise than as I could (should?) be factually categorized, I am no-thing.
As the negation of objective parameters–no matter their utility–I discover the power of my subjectivity. As the negation of empowered subjectivity–such a useful thing to be!–I become an authentic project: a decisive forecasting with no predetermined trajectory,(9) lacking the utility of being an object and the usefulness of being a subject.
I am a useless passion.
ENDNOTES
(1) For an excellent overview of early experiences putting Problem Posing into practice in the USA, see Wallerstein, N. (1987). “Problem-Posing Education: Freire’s Method for Transformation.”Freire for the Classroom: A Sourcebook for Liberatory Teaching. Ed. I. Shor, Afterword P. Freire. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 33-44.
(2) Dukkha also can be translated as frustration. It is an onomatopoeia: the clunky sound of a wheel axle being misfitted to the chariot, thus causing the vehicle to move bumpily with an annoying sound at the turn of the wheel–DUK-KHA! bump DUK-KHA! bump DUK-KHA! bump.
(3) This sounds a lot like what many “transhumanists” mean in their attempts to overcome the limits of humanity. For more on Transhumanism as well as its connections to Buddhist thinkering, I highly recommend Ross, B. (2020). The Philosophy of Transhumanism: A Critical Analysis. London: Emerald Press. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83982-622-120201010
(4) The axe-handle that chops down the tree is made of the same wood as that being chopped.
(5) Merton, T. (1969). The Way of Chuang-tse. New Directions: New York, 58f. This particular section is taken from Book IV §9 of the Zhuangzi.
(6) Email from Adam Briggle to Keith “Maggie” Brown, 30 April 2023.
(7) Butler, J. (2007). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge. 208n6. ISBN 978-0-415-38955-6.
(8) Casting captures a lot of intentions really: the notion of being thrown into the world, that of being molded like metal, and that of receiving a part in a play. Maurice Natanson, who was Judith Butler’s dissertation director along with being one of the most important early American phenomenologists, has a fascinating treatment of the human as actor both on stage and in the world. See Natanson, M. (1967). “Man as Actor.” Phenomenology of Will and Action: The Second Lexington Conference on Pure and Applied Phenomenology. Eds. E. W. Straus and R.M. Griffith. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne Univ Press, 201-220.
(9) Aphorism Injection 24 April 2023.
For Pedro, with thanks for the mind-walk…
What have you done for love? How have you risked yourself to break-open the everyday and find the Heart-Truth that welcomes you into a new possibility?
When desire awakens, do not let this merely dissipate into a one-night stand or become a path to some other amusement. Harness it! Let it flow through you as a faithful intention that brings you close to another.
When friendship blossoms, do not let this merely make you comfortable or yield an escape til something better comes along. Cultivate it! Let it grow along with you as a hopeful connection that grounds you in community.
When, at last, charity thrives, do not let this merely provide justification for why you are a gentle person or give excuses for how you can take short-cuts. Live it! Let it become a caring opportunity in which you arrive at the safe-harbor of your Truth.
And through that Truth, openly welcome all who are in need.
And with that Truth, joyously give the grace that asks for nothing in return.
And in that Truth, carefully prepare a creative place that expresses the glory of being alive.
Yes… yes… I know. There may NOT be anything but atoms bumping around in the void until the cosmos runs down into cold, unmoving death.
But… there SHOULD be more. And it is from the possibility of Love that we can make it so… if we will RISK IT.
Until faculty realize that their vocation as MAGISTERS and DOCTORS, as those with TEACHING authority, actually transcends the MINISTERIAL and CURIAL power of adMINistrators and trustees, they will continue to launch little more than empty critiques of neoliberalization.Continue reading
Drawing on themes from queer theory and responding to COVID-19, “Order of Flo” playfully dances along the lines of destiny at the intersection of bodily motion and mindful emotion. Melting the presentations of drag, queer bodies, and weird minds, “Order of Flo” trans-imagines dance, tarot, poetry, and glossolalia. The evening welcomes a co-revelation of dancers thinking, philosophers moving, and audiences emerging.Continue reading
Does your thinkering lead to making or to doing? Does your doing and your making lead to thinkering?Continue reading
Truth, Beauty, and Joy each have different kinds of ideas and facts. Not knowing this distinction allows systemic bigotry to continue oppressing folx despite contradictory scientific discoveries, socio-cultural evolution, and personal evidence. Continue reading
The thematic of my life is loving struggle through the fundamental attunement of profound boredom. Continue reading
Mark Lance, Ph. D., is a Professor in the Philosophy Department at Georgetown University as well as a co-founder there of the Program on Justice and Peace. Continue reading
As I approach my 55th birthday this weekend, I really cannot tell if I am getting depressed or just bored in my situation. So muchContinue reading
Most who brag of being self-made—to the point of believing their own rhetoric—sooner or later will find themselves self-unmade. Yet even in this, they will become an unmaking alongside all those of whom they took advantage in Violent Struggle.Continue reading
According to a 2015 YouGov poll, 37% of the UK population believe their job makes no meaningful contribution to the world. And despite the time-savingContinue reading
As a #queerplatonic, I am always learning so much about the fluidity of desire These findings reveal that masturbation and sexual fantasy are indeed lessContinue reading