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Existentialism

Jean Paul Sartre

Philosophy

Psychology

Literature

Sylvia Plath, Aristotle, and Jean-Paul Sartre Walk Into a Bar

Sam

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My last few essays have been on the topic of action. This essay continues that theme, with a focus on how to make choices and why it requires an acceptance of one’s radical freedom.<br>Sylvia Plath’s Tragedy<br>Press enter or click to view image in full size

Sylvia Plath’s Fig Tree from The Bell JarIn the novel The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath lays out a profound problem of existence: there are a limited number of ways one can choose to spend their one precious life, and choosing one usually comes at the cost of sacrificing the others. The outcome is often a paralysis, where one does not commit to anything, because no criterion to depend on surfaces . Plath says it more eloquently in the following passage from the novel:<br>I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black , and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

Plath wasn’t able to find a resolution to this existential dilemma. At age 30, she decided to end her life.<br>Aristotle’s Actuality and Potentiality<br>Press enter or click to view image in full size

Aristotle’s concept of Potentiality and Actuality also roughly touches on the same subject. When one stands before a block of marble, there are unlimited ways in which it can be chiseled. Furthermore, in imagination, all these ways can exist simultaneously and in perfect form. But, as soon as one begins the physical movement of putting the chisel to the marble, the landscape of potentiality shrinks. The more it is cut — the more action is exerted — the more its potentiality shrinks. Until at the end, what is left over is simply the outcome: an imperfect statue.<br>Who would willingly do such a thing, narrow all their potentialities into one and take responsibility for its consequences? Is it not better to remain in the lull of possibility? Isn’t imagination better than reality?<br>Jean-Paul Sartre, at least, asserts that the image of possibility is actually what sustains people in an otherwise disappointing life. He says:<br>“For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think,<br>‘Circumstances have been against me , I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.’”

Both the Aristotle example and the Sylvia Plath example leave two major problems to be addressed. The first is: On which set of criteria do you make the important choices in life? The second is: How do you stomach the reality that your choosing necessarily narrows your field of possibilities? Existentialism provides a response for both.<br>Press enter or click to view image in full size

The Library of BabelEnter: Existentialism<br>Existentialism, at least espoused by Jean-Paul Sartre, makes the assertion that humans are radically free, or to put it more bluntly, “condemned to be free.” This is a difficult concept to wrap one’s head around. I will attempt my best.<br>First, to address the obvious counter-argument to the statement: no, you are not free to change something like your age, stature, where you were born, the laws of physics or the operations of nature. Sartre calls these facticity: the unchangeable, concrete facts of life.<br>But to be honest, even as I was trying to come up with a list of facticities, I...