Existential Commitment to Humanity

(2017. This was my final paper for my Existentialism class sophomore year of college. It’s not super important and you don’t have to read this if you’re limited on time; there’s better stuff on this website. This may be half bullshit. That being said, it does mark a point in my intellectual development, a development of some kind of humanism. I truly do believe that a deeply held belief in our connection to Mankind as a whole can fully replace the role God once played; indeed, I think the species is God, in a sense. In fact I think this is healthier; not only that, but I think it’s essential to the ideal of democracy, which is why I include it here, despite how sophomoric it is. One day, when I fully develop my idea of ‘existential sociality’, this essay will be relevant as a precursor.)

What is it to be a human being? How can human beings live meaningful lives? This central inquiry of existentialism posed at the very top of the syllabus demands actualizable answers, for we are all human beings living lives. Many brilliant thinkers have offered some ideas to this end. Soren Kierkegaard in Sickness Unto Death provided a useful framework for understanding what a “self” is, and how to construct a “complete” self. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov illustrates many different kinds of selves in varying states of despair or unity. The works of both of these authors are considered “existentialist.” They were also both explicitly religious authors, and the existential answers they proclaimed were oriented towards an Abrahamic God. However, in the 20th century, existentialism was primarily expounded by atheist or agnostic existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre. Since existence is a question that inherently involves the question of a creating power, this tension between theistic and atheistic existentialism is significant. Can this tension be resolved? In this essay, I will attempt to alleviate this tension with an existentialist position that is not dependent on whether or not God exists, and that furthermore can be actively lived by human beings in their finite lives. My argument is that one can fulfill Kierkegaard’s concept of a complete and grounded self by replacing God with Man as the defining commitment. To demonstrate this, I will show that a self requires a defining commitment in a constitutive power to be complete, that Man can perfectly substitute for God as that defining commitment, that this claim does not depend on the existence or nonexistence of a God and has support from both atheist and religious existentialists, and that in order to live a life according to a belief in God or Man one must actualize their love and responsibility in the finite before they can access it in the infinite sense.

First, I will explain Kierkegaard’s conception of “self” in order to argue that a self requires a defining commitment to be complete. For Kierkegaard, “[t]he self is a relation which relates to itself, or that in the relation which is its relating to itself.” That relation exists because “[a] human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite,” a relationship between two terms: mind/body, eternal/temporal. This combination between two seemingly incompatible elements is the synthesis relation, which then relates to itself, thereby becoming the positive third term, the “self.” This confusing process can be better understood when thinking about it in terms of time. As time goes on and you take in new information, you (the synthesis between mind/body) constantly absorb this new information and make it a part of yourself by relating it to the self that already existed. The self is the relating–to-itself, it’s the relator, the entity that is comprised of the sum of all the previous relations, as well as the thing doing the relating. The synthesis of black and white is gray, and then that gray relates to every new color it meets, adding blues and reds to itself; the self is not any one color, but rather the existence of a color which changes hue by procedurally adding to itself. Now, this self must have either established itself or been established by something else; Kierkegaard asserts that the latter must be true. That untethered self-established self would only be able to despair wanting not to be itself, since it would be dependent only on itself for stability, and itself being such a contradictory synthesis (finite/infinite), it would volatilely vibrate with nothing to ground it. However, people do feel authentic despair in wanting to be oneself, and this authentic despair exists because, according to Kierkegaard, we were constituted by something else. If we try to alleviate this despair by denying parts of ourself or by trying to hold together the contradictions alone, we will fail, because in being established by another we necessarily need to relate to that other in order to be oneself. Despair is only eradicated when “in relating to itself and in willing to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the power that constituted it.” To be grounded transparently means to act in such a way that your higher defining commitment to that constituting power shows through in everything that you do. Kierkegaard’s theoretical Knight of Faith from his book Fear and Trembling is a complete self in this way. She is able to experience the significance of the infinite in her finite life, and to act in the finite through embodiment of the infinite. It is this existence in both the infinite and the finite that gives a defining commitment the ability to stabilize the self, which is naturally volatile due to its inherent contradictoriness. Kierkegaard (and his pseudonym) was a Christian. For him, this infinite power that can be expressed in the finite, this transparent grounding, this defining commitment, this constituting power is God.

This raises the startling question: is belief in an omnipotent, benevolent, monotheistic God necessary to be a complete self? This would be incredibly distressing for most humans living lives; after all, true faith in this sort of unprovable God is incredibly difficult to have, even Kierkegaard wasn’t able to get all the way there in his strictest ideal sense. However, I propose that it is NOT necessary to believe in the Christian God in order to transparently ground the self. Instead, I believe that Man can substitute into the position perfectly. By Man, I mean all of mankind, the collective essence created by billions before us, being defined by our choices now, and which will continue to grow and learn and create long after we are dead. In short, Man as the sum of all men, the essence of Man. The transparent grounding must be “the power that constituted” the self. Of course God fits this, but does not Man? After all, we are born of our father and mother, and “Adam and Eve” (metaphorically or literally) all the way back. Each man is established by Man. Furthermore, Man is “infinite.” Billions of finite men have existed and will exist, trillions of intersubjective connections have and will occur, billions of physical things are created by Man, and zillions of new ideas have and will be thought, imagined, and expressed, all contributing to the essence of Man. Man fulfills the other requirement of a transparent grounding, that it can bridge the self in the finite and the infinite. In our finite lives, we can live dedicated to mankind, tethering our complete self, body and mind, towards this higher purpose.  In our individual choices, we can orient ourselves towards contributing our greatest potential to the whole in whatever ways possible. This can infuse our lives with meaning, bringing infinite significance to our finite actions as our finite actions create infinite significance. 

The writings of atheist and major existentialist thinker Jean-Paul Sartre support my claim that Man can fulfill the demanding position of God as a transparent grounding for a complete self. Sartre describes individuals as having unlimited freedom of choice, but also as existing inextricably within an intersubjective reality. “Man cannot pass beyond human subjectivity,” Sartre asserts, “[t[here is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity.” Because all men operate within this intersubjective reality, product and progenitor of Man, their actions and ideas can all be understood by other men, now and in all times. Therefore, “every purpose, however individual it may be, is of universal value.” This mirrors what happens with a self entirely committed to Man, the ideas align nearly perfectly! “Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes [M]an to exist; and, on the other hand, it is by pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is able to exist.” This Sartre quote illustrates the reciprocally generative synthesis between the individual and mankind. Every finite purpose and action contributes to the whole, contributes to the infinite essence of Man, and living this way infuses universal value and transcendent responsibility into our locally constructed purposes. This all is true for Sartre despite his unequivocal atheism.

Dostoevsky’s Christian characters in The Brothers Karamazov demonstrate his ideal of a complete and dedicated self by feeling connected and individually responsible for all mankind. Their dedication is ostensibly to the Eastern Orthodox religion, to God, and indeed these characters have true faith. But the things they preach, the revelations they have, and the existentialist lives they lead could conceivably be the fruit of faith in Man as well as of faith in God. When Zosima is giving his last words he says “as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for everything and for all men, you will see at once that it is really so” (276). This is monumental; by making oneself, the individual, responsible for Man, one will understand that they are responsible for Man just as Man is responsible for constituting the individual. Even if you believe God created Man, this still holds. Zosima then says “we have been given a precious mystic sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and… what grows lives and is alive only through the feeling of its contact with other mysterious worlds” (276). Alyosha has similar feelings during the transformative moment where he finally achieves a sort of rapturous completion through the realization of his now-deceased mentor’s ideas. In a beautiful scene where we finally read of light and depth and color Alyosha feels “threads from all those innumerable worlds of God, linking his soul to them… He longed to forgive everyone and for everything… not for himself, but for all men, for all and for everything… It was as though some idea had seized the sovereignty of his mind— and it was for all his life forever and ever” (312). This idea, sovereign in his mind for all his life, is the epitome of a defining commitment. Alyosha is infused with his mentor’s love and responsibility for all, and feels his soul linked to all those other worlds, which can be read figuratively as other subjective realities. Even though these two characters are very religious, the way in which they express that religion in the local world through love and connection can be done with or without God. It is the connectedness that Dostoevsky describes in such detail, the responsibility, the love, and it is the characters’ subsequent actions in the finite world which exemplify and actualize their universal commitment to God via Man. Even Dmitri, the character who is struggling in despair to be oneself, ends up finding his way to wholeness through love for Man. His first turning point spiritually comes at the end of his interrogation by the prosecutors, when he has a strange dream about a poor, burned-down village with freezing and starving peasants, including a crying baby with little blue hands. Mitya keeps asking why the babe is weeping, why they are suffering, why, why, why, not understanding. Finally, he “felt also that a passion of pity, such as that he had never known before, was rising in his heart, and he wanted to cry, that he wanted to do something for them all, so that the babe should weep no more… so that no one should shed tears again from that moment” (428). He finally learns to care for all mankind, through this nameless peasant babe in a dream, and he instantly understands that he is responsible for them, and that they need him. Man needs Mitya, and he becomes a complete self through this recognition. In all of these cases, whether or not God is involved, the mystic connected feeling these characters experience is what makes them whole, and it can be expressed in their relationships to Man.

The Brothers Karamazov also demonstrates the active process by which one would go about establishing and acting upon this higher commitment to God or Man. I use these interchangeably because, like in the examples above, whether or not God exists does not change the way this commitment to Man is lived. Even if God does exist, the means by which you act upon this faith only occur in the temporal, finite, intersubjective world. What you do on this earth is what matters to God, and specifically how you act in relation to other human beings. So if you “believe” in Man then the finite expressions of that defining commitment would be essentially the same as the actions a believer in a God would make. Now, in the religious view, Christ teaches us to love other human beings as our neighbors, who are near us and who we can therefore actively love, expressing that love in our actions towards them. Eventually, we can see that all men are our “neighbors” and extend that love. Elder Zosima’s enlightenment starts with his love for his brother Markel, but then he is able to extend that love and “come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love” (275). Alyosha’s own defining commitment was to Elder Zosima, but after the Elder’s death, Alyosha is able to extend that feeling of love to everything and everyone. Crucially, this comes after he demonstrates active love to Grushenka, demonstrating the authentic temporal basis that grounds this universal love. Dostoevsky cautions us to not be like Madam Kholokova and emptily declare universal love; our love must be authentic, active, and inside-to-out rather than hollow. Only by acting with love in the finite can we access infinite love, and once accessed, we can bring that infinite love into our finite lives like Knights of Faith.

I hope I have demonstrated that, God or no God, living a life actively dedicated to Man can be extremely rewarding. Man can fulfill the extreme requirements of a transparently grounding commitment within Kierkegaard’s construction of the self, even though he probably didn’t think of it that way when he was conceiving it. To demonstrate the value of this commitment to Man, I have shown that it can reconcile seemingly insurmountable divides between atheistic and theistic existentialism. My concept has agreement from the atheist Sartre and the religious Dostoevsky, whose characters exemplify complete selves through a Christian dedication to God, but whose actions towards that dedication could easily be the result of a commitment to their fellow men as well, since the finite intersubjective world is the only one in which we can operate. There is a lot of responsibility that comes with a true dedication to all mankind. Both Sartre and Dostoevsky make it clear that one must feel truly responsible for not only themselves but for all men, for all men’s choices, for all men’s sins. This can be quite a burden to bear. However, I would argue that this sort of connection can be freeing and invigorating as well. Think of it as playing on a soccer team. There is more responsibility involved; if you screw up, you feel like you have let down not only yourself but your whole team, and when another teammate screws up you will suffer as well. But how much more can be accomplished together, how validating it is as social beings to connect with others, how exciting it is to win as a group, and how empowering it is to feel like a worthy part of a greater whole!