This semester of Existentialism has been a roller coaster ride of thoughts, feelings, and questions. I have found myself leaving class in a number of different moods throughout the semester; sometimes depressed, sometimes feeling like I have come to a solid realization about some part of life. While it sometimes feels that I have gained no ground overall, I think that this is in no way a bad thing. Existentialism has proven to be the most exciting and most thought provoking class I have taken during my time at Rhodes thus far. The skeptical feelings I had regarding the usefullness of the class prior to the commencement of the semester were quickly destroyed upon reading authors such as Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Camus. Prior to the beginning of classes, I had it in my mind that existentialism was just going to lead me in a circle of thoughts and ultimaterly answer no questions. I guess that I expected this while hoping that at some point during the semester the meaning of life would be discovered. Although this certainly did not happen, the level of thought which I experienced during the semester as well as the conversations brought forth in class have made me think more about life and existence than I ever thought I would. Despite these gains though, the largest question, for me at least, still remains. I have struggled throughout the semester on the topic of God and religion and how these two things relate to existential thought. As someone brought up in a culture where religion is often the only type of existential thought experienced, this class came as a bit of a shock. Reading authors such as Sartre and Nietzsche for the first time really made me take a close look at aetheism and examine the thought of life and freedom without God. I guess it killed me at first because it seemed to make too much sense what Sartre said...not so much Nietzsche, I still have trouble buuying in to slave and master morality talk... I felt that religion had been holding me back in my critical evaluation of life and the meaning of freedom. However, as the semster draws to a close, I still find myself completely confused. While Sartre and Camus make sense in their attacks on religion, religious existentialists such as Kierkegaard have made a profound influence on my way of thinking as well.
I guess ultimately I find myself asking the question, can you really be religious and an existentialist at the same time? This semester has been wonderful in that I have addressed questions which I never thought I would. The fact that many of them are still unanswered no longer bothers me. As Camus said, it's the struggle which makes meaning.
Note: I made a comment regarding this question after Jen's Thanksgiving post. I think its pretty thought provokng and I'd love to hear you guys' feelings.
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3 comments:
First off, good post. This is something that I've been thinking about for awhile too. Kierkegaard is one of my favorite philosophers that we have read because of the way he addresses religion. When he writes of the world through 3 realms, the religious realm is one of them. The thing that strikes me the most is how he calls faith a paradox, which is exactly what Kierkegaard was talking about with the Isaac and Abraham story. The paradox between believing he would kill Isaac, but also that Isaac would not die.
Even after this whole semester, I am left without answers as to whether one can be religious as well as an existentialist. I remember a couple classes ago we talked about God being "the chicken door" and that it needed to be eliminated from existential thought. And while I agree that the existence of God suggests that there is another meaning maker for us to rely on, I am still not completely convinced that religion and existentialism cannot coexist. Responsibility is an important thing to mention here, and I think in order for this to work it is crucial that Christian existentialists take responsibility for their actions, and not use the "God told me to" excuse.
Having said that, I would like to leave y'all with a final thought. Don't we all believe in something? Even atheistic existentialists, don't they believe what their mother tells them? Aren't people superstitious? Or don't we leave home without an umbrella if the weatherman tells us it's going to be sunny? Within the framework of existentialism, how can we explain these reliances on others?
I liked your post. I've struggled with religion for most of my life and still haven't found what I really believe. I did like the existential jolt my thoughts received from this class. I always had a problem with Christianity because of the whole "God has a plan for you." I just can't buy into it. I don't need the Christian God as a motivator for my actions or as something to give personal meaning to my little life. So I really like the existential view of creating your own value system. I think religion and existentialism do have a certain amount of conflict between them, but when I say "religion" I mean the organized kind. I think that a looser term, spirituality, is what is probably a bit more compatible with existentialism, or at least that's the feel I got from it all.
I have been struggling with the relgion question as well lately and, while I've yet to come to any concrete answers, what this course has confirmed for me is the notion that most Christian doctrines aren't as structured as they claim to be. A plethora of them are based on notions involving predestination and "God's will". To me that's just scary. How does that represent structure when one's entire life is already determined and you never know what will happen next because it's ultimately left up to the whim of some transcendent divinity? In this aspect, I believe that existentialism is certainly more structured than most religious doctrines and thus extraordinarily more optimistic and hopeful.
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