Existentialism

okay existentialism that's our topic for today the existentialists are a group after the Second World War primarily who reflect on the meaning of existence and they main figures the people we'll be talking about those today are about kibou jean-paul Sartre here are some of their main works those are just things I happen to have lying around in my office it's censored that is existentialism is centered around the question of existence as the name suggests the central problem really is what is life me what is it all about okay it's sort of a vague question in a way what's the point of existing um there are certain themes that are characteristic of the existentialist one is alienation not really the Marxist alienation of my work is something that I feel alienated from it's not expressing the up force to do it it's not that sort of thing it's more an alienation from the world as a whole a sense that you're alone in the world a sense that the rule is somehow foreign to you they are a stranger in the world there's also a theme of absurdity you look carefully at things ordinarily you take everything for granted but then you look carefully things and you realize wait this doesn't make any sense and so you have these moments at least where you have that sense almost is in Pirandello appearing through the mask and seeing the underlying reality except that in this case it's not some horrifying thing that you're eager to cover up again it's just blank what you perceive isn't nothing that's a lack of meaning a lack of integrity you might say in yourself in the world around you Camus puts this innocent especially traumatic form he says the central philosophical problems that of suicide which really means just what's the point of it all okay does life have a meaning is there any actual point to living now even if you told me the answer is no there's no real point to living I wouldn't say ah well then I'm gonna kill myself I'll just say okay well then I'll just eat drink and be merry but his idea is really look what do you say to the person who is suicidal you want to say life has a purpose life has a meaning but what's the real answer to that question does life really have a purpose does it have a and in the end he affirms that yes you shouldn't commit suicide yes it does have a sort of meaning but as we'll see it doesn't have any intrinsic meaning from this point of view it has whatever meaning you give it and so that's a stereo prospect but also an exciting you can give it any meaning you want that's his position now here's the traditional view what a human beings want what do we strive for well happiness okay living well flourishing thriving that's what we want and our excellence consists in well fulfilling our function well but what is our function what are we for this is the way Aristotle frames the question and indeed his answer is well it's a question of how we differ from animals we've seen his answer that is rational activity I act according to rational plans I'm capable of actually planning having extended sort of trees you might say of decisions plans that I Institute that I decide upon that take some time to implement animals seem to be able to plan a little bit a monkey can pile one box on top of another to get to the banana but not very extensively monkey plans cat plans and so on do not consume years think about your current plan getting a college education that's something that's not a quick and easy thing right it's not just oh do this do that then it's done it's something that takes years of effort years of coordinated effort and that's something only human beings seem to be capable of well the existentialists have in a way a different response to this and it defines the movement Sartre pictured there would Simone de Beauvoir puts it this way existence precedes essence he says existentialism is the view the existence precedes essence and what he means is that there is nothing that is intrinsically essential to being a human being we have no essence we have no intrinsic function yes maybe we have some sort of biological characteristics but really that's not what's essential for us is there a function is there a purpose to us as Aristotle thought there was no we're really free to define ourselves as we choose and so we argues that humans are radically free free not only to do this or that thing but really to define our lives and give our lives whatever meaning we want he puts this in terms of a distinction between being in itself and for itself is yeah that's a good question with Nietzsche and existentialist um if we go back and think about this does he think there's anything essential to us yeah maybe in the end the will to power um at an earlier stage he seems to reduce us in the two level theory to our sort of biochemistry but what's really essential to us um Nietzsche's somebody that I consider like Kierkegaard or a number of other thinkers before the war I think of them as proto existentialist they're almost existential they make several of the most important moves to get there but in my view never really take that final step and affirm look we have no essence at all it's up to us create a club he looks inside himself and says well I should be the person I am but what is leaches view the person I truly am inside the existentialist say that's licensed for me to be whatever I want but there's a way of reading nisha that would say well I look inside I beat them to be the person I am but maybe there is something intrinsic to being Who I am right maybe there is some essence within me and I think it's just in unclear in nature which way he intends it so that's why I see him is going right up to the door of existentialism opening it but not quite walking through but all you would have to do is to walk through is to say you should be the person you you are and that can be whatever you want yeah first person to say that because there's no God we're free yeah right I think the first person to really articulate that was dusty s key in The Brothers Karamazov it's Ivan who tells that story of the Grand Inquisitor who earlier in the novel says look if God is dead then everything is permitted he says you know if God is not there to monitor us and give us the standard behavior outside of ourselves then there is no standard behavior outside of ourselves most philosophers by the way thought there still would be like aerosol for example he doesn't really rely on God to give you an ethics he thinks we do have a purpose we do have an essence but that gives us something that characterizes and excellence apart from anything religious but does CFC lays it out very startling and so I think he's the one who really says look if God is dead that everything is permitted nature comes along and says what God is dead and doesn't each of draw the conclusion that so everything is permitted um well certainly the old ways of understanding what's permitted and what's not go away uh he says look what do I think is true everything has to be the truth about you everything has to be determined afresh um but is there a way that's supposed to go are we free to do it however we want that's again it's the same spot really where I think Nietzsche really doesn't quite say whether there's a preferred way or not in the beginning of beyond good and evil he actually says maybe there needs to be a physiology of value he almost implies that there is something about our physiological characteristic are biological beings that may determine what human thriving is and that if that's right that it wouldn't be just up to us to let it be whatever it is there really is something that would be essential to us as biological beings but in later works he moves more away from that toward the world of power as you say and toward this idea that well maybe we are free to make it up everyone so as his thought goes on I think he gets closer and closer to exist tensions in any case that's really the idea there isn't anything that you have to be there isn't anything you have to do it's up to you you can give your life any kind of meaning you want so a central part suppress art is really projects we engage in certain projects like getting a college education and given that you're engaged in that progress project there are all sorts of things you ought to do but it's all contingent on yours to do that it's not really required by anything outside of you it's not even required by anything inside of you it's up to you to do whatever you want well the idea is look yeah some things about us can't be changed some things are just given our past is given the physical objects of the world just get it's not like the world can be anything I want I can't just say I wish this blackboard since I don't use it we're really magic favorite you could flutter around the room okay and tap board students on the shoulder and say hey pay attention this is cool okay so I can't make that happen books just by wishing right however that yeah things are like that but there are seeing some things that are not fixed we ourselves are not fixed we're radically free to shape our lives as we want we're radically free to do open water so we are self interpreting animals as Charles Taylor is that's if anything is essential to us it's that it's being self interpreting it's having the ability to define our own essence so you might say our only essence is really being able to characterize our essence however we want if there's anything that's special about people it's that perhaps the first existentialist who really does walk through the door self-consciously is Martin Heidegger now Heidegger is not a figure I admire particularly for a couple of reasons one is that he was an ardent Nazi and I think that's not very admirable but part of it is that he wrote in a very I don't know purposely obscure style there was a certain kind of German philosopher who decides that instead of writing to be clear um he wants to write to be mysterious and so Heidegger is sort of like that and some people find that exciting I find it annoying um but in any case he says all sorts of things like nothingness nothings and strain makes strange claims I tried to read his great work being a time I'd rather read things about it that tell me what he thinks cuz I think it's thought is very interesting insofar as you can understand it but reading he was tortured in a case here's the basic idea that he advances he says what I can give my life meaning why or how well by selecting certain projects I can decide I want to do this with my life I want to do that I can make those choices and that gives me a freedom but that freedom is bounded not by my essence freely but just by the fact that I have thrown into the world this is one of his main ideas I am thrown into the world and so the way I come into the world and where I come in and so on the place time of my birth all of that is something I'm in no control right and so I happen to be right now alive at a 21st century I didn't choose that I was tossed into and I was for an American that's not something I chose it's not like God walked up to me and said would you like to go to Nepal or would you like to be born in Italy lots of pizza or would you I didn't have that choice right I just get tossed into the world at some point in a way that is not under my control however once I'm there I can actually then define the purpose of my existence I can define what I do within those constraints so the constraints come from outside of me but not really a normative thought sort of thing of God says this must be done thou shalt not know it's just through the contingency of my person I cannot drink some well we talked about this I can't decide to be a Roman senator for example I can't decide to invent the motorcar it's been done so now here's what I think is strange Heidegger and the rest of the existentialist think that it's inevitable because of that lack of control because I've been throwing the world I inevitably feel alienated from I inevitably feel like a stranger in the world whoever what am i doing you okay everybody confronts those questions and he thinks that I inevitably feel like a stranger like huh I didn't choose to be here what's going on why am I here and now to say everybody raises those questions at some point in their life what is life all about yeah I'm a philosophy professor I think everybody does confront those questions at some point but why should I feel alien why should I feel as if there's no answer well why is there a reason I mean is there a reason why recognizing the contingency of the place and time my birth the circumstances my birth I should feel alienated from the world from my surroundings I don't I don't know how to answer that question I decided to answer it with some Pittsburgh yes some Pittsburgh pictures this is the place of my birth okay and that's actually where I got my PhD but it's also like a mile from the hospital where I was born do I feel alienated from it this isn't my house but there's no reason why you have to feel alienated from the place of your birth right you might celebrate it Here I am with my daughter at Heinz Field there's my family the other side of my family okay I don't feel alienated I don't think good I was born into that family so if you like a stranger I don't get it or the same thing with that family I don't look at those people and think oh what a stranger a bunch of weirdos but sometimes I gotta admit sometimes I do the by wife's family is so much worse my family seems normal by comparison yes do you think that because of the fact that you're put into those situations with the constraints you feel when using other from the other people that are in situations and since there are so many other situations and constraints that everybody else is in therefore he's alienated from all the other verbs well now that would be an interesting point right suppose I say yeah well the circumstances of my birth the place the time who my family members are it's all of that they are kind of unique to me and so maybe that divides us right maybe I feel like well yeah okay there's something I can identify with maybe I don't feel alienated from that but the problem is everybody else has their own thing right we all maybe feel alienated or not from different things and so that would raise a problem and it is a problem the concerns Heidegger are we so bound by these various accidents of our birth that were actually necessarily separated from other people his concept for this by the way he thinks of our being as necessarily situated in particular places he calls that design sort of being there being in a place being at a time but he raises this question of what he refers to as mid sign on being with can I really communicate can I really feel a kindred spirit with other people and he sees that as a problem I don't think he ever really gives a firm argument that it cannot be done in fact at a certain point I think he thinks it's the key to solving this problem but it is at least a problem are those contingencies of my circumstances things that can divide me from other or do the United other people and for him that's a kind of problem that has to be thought through carefully now as we'll see most of the later existentialist ignore that possibility what about us solving this problem together right and feeling like we're not strangers but like we're in this together like we're family is it that possible well in the end I think hider thinks it is possible maybe we can confront this together and that makes a difference well as well see I think that's bellows key idea I can recognize my common humanity with others and maybe we can solve the problems together but in Sartre and Camus I'm strangely alone in all of this so I think they think that actually forces me to confront existence all by myself and I can't get help from anybody else well why why do I feel this way they all think that at certain times we're just forced to confront the meaninglessness of existence cartoon why do we exist well I can't speak for you but I'm here for the margaritas yeah oh here's another one Claire suddenly realized that existence precedes essence and she was free to kill all your gods uh-huh or only the cat okay hi Anu Suzie's torment oh these are really marvelous if you haven't seen the Audrey videos you've got to watch them I don't want to take up five minutes of watching a cat go around muttering in a French accent but they're really really wonderful there's a whole series on so they'll give you a good feel of what exists ilysm at least in its French version is all about question back there okay all right well so we do sometimes confront the absurd we seek meaning in the world and we don't find it and sometimes the gap between our expectations or what we find is so large that were really stunned and we find existence somehow absurd it happens when we turn into ourselves too we find that we really aren't what we are who are you really well you might think well I'm so-and-so I do this I do that but then if you stop and equate so those things really define me you realize no I mean I'm not just defined by those masks those roles that I play and so I'm not really what I ordinarily seem to be but why am i truly well something underneath folks again it's a little bit like this Pirandello type of image but what is that what is the reality of myself underneath those masks those images those roles I find I don't know and so that's what shocks yes that's Dorothy reading Jo pulsar okay so yes I've no red eye I know I've every Discworld book yeah building a Kendall collection seems pointless yeah I know the DRM probably means I'll lose them someday no no no pointless in title sure you satisfy deep max I like urges by building neat collections you still die alone sorry sometimes I'll just take your existential crises for technical insights sometimes I mistake this for a university care so all of these give you the sense of what existential isn't about well we're going to talk mostly today about existentialism as it appears in the writings of Albert Camus he is I think the most accessible writer of the existentialist and also the one with a real dramatic flair he writes literature as well as works of philosophy he was born in Algeria all grown in French of you won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 he was the second youngest person ever to win the Nobel Prize the youngest was Kipling he was also the first writer who's born in Africa to win the prize and you see you see he did up this flair for the dramatic what do you six is introducing you sit you know or stand in the rain in Paris know her cool okay oh yeah there he is something deep he started a literary magazine devoted to existentialist themes with a number of friends and here's a photograph of Camus there on the left with his colleagues who had the editorial staff of that magazine here he is again smoking in a good little balcony in Paris I tried to convince them that to be authentic doing existential and so we all had to fly to Paris and filming my lecture there that didn't work this is a rich University but not that rich in any case he joined the Communist Party in 1935 when he was 22 he was expelled two years later and for being a free Baker he then became an advocate he was also a pacifist until the Nazis invaded France and began shooting people and then he joined the French Resistance now it's easy to make fun of some of his you know flip-flopping political allegiances and so on on the other hand there is something I really admire about Camus which is that he looks at the world around it adapts his ideas to the world there are a lot of thinkers that in my view don't do that they have an idea they have an insight and they run with it and if the world starts throwing at them contrary data or things that don't make sense given their theory they say forget the world I'm going with my theory he's not like that he adapts to what he sees happening around him I think that's an admirable philosophical instinct in any case he thinks we run into absurd walls as he puts it we confront the absurd of the number of situations sometimes we're just weary of the routine you wake up you start going through the motions and you start thinking why am I doing this okay I don't know what you do in the morning when you wake up I I think I've mentioned I used to wake up and drink several big glasses of iced water that was healthy then I started hanging out with Mormons and started a business with a bunch of Mormon partners and then I started drinking coffee just because they always wanted to meet at Starbucks even though none of them broke drank coffee so they corrupted me um so now I make coffee but but in any case you know you go through this routine you don't really think about it but sometimes you stop and you think about you think I don't want to do this today okay actually your students I'm sure you confront this right look in fact everything probably 15% of the people aren't here today it's Friday I noticed that on Friday a lot of people in this class seem to wake up and say yeah I don't want to do this to me yeah okay so I'm sure you can understand that sense of weariness with routine sometimes you just see something out of context you really run into somebody you know but in a context where you're not expecting them it's like whoa what are you doing here and there's a little bit about that jarring of expectations that is a confrontation with the absurd or maybe you see somebody you're watching through the window laughs and you see somebody gesturing and talking about existentialism dramatically and so on you can't hear what they're saying and it just looks ridiculous right who could be a professor or sometimes we just recognize our own inability to act or understand we're in a situation we can't make any sense of or say look this is happening but I don't know why I don't get it and that sense that the world is really foreign to us is operating by a bunch of principles we don't understand that can be a wall where we confront the absurd well what is his goal it's really ultimately to live without appeal I can't resist my stupid joke mango says the banana what do you want out of life analysis to live without appeal it's not that funny joke but it does make you remember this on the exam you will think you'll thank me later for having told that stupid joke in any case what what is he need to live without appeal to anything external to myself to just live on my own terms do what I want make my decisions engage in the projects I want to engage it I don't appeal that anything else for justification I don't say well I think this is what God would approve I don't say even this is for the good of mankind I just say I chose to do it and that's it okay so I live without appeal to anything outside me I just appeal to myself and I say that was my choice so we create our own me there is no outside Authority or stamp but he couples with this with the idea that we are responsive so disarmed this is not a cliche get-out-of-jail-free card this is not a hey I chose to do it nobody can judge me it's rather I chose to do it I take full responsibility Sartre thinks it's bad faith to try to put a point a finger outside of yourself and say oh I'm doing it because they made me do it or God made me do what are my parents made me do it or the circumstances made me do it no you made that decision you have to take responsibility and so they did join the resistance they hated the French who actually collaborated with the Nazis and that was an important thing they thought look you made that choice you were freedom but we're also free to condemn you for it so there's no outside Authority or standard but there is a sense of normativity that arises from our own decisions he draws a number of consequences from this he says but the three consequences I draw from an absurd are my revolt my freedom in my passion my revolt I revolt against a meaningless to me meaninglessness of existence I peel back the mass I realize there's nothing there I revolt against the nothingness that's why I don't commit suicide that's why I don't decide life has known me I realize I protest the path to life has no meaning it's up to me to give it a meaning I'm going to give it one and so i revolt against nothingness that I see behind the surfaces and I decide I'm going to fill it in with something the second thing my freedom I'm free to fill it in however I want true my circumstances place certain boundaries on me I'm born at a certain place in time a drone of the world I can't really get out of that but on the other hand within any set of circumstances even if I'm as the stranger is on death row confined to a cell nevertheless I have a certain kind of freedom a freedom to assign my existence any kind of meaning I want and so recognizing that radical freedom enables me to realize not only am ia protest against the meaninglessness I'm going to assign a meaning and it's up to me to assign it can be anything I want then finally my passion because the meaning of life is something that I am giving it then of course I'm passionate about its my meaning that I'm giving those are my decisions and so I don't have to feel like I'm going through the motions because somebody else expects me to do it here I'm throw into this world and this person telling me to do that and that person telling me to do that but I have to do it no I realize look it's a blank slate I can make it whatever I want it's my responsibility but it's also my freedom and something I can be excited about because it's my part yes hosted at the same time it's kind of like telling you stop wallowing in yourself buddy it was what you did what you decided on your own that's true it's yeah there's no need for self-pity about this you're making the decision even if you've done with the stranger does and commits a murder rather pointlessly um yeah okay you're sentenced to die yes still even if you don't physically have the freedom to leave that cell or postpone that death nevertheless there's a sense in which you're free to think about it however you want one of the images he gives in another book the myth of Sisyphus is of Sisyphus who rolls this heavy rock all the way up to the top of the hill only never roll back down again any sentient eternally to just do now from one point of view he's not free at all he has to do it he can do nothing except push this rock up a hill and then there's no sense of cheap and it just rolls back down and so is that a horrible fate Camus says I imagine Sisyphus Meier why because he realizes that even though he can't control what he does he can control how he thinks about he can control the meaning that he gives it and so in fact he is in that sense radically free and he imagines him pushing that rock with passion and smiling because that's his thing he can actively choose it he doesn't have to be oh it can be rather this is my life this is how I give it me and so even in those circumstances he thinks this is possible no yeah what kind of life does this leave welcome Oh was married twice first to Simone who's pictured there and then to Francine there um they had two children but suppose I really do live by this standard right I decide I will live without appeal and here are my principles my revolt my freedom and my passion what kind of person am I going to be this is going to have real practical consequences isn't it but what kinds of practical consequences now times if i'm priy of moral responsibility after all he thinks gee how certain people collaborated with the Nazis and that was a terrible thing they had the freedom to choose it that they chose poorly and so he thinks it's possible to still judge people's choices in fact this radical freedom does entail radical responsive for what you do and how you give your life meaning but what will it mean for the way you actually live I'm going to live in a way that's filled with passion then emphases it's my own freedom nobody else is going to put any chains on me yeah honestly on a positive side extremely charismatic and also extremely successful depending on how things turn out okay good yeah it does lend a certain kind of charisma right it's not very charismatic to be like this I mean imagine you meet somebody in a bar right and that person just sitting there you say hey I'm so-and-so how are you I say uh what sucks what what do you do I do this I don't like it so like what does that job mean I mean what like what do you actually do in your days I have bunch of crap other people tell me are you gonna say well this is kind of person I want to hang out with and that's probably not but suppose you sit down and they spit I just started my own business I quit my old job I decided I wasn't gonna do what other people tell me anymore I'm gonna do my own thing and here's what I'm doing and I'm excited about it but that's a sort of person you might be alright I want to hang out with this person this person is interesting right so there's a certain charisma that just follows from that automatically you might say and indeed he was a very charismatic figure on the other hand suppose you're aligned somebody on somebody over the long term like you're hiring somebody and you hope they'll stay to the end of that project are you gonna want to hire an existentialist maybe maybe not right it's like you're not gonna tell me what to do hey I don't feel like working on that project today I'm gonna go above a buck so that's sort of a danger right and indeed I got to read you some letters from 1959 this is the year before Kim who died he died in 1969 on December 29th he wrote to his mistress he was still married to Francine but he wrote to his mistress announcing that he would shortly be returning to Paris from laronette where he had spent the summer with his wife and children this fateful separation with at least Emilio's wasn't ever the constant need we have Rachel the next day he writes just to let you know I'm arriving on Tuesday Becca I am so happy at the idea of seeing you again but I am laughing his head right the next day see you Tuesday idea I'm kissing you already I bless you from the bottom of my heart there was another letter setting up a date in New York they were all so different okay then I started thinking looking for pictures of the various parables of Albert Camus and this goes on for quite a lot of them see what I got so constantly maybe not on the other hand charisma definitely yes well in any case his novel the stranger I've already mentioned a couple of times I just want to say a few things about it it was published in 1942 right at the beginning of the forend actually after her friends that are intolerant of the hero if you can call him that so it's a stranger he's an outsider he's detached she doesn't feel any sort of attachment to anything he's unconnected all of those are meanings of the French term not convey he has no reaction to his mother's death early in the novel he see he sets Ramon's girlfriend up to be beaten he killed the friend of her brother who would attack from all his friend um he does all these things kind of randomly he realizes now he's been sentenced to death for the murder and he's thinking is there a way out is there a loophole is there some way out of my predicament he couldn't stomach the brooding certitude of his fate but then he realizes he confronts the absurd he realizes there are all sorts of ridiculous things I'm skipping a lot here he asked himself whether life is worth living the chaplain says come to God my son he says no I can't do that he faces death and the captain the chaplain says this is going to be difficult but he he flies into a raid starts beating up the choke a many decides look what does it mean okay I did this I hadn't done that so what what did any of this mean and he concludes well it means whatever I want it to mean he says all the time I've been waiting for this present moment that dawn tomorrow's or another days which was to justify me in other words I was looking for something outside myself that would justify my life that would explain me that would actually give me a reason for living one way rather than another this is nothing nothing had the least importance and I knew quite well why he - that is the trap one knew why and so he starts concluding nothing matters what does it matter from all was as much wipeout of Celeste it was a far richer man what did it matter if at this very moment Murray his girlfriend was kissing a new boyfriend as a condemned man myself couldn't grasp what I meant by that mark wind blowing from my future he starts concluding look all of us are in a sense condemned all of us are condemned to die it's just sooner in his case than it is for most of us and then he says I suddenly laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe the friendship the tall's wind difficult doom all okay this this tender indifference yes the world is not actually cruel it is strange it's indifferent to us it doesn't have any an intrinsic meaning but the tenderness is he starts realizing wait of it I can make of it what I want and so in the end he says I realize I've been having and I was having still for all to be accomplished for me to feel less lonely all that remained a hope with his bomb on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with hovels of execration so he starts thinking that's the meaning of my life I'm going to go to the guillotine and I'm going to be there hoping they scream at me with hatred and the point of my life will be basically hot okay whatever it is I mean it doesn't matter what it is it's like it'll be what I want and that will make me happy so why assist to smiling well because Sisyphus realizes it's up to him to give this whatever meaning he wants now I have a few minutes left to talk about saul bellow bellow is reacting to the same kinds of problems there was essential asar but it's giving a rather different answer here he is pictured in his circle but first he had a sense of style and he described his own intellectual development this way said I read Marx and Bertrand Russell Morris Co and I read the logical positive I read Freud an admiral a gestalt psychologists and the rest and I know how a modern man is supposed to think the fact is there are other deeper motives in a human being so fellow is somebody actually I think would be very much in sympathy with this course looking at a bunch of people who try to reduce all human motivation to this or that or the other thing to the will to power or to sexual gratification in Freud or to just unconscious movements of physical particles and various other thinkers he reads all of those people he says yeah that's not what human life is about you can't reduce human life from human motivation to one thing so he ends up concluding well okay a title in the book seize the day carpe diem or in my favorite manifestation oh he was born in the summer of Montreal moved to Chicago wins 9 he first became a Trotsky and got involved in the WPA writers project he end up teaching at Minnesota at NYU and most of his career at the University of Chicago in the Committee on social thought he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976 and there are a number of themes in this novel the main one that I wanted in an interview he said that I can sympathize with will huh the hero sees today but I can't respect him so we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking the Tommy Wilhelm is really spello in disguise he impact thinks his own character something else schmuck so yeah seize the day that comes from a poem for us which is there for those of you who are latin fans and right at the end there is that the reason I put this is Carr Padilla there it is um here's the way the poem goes don't ask it's forbidden to know what end the gods will grant to me or you don't play with Babylonian portraits having either it's better doing do it whatever will be whether Jupiter is a lot of to you many more winters of this final one which even now wears out to sea on the rocks place opposite be wise strain the line scale back their loan hopes to a short period while we speak envious time most planned seize the day trusting as little as possible in the future so the whole idea is okay what is Aristotle say our essence is to formulate rational plans and act on them seize the day says forget forget the rational plans just act in the moment be in the moment seize the day forget the future and so it's something that's very different now the overall view here is epicurean Horace was an epicurean a follower of the Greek philosopher Epicurus and his attitudes are common in the modern world materialism the world consists of material particles determinism we have no freedom everything is determined by physical laws hedonism there's nothing to do but seek play self control the best way to attain happiness is nevertheless control your desires and then anonymity my favorite one live unknown so I've said a little bit about each of those materialism yeah there's no soul I just have my body that's it I'm just a material thing determinism we have no freedom everything is determined by physical laws what's gone before hedonism seek pleasure seek freedom from fear seek trance tranquility that's what human happiness is self control of to be tranquil to attain pleasure you've got an open world you've got to limit your desires and finally don't see fame glory or honor don't seek any kind of good that depends on other people seek your own sort of good and especially don't depend on strangers I'm very fond of this last one I bought an epicurean but four years my best friend Nick Astra and I taught here and there was no sign of any of us of either of us anywhere our offices were just blank there was finally they passed a rule say you have to put your name outside your office door so somebody else put it there but I think we were both tried there are almost no photographs of us the idea was really just sort of live unknown yeah we're here if you walk into our classroom we're doing our thing but there's like nothing to advertise we're here or never been here and I don't know why that seems attractive to me I'm not a person who seeks Fame I sort of want to be a squirrel working in a coin I play sometimes with a jazz pianist who was talking about that they've opened up a new jazz thing in Austin the brass house I said well no you said I don't like playing them you're up on a stage it's like a big thing but look at me look at me he likes to play the elephant room where it's like you're you go down into the cellar right you go all the way in the back and there are the musicians and they're doing their thing in the pianos off back in the corner not very well lit and so it's like that guy's doing this yeah he's like a secret you have to know about credit and that's something pleasurable I think about being a secret not just being wet little money enough about me so forget this um yeah key the novel is actually what he talks about in another novel more explicitly certain people are reality instructors and they're people who think they know the score now they think you don't and they're going to teach you these people are usually kind of though they know something but they aren't really in control of things the way they ought to be and so in this novel is this because of the charming lunatic doctor Tim who tries to tell Tommy how to live and champion is always in the neighborhood of the truth but doesn't really understand and Bello has this interesting story he says look when I was in junior high school my next-door neighbor had a mirror that came out of its frame and she gave me the mirror and asked me to fix it so he said what he said well anything else I effects I hit with a hammer so I started hammering the frame back onto the mirror and broke the mirror and so he said the reality structure instructors are like that they're in a world full of mirrors and they go around with a hammer trying to set things right okay as they break a lot and in this case doctors have concern break stuff um which is not initially the way I read the story but that's really kind of what you intended yeah they're out there among the mirrors with their little hammers so who is Tamkin he's this con man on the other end he's described as a novel is somewhere near the truth and what does he tell Tommy well he tells him seize the day he ends up saying actually this reminds me a lot of Pirandello we actually have a lot of souls pretender sold and real soul people feel they have to love something buddy it's all cats not love what art thou it sounds like you putting something famous right if that cats not loved and what are you not what is he quoting nothing okay he's making it up but he's that's part of what you have to see and dr. Tamkin yeah he he's a charlatan okay he doesn't really know he's it sounds like always quoting Shakespeare or something I'm supposed to know but I don't actually know I'm not going to admit it and no he's just making this up so you don't say this important thing to Tommy a man's only as good as what he loves and there he is I think in bellos view getting close to the truth no he says what are about nothing that's the answer nothing in the heart of hearts nothing so you can see how similar this is gonna wait at the existentialist I peel back the Masterson what am i reading what is my essence nothing no of course you can't stand that you want to be something and you try hence this feeling of a stranger of alienation so Temkin the officially epicurean in the novel is actually kind of existentialist to peel back these things what's your true essence nothing you can't stand it so you feel alienated you feel as you have to do something now he says nature knows only one thing the present present present eternal present like a big huge wave colossal bright beautiful okay you must go along with the actually here and now the glory the here and now here about here laughs oh okay be in the present grasp the hour the moment the incident hence seize the day that's what he's telling probably seize the day forget the future just live for the moment live for the press choose to be whatever you want now that's not the way will home who by the way Tommy is this stage name he's adopted he gave up a medical career decided to go to Hollywood and become a famous actor and blew it right so now he's broke divorced and has has their job things are going that way certainly feels alienated feels out of control he thinks of his life suffered okay a load of hump that he has to carry around and so he feels that's what a man's for carry this lump felt like he was he was the monkey on his back you might say hi beer at one point says times the monkey on our backs but he sort of feels like he's his own monkey and decides his essence was to make stakes to get involved in one losing proposition after another he's weak of will he's constantly gives in to temptation but now why is Bello describing this he says look okay people in Western countries have been a flight affected by Romanticism they think it's romantic they think it's exciting to sort of live this life that's highly stimulating there's static infinite possibilities that individual is utterly free your responsibility is just to fulfill yourself to realize your own desires in short he says look this romantic dream is exactly what leads you to existentialism the saying I don't have an essence it's up to me and in fact that's the excitement that's my freedom that's my passion to define my own life however I want but he says look in the end that doesn't work and so there's this wonderful passage where Tommy starts realizing his the cut what he has in common with the rest of the people he's walking in a giant stadium to buy a ticket to a ballgame on the walls between the adversities were words and sin no more and do not eat the pig he had pretty good notice and then the dark tunnel in the haste heat and darkness which disfiguring the creeks and frankness of nose and eyes and teeth all of a sudden a general love that he's a perfectly guru he people first through a lung for us he's nothing he passionately welcomed cause of my brothers and sisters blessing them all as well as himself he feels this sudden sense of brotherhood what Heidegger would have called MIT sign and he realizes there is a larger meaning it isn't just a burden of his existence there is something that actually is a transcendent meaning notice what's Spurs into this thought sin no more and don't eat the pain one of those the religious claims they're religious things and it brings this idea so he ends up going finally to this view just as strangers whew and he's there he goes up to the to casket swept up in this longing he sees the body he just starts crying right he just breaks down and the tears just flood over him and everybody's there saying Kuji they must have been so close look at the way he's crying oh to be loved that way but total stranger right but somehow he feels this is his heart's ultimate need being fulfilled what his sense we all do have certain things in common we are all beings who love and live and strive and work and in the end down okay next Monday nope last Wednesday we'll come back and talk about Jorge Louise sports

Channel: Daniel Bonevac

Views: 165,824

Rating: 4.8892684 out of 5

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Id: -a-8xBbr05Y

Length: 45min 50sec (2750 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 15 2013