Existential Philosophy

Professor Fayez Sayegh, one of the professors of philosophy at the American University of Beirut, is among our thinkers who incline toward "existential philosophy in their thinking." He has founded a circle for the study of "Kierkegaard," the father of existential philosophy, comprising some graduates of the university's department of philosophy and some thinkers interested in Kierkegaard. On this occasion we thought to ask him for a definition of existential philosophy, and he wrote us the following article.

The Scope of the Term

The phrase "existential philosophy" is used in two senses: a first sense, comprehensive and broad, and a second sense, narrow and specialized.

(a) "Existential philosophy" in its most comprehensive sense is every philosophy that directs its attention and its concern toward being (existence). In this sense it is the antithesis of every intellectual effort that begins, not from the analysis of existence as it is and the making of existence and its structures the arbiter over mental conceptions, but rather from the conceiving of existence and its structures, and the positing of it, upon the basis of mental constructions. That is to say, in this sense it applies the mind to existence, and does not impose existence as the mind wills. It is "existential" in the sense that it acknowledges the "priority" of existence over the philosophizing mind, and the necessity of the latter's submission to the requirements of the nature and structure of the former.

(b) But "existential philosophy" in its special sense — and this is the technical sense by which it has come to be known — is the philosophy that begins from human being, from the humanity of man, and all of whose effort is confined within the understanding and analysis of this being. The word "being," in this sense, contracts in scope until it is confined to human being. But the existential philosopher trusts that this contraction in scope is justified in the end by the fact that it contracts to the point where the "density of value" is concentrated: for human being, which is a part of being in general, is the cream of that more general being, its center of gravity, the locus where the highest values are gathered, the seat where the spiritual values are massed. Therefore the existential philosopher sees nothing better than this contraction in scope, so long as it is justified and compensated by an increase in value.

I must say a word here about the expression "being." The more correct thing would be for existential philosophy to be styled "the philosophy of life," after life, were it not that "life" is a term which has acquired, thanks to science, a special biological cast, and has broadened until it embraces non-human creatures, such as animals and plants. If there were a word denoting human life alone, it would be better for the philosophy to be named after it than after being, as is now the case. For the phrase "existential philosophy" now, in its specialized sense, is confounded with the comprehensive sense mentioned above.

The Presuppositions of Existential Philosophy Compared with the Implications of Non-Existential Philosophy

In what has gone before I have defined the outer scope within which existential philosophy arises. But this definition tells us nothing whatever of its true nature; it merely points us to the seat from which it springs.

True acquaintance with existential philosophy must come through acquaintance with its fundamental implications, and these are not truly understood except by comparison with the contrary implications of the non-existential philosophies — of the metaphysical philosophies generally, as history has known them. Let us set out these implications, comparing them quickly.

(a) We may contrast these two types of philosophy, first, in respect of the origin of each.

The "non-existential" philosophy — let us call it, so as to embrace all the various philosophies that fall within it, Academic Philosophy — arises from a "desire for knowledge" which is in truth a kind of "curiosity." Long ago Aristotle said that philosophy has its origin in "wonder," or "perplexity," or "questioning," or "astonishment." In this sense it seeks knowledge as an end in itself, and sets out to know in order to be rid of ignorance. Knowledge, in its view, is a value in itself, and ignorance a "disvalue" in itself.

Existential philosophy, however, arises not from this "desire," but from an existential "anxiety" that seizes the philosopher and robs him of rest. It is an anxiety that touches his being and shakes it to its foundations: for it is an anxiety bound up with the problems that touch human being at its very core.

In this connection we may distinguish the "starting point" of each of the two philosophical types: we may say that academic philosophy treats "philosophical questions," while existential philosophy treats "existential problems."

And on the basis of all this we may distinguish the two philosophers. If we resort to the distinction Pythagoras drew among men — saying that life is like a contest, and that people fall into classes: some are the contestants, some the spectators of the contest, and some those who turn the contest to profit — we may say that the existential philosopher is among the contestants in life, while the academic philosopher is among the spectators of the contest.

(b) The second fundamental distinction is a distinction between the subjects of the two types of philosophy. Academic philosophy has for its subject the knowledge of truth, meaning "the first principle of existence," or "the structure of existence." Here arises metaphysics in its special sense — ontology.

Existential philosophy, however, has for its first and last subject human being and its problems. And the centering of existential philosophy upon the human problem is something that binds it to ethics, religion, politics, society, and all the problems of the human personality, and to God — before it binds it to nature and its laws and structures, and to existence in general and its principal categories.

(c) The third distinction follows from these two: these two philosophical types differ in their kind. Academic philosophy is an intellectual philosophy, in which the mind treats a "question" in the abstract, as though it were amusing itself with the solving of riddles. It is no exaggeration to call it, in its treatment, a mind indifferent to the result — disinterested. It does not matter to the mind what result it reaches; what matters to it is the clarity of the result and its logical coherence, in harmony with the other truths. Hence arose Aristotle's saying that true philosophy is a "useless" effort, a "luxurious" effort. Existential philosophy, however, is a philosophy that does not abstract the mind from the human being in his entirety — from his consciousness and his unconscious, from his hidden impulses and his desires, from his heart and his conscience. It therefore cannot be indifferent; rather it cares with all caring and concerns itself with all concern. It watches, with attentiveness and care and concern, the course of its treatment of its problems, and the results it reaches, because they are the problems of its life or its death, its anxious existential problems. Existential philosophy counts itself not among the luxuries but among the necessities. And here applies what Socrates said about the raising of problems: that the life in which these problems are not raised is not worth the living. The existential philosopher, faced with the problems of his destiny and his being and his values, cannot amuse himself with indifferent spectatorship; rather he pours himself out upon his problems — an outpouring that embraces all his powers, an outpouring not intellectual only but total!

(d) The fourth distinction concerns the results of the two philosophical types. The result of academic philosophy is a theoretical, intellectual harmony and clarity. Existential philosophy, however, does not exist unless it expresses itself — from within its own measure and bond — by its fusion with the life of the philosopher. Existential philosophy does not stand apart from human life as an independent, self-subsistent effort, as a circle of life closed upon itself: existential philosophy enters into the very core of life, and this entering belongs to its own core. Existential philosophy acts in life, and it does not exist if it exists only in the thinking mind and is not manifested also in the life of the thinker. Existential philosophy refuses to acknowledge the partitioning of human being into different circles of activity; rather it sees in these circles an organic cohesion and interpenetration. Existential philosophy, which refuses to grant the abstraction of the mind at the origin of philosophy and in the course of the philosophical process, refuses also, in a special way, to grant the abstraction of the mind in the result of philosophy. For the mind is a part of life: by life it is affected in the raising of problems and in their treatment, and upon life it acts once it has reached the result. Indeed, existential philosophy holds that the truth it seeks is not theories of finished formulation, not opinions or conceptions, but life. And existential philosophy holds that it does not attain this truth theoretically; it attains it when this truth is made manifest in the soul of the philosopher, when the philosopher's new life springs forth — and that is truth itself! Truth is the inwardness of man, not one object among man's objects. Truth is human life. "The Word," in existential philosophy, does not symbolize theories, but flesh and blood that make, among us, a man... (in the expression of John the Evangelist).

(e) The two philosophical types differ, finally, in the form in which each expresses itself. Academic philosophy creates philosophical systems — cast, cohesive, harmonious. In the philosophical system we find this philosophy a center for every truth it reaches, and an answer for every question; so there arises for it a system like the system of Aristotle, or of the Scholastic school, or of Hegel, or systems less finished than these in their casting, but rivaling them in the intention of casting, like the systems of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Royce, and Whitehead. And by the measure of how far the philosopher has attained a system tightly cast, closed upon itself, clasping truth to its breast in monopoly, academic philosophy measures the philosopher's success or his failure.

Existential philosophy, however, holds that its final concern must not lie in this rigid logical formulation; it must turn rather to going deep in the treatment of problems, and to the inward, personal appropriation of the truth attained. And who knows — perhaps human being is built upon a fundamental contradiction, such that it does not permit of the cast system? Who knows — perhaps the truths of our being are in themselves a seething revolt, rebelling against their own actuality, refusing to be confined in theories beautifully formulated? The existential philosopher does not care, in the first place, to arrive at a philosophical system, but to be faithful to his own soul in treating its problems, and in the anxious, violent verification of himself within its contradiction. A sinner, he seeks salvation; limited in his actuality, he refuses limitation in his hopes; a slave to nature and to others, he refuses

slavery, and seeks the freedom of his soul, and refuses to be enslaved even by his very freedom; alone, melancholy in his solitude, he refuses to surrender this solitude for a superficial sociability which is a kind of annihilation of his personality. In these contradictions he is too rich for his actuality to be confined in a geometrical system of exquisite casting, which freezes his vitality and petrifies his being, so that the theoretical mind may enjoy gazing a while at this sublime object before it: this object of which, for all its beauty and its casting, we can say everything — except that it represents life!

A Historical Sketch

Existential philosophy began not as a philosophical type standing by itself, but as an unconscious tendency, peering out shyly within the general current of philosophy. Perhaps we glimpse some of its first beginnings, at the very outset, in the Sophists, who — despite their slidings into relativism and the pursuit of success and appearances — inclined toward the right direction in their turning away from the cosmological and quasi-metaphysical speculations of the older Greek philosophers.

Then this tendency showed itself more clearly in Socrates: who restored to man his central place among the problems of philosophy, and refused, in his thinking, to stray far from man and his problems. But the Socrates we know is the Platonic Socrates, the Socrates cloaked in Plato's metaphysics. And no sooner had Aristotle come, and after him the various Greek philosophical currents, than living man had been lost among the various problems of philosophy, and the anxious, concerned thinking had been lost within the folds of abstract scientific-metaphysical thinking. Finally came Neoplatonism, and it flooded the existential tendency and smothered it.

Nor let us forget to mention Stoicism, which, for all the error of its conclusions, followed a not unworthy existential path in the problems it raises.

Then came Christianity, and we may say that Christ gives true expression to the concerns of pure existential thought. But Paul and John shifted the center of gravity in Christianity from existential concerns to the domain of theology, and set doctrine in the place of life in Christianity. In this they were followed by the Church Fathers, who represent the ascendancy of the Greek, metaphysical, theological spirit over the personal, existential Christian spirit. Exceptional among them was Augustine, who inclined somewhat toward existential thinking; and his "Confessions" are an inexhaustible spring for existential thought, for they are in truth the story of a life, not the defense of a doctrine — and the doctrine in them is manifested only in the life. Christian thought thereafter, especially owing to the dominance of Aristotle, continued to incline toward non-existential thought, until the "Scholastic" tradition came to fix the dominance of that thought. But let us not forget that in Christian life there were always those who drew their inspiration not from the Church's theological heritage, nor from the Greeks, but from the person of Christ; and therefore in the saints — in their lives and in their writings — we find what we may call a true existential thought.

Then came the modern ages, and both tendencies were represented in them. In the age in which Descartes and Spinoza, Hobbes and Locke arose, and which prepared the way for Kant and Hegel, we did not lack the likes of Pascal in France and Bunyan in England, and some of the English poets such as John Donne and the school of the metaphysical poets. But the most important of them all is Pascal, in whom the existential tendency was embodied to a far degree.

Then the age of metaphysics and academic philosophy prevailed — save for Pascal and the groups resembling him — until Hegel came, representing the abstract academic system of thought. Then Kierkegaard burst forth in revolt against him; and it was Kierkegaard who coined the phrase "existential philosophy," and he who carried it over from a tendency toward a philosophical method into a distinct type of thought. In Kierkegaard, then, existential philosophy opens upon a new epoch in its history: the conscious epoch.

Since Kierkegaard's time, these two types of philosophy have been in contention for mastery. And let us not forget that the nineteenth century, the age of Kierkegaard, witnessed the completion of a tendency in human civilization which began with the beginning of the modern ages: the tendency of revolt against the values of the ancient and medieval ages, the values of Greece and of Christianity, and the undertaking of life in reliance upon man's reason and his bare natural powers. This tendency bore its fruit in the chaos that began in the nineteenth century and continues still — and this war is among its fruits. In a chaos such as this, man's return to himself becomes easy. And in man's return to himself, existential philosophy finds fertile soil.

Hence we find today, in philosophy, the likes of Heidegger and Jaspers — both of them leaders of Western thought — existential in their tendency. And we find in theology Emil Brunner, one of the leaders of Protestant theology, who has begun to incline toward existentialism in his philosophy and his theology; and likewise Karl Barth and Karl Heim, to a lesser degree. In theological philosophy we find Berdyaev, the Orthodox, inclining with a strong personal existential tendency; and likewise we find the Jewish theologian Martin Buber, professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a man of worldwide intellectual standing, inclining with a religious-philosophical tendency toward existentialism. Nor let us forget, among the philosophers, Nietzsche in the nineteenth century, and among the novelists, Dostoevsky.

And alongside this current — I call it a current, because it does not yet form a tradition — let us not forget the contrary currents: such as the intellectual currents tending toward science, or toward metaphysics. Nor let us forget the special current tending toward theology and Scholastic philosophy, laboring to redirect attention toward the Thomist heritage, represented in particular by the Frenchman Jacques Maritain.