WAKING LIFE: EXISTENTIALISM
The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiousity is that I think it has something very important to offer us for the new century. I’m afraid we’re losing the real virtues of living life passionately, in the sense of taking responsibility for who you are — the ability to make something of yourself, and feeling good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it’s a philosophy of despair, but I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre, once interviewed, said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. But one thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance of feeling on top of it. It’s like: your life is yours to create.
I’ve read the post-modernists with some interest, even admiration. But when I read them, I always have this awful, nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more that you talk about a person as a social construction, or as a confluence of forces, or as fragmented, or marginalised, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he’s not talking about something abstract. He’s not talking about the kind of “self” or “soul” that theologians would argue about. It’s something very concrete; it’s you and me talking; it’s making decisions; it’s doing things and taking the consequences.
It might be true that there are 6 billion people in the world and counting, but nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference first of all in material terms; it makes a difference to other people; and it sets an example. And in short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It’s always our decision who we are.
