[MD] Does Existence precede Essence?

[Matt Kundert]

Ham, Marsha, DMB,

Ah, the existentialists.  If Plato is the birth of philosophy, then the 
existentialists are the teenagers.

My two cents:

I think DMB's basically right when he says, "existentialism is basically one 
of the symptoms of a disease callled SOM", though I think he's more right 
when he adds "its part of an historical process."  Sartre considered himself 
to be something of a Cartesian, and that's important.  I think Sartre was 
trying to shrug off Platonism--SOM--but instead (like Nietzsche before him) 
only got as far as inverting it, which produces some weird side effects.  
The degree to which DMB is basically right is the degree to which his 
professor is basically right in saying, "existentialism is not a philosophy. 
Its a mood."  The way I see it, beginning with Kierkegaard, the philosophers 
labeled "existentialists" (which is kind of a passe label these days) were 
attempting to shrug off Platonic philosophy, which for Platonists (i.e., 
academics) is the only kind of philosophy--so existentialists don't look to 
them like philosophers at all (which isn't to imply anything about DMB's 
professor).  Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are basically the grandfathers of the 
20th century's "end of philosophy" debates which take place around 
Continental post-structuralists (like Derrida and Foucault) and American 
pragmatists.  Traditional philosophers (like phenomenologists and 
positivists) don't think the other side is doing philosophy at all, and the 
other side thinks the traditionals are doing either bad or pointless 
philosophy.

The difference between those two choices, bad or pointless, is basically the 
difference between the existentialists and the pragmatists.  Philosophers 
like Sartre basically thought they could beat the Platonists at their own 
game.  They thought they could invert the playing board and win where the 
Platonists always lost, rather than just kicking over the table and doing 
something else as the pragmatists suggest doing.

So, in other words, if Sartre _had_ just been parroting a mood (like, say, 
Thomas Mann was), he would have been much better off (philosophically, that 
is).  It's because he tried to build a philosophy out of it that got him in 
trouble, that caused him to produce just one more footnote to Plato, one 
more symptom of SOM.  In the particular, what was produced was the idea that 
since God is Dead, Everything is Meaningless/Permitted.  This is just silly. 
  It is the mirror image of Platonism.  The dialectical movement goes like 
this: Platonism produces Absolute Truth.  Earthly truths are parasitic on 
Absolute Truth.  History has shown us (and Nietzsche finally pronounced) 
Absolute Truth is Dead, a mirage, an illusion.  That means our earthly 
truths are parasitic on a big gaping hole.  And that means that these 
earthly truths have no purchase on anything, and slip around wherever you 
want them to, which means that everything is meaningless because Absolute 
Truth is what gave our truths meaning.

But that conclusion is a lame duck because it is parasitic on the same 
picture Platonists take for granted: Absolute Truth contrasted with earthly 
truths.  If we dump that picture, it just means that the junking of Absolute 
Truth simply tells us that earthly truths are all we've _ever_ had, so we'll 
get along in the future just as we have in the past: full of as much meaning 
and truth and knowledge as ever.

Existentialism was a halfway house.  I think the best way to construe the 
"existence precedes essence" slogan is not as Marsha's suggestion of 
"experience precedes thought" nor "event precedes definition" (thought its 
better), and definitely not Ham's materialistic gloss, but something like 
this: the gist of what the existentialists were up to is the reversal of the 
primacy of essence to existence, that existence mirrors already in place 
essences (like Plato's Realm of Forms being mirrored by the Realm of 
Phenomena). Existence is primary to essence, which means that we create 
essences, which, following the line of thought to completion (which many of 
the original existentialists didn't do), means that talk about "essences" 
and "primacy" doesn't make a lot of sense anymore.

In other words, the slogan should suggest to us that we dump the distinction 
in the first place (which is what all of the other glosses should suggest, 
too).

So, DMB's basically right in saying existentialism is part of the grieving 
process over our patricide of God. Or, it is just one more stage of maturity 
to grow up from.  I still find some of existentialism's slogans useful (like 
the "existence precedes essence" one), but usually only for shaking people 
out of Platonic doledrums.  Otherwise they just take for granted what we 
want to get rid of.

Matt

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