There is a feeling of discomfort in human life – the nauseating experience of having to think of oneself as condemned to a destiny that you alone as a human being have to make. Man, according to the French philosopher and Nobel Laureate Jean Paul Sartre, is what he makes of himself . This is the existential fulcrum in which thinking about man is anchored upon man himself. This means that man, and the very life that he lives, is an irreducible question, a question that he alone has to answer – not God, nor religion, but him. Existentialism, in this regard, puts man ahead of himself. Thus, human life and its very meaning, the values that man has to live, and the decisions that he has to make, depend solely on how man views himself as an actor in the world who is solely responsible for his life. Life is difficult but ultimately, we have no other choice but to live this life. To live this life we must, and we are in a world that constantly asks us why it matters that we find the very reason for us to be and to really live – and live well.
It is important to trace this existential turn in our quest for being human. It is the task at hand. It is our task. If we examine the history of human thought, the advent of man came about during the modern period. Modernity set the stage for the human drama and equipped humans with the implements for his rise. The discovery of the cogito, the thinking self, has become the foundation of what knowledge is. With this, man gave power unto himself to transform nature and put nature unto his disposal. Thus, ultimately, what nature means depends on man, for truth now is not truth, but truth for man, from a “being in itself” to a “being for itself”.
But this “being for itself” or truth as “truth for man” gave man tremendous power and possibilities, most especially in the political realm. When power is translated into the public sphere, it can mean control. Thus, it is not only nature that is under man’s dominion, but the world itself and the lives of people. The way life is lived now depended on the way institutions are governed. Conflict, which becomes inevitable with the thirst for more power, defined the way things are.
The way things are never looked well during the early part of the past century. Think for instance of the Great War that devastated most of Europe, the Great Depression in the US, the persecution of the Jews during the 1930s by the Nazis and the forced collectivization of farms in Ukraine that killed a million in the resulting famine. With these events, people saw that life and only life is all that matters. Whatever happens to that life, it can be said, depends on the decisions that the human being makes. The whole of humanity is under the control of a few powerful individuals, and as such, the meaning of our humanity has been put to the test. Ultimately, we have to understand, that the failure of man is his failure, not another’s. One can be asked to serve one’s country during wars. But of course, one can choose not to. There is always a fundamental option for man. After all, it is his life. This, I believe, is the existential turn.
This existential turn became man’s search for meaning when the Second World War came. Millions of lives were lost at the fronts. Human life became miserable. Many have become victims of a man’s senseless greed for power. Adolf Hitler annihilated six million Jews in the concentration camps. Before the war, in the former USSR, Josef Stalin killed twenty million Russians who disagreed with him and the way he wanted Russia to move forward.
With the death of millions and the bleak future of millions more, men and women began to ask, what becomes of human life? What is the meaning of human life?
Europe, Japan and America emerged economically triumphant years later from the scars of the war. It’s not the same story for many others. Today, the world faces another war – a sense of hopelessness in the third world. Hundreds of millions live in extreme poverty. They basically have nothing. What value does life have for them? Thus, it matters that we ask what role people and just institutions have to play in order to liberate the poorest of the poor from the dungeons of poverty. In this regard, we need to morally examine the meaning of our humanity. Who are we? The existential drama that is human life therefore goes on, but it has now taken new frontiers, new twists and turning points, all important for man to take on seriously if he is to emerge triumphant in life.
No Exit: The Quest for Human Freedom
There is no exit. To respond to the question above, we have to begin with human freedom. Is man free? What does freedom mean? The argument runs that freedom means that man is in control of his destiny or that he is in charge of his life. In the absence of such, there is un-freedom. There is no such thing as a divine plan. Man himself creates and re-creates his destiny. Thus, man is the sole agent of change in his very life and the society where he lives. The world and human life as a whole, in this sense, depends ultimately on what man does. There are of course many impediments to the realization of human freedom. Culture, tradition, and the human condition can restrict people from doing what they think is right. However, these things do not eliminate the reality that man can be free, really free. Rather, they remind us of the extent to which we can be free to govern the way we live our lives. There is, in this sense, a social context to human freedom. But seen positively, this social context should be seen as enabling conditions, and not obstacles to human achievement and self-realization.
Thus, there is no other way except through freedom. Sartre says that “man is condemned to be free” . Man has to confront life. He or she has to face life’s responsibilities. B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two thought of man as a specimen in a scientific experiment. Behavior, Skinner argues, can be controlled. Thus, he believes that societies can be designed. This is done by planning and controlling man’s environment. Of course, as a rational being, man is aware of the things that influence or control the way life is lived. Skinner is therefore asking – why not educate our children on the scientific basis of what it is that we intend them to be? If we want society to be good, it would be very important that we prepare our children and provide them methodically and scientifically the necessary tools that will ultimately make them happy and contented human beings.
Of course, Skinner is wrong. He is wrong because man can never be reduced to the reactions he manifests to the stimuli found in his environment. Man can transcend his physical conditions. Think, for instance, of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR had polio, but that did not prevent him from becoming a great man. We are to be judged by history, not on the basis on our physical conditions, but on the basis of our decisions and the actions that follow them. Thus, man can go beyond his present situation. It is not a question about man being controlled by the world – it is all about man choosing the kind of world he wants to live in. It is this choice that will ultimately make the kind of person that he is.
The Renaissance and the Triumph of Human Reason
We can retrace the advent of man and find one of its sources in the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a period that brought glory to humankind. Modernity opened up a new world for man. With modernity came the advent of science. With science, man triumphed over nature. Thus, with science, man has discovered the power of the human mind.
Michelangelo’s David exemplifies the glory of human reason. David represents the perfect man. He is perfect in the sense that he was able to defeat a great enemy through the use of reason and skill. His enemy’s annihilation also represents man’s triumph over the vast power of nature. David, in this sense, is a symbol for power. Before modernity, nature seemed to be an insurmountable mystery.
Nature was conceived to be powerful and mighty, controlling human lives and the way the world has been. But with the discovery of the many laws underlying the behavior of nature, man was able to defeat uncertainty, ambiguity, and skepticism. Thus, with the triumph of man, as portrayed by David, human reason has put itself in a pedestal, forever glorified. This means that man is above his world, able to pursue his plans and define his world according to his will.
The Concept of Human Subjectivity
Subjectivity essentially means that each man possesses the freedom or the intrinsic capacity to look into the core of his being and ask himself questions about the truth of his or her life. It is man’s nature to be. Since being is a being for man, the truth of man therefore is the truth that his subjectivity, his reflexive self, brings. Truth, in this sense, is a truth for oneself.
Subjectivity implies that man is in search for his authenticity. But he or she looks for this meaning not merely in the factual or the practical. This is because man is not a mere collection of observable phenomena. Physicists can translate into laws what they observe. The same cannot be said of man. This is because as a subject, man is free.
Because man is a subject, man is a being for another. Man, in this sense, is a moral being. But goodness is something that we are free to choose. Evil, however, as exemplified by the fall of Adam, is also there. The fact that there is nothing automatic in man’s moral life implies that man as a subject is ultimately and fundamentally governed by his free nature.
To be a subject demands self-examination. This is because man is morally obliged to know himself if he or she wants to live well. Outside, there exists a crowd, a crowd that tempts every man and woman towards an inauthentic existence. Being dissolved in them means being dissolved in the “they-self” or the uncaring self that knows nothing except the pleasure of the crowd. It also means being immersed in routine where man loses his wonder and the hunger of the human spirit.
Fundamentally, man finds himself above the scheme of things. Thus, man must not simply go with the flow, as if he were some kind of a fallen nut dancing with the waves. Being a subject, he is an autonomous being, free to determine himself and become the person he wants himself or herself to be. Subjectivity, in this regard, implies human possibilities – possibilities for becoming, possibilities for self-realization. Take for instance a boy who collects trash. Every boy who does so is an unfinished task. But this boy and those around him has to see that he is an unfinished task. That life, in the end, will depend on how well he handles his life. It is about believing in what one can do to change life.
Man, finally, sees the meaning of his authentic humanness when he finds himself in charge of his life, in pursuit of his dreams, and in a position to say “yes to life”. He has to believe in his own capabilities. Man has to think that he is more than a faceless number, but a builder erecting the temples of human civilization, or a teacher drawing the truth in every student’s heart, or a postman who has the power to bridge people separated by mountains and seas.
The Meaning of Human Responsibility
The above means that man is a being in search for the meaning of his life. We are in constant pursuit of our happiness. Happiness, as Aristotle exclaims, is the end that we seek. In this sense, it matters that we know who we are and what life really is for. Knowing what life is for means that we take responsibility for that life. Only then can we be truly happy, for happiness means that we have fulfilled the very reason for our being, and thus we take joy in the fact that we have realized something good for someone.
To be human, in terms of the finality or end of human existence, means finding a life “one has reason to value”, notes the Indian philosopher Amartya Sen. For instance, we ask – Is human life really for God’s greater glory? In contemplating about the answer to this question, we should also ask ourselves – What does it mean to sacrifice one’s life for God? What does it mean to serve God? God is good. God is just. God is love. In this sense, to serve God therefore means not to desire harm to one’s fellowman. The greater glory of God also means the greater glory of our fellowmen by sharing with them love, the good, caring for them, being just and being responsible for their welfare.
The meaning of human life then is to be found in being with and for others. Being human therefore means that man is conscious of a world. It is a world that also suffers. To ask one’s self “Who am I?” is not to ask one’s self as in Alice in Wonderland, rather, it means to ask one’s self as to what the world really means, although in a rather cruel way, in terms of Charles Dickens exclaiming in A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” .
The real world is outside the confines of human thought. It is concrete. The real world is irreducible to the exemplars of Plato. The real world is cold, dangerous, and difficult. There are real people, hungry and agonizing. There are real situations – wars, famines, children scavenging for trash in order to survive. Then, there’s a real planet. The earth too, suffers. The destruction of the environment results to flooding, water crisis, and global warming. There is death. People are dying.
Thus, in order to live well, man should ask himself or herself what it is that he or she must do. There is no other option. We have to be responsible. To be truly human, fully human – we have to be responsible for the world and the future it may hold. It is a moral obligation, an inexcusable obligation.
