Sat 12 Nov 2005
Though theoretically, man can hold unswervingly to this atheistic philosophy, when one is confronted with the natural implications of such, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to consistently live this philosophy. The vast majority of existentialists therefore, live in a dichotomy; they think in evolutionary terms and except for selected areas live largely, under a system of implied absolutes in most areas of morals and truth.
The most ardent proponents of existentialism, when holding their newborn babies in hand for the first time, find it difficult to look upon their child as mere protoplasm. It is contradictory to “who we are”, to see humanity as a valueless, meaningless conglomerate of tissue that has, through the medium of chance in time evolved into a very sophisticated accidental biological machine. Those who accept this naturalistic presupposition can make no distinction between the value of a human life and the value of inanimate matter. That is, if they understand it properly.
David Brown, former executive director of the Sierra club, at least in theory, is closer to being consistent with his underlying presupposition, when he sees no difference in the value of a mountain and the value of a human being:
“While the death of young men is unfortunate, it is no more serious than the touching of mountains and wilderness areas by humankind.” (Sited in, B. Asmus’ Building an Unlimited Future, Imprimis, January 1992)
A more precise statement of this philosophy has not been stated since Ingrid Newkirk’s famous quote: “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” Newkirk was the president for the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals. This was quoted from Reader’s Digest in June 1990, in the article, The Animal Rights War on Medicine. It is perfectly logical, then, for the animal rights terrorists to poison foods intended for human consumption in protest of our use of rat poison. This is not to say that anyone should condone the abuse of any animals nor of the inanimate world that has been charged into our care. But, most of us are repulsed by the thought that human life is as valuable as that of a rat. Ironically, I find it ludicrous and vehemently illogical to protest the slaughter of animals such as the baby seal, while condoning the wholesale slaughter of unborn human beings through abortion. Yet, most of the liberals that are opposing the fur industry and the like are proponents of the abortion of human beings. How does that make sense?
Once society moved away from the premise that an almighty creator has imparted us with absolute truths and value and created us as human beings in His image, with a value that supersedes all surrounding creation, the confusion and injustice that followed was inevitable. As modern man approached the beginning of the twentieth century, a dark and ominous cloud had rolled over his optimistic hopes to find a cohesive, philosophical framework from a purely humanistic presupposition. Understanding the naked cruelty of such a mechanistic philosophy, pessimism set in and nihilism ran rampant. Man had reached what Francis Schaeffer referred to as the ‘line of despair.’
“Above the line, men were rationalistic optimists. They believed they could begin with themselves and draw a circle, which would encompass all thoughts of life, and life itself, without having to depart from the logic of antithesis. They thought that on their own, rationalistically, finite men could find a unity in the total diversity… but at a certain point, this attempt to spin out a unified optimistic humanism ceased. At this point, the philosophers came to the conclusion that they were not going to find a unified rationalistic circle that would contain all thoughts and in which they could live. (Francis Schaeffer, The God Who is There. Intervarsity press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1968, Pg. 17.)
Hegel’s approach to this dilemma was markedly different than Nietzsche. By creating the dialectic methodology he removed the straight line of previous logic and replaced it with an ever evolving and progressing triangle that he had hoped would become a mechanism for the evolution of truth.
Instead of logic on the basis of the antithesis as we had previously stated he now created a new synthesizing process. This methodology, he had hoped would enable man, through reason, to find this unified field of knowledge. But, this too proved to be ineffectual. As we consider the development of philosophy up to this point, the following diagram makes it a bit clearer.
Diagram - 4 Before the Line of Despair
Renaissance
| Optimistic, Rationalistic Humanism
|Kant
|
______________________________
| | |
Hegel Nihilism Neitzsche
————————————————————–Line of Despair
(Adapted from The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer)
Kierkegaard and the Line of Despair
It is precisely at this point that the thinking of Soren Kierkegaard crossed below, what Francis Schaeffer refers to as the line of despair and opened the door to modern, modern man. Kierkegaard came to the conclusion that man could not, by reason, arrive at synthesis. What he proposed revolutionized philosophy from that point forward. Instead of trying to find, through reason, a philosophy that could enclose all of human experience, he proposed that everything of real importance in life could only be achieved by a blind leap of faith. Pure reason could not bring man to metaphysical knowledge and since the advancements in rational science seemed to be in conflict with metaphysical thought, he came to the conclusion that the only way to reconcile them is by divorcing them.
In other words, he relegated to science and the inquiry of the mechanisms of the material world to a rational approach, but on the other hand, the inquiry of the meaning of life (metaphysics), morals (axiology), or the assertion of truth (epistemology), he claimed, could not be reached by rational means and so he relegated these across the line of despair to the realm of blind faith. Thus, crossing the line of despair, he severed the field of knowledge into two un-unifiable parts creating the divided field of knowledge:
Rationalism
Knowledge of our physical world Irrational Faith
-Time, matter, space: Knowledge of the phenomenal
(Understanding man the world; metaphysics, axiology,
‘animal’.) Epistemology: (Understanding man the ‘being’.)
The Line of Despair
DIAGRAM – 4 a The Divided Field of Knowledge
(Adapted from The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer)“…The important thing about him is that when he put forth the concept of a leap of faith, he became, in a real way, the father of all existential thought, both secular and theological.
As a result of this, from that time on, if rationalistic man wants to deal with the real things of human life (such as purpose, significance, the validity of love) he must discard rational thought about them and make a gigantic, non-rational leap of faith. The rationalistic framework had failed to produce an answer on the basis of reason and so all hope of a uniform field of knowledge had to be abandoned.” (Francis Schaeffer, The God Who is There, IVP, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1968, Pg. 22.)
The old idea championed by the Renaissance thinkers that optimistically hoped man could through reason find a way to unify in a system the universal and the particulars was now dead; it could not be done through reason alone; hence, the leap across the Line of Despair into the mystical and unverifiable through a blind leap of faith.
As we move further below the line of despair, into the twentieth century, two main branches of thought stem out from Kierkegaard’s thinking. On one side emerges modern secular existentialism and on the opposite side, as a mirror of the latter, religious existentialism.
Secular existentialist thought can be categorized in four main groups: German Existentialism as proposed by Martin Heidegger, French Existentialism as proposed by Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre (although there were some minor differences between these two), Swiss Existentialism as proposed by Karl Jaspers and lastly in our American society as of late, Maslow and Erikson, extrapolating from those before them, have cultivated a unique expression of American existentialism.
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