Much Widom, Much Grief Chris Selmys Originally published in Issue VIII of Vulgata, July 2002.

by Chris Selmys

Philosophies that do not contain even a grain of truth are very rare. Only the most total incompetence, married to rather severe self-deception can result in a system of thought that is wholly without worth. I would therefore like to draw attention to a movement, indeed one of the major philosophical movements of the Twentieth century, which for practical purposes seems to be mostly considered devoid of value by Christians.  I am speaking of existentialism. This movement has impacted the modern outlook in a number of important ways and its primary thinkers are for the most part people of exceptionally keen intelligence who very sincerely sought the truth. More importantly, though, while the conclusions (or lack thereof) arrived at by existentialist thinkers are usually flawed, the experiences and observations of reality that sparked their thought offer valuable insights into the human condition that can, and should, be applied to Christianity.

The Problem of Meaning

Our first difficulty will be to discover what exactly is meant by the term "existentialism", as there is very little unity among the thinkers so labeled and most of them actually resist rallying under that banner. Fortunately, there is something which unifies the movement and which causes philosophies to be described as existentialist. Unfortunately, it is difficult to put one's finger on precisely what that something is. People periodically offer answers which are satisfying to varying degrees. One claim is that existentialism is a philosophy of despair, that "the old atheism is an atheism of skepticism, the new atheism is an atheism of despair."  While this is certainly a major feature of much existentialist thought -- Sartre  wanted existentialism to be the philosophy of godless world and saw despair of any higher purpose as an essential element of his philosophy -- there are many existentialists who reject despair, and even several (Kierkegaard, Berdyaev and Dostoyevsky, for example) who accept the existence of God. I would be inclined to suggest that the common ground is rather a set of experiences than a set of axioms. Existentialism is a philosophy that arises out of "angst," or the experience of the need for answers to the most fundamental questions of human existence. An existentialist is someone, always an intellectual as far as I know, who reaches a point of crisis in their lives, a crisis so intense and consuming that they cannot move beyond or around it until it is utterly resolved and whose effects extend like poisonous tendrils into every aspect of life. Whatever external limbs and flourishes there may be, the central question will always in some way concern meaning, though it can be articulated in different ways. As far as the meaning of life in general goes, we can flip open the Baltimore Catechism for a quick, succinct answer - "God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next". An atheist who  settles down to the task of sorting out what his life is about and feels it in his bones that he cannot rest until the answer is in sight, is in big trouble. When a towering intellect brings the God shaped hole in their lives or the one in modernist society into sharp focus it is a terrifying experience. Someone who fixes their gaze on this abyss becomes hypnotized by it and is engulfed by despair if they cannot invite God to come and fill it. The meditations of those who have stared long into this darkness and kept their grip on their sanity (as well as a few of those who did not) are full of valuable observations about the human condition on both the personal and abstract scale. Accompanying this general angst, is the experience of the magnitude of certain facts of human life that are often taken for granted.

The Problem of Morality

While most existentialists reject the idea of a divine law and do not believe in absolute morality, they do believe in something called authenticity. By this they mean that one must strip oneself of pretences, that one must attempt to live in accord with what they know to be true, and they don't mean by this living out what you happen to have chosen to believe is true. One of the major ideas in existentialism is the idea of "bad faith," of believing something which you know to be untrue because it is easier to believe it. For example, a woman who knows that her husband is cheating on her but convinces herself that he is not in order to avoid a confrontation would be acting in bad faith. Unfortunately, the existentialists take this too far, often assuming that any sort of belief that would eliminate existential angst must be based on bad faith. Thus, belief in God, or in the objective meaningfulness of life, are assumed to be based on a desire to believe rather than on good reason to believe. In many cases, they become afraid of believing in anything because they fear that their belief will be nothing more than self-delusion. Having seen through whatever belief system they held prior to existentialism, they are terribly afraid of accepting a new belief system that they will be unable to see through.

Someone in this situation would be wise to ask where this fear comes from. What is the importance of believing what is true if truth is ultimately irrelevant or undiscoverable? This commitment to truth is either bad faith in and of itself, springing from a desire to believe in a truth that does not exist, or else it points to the existence of a real truth that is not a delusion but an answer to our existential angst. Existentialists should also consider whether they might prefer that there were no truth. If you reject God and meaningfulness, but are unwilling to accept the implications of a universe in which God exists, then might not your commitment to atheism and meaninglessness be an instance of bad faith? The assumption that theism is likely to be based on bad faith includes an assumption that most people would prefer to believe that God exists. It is certain that many people do prefer to believe that some sort of divine power exists to provide meaning, miracles and comfort, but it is common for this entity to resemble a big fuzzy teddy bear in the sky much more than it resembles the Lord God of Israel. It is somewhat more difficult to demonstrate that people prefer to believe in a God who makes real, difficult moral demands on us. While there are undoubtedly some atheists who have rejected God for honest intellectual reasons, there are far more who have rejected Him because He demands an hour of time on Sundays, or because He interferes with their sexual freedom. Any existentialist who would be unwilling to sacrifice these things for the sake of God is guilty of bad faith in denying His existence -- their desire for self-determination and moral relativism provides more than adequate reason for preferring to believe in God's non-existence.

The Problem of Freedom

One of the movements major concerns is the idea that it is impossible to avoid making choices. We are constantly exercising our free will, and in any given situation we must make numerous decisions. Indeed, choosing "not to choose" is considered a clear instance of bad faith -- it is an attempt to convince yourself that you are not choosing when in fact you are choosing inaction. With this constant and inescapable exercise of the will comes a constant and inescapable responsibility -- we are ultimately in command of our own actions, and we alone are to blame for the consequences of those actions.

Try to be astonished at the fact that you posses the faculty of free will because it really should inspire wonder and awe and doesn’t very often. Also note that we don't actually consciously exercise it very often. The brain cannot process all physical data simultaneously but reduces things to abstract categories (there are some cars going by on the road, as opposed to, there is a blue Dodge Caravan with black stripes on the side, four doors, license plate KUB 945 …) and focuses the most important aspects of our surroundings (if I am typing I will notice the keyboard and the monitor, but not the speakers or the statue of St. Francis that are also in my immediate vicinity. If I need to sneeze, I will shift my focus so that I am aware of the box of hankies, which was in my field of vision all along, and so forth.) In the same way, we reduce an almost infinite number of potential choices to a manageable number in order to be able to act. Thus, while I could just as easily pick up and hitch-hike to Nova Scotia instead of finishing to write this sentence, I don't usually perceive these as potential options when I am trying to decide what word to use next. In order to make our freedom manageable, we reduce it to formulae and habits which instruct us in what choices are "possible" or "reasonable" given our current situation. In some cases this is a good thing, but it can also result in habitual behaviour that makes us miserable and prevents us from noticing that we do have other options. Unfortunately, it is possible to take it in the wrong direction. Left without an absolute moral reference point, responsibility becomes nothing more than an immediate physical and psychological concern, and belief in it can become an excuse not to offer compassion to those who have suffered as a result of their own mistakes. It also fails to provide a context in which suffering is explicable unless it comes as the result of our own choices. Thus, Simone de Baeuvior saw her mother's cancer as an unjust imposition on her "right" to a life free of externally imposed suffering. What begins as a powerfully liberating observation becomes "a prison." We have no choice but to choose, we cannot escape from the consequences of our choices, and on top of that we are confronted with suffering that we did not cause, with situations where it seems that no choice will allow us happiness.

It is interesting that, once God is eliminated, even the greatest of blessings becomes an unbearable curse (an insight, perhaps, into the psychology of Hell.) We possess free will in the likeness of God, and only in the light of God's presence can we make sense of our freedom, or of its attendant responsibility. In God we find a basis upon which to make sense of our free will, and upon which to make sense of situations where suffering imposes itself against our will and in spite of our choices. We are no longer caught between an unmanageable number of options or mere habit, instead we are called to recognize that in every moment there is something which God intends for us to do. Submission to the will of God provides a framework in which to make meaningful choices, it provides an escape from the perception of freedom as a prison, because it renders our choices liberating instead of confining. By uniting our will, which God has given us, to His, which is perfect, we neither leave His precious gift unopened to gather dust nor collapse under a burden to great for us to bear alone.  Dostoyevsky reached to the pith and kernel of the matter when he wrote that "A man who does not bow down to God can never bear the burden of himself".

There is also something valuable to be taken from the idea that our freedom is far more extreme than we usually perceive it to be. For Christians it functions as a warning against complacency. Whenever we live according to simple habit, and exclude possibilities that lie outside of our comfortable boundaries, there is a risk that we are excluding the very things that God wills for us. When we look at the lives of the Saints we see people who are constantly being challenged to move outside of their comfort zone, to do things that seem absurd or even insane, but which yield incredible fruit. This does not mean that we should seek to do the ridiculous, but rather that we should always be open to the possibility that God is calling us to do things that lie outside of our routines. There is a saying whose source I was unable to trace which goes "Whenever I think that I have fully surrendered my life to God, He asks me for something that I am unwilling to give up", and it is perfectly true. Even more importantly, we must be on guard against habitual reactions that may prevent us from receiving God's grace. We must be conscious that we choose not only what we do, but also how we react to the events of our lives, and we must try to choose our reactions in accord with the promptings of the Holy Spirit instead of simply allowing ourselves to react out of our sinful nature. If we take this knowledge of the power of our freedom, and place our will in the hands of God, then we become liberated from habit and drudgery, and become able to reach holiness in every calling and situation.

The problem of mortality

Several existentialists have observed that people do not live as if they were mortal. Most human action, they say, makes more sense if we assume that people believe themselves to be immortal. In its purest form, this idea makes a certain amount of sense. We spend a great deal of the time given to us carefully wasting it. We do many things which neither contribute to our own happiness, the happiness of others or any other sensible motivation. Now there is a certain amount of disagreement as to what sort of activities fall into this category. Most existentialist thinkers, observing the modern wasteland, have little to no consciousness of the dignity of manual labour, of "menial" office work, or even of home-making, which they see as drudgery. Thus the majority of human activity becomes classed as "a waste of time," in the sense that most people's lives are largely consumed by "meaningless" work which does not make them happy. Others are a great deal more moderate and recognize that, besides the more pleasurable pursuits, there is a need to provide for the basic necessities of life. This mentality arises from an exaggerated consciousness of mortality, coupled with a disbelief in any sort of after-life. It's advocates believe that one should live every day as if it were likely to be their last, and thus they find it tragic that a man might spend the majority of his waking hours making cardboard boxes.

Hidden within this concept of reality are a couple of assumptions. The first is that human happiness lies in self-fulfillment, as opposed to service to others. Thus, the life of someone who has poured themselves out for  the sake of their family becomes a tragedy and a waste. Secondly, there is a failure to recognize the difference between living as if you had only a week to live, and living as if you had another 40 years. Obviously if you thought it likely that you were going to die next Tuesday, you would not go into the office and spend your last precious moments typing memos. You would almost certainly recognize that your beloved descendents would rather you gave them your time in your last days than that you left them a few extra dollars. On the other hand, if you think it likely that you will need to provide for your family and for your own needs for the next twenty plus years, it makes sense to try to get and keep a job. If you are not able to find a job that would be considered "meaningful" or "fulfilling" by middle-class university undergrads, then it still makes sense to get whatever employment you are qualified for. To do otherwise is not to recognize your mortality, it is to fail to recognize your basic human need for food and shelter. Finally, there is the assumption that most people do not find their work meaningful or fulfilling. There is a failure to recognize the pride that a brick-layer may have in building good houses, or the love of family that renders a homemaker's sacrifices worthwhile.

Alternatively, there are truths contained in this perception. For one thing, the perception of the meaninglessness of work arises more naturally in a society where "human resources" are simply seen as a means of creating profits and many products are made to fulfil artificial needs invented by advertisers. The degradation of human labour is a genuine problem, and one which Christians must strive to remedy. Secondly, while "wasted time" does not constitute the majority of human activity, an alarming amount of our time really is absorbed by activities that don't serve any function except to waste time. We will watch hour upon hour of television without receiving any fulfillment or even relaxation. We act, in these cases, almost as if we had an eternity which needed to somehow be whittled down with fluff and padding. Try to think of the longest hour you ever spent and then remind yourself that every single day contains at least 16 of them.

Most importantly, though, it is accurate to note that most people do not seem to live in the consciousness of their final destiny. While this observation does present existentialists with a certain amount of anguish, it should trouble Christians far more. While they believe that people are wasting the precious seconds of an all too finite life, we believe that our actions in this life have eternal consequences. We have been given our time, just as the servants in the parable were given their talents, and we know that in the end we are going to be called to account for how we have spent it. After very little thought most people will come to the conclusion that there are thousands of hours that are going to be a little bit hard to explain. This is not to suggest that we should not have relaxation time, but rather that we should actually spend our leisure time relaxing and enjoying ourselves rather than simply letting it drain away in mindless pursuits that leave us feeling as if we had no time off in the first place.

The problem of subjectivity

We are not usually aware of the personhood of other people. Obviously we recognize it in an abstract, intellectual sense, but what about in practice? Let's not kid ourselves, we usually see others only in terms of their relationship to ourselves. We see who they are to us, what they do for us, what our duties towards them are, how we feel about them, and so forth. Now I'm not knocking this or even really suggesting that there is any other way to see it, but we should be aware of it. Rarely are we really fully conscious that behind the behaviours that we can perceive lies a consciousness as intricate and as real as our own. If we try to overcome this, to put ourselves in their shoes, so to speak, our attempts really just involve taking our own experiences and trying to apply them to what we know of the other person's situation. Thus, if someone loses their mother, we try to empathize by imagining what we would feel like if we lost our mother. Ultimately, though, this cannot bridge the divide. It does not allow us to experience the situation as they would, it does not allow us to enter into the complex interplay of past experience and present emotion that makes their particular experience of grief, or joy, or love unique. We can only understand other people by simile, by comparison with ourselves.
The existentialists have built up a great deal of philosophy on this premise. We are trapped, they say, within our own subjectivity. We can never really understand what it would be like to experience another person's "I", and, in turn, no one, no matter how well they know us, can ever really understand who we are on the most fundamental level. This leads to a fundamental alienation in which everyone is seen as an "outsider" in relation to everyone else. Albert Camus he said that man was doomed to be a stranger in the world since he has no genuine relation to anyone, either God or neighbour.  This has drastic implications for human communications. Indeed, some thinkers have gone so far as to suggest that human communication is ultimately meaningless, that we are unable to really communicate ourselves to another person. For example, when I say "I love you," and I mean by that a certain type of subjective experience, I assume that you have had a similar experience by which you can relate to mine. But, they say, there is no real reason to think that the word relates to the same experience in any two given people -- we may well assume a correlation when in fact, there is none.

Does this seem a little bit extreme? Well, it is. The most of incredible thing about language is that it really does work. There are cases, obviously, of cross communication, but there is ample evidence that, in spite of the problems that sometimes arise, we are really able to communicate. We must however recognize that this philosophy of subjectivity follows perfectly naturally from atheism. The profound sense of loneliness which prompts this particular branch of existentialist thought is real, and we must address it and it's causes if we are to bring the gospel to those suffering from this feeling of alienation. The desire to be perfectly known and perfectly understood is a genuine human need, and it is one that can only be met by God. Therefore, if someone does not have God in their life, it is only natural that they should seek for this kind of intimate knowledge in other human beings. Unfortunately, the search is doomed to failure -- no mere human, no matter how loving and compassionate, can ever enter into the most intimate depths of another person's soul. Fulton Sheen talks about this when he discusses the disappointment that modern people ultimately find in sex. At the moment when they most desire to be completely united with another person -- at the moment when they expect to find ecstasy and epiphany in the knowledge of the other -- they are thrown back upon themselves.

God alone can enter into the centre of our subjectivity, and He alone understands the depths of our heart. If we refuse to acknowledge Him, then we are condemned to a deep feeling of loneliness. If we embrace Him, not only do we gain the knowledge that we are perfectly understood, but we also become, more and more, able to transcend our own subjectivity and to see others as Christ sees them. By participating in Christ's life, we are able, in a sense, to participate in His objectivity. This is why the Saints are often said to give the impression that they really "know" or "understand" you mere moments after meeting them. That is why so many in the World Youth Day crowd felt that the Pope was talking to them personally and that he understood who they were.

If we are to minister to those in this state of deep loneliness, we must allow Christ to transform our understanding of other people. The existentialists have noticed a tremendously important fact: that every person is completely unique, and that every person is just as human as we are. While this knowledge, in the darkness of atheism, leads only to loneliness, in the light of Christ it must lead to a deep compassion and appreciation for the dignity and beauty of the person. We must recognize that every person is equally a child of God, and that every person is just as "deep" and individual as we are. God doesn't use a cookie cutter to make people.
We must also try to be, more and more, the people who God created us to be. Real people are infinitely more fascinating than the cardboard archetypes that society offers us to imitate. The reason is that human beings only have a limited number of ideas. Whereas every person is God's idea and God has an infinite number of unique ideas, all of them fascinating and unpredictable.

The observations of the existentialists are usually observations of reality. If they are accompanied and interpreted, however, in the light of a fundamental despair, then they can only lead to a profound sense of loneliness, meaninglessness and imprisonment. We must, therefore, bring the light of the gospel to bear, so that from the midst of the existential crisis there arises a great liberation, a commitment to meaning, and a knowledge that God penetrates to the very heart of our being.