The Truman show and Sartre: how the Other can reduce me to an object?

How Sartre and The Truman show have common factor? The answer comes from the title of one of Sartre’s chapter, The look. In both case, the look has a major role.

We experience the world because the Others are looking at us. Actually, it is the case in The Truman show, Truman exists because Others are watching at him all the time, in fact, if the public decides to change the channel of the TV, Truman does not exist anymore. In this movie, Truman is reduced to an object, into the hands of director, even his meeting with Meryl is expected and orchestrated since his birth.

Truman, has some doubts, he feels he is observed, and he understands he cannot fight against that, as Sartre writes in Being and Nothingness: “I am vulnerable […] I occupy a place and that I can not in any case escape from the space in which I am without defense –in short, that I am seen”. Truman tries to escape from the place he lives, but he does not succeed.

At the beginning of the movie, we can consider Truman as “l’être en soi”, because he is unaware of him, in the sense that he ignores the truth and his freedom. But at the end, when he achieves his escape he becomes “l’être pour soi” because he is aware of his existence and of this capacity of freedom. But, during the movie, from the beginning to the end, he is “l’être pour autrui”. In fact, he exists thanks to and by the look of the Others. And it’s why, according to me, The Truman Show depicts the human reality.

“As an essential structure of a temporal-spatial situation in the world, I offer myself to the Other’s appraisal”. This idea of the Other’s appraisal is an important part of human being’s life. In fact, if the Other’s Look diverts from us, we cannot exist, as Truman. The Other’s appraisal makes us an object, but without it we can live. The Other by making us an object, allows to us to override of this object made by his sight, to become a person.

According to Sartre, the Other’s look is a real part of our existence. But nowadays, this last takes so much importance that people offer their image all the time, with for example the social network as Facebook, Snapchat or Twitter. And the entire humanity, with the expansion of the medias, become “l’autre pour autrui”. Moreover, there are some people whom need to flaunt to exist, as we can see with the TV reality show, and what sacres me is this kind of TV reality shows have a lot of audience.

To initiate a debate: Do you think we are leaving in a Truman Show world ?

COULD "BAD FAITH" BE LOTTE SCHWARTZ'S NICKNAME?

In Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre explains well that existence predates essence : it predates identity. Human beings are - first of all and forever - human beings. Nothing could be clearer! He defends the idea of the free will given to every human being. It is important for him that every one can choose what to be. Thus, he distinguishes three kind of existences : when a human being is conscious of his existence and his freedom so he's not like animals or objects that are just shapes, bodies with no conscious ; the third existence jeopardizes the authenticity of human beings as they start to live for others.

Then comes the "bad faith". Bad faith occurs when people feel "self-deception", when they start to as a social role and not as a human being instead. They believe their social status is the same as their human one. It is dangerous because people keep on performing the habits, the duties, the values they think are related to their human condition but is actually linked to their social role. They start to fear their true condition and seek for something else, as they consider themselves as non compliant to their role. Sartre indeed specifies "I am never one of my attitudes, any one of my actions", which means people can't be defined by their social role. In order to become authentic selves, people must seek a balance between their existence and their essence. 

What is intersting in Sartre's analysis is that, living bad faith, people will see their lives and act the way the others, the external subjectivity appears to want them to live it ; then it leads us to analyze the character of Lotte Schwartz in Being John Malkovich.

Lotte Schwartz is the main character's wife. She's kind of a passive and quiet woman who seems to forgive everything her husband does, she accepts him to come home late, doesn't insist when he says he doesn't want a baby, etc. Then, her husband tells her about the tunnel that leads to John Malkovich's head and she completely changes. She tells her husband that she wants to change her sex because she fells in love with Maxine - her husband's colleague. Thus, Maxine hangs out on several dates with John, as she perfectly knows Lotte's in his head. 

We could say that Lotte experiments bad faith as is ready to live her relationship with Maxine, her sexuality, in the body of someone else. As Sartre explained, she doesn't feel the will to have sex but her self is corrupted by the way Maxine looks at her. She slowly gives up on her idea of changing her sex as she believes she found her real identity in John's head and that she's not glad of her existence. 

She should stop seeing herself through Maxine's in order to remain authentic.

But as Maxine has a baby from John and decides to keep it - as a symbol of her love for Lotte - this one remains definitely lost in bad faith.

Happy Days: the incarnation of the fight against the human despair

      Happy Days is a play from the absurd current, written by Samuel Beckett, an Irish poet and playwright. This play is one of my favorite of the genre, certainly because it gives us a way of thinking when our human condition brings us down. Happy Days embodies the loneliness, the human despair, but also the way to fight against these struggles even if we are completely aware that there is no happy ending in life. 

This play is a real lesson of life, so if you are reading this blog and you have not read or seen it yet, I truly hope that I will tempt you !

STORY AND COMPLEXITY OF THE PLAY

Happy Days takes place in a desert, on a hill. Winnie, a 50-years old woman, is half-buried on the top of this hill, with her husband who stays quiet almost all the time. Winnie is half-wedged in this hill and does not try to exit it. She just looks around her - her purse, an umbrella- and leaves some stuff- glasses, a gun, some tissues,… -. She is talking to herself, prays and tries to wake his husband up, in vain. She keeps praying and talking alone, and complains about the difficulty of keeping fighting for "ending her day" that is to say to staying alive in this life of nonsense. Then a ring marks the end of the day, and the suffer of Winnie. Her behavior is absurd, and it does not make any sense. Willie, her husband, appears some times with a few sentences: « Pray, Winnie, this is the only thing to do » or « pray your old pray Winnie ».

During the second act, Winnie is now is buried until her neck. Her gun is clearly seen by the audience. The ring rings but she does not pray this time. She keeps talking to her husband, who does not answer. She keeps asking questions about her identity, her environment, her self. She is in an introspective part, but then the ring rings again and she expresses her happiness for the noises which help her to end her day. Her dialog becomes more and more non-comprehensive and violent. At a time, she realizes that she is hurt, and Willie climbs the hill to join her. Winnie expresses her joy to this moment, and keeps talking to her husband, without answers. Then Willie falls down to the hill, and stays down. He achieves to say « Win… », which makes Winnie terribly happy. And she keeps singing her song.

I truly know that this play seems to be really awkward and tainted of nonsense, but the sense of this piece of theater is more complex that we could think at the first sight.

EXPLANATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY

Behind the awkwardness of this play, « Oh les beaux jours » embodies the notion of despair in life that we all feel one day or another. The play shows the absurd side of life and of our human condition through many metaphors. 

Since the start of the piece of theater, we are plunged in the absurd. But everything has a meaning. The fact that Winnie is half buried on a hill is a metaphor of our life. And every day we are buried a little bit more buried than the previous day, and one day we will be completely buried, that is to say dead. Winnie is approximately 50 years old, that is why she is half buried: she is at the half of her life.  This is a sad but true metaphor of our human condition: some people condemned to be dead one day who makes everything to ignore it.  This is the example of Winnie’s behavior: even if she is half buried, she keeps singing and praying, waiting for her day to be ended. But we also realize, as a viewer of all these incoherences, that our human nature is fragile and that we are condemned to despair and pity. 

This play often reminds me the work of Kierkegaard on the human despair, and the play of Samuel Beckett is a true representation of the points developed by Kierkegaard: besides the notion of despair in front of our human condition, the loneliness and the cruelty of life have an important place in both works. Because Winnie wants to live, she hangs on everything she can even if she is in a terrible situation without any hope. But we realize that the absurd behavior of Winnie is ours: in order to fight against this fatality of death, we hang on what can keeps us away from the idea of an eternal death, such as religion for Winnie and her prayers.

To sum up, this play embodies in a very pessimistic way our human condition. Even before our birth, we are already condemned to death and we try in our whole life to escape from this sad truth. Beckett describes this human condition through the absurd current by showing to the viewer some unexplainable behaviors and an awkward scene, but when we exceed this first degree of the play, we discover a real message for the way we are living today. 

Certainly, the play I just exposed you sound really pessimistic and not funny at all, but I truly recommend you to see it if you have the occasion, there are some flashes of humor in the piece of theater ! But you will more appreciate the value of life after this play, so go for it!

How Stranger than fiction is an existential movie

Harold Crick is an ordinary man who lives a very boring life full of repetitive routine gestures. He counts everything, the number of strokes of toothbrush, the number of steps he makes to go to the bus station. He always puts his tie on the same way. He always takes the same bus at the same hour. He goes to sleep everyday at exactly 9:30 pm. He has no friends, no ambition, no dreams he wants to fulfill. He is just living over and over the same things. He is alive, but he is not experiencing life.

His life changes when he hears the voice of a woman narrating his life. This voice knows everything about him and can predict what he is about to do, what he feels, what he thinks. It is narrating everything he is doing. And as this voice comments everything he is doing, Harold feels really disturbed. This is a symbolization of his progressive becoming aware, becoming self-conscious of his condition, of the absurdity of the life he is living. We can of course link this idea to Kierkegaard’s philosophy and the concept of progressive stages of despair associated to different stages of self-consciousness. Harold indeed feels desperate and lonely : nobody hears the voice but him, nobody understands him, not the psychologist, not his colleague, not the random woman who waits at the bus station. Confronted to this voice, he becomes aware of the absurdity of his life, but this is not enough to make him change.

The real turning point in his life occurs when the narrator announces his imminent death, without saying when or how. At that moment, Harold panics and anguishes. He feels upset about knowing his imminent but inevitable and unpredictable death, even though everybody knows that everyone will die eventually. Sooner or later, death will take us away from the living world. But many of us tend to forget this inevitable truth, to underestimate the fact that we might die in a near future because of an accident or a disease, even if we are young and in good health. In other words, human beings tend to live an inauthentic life. Heidegger’s philosophy can help to understand this notion of authenticity.

According to him, a Dasein, that is to say a self-conscious being, a being who knows and cares about his being, a Dasein who is inauthentic is hiding from itself, forgetting the very possibility that makes it human - death. The inauthentic Dasein is not living its life, it is hiding in the “they”, an impersonal way of living: it is not looking for its future, it is waiting for the world to give it one. It takes refuge in the present, without thinking about the future. Harold Crick was exactly living this way.

But in his struggle to fight his imminent death, he finally realizes that he has been living an inauthentic life. He wants to do something to stop this prediction, to find a way to stay alive. He desperately went to see a professor of literature, as it was about a narrator. The professor tried to find a solution, but eventually, when it seemed to him that nothing could save Harold, he just told him : “live your life, all of it. Make it the one you’ve always wanted”. Why not have an adventure, invent something, or just make pancakes if that is what has a meaning for him? But taken aback, Harold at first couldn’t understand this simply answer. He didn’t know what it meant, how could he just “live his life” while he knew he was going to die ? When he asked the question “What you would do if you knew you were going to die very soon ?” to his friend, the latter answered “go to space camp” because that is what he has always wanted since he was a kid. Harold didn’t understand either at that moment. What has he always wanted ? He couldn’t answer this question at the beginning, but then he thought about the guitar. He never thought he could one day be able to play the guitar, but eventually he tried, and succeeded.

In other words, he started to live an authentic life. He dared to do what terrified him before, he stopped counting everything, he did what he thought he was unable to do, he told the woman he loved that he wanted her. He became aware of all the possibilities around him, and he started to give a sense to his life, to looked for what he wants, instead of staying in passive way of waiting. He experienced life, he knew he was living significant moments such as when the woman he loves put her head on his shoulder on the morning, and when he realized that she was actually falling for him. As the narrator said, “he became stronger in who he was, in what he wanted, and why he was alive”. In Heidegger analysis of the authentic Dasein, the Dasein is living under the “I”, not the “they”. It owns its own possibilities. The Dasein is revealed to itself as the will to act according to its own conscience. It is living its own life, not waiting for the “they” to build its life.

There is a significant difference between the inauthentic Harold and the authentic Harold: they are not driven by the same thing. The inauthentic Harold is afraid of doing some things, he is driven by fear; whereas the authentic Harold isn’t afraid of anything but he is anguished. Angst, at the contrary of fear, drives our attention away from the everydayness to bring us back to the strangeness of ourselves. In other words, it bring us back to our ownmost possibility. The Dasein is no longer hiding itself from its situation. It makes its own choices. It’s only when the Dasein is lucidly thinking about its own death that it can grasp all of its existence and tear itself away from impersonality. As for Harold Crick, death has to be always present in our mind, we have to consider it as the possibility of every of our action, so that we’ll make them as if they were our last one.

In this film, other characters are also really interesting to analyse in an existential point of vue. Ana Pascale, the woman that Harold Crick loves, is quite the contrary of him. She is living an authentic life: she knows what she wants, she is willing to take risks to live according to her will. Even if this means to get into trouble because she refused to pay all the taxes. She wants to do something to make the world better, and she believes that she can do a little something just with cookies. As she said to Harold “If I was going to make the world a better place, I would do it with cookies”. She doesn’t only sell cookies, she gives heartwarming cookies with smile and joy.

Karen Eiffel, the writer which is narrating the story, is also a really interesting character. She is obsessed with the end of the story, that is to say the death of Harold Crick. She has to find the best way to kill her character, as it will determined if her novel becomes a masterpiece or not. Interesting is how she drives herself closer to her own death while doing so, as she can’t stop smoking cigarettes. Smoking cigarettes isn’t a problem for her as what she is doing, writing her novel, is what matters for her. This is her way to live her authentic life. There is a very significant moment in the film which illustrates this :

What should we remember of this film and Heidegger philosophy ? I agree with the end of the film. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can be saved by a heartwarming cookie, a familiar hand on our skin, a kind and loving gesture, an encouragement, a loving embrace, an offer of comfort, soft spoken secrets, or even a piece of fiction.

The Ascetic ideal has already won, confessions of a lost agnostic.

I woke up this morning with a strange felling, I had just become aware of the idea which had troubled me for two weeks. Let me tell you about how it began.

I read Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals two weeks ago, and, as a good agnostic which had been raised in an atheist family, I thought “oh yes, Nietzsche is right, only atheism can fight against the ascetic ideal! Ascetic way of life is the worst we can imagine, it weakens our willing of power, it keeps Man expressing his own nature. I don’t believe, so I will not follow the ascetic ideal, I will be better than this biased vision of the dialectic “good-mean”, I will go back to the old and not warped vision of good, the good which can follow its willing of power.” In a few words, as explains Rousseau in his “Confessions”, I was like a child reading La Fontaine’s fables; I was identifying myself to the winner. But the winner in the story is not always the winner in the life. Days after days, I thought a bit (fact which is rare enough to be noticed), and I tried to consider the way I acted. At this point of the story, my resolution to be the man who would overcome the ascetic ideal began to weaken.

Indeed, I am a common man, I am not especially kind with the others, but, as my whole compatriots, I do not live as if I were alone. I take the door when someone comes after me, I say “hello”, “good bye, have a nice day”, even if I want the one I say it to be dead in a painful situation. Talking to this, I want often people I don’t like to be death in horrible suffering, but I never killed anyone and I even never hurt anyone. More important, I follow the rules, even if they are compelling me not to be what I would prefer to. I follow the rules because, most of the time, I totally agree with them; I think the rules are fair, because, to me it is normal not to kill someone, not to endanger the others driving fast, it is normal to wait your turn at the entry of a museum, to pay for the meal you eat… In other words, I am an agnostic who shares the ascetic ideal. Here we are facing an important obstacle: how can you be agnostic and follow part of the ascetic ideal?

How can you be agnostic and follow part of the ascetic ideal?

The first answer to it could be “you are not atheist, you are agnostic, so shut up, you are totally out of the topic.” This answer cannot be relevant, because what is important, in Nietzsche’s perspective, with atheism is not the fact that you exclude every possibility of a God’s existence, but the fact that you do not believe there is something after physical life. And this characteristic is shared by atheists and agnostics.

The Second answer could be “Nietzsche was wrong”. Indeed, you can consider our societies are so linked to the ascetic ideal that we cannot live out of this way. That could be right, our societies are very old, and they are based on the Catholic moral (for France) or the Protestant one (for the United Kingdom or the United States). Deeming Western States as children of the Christian moral, it is easy to conclude that, as people of these states, we are socialized following the rules of the ascetic ideal and thus, we cannot go out these rules, even if we do not believe in God or in life after death. Following this idea, we do not need atheism but we need atheism and a lot of time to overcome the ascetic ideal. Gradually, and only if there are more and more atheists, societies will begin to change and the socialization to. And, maybe a day, the ascetic ideal will be overcome. This answer to my problem seems to me as facile as the first. It is too easy to say “Nietzsche was wrong; I cannot do anything to overcome the ascetic ideal”. Then the last proposition we have to consider is the sentence “and if I had misunderstood Nietzsche?”

“And If I had misunderstood Nietzsche?” is maybe the best answer to this matter, because it invites us to reconsider what means “overcome the ascetic ideal”. That is right, I am not the Noble man, which, according to Nietzsche, follow his willing of death in all situations. But maybe, the ascetic ideal is overcome as soon as you stop to believe in the God, or, to reformulate, as soon as you stop to choose your acts observing the willing of a hypothetic being. When you follow the ascetic ideal saying “I follow it because I think some of these rules because I find them fair” instead of “I follow these rules because God’s will judge my soul at the end of the life” you are overcoming this ascetic ideal. And more important, in this perspective you are choosing the rules you want to follow because you think they can be good for your own behavior. Acting in this sense, we can, I think, overcome the ascetic ideal.

According to you, is this a way to overcome the ascetic ideal, or is this ideal even a thing which has to be overcome? Is there another way? 

Regression in existence? - Apocalypse Now

What means human life? Apocalypse Now

Some of you may have seen this incredible movie. It is a diving into craziness, into the deepest part of our humanity...

The film seems to be a complete mess. It was actually the state of the shooting. It took month to the film team to shoot everything they needed in Vietnam and Cambodia and Francis Ford Coppola nearly got ruined because of this. That was a dangerous bet, but what a film after all! Coppola pushed every body, actors and team to their limits and extracted the essence of craziness that could only be found that way.

The regression of the minds in Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now is based on a novel, "Heart of Darkness", by Joseph Conrad. The title only reveals us that life is going to be bullied. Francis Ford Coppola transferred the hell of colonialism in Africa in the early 20th into the hell of war in Vietnam. And what an awesome idea! The characters are on a mission aiming to kill a colonel, Kurtz, become crazy (or what the army calls crazy) in the heart of the cambodian territory.

By going up the river to Kurz' camp, each of these five soldiers are going to meet their basic instinct, more and more. Because they are meeting the horror and the absurdity of existence at the contact of this war.

The meaning of this war is absurd. Killing people that didn't arm you in any way is absurd. Continue a war that is already lost is absurd. The characters are aware but in the first stage, that is not enough evident for them to become crazy. A character represents it clearly in the film. The lieutenant-colonel Bill Kilgore. He is the one that announces his attack with the music "the Ride of the Valkyries" by Wagner. He wants to surf on the battlefield and is untouchable. This character is just out of reality and never stops to make actions out of the context, absurd. And it just seems comic. It is only the first stage of the trip, the entrance of the river, when the illusions of civilisation begins to break.

Nietzsche is found in this film : when illusions are broken or are just seen as illusions, absurdity of existence begin to happen. But more than that, this is the horror that accompany the fall of the civilisation and its marks.

And this film aims at shooting down the civilisation to find the primary world, the world of nature. And the human "natural stage", the basic instincts, maybe to find the Dionysian state of becoming one with nature and everything.

The Horror!

The Horror is the central point in this movie. Not only because it is said by the most mysterious, most awaited, most charismatic and most crazy character in the movie. Kurtz aka Marlon Brando lived for month the experience of war and its atrocity. He saw and understand the Horror of the humanity, particularly when civilisation tries to hide it. The Apollonian state, fulfilled with dream and beautiful interpretations is not enough anymore to survive with an healthy mind to the war's atrocity.

The main character, Villard (Martin Sheen) is becoming mad because he is not in contact with war at first. And wandering up the river, he will come back to its killing instincts. The regular soldiers are young americans and they will know the fear of the unknown, of the dark and the thrill of killing, of stealing, of losing oneself. The young blond surfer, so esthetically beautiful is losing the count of days and night, paints his face like camouflage and catches the sun all day long because he has nothing to do but to try to become one with the nature. The cool black kid from brookline becomes a lunatic shooter, always keeping his weapon in hand an killing whatever he can because he fears the horror.

The horror seems to be everywhere and especially concentrated in Kurtz' camp, an old temple covered with bodies lying on the steps and hanging on trees. The horror of life and what human can do.

What are the conclusion on existence?

What human can do, what they are capable of, is what they are. This lesson seems to shake every positive vision on existence. Being human is not being an animal. It is far worse than that. Even covering the bad aspects with the illusion of civilisation.

And nothing seems to happen affirming life, no value can cross this wall of craziness. We are here far from Nietzsche's conclusion, or expectations.

The same beginning : leaving every illusion, every metaphysical rule. A different end : against the hope for the life-affirmative Übermensch, the pessimistic vision of the brutal and cruel human once freed from illusion.

What is the most realistic vision (if the word realistic can be used in this context or in existentialism in general)? The pessimism? We're all animal after all... Or the optimism? But Nietzsche conclusion is under condition and we must remember that its contemporary fellows were not prepared for the revelation. But in Nietzsche vision, we must elude this stage of "animal-like" behavior because we are saying that we are animal, but on what ground? What so absolute, metaphysics? he Nietzschean vision seems to be not easy to fight in any case...

And in the end, the main character dive into craziness but goes back to the civilisation...

Harold Crick, Craig Schwartz, Lotte Schwartz and Maxine Lund: Responsibility of existence or attempt to run away from it: Authenticity according to Heidegger

           Martin #Heidegger, a German philosopher, presents the concept of Dasein in his book Being and Time in 1927. It is a German verb which means “be present”. Then, Dasein represents human existence which #Heidegger gives two opposed ideas: Authenticity and Inauthenticity. Authenticity is the ability to be responsible of his existence, that is to say be able to modulate it according to his own convictions, wishes and feelings. There is a continuous “Worry” for human to interact with his environment by leaving his own mark. In opposition, an inauthentic existence is embodied by less responsibility: he leaves Society, his environment, organize his actions and influence his behaviour. Dasein is eluded, benefiting external codes which come from his social framework. Society’s rules are going to lead him, and he exists only as an average individual instead of a unique person. According to #Heidegger, there are 2 degrees of appropriation during existence. So, “pouvoir-être” is more or less present for humans, existing as individual or persons.

            The movies Stranger than fiction and Being John Malkovich allow us to highlight 4 intensities for existence and its both categories (authentic existence and inauthentic existence). Such a distinction is possible with the study of several protagonists: Lotte Schwartz and Maxine Lund, Craig Schwartz, Harold Crick, and John Malkovich himself.

            Firstly, Being John Malkovich proposes the possibility for human to have less responsibility. It is possible to lead an inauthentic existence, where we highlight the wish to run away from his own self.

            The desertion of his own personality can be observed with characters of Lotte Schwartz and Maxine Lund. Indeed, both women find them attractive during their meetings. However, when Lotte attempts to have sex with her, the latter pushes away her because she is not seduced by Lotte’s body. To satisfy her, Lotte has to be inside of John Malkovich, keeping her personality. In this situation, Lotte’s physic being is given up completely. Her body which constitutes individual’s identity is eluded benefiting the hosting body. In this case, we notice a kind of inauthentic existence: Lotte pushes away her former existence by taking control of Malkovich’s body and mind. Maxine operates on Lotte as Society: she imprints her ideals and wills on Lotte. She moulds her. The felt “Worry” by Lotte is not about leave his mark: Lotte only receives “Worry” by a foreign body.

            Another situation which is possible in Being John Malkovich: using another one in order to make exist his own personality.

Craig Schwartz, Lotte’s husband, has a hobby: puppets. Despite of his administrative work with Doctor Lester, he remains a puppeteer. Meanwhile, social disinterest for the profession, his lack of visibility as an artist and his financial precariousness make Craig give up his passion. It’s at this moment that John Malkovich’s body plays an important role. In fact, it is going to allow Craig to fulfil his hobby fully thanks to notoriety of another one. Then, Malkovich’s celebrity permits him to broadcast a new vision of the work of puppet-master.  In this case, we have a new form of existence: it’s a half-authentic existence. On the one hand, Craig denies his body and then physical identity. So, there is an inauthentic existence because there is less responsibility. On the other hand, he does it in order to realize his personality. He wants to highlight his aptitudes and attitudes. Then, this claiming of his true self is his “Worry”: he has one, he handles his existence and claims it. His claiming is stronger than Society, he wishes mark his circle with his vision. We have an aspect of authentic existence.  The case of Craig Schwartz shows lack of physical “Worry”, whereas the psychological “Worry” is demanded.

            Stranger than fiction shows the perfect case of an authentic existence with Harold Crick’s life.

Harold Crick leads a stereotyped life as a State employee. He is a tax inspector. His life is very ordered: minutes are decisive for all his professional actions. However, one day, his life is commented by an external voice, and he becomes aware of the foreseeable nature of his actions. He notices that he hasn’t any “Worry”: his life is completely organized by Society, with working hours or bus hours for instance. He sees that he hasn’t influence in his own life, and that he is an embodiment of Society instead of an embodiment of his personality. The external voice makes him notice other people, and particularly Ana, a pastry chef. This woman has the opposed effect to which one of Society: she allows him to struggle against it and give his own perception. This shift can be observed with clothe which are born by Harold. Before, as a State employee, he wore suits but now, he wears normal clothe. He attempts to handle his life by being less stereotyped. Here, we have a concise case of authentic existence: Harold has the “Worry” to mark his world, with his love story with Ana for example.

            Let’s go to see last time with the movie Being John Malkovich to analyze the case of a too authentic life.

            Main aspect on the movie is the possibility to occupy John Malkovich’s mind, which provokes question about this experience led by Malkovich himself directly. It happens during the movie, Malkovich is projected in his own mind. Then, this extraordinary situation shows Malkovich meeting a lot of individual, where each one has Malkovich’s head and says just “Malkovich”.

Malkovich !

Here, we have a case where “Worry” is so strong that all Malkovich’s circle is marked by his personality. John doesn’t like that situation, and seems to become crazy. It is possible to think that a Society which is only composed by aspects coming from just one personality is harmful. Indeed, people need influence of other in order to build themselves, and question their shortcomings. In a standardized Society, there would be a negative indulgence.

            To sum up, #Heidegger highlights a consequent aspect of existence: shall it have to belong to us, or shall it have to be a result of social framework? Craig’s reaction to use another person to be himself truly brings a political and sociological question: do people have good ways and means to realize themselves in Society? Then, we find an analysis developed by the sociologist Robert #Merton, with the famous key-concept of Anomie.

To open a debate, I would like to ask a political question:

Do you think that Society of Malkovich(s) is a totalitarian regime?

Ein Malkovich, ein Malkovich, ein Malkovich?

IS WAITING MEANINGLESS

What does Nietzsche mean when talking about a "death of 

God?" Tons of people have misunderstood his theory, thinking he meant that God literally stopped to exist. But he explains himself in The Gay Science, published in 1882. He actually says that "we have killed Him". He thinks that human beings destroyed all the supreme structures which were linked to God, that they consciously avoided the eternal and the temporal to interact. He says that human beings are plunging themselves into chaos as atheism is raising. His theory isn't much about theology but he believes that the Western societies have been built on religious structures, all their logic is linked to it. If they destroy their religious roots, they will be totally put upside down, so they could fall into nihilism which is the most dangerous thing, according to Nietzsche. Nihilism is the fact people don't believe in anything anymore, they think humanity is denuded of any form of values, norms, aim or finality. Humanity is absurd as it has no sense, no reason to be what it is, but is just what it is. 

Some absolutely disagreed with him, like Albert Camus who said that this death of god was inconsequential as human beings don't need a higher moral authority to live a moral and valuable life. 

I tend to agree with Nietzsche, and even more when confronting his theory to Becket's Waiting for Godot, written in 1948. In this novel, Vladimir and Estragon, two of the main characters, are waiting on a country road, below a tree, for someone who's name is Godot. They stay here for minutes, maybe hours, discussing, arguing about life, pleasure, absurdity and death, waiting for someone - we discover - they hardly know. They don't know what they look like or why they're waiting for him. But we see, as the story goes, that Godot is the only reason they keep on hook on life. Godot may be linked to Jesus, which is expected to appear at the end of time i the three monotheisms. Even if they never personally met him, they believe Godot exists, they hang on their belief and try to put order in their life while waiting. Conversely, Pozzo, which seems to be the owner of the locality, thinks waiting for Godot is absurd, and that Vladimir and Estragon are wasting their time ; he then could be linked to Albert Camus' theory. But comparing the both friends to Pozzo, we see that this last character lives without morality as he treats his lackey, Lucky, the worst way ; he even succeed in convincing the two vagabonds to treat Lucky bad, spreading his lack of morality. 

Beckett has always refused this interpretation, he even said, in a letter he wrote to Michel Polac in 1952 that he doesn't "know who is Godot" but that it could be "possible" to find a sense to his story. Do you agree with this interpretation? Do you think his novel reflects the analysis Nietzsche made about the "death of God" and nihilism?

The terrific and terrifying experimentation of existentialism

« What if there were no tomorrow? » asks the main character when he realizes that he is condemned to live the same life again and again. This is maybe the best way to summarize this movie, Groundhog Day, which, while being a very naive and easy-to-watch movie at first glance, might also reveal something about the quest of identity. 

Indeed, for those of you who may not have seen the film, the scenario is basically the story of an egocentric weather forecaster who covers a popular and boring event in a small town, the Groundhog Day event. Everything is fine, until he wakes up and understands that he is living the same day as the day before. He then starts experiencing the same day again and again, which makes him change his behavior in order to get out of this evil cycle.

Who has never dreamt of living a day once again? Because you made a mistake, because you said something that you shouldn’t have,… Everyone has already dreamt of erasing its mistakes. You may also dream of trying another path for your life, to see where it leads and to know whether it can make your life better.

There are plenty of reasons to want to live his day again and again, in order to somehow achieve the perfect day.

Exhilarating though it sounds, this experience of starting the same day again and again is terrifying. At first, it seems great and enables you to do the most of your life, as you don’t have to worry about the consequences nor about the social rules of moral.

“We could do whatever we want. I’m not gonna live by their rules anymore!” claims the main character.

After experiencing a sense of freedom, the character starts living an aesthetic life.  He tries a lot of excesses : crime, food, attempts of suicide… He does not care about the moral issues. In a way, he is trying to find his way in a world where he does not have to care about others.

He is trying to become the “Ubermensch” Nietzsche describes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Namely, a man fully empowered and who creates his own norms.

He is trying to find his true self, and his own norms by relating to objects: Kant would say he is living an esthetic life, which is closer to the life of an animal than to the life of a responsible human being, as it is based on pleasures and not on a true self-consciousness. And indeed, this life does not make him happy. He experiences despair as he understands he keeps living the same life again and again. While trying to live the best life possible, he realizes he cannot be satisfied until he has achieved a real goal. This film is the story of the quest of that goal.

This story is the story of all of us, condemned to live the same day over and over again, because of this kind of routine going on as soon as we have obligations: work, studies, friends,... Life keeps repeating itself, and we cannot stop it until we found a true purpose to our life. This is why the quest of the true self through the experimentation of hedonism, crime, is interesting to watch. At last, the character surrenders and finds out that this is not the kind of self he wants, neither can, be. He cannot handle having no responsibility and not seeing any progress in his life.

This film can be understood as an invitation to reevaluate moral values and try to be the self we want to be by experimenting new things while being aware of the consequences. 

That may be the most frustrating thing about the esthetical life depicted by Nietzsche, namely the fact that you may have to reinvent yourself everyday. However, by doing so, you eradicate your previous self and therefore lose all the advantages you had acquired thanks to your hard work and your experience. By  finding your purpose in life, it suddenly makes sense as long as you don't hold to this goal for too long. 

So, should we reinvent our life every day, without caring about the consequences? Or should we follow the path towards a goal we truly want to achieve?
The answer lies in the middle. Both are necessary to fulfill our dreams and ambitions.

Don't stay locked down in the prison of an average everyday life and find a purpose in your life: these are the lessons I'll retain from the exhilarating existentialism experience depicted in Groundhog Day. 

Being and time and The death of Ivan Ilyich

INTRODUCTION

     The short story of “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” can provide us some ideas about life and death. I found some similarities between this text of Leo Tolstoy and Martin Heidegger’s theory in “Being and time”. The text of Tolstoy is seen as one of the most influential works about the death and the meaning of existence. We can see in this story how the fact of accept our mortality can shift the way people approach life and also the death. "Being and Time", Heidegger's work, will talk about the essential question of being, he makes use of anguish and of the being-toward-death to disturb the logic of impersonal that drives everyday life. Thus, both works deal with the problems of the inauthentic mode of being.

THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH

     The Death of Ivan Ilyich, by Leo Tolstoy, published in 1886, introduces the theme of death and the meaning of life, personalized in Ivan Ilyich, a Russian judge who is overcome with dread and anxiety toward his own imminent death.

     The narrative, in fact, begins with the end, in the building of the Court in which Ivan Ilyich worked and where his death was commented by his coworkers. It is Ivan’s funeral and then, the story goes back in time to show how Ivan Ilyich, a respected judge, knows his wife, who marries for money and for her beauty.

     Ivan Ilyich was one of those important employees. With an arranged marriage and a good salary, he was successful, but a mysterious illness have caught him by surprise. He just lived his life by playing a role.

     Because the medicine has failed, the only thing he could do was to wait for the last breath. This situation puts him in front of all the miserable life he has built on lies and appearances. Therefore, he has to struggle to retrieve his usual everyday ways of putting death out his mind, however he does not succeed. In sum, the novel shows the trajectory of the character’s slow deterioration and his difficult to deal this the death.

BEING AND TIME

     Death is an inevitable event. Heidegger argues in “Being and time” that by confronting the certainty of death, we adjust our viewpoints and change our approach towards life. We become beings-toward-death who are able to re-examine life and embrace our world. This philosopher believes that the individual, when he is aware of his condition of being finite, can take ownership of their possibilities, choose oneself more proper and he can be more authentically.

      However, before starting the discussion about Heidegger’s theory is necessary some concepts like Dasein. We can say that Dasein is an individual human being. By his analyses of being towards death, the being there or Dasein understands what is to exist.

     This is because Heidegger believes that man is the only one who can have an understanding of being. In other words, only Dasein (being-there) is able to question about the meaning of Being and the existence. He also says that Dasein may run away from facing the reality of death. So, confronting death may lead us to despair. However if he does it, he may collapse into a state of anxiety. In our everydayness, according to Heidegger, we can lose ourselves in a public identity and in the meaningless chatter of the crowd.

     When Heidegger invites us to look at the time as an open horizon, he makes us realize that among the many possibilities that awaits us, one will occur for sure: the death. Dasein is only complete when he reaches death. Death is closely linked to the phenomenon of existence and should no longer be thought as something external that would determine the end of existence, in fact, the death is essentially Dasein's relation to his own existence.

     If we choose to accept death, we can realize the possibilities of life, so we can conquer life. Freedom for death that enables anguish is what releases the man of everyday banality to the possibility of an authentic existence in which death is contributor of sense other possibilities.                    The way of facing the inevitable makes the difference in living an authentic or inauthentic life. And it's the authenticity that Dasein is able to meet fully with his being. Authentic existence is acceptance of finitude, it means to have the courage of anguish towards death. Nevertheless, it is important to note that Heidegger’s conception of authenticity is notoriously difficult to define.

SIMILARITIES

     We can see “Being and Time” in “the death of van Ilyich” because this story shows a case of a person who lives an inauthentic existence. The main character and his family deny the inevitability of death. Ivan’s family try to comfort him, but despite doing it, they are only denying that Ivan will soon face his death.

     How Ivan’s attitude in relation to death was misunderstood, he could not face and accept his death, and that is way, he had an inauthentic way of living. However, we can say that Ivan was inauthentic long before he learned of his illness. But, when he got sick, rather than accept the fact that had an inauthentic life, he sees the whole state of his disease as absurd. In fact, throughout his illness Ivan has moments when he is able to accept the death, but he also denies his imminent death, as well as accepting and denying that he has not lived authentically.

     We can conclude from these two works that the meditation of death should not make us depressed but in fact, the inevitability of death is just the thing that makes our existence authentic. If we can own the fact of our unavoidable death, we can own ourselves.