An Existential Life

“Truth, defined as event and conflict, is centered in the work of art which is also considered as an event and a conflict. Art, embodied in the work of art as its origin, lets truth originate because it is both the specific expressions of truth as well as the condition for the expression of truth. In this way art not only expresses truth, it is truth. When a work of art is created it gives truth a location to become, a work-place. Heidegger indicates when he states that ‘Art is the setting-into-work of truth.” In another similar formulation he also states: “Art is truth setting itself to work.’ By these statements he means that art is the entire process of truth freely realizing itself in a work of art. Art is the becoming and happening of truth. This, then, is the full meaning of “ART LETS TRUTH ORIGINATE.” 

Barend Kiefte 

In quotatations-

Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art”, in Poetry. Language. Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row Publications, 1971, p. 77

Submitted by Diana Hereld (dianahereld@gmail.com)

Facticity (throwness): We find ourselves existing in a world not of our own making and indifferent to our concerns. We are not the source of our existence, but find ourselves thrown into a world we don’t control and didn’t choose.

Paul Tillich’s formulation expresses this point beautifully: he speaks of our anxiety due to the …threat of non-being…. The forms of non-being are many and various and each prefigures the ultimate loss of being that is death and the ultimate contingency of being that is birth. Both the chance events and extreme situations of life make evident the threat of non-being and cause us anxiety.

• Being human is finding oneself …thrown… (Heidegger) into a world with no clear logical, ontological, or moral structure.
• We hide from death, from uncertainty, from ourselves, from Being-Itself (Tillich) with enormous creativity but with self-destructive consequences.
• Extreme situations make our hiding impossible and so they often become the focus for philosophical and literary reflection on human anxiety.

via fluux

Sartre’s opposition to bad-faith (or self-deception) is an example of what is meant by authenticity; perhaps Heidegger’s expatiation of authentic existence is one of the most complete.

• We need to face up to our situation rather than making things worse with self-deceptive approaches to religion, metaphysics, morality, or science.
• We need to make decisions courageously; the key to this is accepting our own limitations and realizing that we cannot achieve certainty in the making of such decisions.
• We need to be honest with ourselves and each other: we must not settle for less than the actual anxiety due us!

Existential issues in general have been thoroughly analyzed by philosophers such as Kirkegaard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, Frankl, and others. These authors address a range of existential questions. Briefly, it can be mentioned that Kirkegaard focused on death anxiety and the dread for annihilation.  He was the first to make a clear distinction between fear (for something) and diffuse unfocused anxiety (dread). As such, anxiety (e.g., death anxiety) cannot be located and the source cannot be defined, it can neither be understood nor confronted and it begets a feeling of helplessness. Jaspers emphasized the impact of boundary or border situations (e.g., a cancer diagnosis) on human behavior: such unalterable experiences make us either live more intensely, in a more authentic fashion, or make us give up. This was also emphasized by Heidegger, who stated that only true awareness of our personal death can shift us from one mode of existence (“unauthentic”) to a higher one (“authentic”). We value life when death is a reality.

Heidegger and Frankl also stressed the impact of meaning, although partly from different angles. Both stressed that meaning is essential for life and that humans are intentional: looking for or creating meaning, as meaninglessness is impossible to endure. However, according to Frankl, life has an inherent meaning, whereas Heidegger’s point of departure was the concept of meaninglessness: There is no given meaning in life and this lack of meaning drives us to search for or create our personal meaning.

Sartre was the forerunner for the concept of man’s freedom: man is doomed to freedom, meaning that man must always choose and choices create anxiety. However, one is always responsible for one’s own life. Also, Frankl stressed the freedom of will: we have freedom to find meaning in existence and to choose our attitude to suffering.

Read more here.

Tillich’s formulation expresses this point beautifully: he speaks of our anxiety due to the “threat of non-being.” The forms of non-being are many and various and each prefigures the ultimate loss of being that is death and the ultimate contingency of being that is birth. Both the chance events and extreme situations of life make evident the threat of non-being and cuase us anxiety.

• Being human is finding oneself “thrown” (Heidegger) into a world with no clear logical, ontological, or moral structure.
• We hide from death, from uncertainty, from ourselves, from Being-Itself (Tillich) with enormous creativity but with self-destructive consequences.
• Extreme situations make our hiding impossible and so they often become the focus for philosophical and literary reflection on human anxiety.

Existential Psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy which aims at enhancing self-knowledge in the client and allowing them to be the author of their own lives. Its philosophical roots are to be found in the works of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre and other existential thinkers as well as Husserl and phenomenologists. Historically, existential therapy began when Binswanger attempted to use Heidegger’s theory therapeutically, an approach that was adapted by Victor Frankl, Rollo May and others in the United States

Emmy van Deurzen (in Handbook of Individual Therapy, ed Dryden) outlines the goals of existential therapy: 

1) to enable people to become more truthful with themselves. 

2) to widen their perspective on themselves and the world around them. 

3) to find clarity on how to proceed in the future while taking lessons from the past and creating something valuable to live for in the present.