An Existential Life

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.

Existence:

The word “existence” comes the Latin word “exeo,” which means “I go out.” We are familiar with the word “Exit,” on doors in public buildings where the word means that one may go out of the building through this door. To exist, then, means to go outside of one’s present and past self towards a future self which is freely chosen. 

Ambiguity: Doubtfulness or uncertainty as regards interpretation: “leading a life of alleged moral ambiguity” or “the ethics of ambiguity”.

The hedgehog’s dilemma, or sometimes the porcupine dilemma, is an analogy about the challenges of human intimacy. It describes a situation in which a group of hedgehogs all seek to become close to one another in order to share their heat during cold weather. However, once accomplished, they cannot avoid hurting one another with their sharp quills. They must step away from one another. Though they all share the intention of a close reciprocal relationship, this may not occur for reasons which they cannot avoid.

Both Arthur Schopenhauer and Sigmund Freud have used this situation to describe what they feel is the state an individual will find themselves in relation to others. The hedgehog’s dilemma suggests that despite goodwill, human intimacy cannot occur without substantial mutual harm, and what results is cautious behavior and weak relationships. With the hedgehog’s dilemma one is recommended to use moderation in affairs with others both because of self-interest, as well as out of consideration for others. The hedgehog’s dilemma is used to justify or explain introversion and isolationism.

(via stegosaurusplease)

Futility: The quality of having no useful result; uselessness. Lack of importance or purpose; frivolousness. A futile act. One will run into it a lot in existentialist writings, movies, art etc., and in real life situations.

Anxiety:

For Kierkegaard (writing as a pseudonymous author, Vigilius Haufniensis), anxiety/dread/angst is unfocused fear. Kierkegaard uses the example of a man standing on the edge of a tall building or cliff. When the man looks over the edge, he experiences a focused fear of falling, but at the same time, the man feels a terrifying impulse to throw himself intentionally off the edge. That experience is anxiety or dread because of our complete freedom to choose to either throw oneself off or to stay put. The mere fact that one has the possibility and freedom to do something, even the most terrifying of possibilities, triggers immense feelings of dread. Kierkegaard called this our “dizziness of freedom.”

Kierkegaard focuses on the first anxiety experienced by man: Adam’s choice to eat from God’s forbidden tree of knowledge or not. Since the concepts of good and evil did not come into existence before Adam ate the fruit, which is now dubbed original sin, Adam had no concept of good and evil, and did not know that eating from the tree was “evil”. What he did know was that God told him not to eat from the tree. The anxiety comes from the fact that God’s prohibition itself implies that Adam is free and that he could choose to obey God or not. After Adam ate from the tree, sin was born. So, according to Kierkegaard, anxiety precedes sin, and it is anxiety that leads Adam to sin. Kierkegaard mentions that anxiety is the presupposition for hereditary sin.

However, Kierkegaard mentions that anxiety is a way for humanity to be saved as well. Anxiety informs us of our choices, our self-awareness and personal responsibility, and brings us from a state of un-self-conscious immediacy to self-conscious reflection. (Jean-Paul Sartre calls these terms pre-reflective consciousness and reflective consciousness.) An individual becomes truly aware of their potential through the experience of anxiety. So, anxiety may be a possibility for sin, but anxiety can also be a recognition or realization of one’s true identity and freedoms.

(Source: Wikipedia)

World-Design: a concept introduced by Ludwig Binswanger, ‘World-Design’ refers to the all-encompassing pattern of an individual’s mode of being-in-the world. The borders of the design may be narrow and constricting or broad and expansive, open or closed, disclosed or concealed, light or dark.

phenomena: not the visible manifestations of an ultimate reality, but rather, they are reality.

Pathological symptoms: Encroachments on and impairments of the free, open fulfillment of human existence.

passion: the quality of striving to come into being. 

engagement: being involved with something rather than studying it in a detached, indifferent, scholarly sort of way.

dasein analysis: an existentialist approach to psychoanalysis, developed by Ludwig Binswanger who heavily borrowed from Heidegger and applied his concepts such as Being-in-the-world to psychotherapy. Daseinsanalysis was furthered by Medard Boss who was inspired by Husserl and thus applied existential and phenomenological frameworks to finding meaning, especially in dream analysis.

dasein: being-in-the-world. Ideally, should be open to one’s past and future as well as one’s present. 

anguish: a revelation of the possibilities which lie beyond one’s constricted existence.