Since I use Orexis Dianoētikē as a nexus knotting together intellectual threads from my other, more specifically focused blogs, I'm doing that in this entry -- calling attention to a 2-part discussion about existentialism, freedom, choice, and the success of the projects and commitments of a person. Here's part 1 and part 2.
We veered off into a discussion about the ways some people connect up radical human freedom (which existentialists do affirm) with personal responsibility for producing one's success or failure (not something existentialists think we have entire control over) during my latest talk, on Franz Kafka, in the Glimpses of Existence monthly lecture series hosted by the Kingston Library.
My view is that there is a kind of solipsism lurking within the claim that, because a person is free, they can make their destiny or fate simply by willing, desiring, or choosing -- that would be true, were solipsism, the view that one is really the only acting, real person in the world, true. But, we inhabit a world equally inhabited by others, who are also free -- indeed a world shaped mysteriously (and often frustratingly!) by other people's use of their own radical freedom (which in its turn is conditioned by still others, and others. . . )
No comments:
Post a Comment