Week 6 – Final Topic
This week, we will cover “existentialism” as our final topic. Existentialism is under a branch of philsophy known as ethics which is primarily concerned with making choices in life so that the right choices will result in the greatest amount of happiness and goodness for our lives. Where things get tricky is that depending on “who you are and how you’re made”, this somewhat determines our actions. We can illustrate this using common things in nature. For instance, if you’re born as a rabbit you’ll be eating a lot of veggies and if you’re a lion, you’ll be eating lots of meat. In addition, how we’re born not only determines our daily choices but also our life goals and purpose in general. To illustrate this point, let’s take the jobs of two different animals, bees and dogs. A bee’s job is to pollinate 75 to 80 percent of all fruits and vegetables we consume. A German Sheperd is one of the best breed as police dogs. Now, imagine if we tried to switch the jobs of bees and dogs, how crazy and inefficient would life be? Dogs would be going around sniffing flowers and we would be using bees to fight crime! (Animals were only used here only to illustrate a point since obviously we are not animals but hopefully you get the picture). Therefore, existentialism tries to deal the ultimate questions: “What is the purpose or meaning behind life? Whose idea was it for us to be here and how are we supposed to live?” We know that to be happy and succesful we have to find our own special purpose that is different from others since everyone is unique (e.g., “run your own race, live your own life and not someone else’s hopes and dreams). However, this quest is not as easy as it seems. The theories below are some common competing theories in ethics that rival existentialism and so please view the summaries and follow the steps.
STEP 1 (Please read the following theories)
Ethical Theories
Stoisicism -> Stoics observed that life is full of events and they separate into two types of events: events we can control and events we cannot. For instance, we can control what clothes to wear today, what to eat, what TV shows to watch. But many things are also out of our control: the weather, traffic, world events. Therefore, Stoic thinkers believed in the following motto:
“Change the things in your life you can control and don’t worry about things you can’t change since there’s not much we can do about events outside of our control anyways.”
Cynicism -> Cynics believed that people were too materialistic and we often measure our own happiness and success by how much we own and earn. And when we live this kind of life, there is often “no end” to spending. For instance, you go to a clothing store for pants but now you want to buy a shirt and shoes that matches the pants. Or you want to buy a certain car but now you need insurance, gas, maintenance and maybe even a new parking permit to park that nice expensive car. Therefore, cynic thinkers suggest that we live life as simple as possible with the least amount of belonings. The cynics describe society this way:
“We buy things we don’t need
with money we don’t have
to impress people we don’t even know or like”
(For instance, Americans owe more in credit card than any other time in history, click below if you’re interested in reading article)
https://www.cnbc.com/select/us-credit-card-debt-hits-all-time-high/Links to an external site.
Epicureanism -> The Epicureans believed that life is short so play hard. We should have fun and maximize pleasure as much as we can before we die. There is no guarantee we will be alive even tomorrow and if we were to die, there is no guarantee that there exists an afterlife. Therefore, any talk about god, soul and heaven were all nonsense and wishful thinking. What about important moral qualities that we deem important in society like justice, equality and love? For Epicureans, there is no justice nor equality. It only exists for those who have money and influence. What about love? Especially unconditional love (e.g., love someone no matter what)? For Epicureans, there was no unconditional love. This means that we all love conditionally (e.g., I will do this for you if you do this for me). Even a marriage is an equal exchange between two persons and if one side feels that they are not getting out as much as they are putting in and relationships often come to an end. Therefore, an epicurean thinker is mostly egoistic (e.g., selfish) and into pleasure. The epicurean motto is as follows:
“Pleasure is the greatest good”
Step 2 (Please read the brief/edited story from an ancient town of Corith, Greece)
The Story of Marcus
There was once a person by the name of Marcus in the town of Corinth 2000 years ago. He was known to be a person of low character. He was often caught stealing from stores in town or owing favors to his neighbors and never paying back. So, the mayor of Corinth said to Marcus, “Steal no more or you will face the consequences.” However, Marcus did not listen. He got caught stealing again. The mayor was very furious but the town’s people asked him to give him another chance. So, he did. But after some time, he stole again for the second time. The mayor was very upset but people pleaded not to punish Marcus. So the mayor refrained. Finally, for the third time, Marcus was caught for theft but this time, no one came to his rescue. As punishment, the mayor of Corinth sentenced Marcus with the following:
“In prison, Marcus will roll a stone up the hill all week and see it roll down on the weekend and do it over and over until he dies”
Curiouly, while this story of Marcus is a fiction, existential thinkers believe that it exemplifies the human condition. We are all born into this world (not our choice), to parents who we have not picked, to a body which none of the features we picked (e.g., our height, eye color, skin color, etc) and trapped in a place called earth and have to work until we die. We work or go to school Monday through Friday, get paid, spend that money and do it all over again and what do we have at the end as a prize, death. So, is this the point of life? Does this make any sense to you? This is often why existenialists claim that life is “absurd” and that it leads to “angst” (e.g., anger, anxiety, fear).
Now, that you had a brief introduction to existentialism, please watch the following video and answer the questions
1. Please state a line/phrase that was stated by any one of the cartoon characters in the above video and state why you picked that one.
2. Based on the above 3 theories including existentialism, which one ethical theory do you think is the most popular in modern society? Why do you think this is the case?
3. Do you think or feel that human life is similar to that of Marcus (that we work all week and spend all the money on the weekend just to do this over and over)
