Kierkegaard - From Herbert Dreyfus "Existentialism through film" Lectures and odds and ends.

A personal note, K IS THE DUDE!

The Greek tragic hero renounces himself for the universal (the ethical or the norm)

The knight of faith renounces the universal for there-self (non ethical or away from the norm)

One relates to oneself by there relation to an unconditional relation

Lecture 12 at 35:00

Despair is when one lives in the eternal (spirit, possibility, the future, negative) OR the finite (body, necessity, the past, positive) as true,yet we are a synthesis of the two. We are walking contradiction.

3 forms of relation:

1) Unconscious of the despair (spiritlessness) - Running away from the despair(the contradiction) Drinking, drugs, games, TV all are ways.

2) Living one side of the contradiction therefore becoming un-unified. 

3) Wanting in despair to be oneself - a self relating to itself without the relation to this relation. Trying to force the contradiction together under ones own power.

To be without despair :

Have a defining commitment - define yourself through the 

unconditional relationship where everything done is though this relation

Greeks say that there is no way to fit together the contradiction. It's one or the other. In the Christian Kierkegaard way you can. The eternal and temporal for the Greeks cannot meet. For K, there is a kind of eternity "in time the unconditionally committed person becomes eternal" eternity is forever and the unconditionally committed person is in the eternal. They will always be defined as this relation. Forever as long as it matters to you. Within the unconditional commitment you are no longer on the process of defining yourself. The unconditional commitment defines ones world and is eternal and completely open ended and makes finite things in the world meaningful and all that could mean anything meaningful meaningful

The necessary and possible are unified by the unconditional commitment being the self one is always while certain circumstances may change in ones commitment (Heidegger's factisity similar to necessity and freedom to possibility )

The knight of faith in the necessary and possible - can receive their new Issac 

The knight of resignation is stuck in the necessary 

Structural states:

1) Despair (cant deal with the contradiction) is what you have if your without a self

      b) life is not working and never           could work. ex holding on to a past that identifies oneself in a way that does not allow for anything new. K's example in Either/Or one tries to change the necessary (past) with all their energy instead of using that energy for the possible (future).

2) Anguish (not consciously dealing with the contradiction) is what you have if your a self. Away from the ethical or the "what they(das Mann) want me to be/do"

Existentialist against the enlightenment promise that detached analytic thought would save us. Would provide self efficiency and provide an absolute ethics.

K's the good life is in an unconditional relationship with another(person or activity)

Dostoevsky's good life in an unconditioned relation with all others in a agopy love mood

Nietzsche's the good life is the free spirit constantly gaining more power, changing their horizons. Solidity or an unconditioned relationship a sign of weakness. N's example would be an artist.

Existentialism vs existential philosophy:

Sartre - began existentialism in focusing on the aspect of our freedom to choose the best way to live. This introduced a sort 

of detached separateness from ones world to be able to have such a freedom which many like K or H would reject.

All existentialist and existential philosophers would agree that 1) there is no human nature or essence. 

2) the individual is higher than the universal

3) truth is subjectivity, perspectivalism, more points of view are always better than a detached rational view. There is no objective reality.

--------------------------------------From Palmer's book

"The subjective thinker cannot have her own existence as the object of thought. When something is the object of thought it is abstracted from experience and conceptualized. Only that which has been terminated and is complete cab be objectified. But the experience of existence is one of open endlessness  In fact, the experience is as much of something negative as it is of something positive. "

"Subjective thought is negative thought in that it ponders what is not (possibility) as opposed to what is (necessity). It ponders the 'nothingness that pervades being'"

"Descartes wanted certainty in immediacy and certainty of consciousness. However once an immediacy is abstracted from sensation its certainty is no more."

"Consciousness is the collision between actuality (what is) and possibility (what is not). So it is a form of doubleness or doubt. A collision of contradictions:

     Word - Sensation

     Possibility - Actuality

     Ideality - Reality

     What is not - What is

     Abstract - Concrete

"Thought is negative accentuated by doubt. Belief acts as a positive to this negative. Belief sustains thought and holds the world together."

Objectivity is grounded in belief, not certainty.

"Subjective truths are not pieces of knowledge, but are ways of arranging knowledge and activating it."