Dostoevsky Kierkegaard Nietsche And Jaspers Essay Research free essay sample

Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietsche, And Jaspers Essay, Research Paper Daniel Leonard Existentialism Dr. Brahinsky March 27, 2000 Trev, wake up! Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Jaspers write of many of import issues refering our being and society in general, but the 1 that involvements me the most is the belief in the ignorance and stupidity of the bulk of the human race. We are so shockable, so asleep, so afraid of researching ourselves and what is beyond this across-the-board narrative we have created and in which we live ( and ironically hatred ) . These four philosophers all seem to see the large image. Some wish they neer had, others feel born once more and superior to the remainder of world. Regardless, until the full universe understands, there is no hope for adult male # 8217 ; s endurance. I will get down with Mr. Nietzsche who speaks with a really barbarous and pointed attitude. He is rather angry with people in general for being shallow, for falling asleep to the cultural drone humming in the dorsum of all our caputs. It is so easy to populate daily like dead organic structures, making what you are told, working invariably to avoid believing excessively much. ( That # 8217 ; s why I love work! ) . We fear what is indoors. We are afraid to be as our psyche and our heads. Society, scientific discipline, and even academic doctrine avoid looking inward, or paradoxically, seeing the large image. The full universe is seting us to kip. They # 8220 ; effort to understand this canvas and these colourss, but non the image # 8221 ; ( Nietzsche in Kaufman, 124 ) . Merely the true philosopher, the true understander of being, can uncover that topographic point where stuff can no longer pervert you. There are so many obstructions ( we refer to them as civilization and usage ) in this universe that obstruct our way to higher consciousness where we will recognize the unity of everything and achieve witting love. Equally shortly as we realize we are all bubbles drifting on the same ocean, we become wholly free from these obstructions and have nil to fear, non even decease. This is heaven on Earth. Nietzsche recognized faith as possibly the greatest obstruction of them all. It purportedly was created to assist get the better of all the other obstructions, but now farther disorients us and about leads us in the opposite way. Interestingly, Nietzsche sees as the root of turning nihilism non social or psychological corruptness, but Christian reading. I # 8217 ; m non rather certain I understand this, but the manner I see it is Christianity ( along with many faiths ) # 8211 ; the one establishment created to salve and give significance to life # 8211 ; is, through its current and turning lip service, taking intending off from life. Jesus was a great instructor. His cardinal message was that if we love one another and do non let ourselves to acquire caught up in the mundane facets of life, we can accomplish a higher degree of being and happen true felicity. Christianity developed out of Jesus # 8217 ; learning as a kind of stepping-stone to assist people understand Jesus and acq uire to the topographic point he was speaking about. Christianity is like a set of guidelines to take us to higher consciousness. But we have made a complete jeer of Christ and his instruction. Christianity has lost sight of its original end and go wholly bemused with regulations and ordinances. We do non necessitate faith ; it is merely here to assist us. But alternatively of higher consciousness going the end, faith is now the end. Equally long as you follow the regulations and ordinances of the church, every bit long as you have faith, you are a good individual. Incorrect! You are a nihilist. In The Antichrist Nietzsche viciously attacks the priests and theologists who advocate this fabricated universe of God, the Satan, wickedness, salvation, free will, etc, which # 8220 ; falsifies, devalues, and negates world # 8221 ; because we can non stand the sight of it ( Nietzsche, 533 ) . The church has pronounced sanctums exactly what the Jesus the Gospel felt to be beneath and behin d himself ( Nietzsche, 536 ) . The land of Eden is non a topographic point we go after we die. It is a province of the bosom and we can be at that place right now, here on Earth, if we follow Jesus # 8217 ; true message. But what is Jesus # 8217 ; true message? If nil else it is to be yourself, love your neighbour, and avoid the crowd at all costs ( nice segue, right? ) . Soren Kierkergaard has a large job with # 8220 ; the crowd # 8221 ; of which so many worlds seem to be a portion. This mass of people bing in the province of consciousness called waking slumber is the wheels of our civilisation yet have no idea of where they are traveling. Kierkegaard is awake, and hence superior to everyone around him. His clip was one of technological pioneering, society blindly traveling frontward looking for ways to do like easier. Many boarded the bandwagon of alteration, following the technological revolution for no good ground. Kierkegaard went out into the streets of Copenhagen and tried to flim-flam people into seeing the truth by knocking society when he had no right to, because he was a moonstruck loafer ( in camouflage, of class ) . His chief job with the crowd is that is a safety for all who fear ind ividualism and the decision-making that comes with it. He speaks repeatedly of how the journalist can compose anything he wants ( things he would neer state talking one-on-one with another individual ) and his words will touch 1000s upon 1000s of ears and be taken earnestly, but because of the namelessness of both the writer and the public reader, duty for things said can be wholly avoided. The crowd is failing. The crowd is untruth. Nietzsche says the same thing: people are afraid to look inward. They seek safety from their heads in work and changeless activity. Jesus would hold no association with the crowd. Truth, individualism, and higher consciousness radiated from him. The nazarene could merely be # 8220 ; what He is, the truth, which relates itself to the single # 8221 ; ( Kierkegaard in Kaufman, 96 ) . That is why so many feared Him, and still make. That is why he was killed. Kierkegaard continues to explicate why so many turn their dorsums on higher consciousness with his construct of apprehension. Dread is a feeling that befalls us when we realize possible or possibility in ourselves, when we learn something new that forces us to do a pick or determination, or merely to believe in a new manner. Peoples fear freedom. They fear pick because one time one is confronted with chance he is expected to take advantage of it. If you learn something that brings you out of ignorance you can neer travel back to life in that nescient mode with a clean scruples because now you know better than to populate like that. If you do non modify your being based on what you have learned, you are looked down upon. Some people appreciate possibility ( ie. of going less nescient ) because they are willing to alter or they like the option to take. Most people would much instead have neer been told that the full human race originated from a individual population in Africa 200,000 o ld ages ago. They wallow in their ignorance and hatred being pressured to alter. The Underground Man must be the most astonishing illustration of apprehension one could conceive of. He is the manifestation of apprehension. His full head exists inside the kingdom of apprehension, and apprehension in the worst manner. He is faced with an unbelievable sum of possible and chance because of his heightened consciousness yet more than anyone is unable to do the # 8220 ; qualitative spring # 8221 ; merely because he is submerging in picks, in freedom as it would look. Kierkegaard is besides really concerned with what it means to go a Christian. What is the single # 8217 ; s relationship to Christianity? He inquiries why anyone would establish their ageless felicity on something about which they can non be certain ( like historical Christian certification ) , but so goes on to state that religion and passion are certainty, and they are what make you a true Christian. By the terminal of Kierkegaard # 8217 ; s choice I have decided that he greatly admires the true Christian, but looks down upon spiritual philosophy in that it is a crutch for those who are non genuinely passionate about God. He raises the really of import contrast between nonsubjective truth and subjective truth. Which is truer? A thing surely is non true merely because you believe it is true, but I do believe that subjective truth is the more of import of the two. There is more virtue in the adult male who prays with full passion to and idol than there is in the adult male who pray s to the true God but with a false spirit. I have a great regard for passion, but infinite passion with no nonsubjective foundation does non work ( like the illustration that inkinesss were born from the Satan ) . Kierkegaard puts it best in stating # 8220 ; The truth is exactly the venture which chooses an nonsubjective uncertainness with the passion of the space # 8221 ; ( Kierkegarrd in Kaufman, 117 ) . So it is a combination of the mind and emotion that makes us a # 8220 ; true # 8221 ; Christian. This ties in with Nietzsche # 8217 ; s thoughts of Christianity in that many alleged Christians purely rely on the aim, exoteric facets of faith for comfort and wholly lack the passion required to go a true Christian. Kierkegaard is right. We are Christians as a affair of class ( Kierkegaard in Kaufman, 120 ) . About everyone I know calls himself or herself a Christian, but I have met merely two or three of them who took the rubric earnestly and were genuinely passionate and had g reat religion. Peoples are afraid, or possibly merely unwilling, to take the hazard. Passionately believing in something that is unsure to you is unsafe. As civilisation pushs frontward and trust on ground and nonsubjective truths go more and more cardinal, our demand for God to explicate life continues to diminish. Hence, being a Christian with infinite passion in today # 8217 ; s universe is both black and foolish. We have killed God, says Nietzsche. I like Dostoevsky really much because I understand the 1000 gh procedure of the Underground Man. Last twelvemonth, in fact, I was certain I was on my manner to going what I can now term the Underground Man ( thanks to this category! ) . That was when I was excessively witting, hyper-aware, and really insecure. I was far from the province of the Underground Man, but certainly in the initial phases of paranoid-schizophrenia! My ideas seemed morbid. Not that consciousness itself was a disease, but that my heightened consciousness was in some manner poisoned. Therefore I feel Dostoevsky ( when I say Dostoevsky I am talking of his Underground Man ) is incorrect to name consciousness a disease. His gross outing ideas are non the merchandise of higher consciousness but of a morbid head. His ideas are non normal ; this is what I believe. Dostoevsky admits right off that he is more intelligent than anyone else around him. However, he besides admits that this is his ruin: an intelligent adult male is bound to be an basically nondescript animal, while a adult male of character, a adult male of action, is necessarily a limited animal ( Dostoevsky in Kaufman, 4 ) . So in one sense he looks down upon the stupid, unconscious, mean adult male who exists without thought, yet in the other he badly envies ( to the point of abhorrence, he adds ) the mean adult male exactly because he is unconscious ( his absence of inordinate idea enables him to be a adult male of action ) . In rereading Notes from Underground I realize that Dostoevsky is an absolute mastermind. I am in awe at his deepness of apprehension of heightened consciousness. I will take his mouse illustration and use it to myself. I, at one point, for about three old ages, thought excessively much. I became really self-aware, analysing everything I said and everything s aid to me. I became ashamed. I became immobile, and it was most acute when I smoked marihuana. I was so immobile when high that I was afraid to talk. I would desire to discourse and come back, felt compelled to, cognize precisely when something should be said and what its content should be, but could non because I was surrounded by a # 8220 ; nefariousness in the signifier of inquiries and uncertainties. . .caught up in a fatal mire # 8221 ; ( Dostoevsky in Kaufman, 11 ) . And when I did talk, I crumbled, and my insecurity was revealed, and therefore I thought of myself as worthless, a mouse. No 1 called me worthless but myself, but I was convinced that, objectively talking, I was worthless. I was a individual who did nil, entertained nil, and benefited no 1 in any manner. Merely God knows why I was alive. There are others in the universe who are worthless but are non witting of it. This puts me all the more at mistake because I realize my ineptitude and therefore should be able t o alter. But I can non alter ; it is impossible. Thankss to modern medical specialty, this is where I stop and the Underground Man picks up. He, recognizing he can non alter himself, crawls into the black hole of desperation and drowns himself in retrieving every clip he was humiliated. Then he drowns himself in his ain ill feelings about himself. After many, many old ages he begins to accept his earnestly flawed character. He takes pride in his disease and becomes masochistic. He defiles and degrades himself in the face of others, welcomes the # 8220 ; toxicant of unrealized desires turned inward, # 8221 ; and in the terminal feels a unusual pleasance in it all. Forgive my aside. I think the lesson Dostoevsky provides is ignorance is bliss. His disaffection is accentuated by the societal criterions of his clip. The decisive # 8220 ; adult male of action # 8221 ; is the 1 who achieves and becomes something. Unfortunately in this universe, you need to believe quick, act fast, and be certain in order to last. You have to cognize how to populate on the surface, to interact with others # 8217 ; personalities ( masks ) . Dostoevsky merely knows how to be as his internal being, his true being. Possibly due to his lonely upbringing he neer learned how to interact as the universe interacts, on an external degree. And since he could non make this he was alienated from the start, and continued to be alienated and to hold his true ego corrupted by blending kernel and character with out separating between the two, bring forthing his current writhed being: a paranoiac and a schizophrenic. You see, many people possess some grade of higher consciousness, but they besides know how to interact on the degree on which our society is founded # 8211 ; the degree of the mundane. These people possess being ( ability to move and take ) and cognition ( emotion, mind ) and are on their manner to apprehension ( being awake ) . Dostoevsky possessed enormous cognition, but really small being. Therefore, he had apprehension ( and possibly had even reached the # 8220 ; self consciousness # 8221 ; level a measure above the # 8220 ; wake up # 8221 ; degree ) but it was manifested in a negative manner because of his deficiency of being. ( This is my best and concluding effort at explicating Dostoevsky place! ) Carl Jaspers: the concluding chapter. Unlike our other three philosophers, Jaspers, at least as it appears to me, is less concerned with the particular. ( He is much nicer besides! ) He tries to gestate and project consciousness and being in their broadest sense. He focuses less on the person, the crowd, God, higher consciousness as a finish, and more on how these things exist inside and outside our consciousness. Jaspers # 8217 ; narrative is the most complex yet, but fortuitously he goes to great strivings to explicate himself. Still, I had a hard clip working through his doctrine, so bear with me. We worlds live and think in skylines, but the fact that we have skylines indicates there is something beyond them, environing the given skyline ( Jaspers in Kaufman, 211 ) . Jaspers now introduces the Encompassing, its two manners # 8211 ; Bing itself and the Encompassing which we are # 8211 ; and the three manifestations of the latter manner: empirical being, consciousness as such, and spirit. Jaspers makes a differentiation between the consciousness of life existences and consciousness in general, or empirical being versus the Encompassing of empirical being ( aka. Bing itself, or existenz ) . He calls the first an actuality and the 2nd an inactuality. Right now, as I think, I am witting but enclosed in my ain individualism. In my self-awareness I exist as merely an realization of truth, as a mere contemplation of my true ego. My being, my witting being, that is, is a consequence of the intersection of eternity with the temporal. This reminds me of two things: Kant # 8217 ; s th ing-in-itselfs and phenomena, and the ocean analogy. Empirical being sounds like Kant # 8217 ; s Phenomena in that it is the point at which non-physical things and thoughts like life, consciousness, and the psyche become objectively accessible to us. We grasp, analyze, and understand these things. Then we see past this topographic point, where unknown meets the head, to the unknown where we ( and everything ) exist in pure kernel. This we can non hold on. Another manner to see the state of affairs is that we are all bubbles on the surface of the ocean. Everyone comes from and returns to the same topographic point: the ocean. Recognizing this, we reach a higher degree of consciousness similar to witting love. So the manner we exist usually ( in the matrix, haha ) is an Empirical being as an indirect manifestation of our true egos ( Bing itself ) , in other words, as a contemplation. We achieve consciousness as such when we realize these restrictions of our consciousness, when we rea lize that nil we see is in its true signifier, but instead something created from our ain head. Spirit is acknowledging that everyone is everything because we are all portion of the same whole ( the ocean ) . # 8220 ; The person as spirit is non himself, but the integrity of contingent persons and of the necessary universal # 8221 ; ( Jaspers in Kaufman, 220 ) . Kant hit a dead terminal and decided we will neer be able to step outside our witting to see things as they truly are. Jaspers, nevertheless, takes us farther. He says we can excel the Encompassing which we are ; we can go our echt egos. We can Be, in the most cardinal yet most absolute manner. This is existenz, where everything appears to everything else in its true signifier, as if one were looking down upon the Encompassing. This I achieve existenz through transcendency. # 8220 ; Transcendence is the power through which I am truly myself # 8221 ; ( Jaspers in Kaufman, 219 ) . Existenz is infinity in clip. This is wher e no boundary of any kind can be found. This is where pure communicating occurs. This is absolute truth. This is God. Existenz is sing the thing-in-itself. Jaspers goes on to speak about ground and existenz being contingent upon one another, but I will non acquire into that. My reading of Jaspers is convoluted plenty, and for that I apologize. If I had more clip I would explicate myself better. The bottom line for me is that Jaspers has combined the power of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche with his ain and has explained rather convincingly that we can see God, that there is hope for world, and it begins with paying a spot more attending. I can make that. I was witting one time, but it was a bad kind of witting, like Dostoevsky # 8217 ; s. I was in horror of the awful ideas go throughing thru my caput. That # 8217 ; s when I was convinced I had a diseased head. Prozac has about cured me of that poisoned consciousness, and I # 8217 ; m now get downing to see spots and pieces of the higher consciousness I think these philosophers understand. There is so much bull*censored* in this universe ( for illustration, why do we have first feelings? ) . That # 8217 ; s why I chose the subject of shockable, dormant worlds. Because the manner we live is pathetic, and although I enjoy everyday life a great trade, I know existence runs much deeper than this, and I would wish to cognize those deepnesss and how to acquire at that place. What can adult male make? A snake pit of a batch. We have merely been reading the inquiry the incorrect manner. Kaufman, Walter. # 8220 ; Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sarte # 8221 ; Dostoevsky, Fyodor. # 8220 ; Notes from the Underground # 8221 ;