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Existence precedes essence
"No Exit (Huis Clos) is one of
Sartre's finest plays; it is produced and studied more than any of his
other dramas. The setting is Hell even though it resembles the real
world around us. Three characters come together in this microcosm of
Hell in a way which shows their indispensability to one another: They
become inextricably involved in each other's stories, and they represent
the fundamental idea of the play-namely, that other people are torture
for us. The question of "the others" is integral to the works of Sartre;
he describes over and over how other people can condemn us, define us,
withhold love from us, murder us — in short, take the power away from us
to live life as we wish.
But "the others" cannot rob us of our freedom,
and this is the central notion in Sartrean existentialism. The anguish
which we feel when we are confronted with the vast and meaningless
universe is something which Sartre calls "nausea." To combat this
"nausea," man can use his freedom — freedom of thought, choice, and
action. But once man has chosen and acted upon his choice, there is no
turning back: This choice stands as an imprint on his essence, on his
human makeup, and it follows him for the rest of his days. In No Exit, Sartre
pushes this idea to its extreme, showing how the torture of looking
back on our past is a form of Hell, particularly when we fail to choose an
act when the opportunity presents itself. If man is alive, he can
always choose to rearrange his life, but when he dies, the lifelong
events are frozen into a mold which can never be broken. This is the
atmosphere in No Exit, where all three characters have died and
are condemned to the unmalleable truth of their past actions. Contrary
to the situation in The Flies, this play shows what happens when people do not choose properly. In The Flies, we witness the results of correct, as well as incorrect, choices."
Cliff Notes (yes copied and pasted)
The debate isn't really directly about No Exit. I thought it could lure some people to read the play. This debate is about existentialism. What are your thoughts on the idea?
I had to use google translate because I don't speak Danish. But if you want to speak to me without people understanding I speak fluent french ;)
C'est dommage que personne connaisse Sartre. Ce n'est pas mon philosophe favori mais il ecrit des choses intéressantes. C'est très puissant les implications de la phrase "l'existance précède l'essence". I hoped someone would discuss the implications of the statement.
how can you have been raised in Denmark and not speak Danish? I just wanted to practice my Danish with you. I'm not interested in speaking French with you.
I speak English and German fluently. And know a little Spanish and Danish and Afrikaans.
Every big philosopher writes interesting things. Is your favourite Plato? Marx? Adi Shankara? Russell? Wittgenstein? Nietzsche? Kierkegaard? Hume? Aquinas? Aurelius? Kant? Epicurus? Pyrrho? Hegel? Heidegger?
(You can reply in French if you prefer. Je connais un peu de français, enough to understand but not to speak.)
Mon amour en ce moment est Camus. Je redécouvre ses livres. Ma grosse critique de Sartre est que en effet il a la grosse tete et que sa philosophie est intéressante mais que j'ai parfois trouvé déconnectée du monde ... La philosophie reste un domaine abstrait mais Camus a réussi à écrire quelque chose qui touche l'extérieur...
What made the one esteemed to be wise one think existence justifies his being outside of the fire of Hell? Why did he portray Hell as a place that is tolerable where a person can enjoy a discussion? Is the depths of his philosophy found in stating that in freedom a person cannot undo the things they have done? How long did it take the esteemed to be wise orator to discover that great truth? Do we really have to study his works in order to understand that we can't undo what we have done?
I used to read the so-called great philosophers and classics until I realized they don't know what they are talking about and are trying to invent their own realities where they are justified to exist without punishment in death....and now, thank God, I've forgotten most of who said what as they tried to prove their existence outside of the all-consuming fire of Hell is justified. I was around 20 years old when I realized all these "philosophers" were just trying to stroke their own egos by flattering themselves with feigned eloquence. Fancy talk is not eloquent when it is not based on truth, it is evil trying to establish lies as valid.
That, by itself, isn't absurd though. A 20 year old can surely do that. And here we have a more probable event, since he didn't really critique anything, of a 20 year old instinctively rejecting philosophers.
Though an individual could try that (on an unmanaged dedicated server) by editing the scripting files to allow for some more commands, or making a GUI interface to to merely edit the font tag, that doesn't seem like an enticing feature.
Really? There isn't a philosopher or classical writer who's ideas interest you? You don't have to agree with the ideas. Why interest myself in ideas that naturally agree with? There is no self development in doing that... Right? But I am going off subject...
They used to interest me when I was searching for the truth, searching to know the meaning of life and my own real worth. I still remember some of the classic novels which were stories based on truth. There was a time when I would have enjoyed the play story of your OP as it has some elements of truth. The story is familiar, I may have read it or seen the play. Still, it is of the same bunch of philosophers which could not give me the answers I wanted. Today I would not pay one penny for their work and would not give one minute to allow myself to be amused or entertained with their efforts to portray their uncertainty as eternally valid. The story of your OP portrays Hell as a place where final judgment is never reached. That would be eternal life in a world like you experience now. The theme of the story is a lie, Hell is not here on Earth, it is not the similar to this world, it has nothing to compare to this world where there are good things which can be appreciated even if our health or circumstances are painful.
I used to read the philosophers and classics for hours, and then sit for hours thinking and trying to understand and figure it all out. Day after day for I don't know how many years, I guess ten years as I started reading the adult works around the time I was twelve, searching for the truth ten years...maybe eight. I was always reading 3-5 books at the same time, reading a couple hours in one and then another. Then I realized that what the "philosophers' are saying is wrong as they are saying they do not know what they are talking about and cannot know what they are talking about...they just like to talk!!!
Self-development is not possible. We cannot develop into being anything different than what we are. Accomplishments and improved talents does not change what we are. Trying to do and be good does not change what we are. I'm all in favor of people doing things beneficial to others, to themselves, and to society as that is what keeps evil at bay. Evil in the world is restrained by the desires of people to do and be good. It's just too bad the evil operates by force and will force the use of violence against it to put an end to it.
Self-development is not possible. We cannot develop into being anything different than what we are. Accomplishments and improved talents does not change what we are.
See...this is the big problem with your type. You religious nuts and Creationists. As Dawkins says, you are content with NOT knowing or understanding the real world and your places in it.
Neuro-science has shown repeatedly that we can improve our cognition and brain power. It's like exercising a muscle. You exercise your brain. We can actually improve our IQ. This is called "neuro-plasticity." We've known about it for about a decade. The experiments and proofs of it happening are indisputable. We have seen people improve their powers of cognition and intelligence in many many tests and surveys.
Look it up.
But of course you will not.
Why?
Because, as I said: your kind is content with NOT knowing. You are all too happy to bathe in the lazy warm waters of religious zealotry, thinking, "Ahh...god did it. This is all I need. I don't have to work or learn."
Figures you would cut out the part where I said I am all in favor of people doing things beneficial to society, useful applied science and invention, hard work and good citizenship. It is the desire of people wanting to do good and accomplish beneficial things which restrains evil in the world. If people stop trying to be good, evil forces will multiply their power quickly and another Hitler will rise fast. The world is going that way anyways, but it's good intentions of people who want to live good lives which hinders the evil from exploding.
Improve your cognitive powers, gain vast fortunes and cure plagues and diseases, expand the average human lifetime to 300 years and you are still a jack ass. You can't change what you are by "self improvement". God will not bow down to you and say "you are da man, boy!!!!".
I don't have to look up rising IQ's or longer average lifespans or higher average height or any of that stuff. I do not dispute it. But the people are still the same at heart, corrupt at heart, sinners in need of a Savior. You cannot save yourself, all the self improvement in the world takes you nowhere but to your grave.
You're a jack ass, Slappy, taking my words out of context and then framing your lying accusations implying I am saying things I did not say when if anybody reads the post you twisted your quote from they can see you are a toothless liar you jack ass punk.
And fyi, "jack ass" is figurative language accurately describing your personality, tactics, and character in light of the way you are acting...STUBBORN AS A MULE AND STINKING LIKE ONE
So what if you reach evolution's promise of being like a god when you are fully developed? You will still have a sinful heart and in reality be no more a god, no better than what you are now, a sinner with one foot in the grave and the other on thin ice melting over the fire of Hell where you will fry like an eternal sausage if you will not believe God can and will save you is you will honestly seek His mercy in repentance of your sins.
Dawkins says he cannot condemn "mild molestation of children" as he and his classmates where molested by a teacher at school. It is highly likely that Dawkins is a child molester, and if he is not he certainly has nothing to say against Catholic priests who commit "mild molestation" on altar boys.
If you think Dawkins is an authority on anybody's character, I have to wonder if you were molested as a child or are a child molester yourself.
Developing talents and skills and abilities is great. I'm a big fan of many people who are not Christians yet have done great things in technology, medicine, sports and other areas. I am not a fan of anybody who teaches or believes in the big bang or evolution, make-believe nonsense. I watched one of the old greats play hockey after he was retired and he wove that puck through all defenders like Fred Astaire dancing with a coat rack. You're just a big mouth punk, Slappy. Your rabit hatred of God, Christians and God's word turns you into a foaming mouthed devil.
It is natural to agree with ideas which imply we are exempt from condemnation, exempt from final judgement. It is natural to agree with ideas in which our existence outside of Hell's fiery damnation is justified. To think that I deserve to die and burn in Hell is completely against all ideas of being justified by our existence to be free from the punishment of Hell's fire.
When you find somebody does not have the answers you want, why waste any more time pondering their ideas? Most people want to believe they have the right to be free of the fire of Hell and cannot be left there to fry like eternal sausages, so they will entertain themselves their entire lives with anything as long as it excludes the possibility that they may be wrong in believing they are exempt from damnation in the eternal fire of Hell.
There is one philosopher and classic writer whose works never cease to interest me. His name is Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived. He made some serious mistakes in departing from the truth in his attitude and lifestyle but concluded his works with standing on basic truth. Solomon's writings are in the Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the story of his life is in the Books of the Kings and the Chronicles. I believe he wrote Ecclesiastes near the end of his life after he realized what awful mistakes he had made in departing from objective truth. His writings in Ecclesiastes renounce the sins of his life showing his repentance.
It is me who is going off subject a bit. You'll have to pardon me on that or ban me as my thoughts have left things like the OP's play's ideas in the dust. What I do in my discussions is try to draw people into discussing points in the OP, and in respect for you I am trying to be mindful of your leadership in the discussion presenting your ideas. If you feel I'm going too far off subject I cannot blame you for banning me as I do tend to leave behind things I find no value in.
The only person who exceeded Solomon in philosophy is Jesus Christ who is more than a philosopher, He is the embodiment of the truth. Nobody compares to Jesus Christ. If you really want to be challenged in your ideas, get a good old King James Bible and start reading in the gospel according to John and then read the Book of the epistle of the apostle Paul to the Romans (in my opinion, abbreviating the titles as "John" and "Romans" is lazy)......and then do it again if you still are unclear about the truth of reality.
The city of King Solomon in Jerusalem is thought to be on the slope leading down from what is now the Al Aqsa mosque. Israeli archaeologists have been desperately excavating the site for many decades yet not one iota of evidence of the existence of King Solomon has been found. No mention of his name has been found on any tablet, inscription, tax record or pot decoration.
Anyone who has visited Egypt will have seen widespread evidence of a monarch who reigned three hundred years before Solomon, Pharaoh Rameses II, yet of King Solomon who ruled over a vast empire and army (1 Kings 4, 21-26 and 1 Kings 9, 17-23, 2 Chronicles 9, 25-26) there is no trace. All the vassal peoples who paid taxes to him have left not a single record of account or inscription. Not one of the soldiers of his conquering army left a sword, helmet or shield.
Professor Yadin’s two volume work "The Art Of Warfare In Biblical Lands" (International Publishing Co. Ltd., Jerusalem 1963) has ample illustrated examples of discovered contemporary armour and weapons from other lands, but one looks in vain for a single item from the Solomonic empire.
Search through Israel’s museums and you will find no evidence from the empire although there are ample artefacts marked "Canaan" or "Philistine". It is inconceivable that if Solomon and his empire had existed in reality not a trace of them could be found from all the archaeological "digs" throughout Israel.
Who then created this fiction, when and why? Many Hebrews of the Babylonian captivity, 586 BCE rose to leading positions in Babylon, became established and wealthy. They had no wish to return to the harsh life of a deserted and derelict land. The Hebrew people were facing the greatest threat ever: total annihilation by assimilation, and their land had been entered by armed hostile tribes.
This article is from December of 2016. Once again, like with your archaic anti-science notions like your belief in "vestigial" organs you show you are out of touch with modern science. Here are some excerpts, eat crow and weep Slappy. Read the whole article and throw a temper tantrum denying everything published on this evolutionary science website, typical of the small mind in your hockey helmet.
Six clay seals found at the archaeological site of Khirbet Summeily in Israel offer evidence that supports the existence of Biblical Kings David and Solomon, says a team of archaeologists led by Dr Jeff Blakely of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Our dates for the bullae are based on multiple types of evidence we combined to determine a general 10th century B.C. date,” Dr Blakely added.
“The style of the bullae, the types of ancient pottery found in the same contexts as the bullae, the types of Egyptian scarabs found, the style of an Egyptian amulet, and the overall stratigraphy or layering of the site each suggested a 10th century date.”
Two of the bullae the scientists excavated have complete seal impressions, two have partial seal impressions, and two others have none. Two bullae were blackened by fire. One bulla has a well-preserved hole where the string used to seal the document passed through the clay. The impressions in the bullae do not contain writing.
Dr Hardin said: “we are very positive that these bullae are associated with the Iron Age IIA, which we date to the 10th century BC, and which lends general support to the historical veracity of David and Solomon as recorded in the Hebrew Biblical texts. These appear to be the only known examples of bullae from the 10th century, making this discovery unique.”
The finds contribute significantly to an ongoing debate in the scientific community about whether governments or states existed in the early Iron Ages.
The artifacts hold far-reaching implications for the growing number of scientists who maintain that such political organization occurred much later than Biblical texts suggest.
“Some text scholars and archaeologists have dismissed the historic reliability of the Biblical text surrounding kings David and Solomon, such as recorded in the Bible in the books of Kings and Second Samuel, which scholars often date to the Iron Age IIA or 10th century BC,” Dr Hardin explained.
“The fact that these bullae came off of sealed written documents shows that this site – located out on the periphery of pretty much everything – is integrated at a level far beyond subsistence.”
“You have either political or administrative activities going on at a level well beyond those typical of a rural farmstead.”
From one of the most subtly is not blatantly anti-Christian/pro-evolution world famous rags of atheism, THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE...from 2010 dating you at least 7 years behind modern science.....
Here's some more education which you obviously missed on on when you stopped using your noggin after you decided the Bible is lies much like you stopped using your noggin when you decided to believe "vestigial" things prove evolution while real scientists unlike you continue to find the functions of what anti-science evolutionary religious nuts of Naturalism decided were leftover junk not worthy of trying to understand it's purpose.
Excerpt from the National Geographic article:
A 3,000-year-old defensive wall possibly built by King Solomon has been unearthed in Jerusalem, according to the Israeli archaeologist who led the excavation. The discovery appears to validate a Bible passage, she says.
The tenth-century B.C. wall is 230 feet (70 meters) long and about 6 meters (20 feet) tall. It stands along what was then the edge of Jerusalem—between the Temple Mount, still Jerusalem's paramount landmark, and the ancient City of David, today a modern-day Arab neighborhood called Silwan.
The stone barrier is part of a defensive complex that includes a gatehouse, an adjacent building, and a guard tower, which has been only partially excavated, according to Eilat Mazar, who led the dig for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Over the years, the structures have been partially demolished—their building materials scavenged for later structures—and what remained was buried under rubble, Mazar said.
The Bible's First Book of Kings—widely believed to have been written centuries after the time period in question—says Solomon, king of Israel, built a defensive wall in Jerusalem. The new discovery is the first archaeological evidence of this structure, Mazar says.
(Related: "King Solomon's Mines Rediscovered?")
Bearing Out a Bible Passage?
Ancient artifacts found in and around the complex pointed Mazar to the tenth-century B.C. date.
"We don't have many kings during the tenth century that could have built such a structure, basically just David and Solomon," she said.
According to the Bible, King David, of David-and-Goliath fame, was the father of King Solomon, who is said to have built the First Temple of Jerusalem on the Temple Mount.
Ceramics found near the wall helped narrow the date down, being of a level of sophistication common to the second half of the tenth century B.C.—King Solomon's time, according to Mazar.
Three-foot-tall (one-meter-tall) earthenware storage vessels were found near the gatehouse, one of them with a Hebrew inscription indicating the container belonged to a high-ranking government official.
Figurines typical of tenth-century B.C. Jerusalem—including four-legged animals and large-breasted women likely symbolizing fertility—were also uncovered, as were jar handles bearing impressions reading "to the king" and various Hebrew names, she said.
The artifacts may hint at the area's street life in biblical times. Here ancient Jerusalemites would have gathered around the wall's city gate to trade, settle disputes via street-side judges, engage in ritual practices, and stock up on water and supplies for treks out of the city, Mazar said.
(Also see "Solomon's Temple Artifacts Found by Muslim Workers.")
You are a fraud when it comes to pretending you know what you are talking about. All you are doing is proving you are out of touch with modern science and archaeology.
The Babylonian captivity was the first razing of Israel's work outside of Egypt. Why in the world do you acknowledge the historic fact of the Babylonian captivity yet you refuse to acknowledge Israel's own historical record of its chronicles? The Babylonians and the Egyptians had a lot more interest in denying the God of Israel and erasing everything they could of His record than they had in preserving historical facts. And why is it so important that the veracity of the Bible be denied? Because if you can show the promises of God regarding Israel are untrue then you have dethroned God and you can rule the world and take God's throne...the promise of evolution.
Bad news for you, Slappy. Jesus Christ is coming back and will rule the world from Mt. Zion. Calling the Bible lies, calling Christians deluded, and calling Jews mythologists will not stop Jesus Christ from coming back bodily in person to rule the world. Before Jesus rules the world, you will have your idol take the stage as the world leader, the devil in disguise who you will love and worship....if you are not in Hell before then, if you are still in the world, if you still in your pride are denying God's right to rule over you........
you're lost, Slappy, and you are fighting on the losing side.
I think the connection between existence and essence is too complex to be captured with a uni-directional relationship. They tend to inform one another, so much so that they may even be inseparable under a certain light. That said, the broad focus upon the individual which generally characterizes existentialist philosophy appeals to me. I've found the work of the Young Hegelian's particularly interesting, especially the ideas of Stirner.
The idea of Sartre wants to present is that man is what he makes of himself. This means that man must have first existed and decide whatever he wanted to be. He is not determined by some essence (nature proper to a thing) but it is him who decides.
His notion also of No exit is primarily the idea of existential burden. He has no other ways to escape but to accept that he has the freedom and must be accountable of the effect of his actions : )
