The Existentialist Attitude
An Exploration of Christian Existentialism: Part I
When you think of existentialism and her thinkers, you likely think of an atheist existentialist: Nietzsche, Sartre, Beauvoir, maybe Heidegger or Camus. This is not without good reason; they were the chief popularizers of existentialism as we conceive of it today. Because of their predominance not only as famous existentialists but as famous philosophers, it may be a surprise to learn that some of the earliest existentialists1 were Christians, not atheists. It is some of those Christian existentialists that I have studied for the past few months, and who we will explore over the course of a few articles.
In particular, my studies served the purpose of preparing me for a talk I gave at my university last month; you can watch the recording here. I read one major book from each of the four thinkers we will discuss: Søren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, Nikolai Berdyaev, and Gabriel Marcel. In particular, the books I read were:
Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death, written under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus;
Tillich’s The Courage to Be;
Berdyaev’s The Divine and The Human;
Marcel’s Creative Fidelity.
In this mini-series we will explore some of their commonalities, look for hidden resonances, and see where their worldviews clash—in other words, a comparative analysis. From the outset, I will note that I do my best to read books constructively and with an open mind. If you are hoping that I will constantly hand dueling pistols to the authors, I suggest you look elsewhere. No two people have the same worldview. We do not need to add conflict where it is not present; there will be conflict enough regardless.
More than anything else, what I see drawing these thinkers together is what Tillich calls the existential attitude:
We must first of all distinguish the existential attitude from philosophical or artistic Existentialism. The existential attitude is one of involvement in contrast to a merely theoretical or detached attitude. “Existential” in this sense can be defined as participating in a situation, especially a cognitive situation, with the whole of one’s existence. This includes temporal, spatial, historical, psychological, sociological, biological conditions. And it includes the finite freedom which reacts to these conditions and changes them. An existential knowledge is a knowledge in which these elements, and therefore the whole existence of him who knows, participate. [...] There are realms of reality or—more exactly—of abstraction from reality in which the most complete detachment is the adequate cognitive approach. [...] But it is most inadequate to apply the same approach to reality in its infinite concreteness. A self which has become a matter of calculation and management has ceased to be a self. It has become a thing. (Tillich, The Courage to Be, p. 115., italics my own)
For Tillich—and as we will see, for all of the thinkers mentioned—there are realms of knowledge which can only be experienced with the whole of my being. To “know” them without being changed would be a betrayal of my claiming to know it. This is most directly relevant to us in how we relate to ourselves.
The implicit view of oneself that we are handed is that of a small cog in a giant machine. Everyone from governments to tech corporations to universities has a vested interest in reducing us to a number in a spreadsheet—all for the sake of that omnipotent god, Efficiency. The more docility people show in accepting this premise, the better it is for the Powers that Be. This is exactly the mindset that existentialism in any form wants to shake us out of. We allow ourselves all too easily to become things instead of selves. “The greatest hazard of all, losing the self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss—an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.—is sure to be noticed.”2 If Kierkegaard wrote this in the 1840s, how much horror would he feel today?
Indeed, Kierkegaard is the man who started3 all of this existentialism business. One of his more famous phrases, “Subjectivity is truth!” sounds terrifying to our modern ears, but if we step back and read it in context we see that he means something rather similar to Tillich as above.
To start with, we must recognize that Kierkegaard does not believe we are fully selves yet. Subjectivity, becoming a subject, embracing all of our conditions—this is an art which no one has perfected. The pseudonym Johannes Climacus writes “...becoming subjective is the highest task assigned to a human being, [...] the task of becoming subjective is indeed assigned to every person.”4 This task, becoming subjective, is precisely the ethical task for human beings. This ethical is “not only a knowing; it is also a doing that is related to a knowing”.5 That is, ethical knowledge cannot simply be objective, mental; it must also transform our lives and our behaviors in accordance with it. Furthermore, the claim that “subjectivity is truth”6 is taking place only within the context of this ethical-religious knowledge:
It is always to be borne in mind that I am speaking of the religious, in which objective thinking, if it is supposed to be supreme, is downright irreligiousness. But wherever objective thinking is within its rights, its direct communication is also in order, precisely because it is not supposed to deal with subjectivity. (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 76, fn., emphasis my own)
That objective thinking has its reality is not denied, but in relation to all thinking in which precisely subjectivity must be accentuated it is a misunderstanding. Even if a man his whole life through occupies himself exclusively with logic, he still does not become logic; he himself therefore exists in other categories.(Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 93, fn., emphasis my own)
“Subjectivity is truth!” is a true claim insofar as we speak of truths which engage the whole of my being. It is not true as regards mathematics, science, certain modes of history, etc. But this objectivizing stance, which we rightfully take in regards to mathematics or science, is the wrong stance to take as regards my own selfhood. Kierkegaard wants us to properly develop into subjects, into human beings; we must cast off the chains of objectivization. This casting off is ultimately the same thing as becoming Spirit—and “a human being is spirit.” (Sickness, p. 13)
Berdyaev opens his text The Divine and The Human with a meditation on the interplay between objectivization, subjectivity, and the divine revelation in history. God’s revelation in history has become an object or a series of objects—a fact both necessary for it to exist in the world, yet problematic for producing true spiritual life in humanity:
In the case of revelation, which is fundamental in the religious life, the same thing has happened as with all manifestations of the Spirit; it has been objectivized. The fact must be recognized that Christian revelation could not have played a social role and could not have become an impelling historical force unless it had been objectivized, that is to say, socialized and adapted to the level of the common masses. [...] Objectivization is a distortion of spirituality and at the same time objectivization is a necessity for the realization of the destinies of mankind and of the world, for movement towards the Kingdom of the Spirit! But on the way, the illusions and distortions of objectivization must be stripped off, there must be cleansing. And this is the mission of the prophetic side of religion and philosophy.
[...]
Revelation is the fact of the Spirit in me, in the subject; it is spiritual experience, spiritual life. [...] the manifestations of the Spirit in the lives of the apostles and saints were not of an intellectual character, the entire spiritual nature of man came into operation in them. (The Divine and The Human, p. 13-15)
For Berdyaev, true religious revelation is in the subjective. His critique of revelation is a critique from within. He wants to free the divine revelation that is the life of Christ from the naturalist and materialist distortions which have so long afflicted it. Spirit, he says, is never fully present in an object; Spirit may only be symbolized by objects. Objects are inherently finite, but Spirit is infinite creativity, freedom. This is essentially the basis for the apophatic impulse: if God is an Infinite Mystery, beyond all our understanding, no concepts or objects or any finite thing could wholly encapsulate the Divine Life.7
This freeing from materialist distortions does not, however, mean that we should ignore historical criticism. On the contrary, it is because historical criticism is only concerned with the objective that we must let it do its work to the fullest—nothing historical criticism can say has the power to determine matters of the Spirit. “No religion stands on a higher level than truth, for God is truth and is known in spirit and in truth.” (p. 16-17) Just as Kierkegaard saw realms where objectivity is necessary, so too does Berdyaev.
Marcel, as he so often does, concerns himself with how objectivization plagues our human relationships. Rending another soul as a mere object rips apart our ability to love not only the other person but also ourselves:
Let us return to our preceding remarks concerning the object: it is what does not take me into account, something for which I do not count. Conversely, I address the second person when what I address can respond to me in some way—and that response cannot be translated into words. [...] When I consider another individual as him, I treat him as essentially absent; it is his absence which allows me to objectify him, to reason about him as though he were a nature or given essence.
[...]
The being whom I love can hardly be a third person for me at all; yet he allows me to discover myself; my outer defenses fall at the same time as the walls separating me from the other person fall. (Creative Fidelity, p. 32-33)
Love, he says, is inconsistent with treating another person like a them over there, like an object. Much as Berdyaev sees an incongruity with objectivization and revelation, so Marcel sees an incongruity with objectivization and love. It is not simply ourselves we must cease to objectify, nor ourselves and God/revelation, but also other persons.
Going further, Marcel says true action occurs only when it engages the whole of our being. “An act, I shall maintain, is more an act to the degree that it is impossible to repudiate it without completely denying oneself...” (p. 109). Thus we return full circle to Tillich—truly being a person requires completely accepting oneself, engaging the whole of what it means to be human. Being human involves not only myself, my self, but other people, other selves. True engagement with another person, therefore, must make room for the whole of the other person within myself. I cannot objectify another person, reduce them to a set of ideas in my mind, or insist on projecting past conceptions onto their present or future self, and still claim to know them and be with them. If we do not know a person and cannot be present with that person, can we claim to love them? I think not. Presence requires a concrete, particular engagement with the other person, with the Thou as Marcel says, as they truly are. This is why love can always increase between people; we can only love another person insofar as we truly see them as they are.
Love is connected with personality, it is a relation between one personality and another. Love is really human when it is love not only for God in man, for what is perfect and beautiful in him, but also for man in God, for the unrepeatable individual, one who is dear to me independently of any perfection he may or may not have.” (The Divine and The Human, p. 125)
For me, all of this ties together in the acts of love and faith. The talk I gave was for an apologetics organization at my university. Often times, in the world of apologetics there is a tendency to reduce faith to a list of propositions that one mentally assents to. Kierkegaard, Marcel, Berdyaev and Tillich all say that this view of faith is a misunderstanding. In doing so, they are following the apostle James:
James 2:14-22: What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from works, and I by my works will show you faith. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. 20 Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is worthless? 21 Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and by works faith was brought to completion. (NRSVue)
Even the demons believe—and shudder. Mere propositional assent is granted to the demons, but this does not constitute faith! No, faith without works is dead, because true faith is a true act, in the Marcelian sense. True faith is an active faith, it is a faith which works, which transforms the whole of one’s being. It requires an active engagement with my concrete situation: if a brother or sister is lacking and we do not supply their needs, not only do we fail to love, but James says we fail to have faith.
Love is no different. What are the greatest commandments? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. “All your heart, soul, mind, and strength”—is this not precisely the existential engagement of Tillich which opened this article? And to love our neighbors as ourselves, we have seen that this requires a full existential engagement with both my own reality and personhood, and that of my neighbor. I can only love others insofar as I truly perceive them.
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“Existentialism” as a term was only coined in the 1940s, by Gabriel Marcel in reference to Sartre. Most of those that we now call existentialists are called such only retroactively—and moreover even some of those who were alive after its coining did not consider themselves such during their lifetime.
Sickness, p. 32-33.
I tried to make a joke here about “started” and “Sartre”—”sartred”?—work but it just didn’t. Surely someone better at wordplay can do this.
[Johannes Climacus], Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, p. 159.
Ibid., p. 160.
Ibid., p. 203.
Berdyaev, while claiming to be fully apophatic, sure has a lot of cataphatic adjectives he likes to attach to God. Whether he maintains his apophaticism is probably a matter for debate—debate for scholars of actual repute, not myself.