Existentialism: Keirkegaard, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky
...an freedom and meaning. Instead it is the revelation of the paradox of reason against freedom. Freedom cannot be a standard objective truth. If it were a standard objective truth, then there would be no freedom. Subjectivity is truth, and each individual is a unique subjective truth, and this form of freedom cannot be reduced to an objective truth. This rejection of reason as a means to discover and exercise freedom is also true of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. All three authors reject the acquisition of new knowledge through reason as a means of relieving the anxiety that the mystery of existence produces. If reason is the tool to use, then there is an answer that awaits us in the end. This promise of an answer would give us a goal to work towards and a hope that it would relieve our anxiety and leave us victorious over life. But where is freedom, if life is a game to be won or lost. Reason and science cannot penetrate the mystery of existence. Neither can it inform us of the truth. It cannot answer the fundamental religious question. Nietzsche rejects Kierkegaard’s plummet into faith in God because it is a rejection of a faith in man. Nietzsche sees this as a weakness. To turn inward and face the mystery of existence, to face the anxiety it produces, and look to God to fix the problem of existence strips the individual of strength and makes human existence a powerless project. Nietzsche refuses to turn backwards and embrace the orthodox tradition of complete surrender to God and a means of dealing with the fundamental religious question. To do so would be to relinquish freedom and meaning from the realm of the human endeavor and surrender the project of life to an absolute God. For Nietzsche God is dead, our belief in God no longer serves its purpose, and we must move on and decide what to do next. A new day is dawning and we must accept that the Christian God can no longer be a refuge for our anxiety. But just as Kierkegaard looks inward towards subjective truths, so does Nietzsche. But Nietzsche’s project is quite different. If God is dead, then where are the foundations for truth and value? We are now truly free to find truth and value now that we have removed God from the problem. Instead of answering the question of mystery through a relation with the other as Kierkegaard does, Nietzsche sees the mystery of existence as impersonal. Nietzsche looks back to the pre-Socratics, before the doctrines of a rational world spoiled the western tradition, to a philosophy of an impersonal nature devoid of rational ends. Truth and the question of freedom cannot be investigated as though they are external things, grounded in some fixed reality. This is still a project in which truth is subjectivity. Again we have the idea that scientific reasoning systems are unable to systematize something that is not a thing. It is not that there is a problem with the process of scientific investigation. It is just that it is an inadequate tool for revealing the irrational nature of existence. Subjective knowledge is concerned with who we are in some fundamental way. And because it is subjective knowledge, it is our own responsibility to answer for our own understanding. To not have this responsibility is lack of freedom. We must be responsible for what we understand of ourselves and we must be responsible for how we come to that understanding. But again, this is process of understanding is not a game to be won. There is no right or wrong answer. There is no true or false answer as there would be in science because truth is subjective and this is a project of self-reflecting on self. If we are to take responsibility and be free then it is up to us to find the courage to create for ourselves both what is true and what is the meaning of things. By declaring that God is dead we do away with the moral laws that were imposed on us that said no to life. We are no longer chained by these rules and instead are free, but only if we have the courage to embrace our will to power and say yes to life. We must be courageous enough to look into Kierkegaard’s precipice of despair and exercise our true freedom and choose life instead of choosing Faith in God. This is still an act of faith on Nietzsche’s part. The mystery is still unresolved, but for Nietzsche, freedom comes from having faith in man not God. If we can exercise our will to power by becoming Gods ourselves, we find strength and joy in life; we say yes to life, we take responsibility for our own life and are free. The result is a style of life that is not informed by reason and science; it is not concluded in a final dead end equation. It is a style of life, a way of living, which frees us from the anxiety of the mystery of existence, by embracing the mystery as the necessary source of the creative...