Liberal, you and mswas seem to claim that an existentialist must also be a solipsist. olivesmarch4th remarked that this is not clear to her, and it is not clear to me either. The little old lady standing on the street may or may not have pre-existed her essence, but the fact that she is old tells me that she has existed for some time, meaning that she currently has an essence. That being the case, it is not clear to me how or why the old lady’s moral value has anything to do with the existential question.
Put another way: if you’re planning to break into my house to steal the million dollars I have tucked away under my mattress, does it really matter whether I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth or got it along the way?
I still maintain that the only sensible way to interpret “essence” in this context is something like an Aristotelean final cause, or a purpose. I gave, in my first post, two examples of when this is demonstratably true. If we take “essence” to mean the first definition that Sophistry and Illusion] gave, then I don’t see why we need all of the metaphysical baggage that you want to incorporate, in addition to the other point SaI raises. If we take it to mean the second definition (existence without form or properties), then “existence precedes essence” becomes false, but in a trivial and useless way. Again, we don’t need any additional metaphysics to answer the question.
IMHO, the question of whether our choice of values is completely unconstrained was answered well within the first page. If we want to discuss a similar question, e.g., how constrained is our choice of values, or perhaps about the mechanism by which we come to adopt these values, then I am more than willing to take part.
Well, I’m fairly confident that I don’t know enough about the old writings to engage in this discussion, if for no other reason than for lapses in my terminology.
From what I’ve learned here, ‘essences’ are essentially the things you find running along the left side of the page in dictionaries. They’re not technically definitions, as they’re only the bit on one side of the ‘is’, and not the entire statement; however it still seems to me that the only useful way to think of them is as definitions, unless you’re trying to imbue them with an unmerited and unjustified spiritual significance anyway.
It seems to me that some essence is er, (to coin a new term) ‘concurrent’ with existence; a thing’s mass, for example, is intrinsic to its existence, so for the entirey of its existence from the first instant forward, having the specific mass it’s got is part of its essence. Or is one of its essences. Whichever.
However, regarding wheelness: I have a CD. It’s got a number of essential properties like mass and color and thickness and whatnot, but there are a lot of other essences which it seems I can apply to it long after it’s been existing for a while. For example, it’s not an AOL CD so it’s not at its essence a coaster, but it becomes one if I stick a cup on it. It’s not essentially a frisbee, until I fling it across the room. It’s not essentially a wheel, until I stick a pencil through its hole and use it to roll my little red wagon. It’s not essentially a table leveler, until I slide it under a table leg…
Some definitions/essences apply to the thing right from the get-go; from the moment the thing has all is molecules in approximately the same place, it has certain essential qualities. But others seem to to clearly be dependent not upon the mere existence of the object, but what it’s doing at the time. The essence/defintion of course was meaningful long before the object was around, as definitions apply timelessly; however, the quality of having any particular essence is clearly not essential to the existence of the object, aside from the essences describing its physical properties and so forth themselves.
And this seems somewhat vaguely relevent to the moral discussion at hand, although perhaps not so much to the quoted post below, which clearly does not define ‘essence’ to be merely a definition (or half of one, even).
If you don’t mind, could somebody explain how anything in this post relates at all to the metaphysical discussion and definitions? Like, does existentialism really require you to ignore the vast majority of available facts and details about a situation? And since when is any decision to do with essences a ‘moral’ decision? If a CD is first and foremost essentially a wheel, as opposed to just happening to be being used as a wheel at the time, is it suddenly a moral question whether to spin it or not?
(And I think in my part of the country you can be arrested for edifying an old lady, particularly if you do it without first securing permission.)
But these aren’t essential properties of the CD. An essential property is typically taken to be a property such that if you removed that property, you would no longer be talking about the same object, because that property was essential to the object’s being the object it was. I could change the color of your CD, or change its mass by scratching a bit of plastic off of it, and it would still be a CD, and in fact the very same CD it was before. This is one reason I am denying the existence of ‘essences’, unless the notion of ‘essence’ is watered down so far as to be unrecognizable.
But these aren’t essences; these are just uses to which the CD is put. You can’t change something’s essential properties just by putting a cup on it. Essentially, it remains the same object, although it is being put to a different use. Like I said, essences are…well…essential. Any other definition of ‘essence’ is, IMO, a misuse of the word.
But, it wouldn’t be the “very same” CD as it was before. It would be a differently colored CD. (Apparenly this matters, as Liberal was quite insistent about the redness of the red cube mattering.)
And yeah, “essence” and “defining property” seem to mean about the same thing, give or take unjustified spiritual mumbo-jumbo. However, I think you’re being too picky about what constitutes a defining property. I have two arms; is that a defining property of me? Would I still be me if I lost an arm? Well, yes, but only because I’m using a different definition/essence for the term “me” in the prior sentence, one almost entirely based in continuity of perception (in this case self-perception). So, just because losing an arm wouldn’t violate my “me” essence/definition, doesn’t mean that I would be in essence unchanged if you lopped one of my arms off. That would be an essential difference, by my measure.
(Either that or it would be essentially ethical to go around lopping old ladies’ arms off, which Liberal probably wouldn’t agree with.)
As “wheelness” wasn’t rejected out of hand as a possible essence, I doubt that you’re using the word “essence” correctly (at least as far as it has a consistent definition in this discussion, anyway). Otherwise nobody would say that “wheelness” or “free moral agent living out her moral journey-ness” were essential properties, since either are conditions that can be acquired or lost based on the circumstances.
Of course, I think that this “essences” stuff is just a smokescreen for somebody saying that their opinions of things are the one and only objectively correct opinions of things, a position which of course allows them to oppress people who like different things than them. They get to pick or invent the properties they like into things and claim that they are “essential”, therefore everyone else must respect them. The old lady is “essentially” a free moral agent living out her moral journey; ergo, fie upon you and your attempt to stop her from smoking, or drinking, or terrorizing her children. If you mess with her, you’re messing with her essential freedom!
I think that japanese animation is essentially better than shakespeare. So we should definitely throw the latter out of schools and teach the former instead. And, being essential, this decision was made before you even knew it was up for discussion!
In other words, religious-type self-rightousness codified into another terminology. Or that’s my take on the moral argument, anyway.
(I also strongly suspect that Liberal is grossly mirepresenting existentialism; however I have not the tools or knowledge (much less the terminology) to present what it might alternatively actually be, so I’m left with just my suspicion.)
No, I wasn’t saying that one MUST be a solipsist to be an existentialist, only that it is a seductive trap for the noob. I went through a period of fearing I was the only person who existed, and that everyone else was a figment of my imagination. It was a necessary phase as I had to ask the questions, as ludicrous as they may seem.
I, for one, am not saying I create my own values from thin air. Of course all my choices are influenced by my context. Granted that, though, what I am saying is that the responsibilities of my actions are my own. Where they come from is irrelevant - if I wish to be considered as a whole being, I have to own up to my actions. I cannot lay claim to some innate nature as an excuse for any of my actions. Does that explain a little better?
Lib, read “precedes” for “pre-exists” and my objections are still the same. “precedes” is a copula with inherent time reference built in - it asserts a time relation of the subject essence and the predicate existence. It is a copula and an ontological claim at the same time.
To me, essence arises out of context. e.g. A knife is a knife because of what it does as much as its form. The essence arises out of the substance’s journey through time. But the thing itself - the substance, devoid of context - has no innate meaning. It is empty This is where Buddhism comes into it (for me) - all forms are impermanent, so* nothing* has a permanent essence. But this is not a strictly materialist view - things are their forms and their interactions. Or - existence is emergent. Things are greater than the material sum of their parts. That’s not strict materialism to me.
Well, of course not. Why would anyone think differently? Many examples of existing (and non-existing) things have been brought up. What is one to do, skip over them? A wheel is not a wheel in the same way that a moral decision is a moral decision. The what a moral decision was to be is different from the what a wheel was to be.
Don’t know about mswas, but I’m not saying that. Just because you are free to assign whatever essence you wish to a thing doesn’t mean you believe you’re the only person who exists.
No. Why?
That made me laugh out loud. It’s like solving a math problem using shortcuts and declaring that all that theory was demonstrably unnecessary. The shortcuts were made possible by the theory. All I did was explain how the notion of essence came about and how it has fared throughout history, long before existentialism became popular. And I did that because I was asked to. Why you are now trying to pin on me the baggage carrying party pooper label is unclear.
No one is requiring you to take part in any discussion. If you were satisfied on the first page, why are you still here?
No, it doesn’t require it. No one said it requires it. How can you even ask that question immediately after quoting the phrase “you are free to apply”? That doesn’t mean you’re required to do anything; it just means you’re allowed to. If you’re going to poke fun at my posts as though I’m not in the room, at least poke fun at what they actually say.
That’s because you identified it as a “red cube”. It can still be a cube without being red, but it cannot be a red cube without being red. Is it really necessary to explain this?
Morality has to be spiritual? You can’t be moral without a god or something?
That’s just interstitial recklessness. I would think that those things would edify her, and have said nothing to indicate anything to the contary.
No, it isn’t. A precedent does not imply anything temporal. It implies something ordinal. Just because one comes before two doesn’t mean that two was a minute later than one.
Ah, precedes in a “order” sense. Gotcha. But that’s still an ontological claim - essence > existence is certainly ontological in nature. And what order are we talking about? If not temporal, then ??? In value? Is this a moral/aesthetic order? Alphabetical? Well, that one would be true, but I don’t think that’s what you’re getting at. How is the set that includes both essence and existence ordered?
Sorry, missed the edit window - Lib,you know as well as I that the bolded bit is not true. I think you meant to type “need not” instead. “precedes” can very well mean “happens before” or “to come, exist, or occur before in time” and you know it. The ordinal is not the only interpretation. Certainly, most interpretations of Sartre’s statement use a temporal interpretation. Sartre himself uses the temporal sense:
No, it really isn’t. Neither one nor two exist, but we can talk about their order.
Since Aristotle, what we’ve been talking about is the order in which one must emerge from the other. For many centuries, it was just assumed, intuitively, by the vast majority of thinkers that existence must emerge from essence. The major player in the shift of thinking wasn’t really Nietzsche, but Sartre. Nietzsche more or less gave up on the question. Sartre put his foot down and said, “Here’s the answer: essence must emerge form existence.” And whether Begbert or others like it or not, whatever the answer is does have theological implications. (See the link I gave before to the Wiki stub on this issue.)
Using our number analogy, we know that two emerges from one, thanks to the work of Peano, and of Russell and Whitehead. If we could establish similar arithmetic-type rules for metaphysics, we could prove one way or the other about essence and existence as well.
I’ll concede that “precede” can be used in a temporal sense, but just not here — simply because there’s nothing temporal about it. And Sartre means the same thing Aristotle meant, only reversing the subject and predicate. Any references to time are strictly metaphorical. The metaphor is intended to aid comprehension, not to be taken literally.
And if “the order in which one must emerge from the other” isn’t a temporal order, I don’t know what is.
And I think attempting to apply mathematical rules to philosophical questions is an exercise in futility, myself. “1 precedes 2” is true in Peano’s arithmetic, sure, but so what does that prove about existence and essence? 1 & 2 are both in the set of natural numbers. I ask again: What set are both essence and existence in, that you would ordinate them.
Mr. Dibble, I’ll do this bit of homework for you, but you’re as capable of checking me out as you are of challenging me with “cite?”. One is simply lazier than the other.
This page is a fairly plain-spoken overview of what I’ve been saying: that essentialism and existentialism are opposites; that the former is defined primarily by the notion that essence precedes existence, and the latter by the notion that existence precedes essence; that essence is “fixed, pregiven, pre-established, predetermined, essential, necessary or involuntary nature”. A thing that is fixed does not change. Without change, there is no time. The page represents the views of an existentialist, chosen to counter the implication that I’m making shit up to suit myself.
As far as your set question, essence and existence are in lots of different sets, depending on what you’re talking about. They’re both in the set of words that start with “e”, if you’re talking about the words. For this purpose, though, they are in the set of essence and existence, one emerging from the other. I acknowledge up front that you don’t like that answer or, even worse, may say that it isn’t an answer. But I don’t know what you expect of such a broad and vague question. What set are you in? Aren’t you in quite many?