Heidegger writes, in Being and Time, that “in the broadest sense, death is a phenomenon of life” (312). To be fair, though, a philosopher did not necessarily have to think or say this—anybody could have said this. The statement that death has happened somewhere always resurfaces when one reads the newspaper or watches the news—even in the act of killing a roach, one is aware that the roach has died. Regarding the individual, each and every individual—Da-sein, as Heidegger defines the human entity—can never escape their own death; in Heidegger’s own words, “No one can take the other’s dying away from him” (304). Considering that Existentialism attempts to capture the human condition, a consideration or interpretation of death is quite relevant in Existential philosophy.
There is no denying that death is something that we, as humans, can not avoid and that our death will always be our own. He captures, exceptionally well, the “covering up” of death by the “publicness” (320). The “publicness” that Heidegger mentions is the other person or other individuals that exist alongside the person whose death is his own; the “publicness” is the “they” that is differentiated from the singular, mortal individual. Heidegger writes, “The “fleeting” talk about this which is either expressed or else mostly kept back says: One also dies at the end but for now one is not involved” (320). The “this” that Heidegger is referring to is the notion of death. He describes it as “fleeting talk” because the “they” do talk about death; through their talk, the “they” also know that death is “a constantly occurring event…” (319). The “they” comes to know of death by being witness to the death of a neighbor or a stranger; the death of an individual is always happening somewhere at any time in the world (319). There is a hint of detachment involved in saying that “one dies at the end but for now one is not involved”. To say that one is not involved with death at the moment, is to deceive oneself. The individual—and everyone for that matter—is always involved with death the moment one is born into this world. This type of deception puts Da-sein “in the position of losing itself in the they” (320).
Heidegger also presents us with another way in which the “they” covers up death. What the “they” offers is the false sense of tranquility that the “they” offers to the dying person. While Heidegger does make a generalized statement in saying that “the “neighbors” often try to convince the “dying person” that he will escape death and soon return again to the tranquillized everdayness of his world…”, one can argue that he is not off the mark. Be it by trying to comfort the dying person through speech or through silence, the fact that the dying person will die can not be avoided. The “they” can attempt to tranquillize the dying person by saying that everything will be all right, but in reality there is no way that death can be avoided for the person that is in the process or on the verge of dying. Although Heidegger is not prescribing any type of action through these passages, he does say that the general attitude that the “they” condones towards death is one of indifference (321). He writes, “the they does not permit the courage to have Angst about death” (321). For the “they” the individual only has one option: to remain silent on the issue. One must simply accept it as a fact of life that one dies because even to think of death “is regarded publicly as cowardly fear” (321). From the way that this argument has been presented, the “they” wants to overlook—and perhaps ignore—the issue of death. In our times, death is still something that one should avoid thinking about. It is still something that is not spoken about courageously and with an open hand.
Camus, on the other hand, approaches Existentialism through the concept of the absurd. The absurd, as Camus defines it, “is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart” (455). The irrational refers to the world; the “world in itself is not reasonable” is what Camus writes in his essay (455). The absurd grows out of the human desire to know and “the unreasonable silence of the world” (460). Merely with this concept of the absurd, Camus strikes at the heart of the human condition. Camus, perhaps following Nietzsche in thought, is saying that regarding the human aspect of the absurd, the human mind has its limit in what it can know.
Scientists that have taken the natural sciences as their profession highlight, in a very striking way, the limits of reason as Camus describes it. In particular, it is that branch of science that inquires into subatomic particles that highlights the limit of the human mind. Camus writes that, ultimately, the scientist that inquires and teaches us about subatomic particles reduces himself to poetry. Theoretical physicists of our time continuously talk about “string theory”. Their way of explaining it to the general public is, basically, through metaphor. Physics starts off with the natural world and tries to have an understanding—and perhaps mastery—over the universe. The world, on the other hand, refuses to stand still; it remains a constant mystery to the scientist. The more the scientist understands or knows about the world, the more mysterious that the world becomes; this mystery regarding the world is its silence. Taking the field of philosophy, and thinking of it through the concept of the absurd, the philosophical individual also seeks to know. Using Heidegger’s examination of death as an example, Heidegger wants to understand the phenomenon of death through ontology. He is aware that death is a possibility for Da-sein—and it is a possibility that can not be escaped. This type of understanding, if one is not careful, can transform itself into something that comforts the mind in its desire to know. One can interpret death, but one can never say what death is in itself.
One must stay within the absurd if one is to keep in sight the limits of reason and the “silence of the world” (460). To live within the absurd, one must “live without appeal” (479). To live without appeal is to be able to live without a false sense of comfort. Having described science earlier, science can be viewed as an appeal to something that can give one answers, or at least can give us the hope that it will give us clarity. Having clarity gives one a type of comfort. The type of comfort being spoken of can be a religious, scientific, or philosophic type of comfort. These are only some of the many examples.
The play, Waiting for Godot, follows Camus’ absurd line of thinking. Camus writes in his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, that man becomes a stranger “in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights…” (443). “Illusions” and “lights” are simply metaphorical words that are respectively equivalent to metaphysical comfort and meaning. Waiting for Godot deals with both aspects but is mostly underscored by the world’s lack of meaning. To even pick out a certain line from the play would not give full scope as to how the play is underscored by the notion that the world lacks meaning.
The play is in two acts. While both acts resemble each other, there is a slight difference between Act I and Act II. All the characters that appear in Act I also show up in Act II in very similar circumstances. Contrasting both acts, in Act II Pozzo, Lucky, and a boy all suffer from amnesia—or at least that is the impression that they give; these three characters do not remember meeting Estragon and Vladimir the day before.
A recurring line that keeps on coming to the fore throughout the play is “we’re waiting for Godot”. Both Estragon and Vladimir appear to have been waiting for this mysterious figure for quite some time. The play ends with the impression that both of them will keep on waiting for Godot until they die. In a certain sense, this ever-present notion of waiting for something or somebody represents our human condition. In Christianity, for example, the people of that faith are constantly waiting for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The question of when his resurrection will happen is not definite, and yet people keep on waiting. These people go to church, they try to live their life according to the scriptures that they follow—and they wait, week after week, and year after year. Up until today, they are still waiting.
Thinking about the play in this manner, the question then becomes one of whether what one is waiting for is even real or tangible at all. In Estragon and Vladimir’s case, they give the impression that they will keep on waiting for Godot. Going back to the example of science, the people that believe that science will give us all the answers will keep on waiting for the day when that happens. Each and every time that the scientific world discovers another fundamental aspect of the physical world, there is always the hope that science is getting closer to knowing how the universe or the world functions.
Regarding the meaninglessness of the play, the play has no plot, nor does it have any traditional type of teaching. If it does have a teaching, it is a type of teaching that falsl in line with the concept of the absurd: that what one does with one’s life is entirely meaningless. This does not mean that what one undertakes in one’s life is meaningless; what one undertakes in one’s journey in life only has meaning for the person that undertakes the task through his or her own effort. Viewed from the scope of the universe, though, what we do has no implication for the universe.
Referring back to the play, although Estragon and Vladimir waver—at times—in their faith that Godot will eventually arrive, their willingness or desire to keep on waiting for him is resilient. To be unwavering in one’s commitment to the task at hand requires effort. It is quite easy to dismiss Estragon and Vladimir’s constant wait for Godot and call it childish or even stupid simply for the fact that waiting for somebody is not considered a “noble” goal in life. Furthermore, both Vladimir and Estragon appear to be bums that pass their time in a stupid and careless way. Their life simply consists in waiting for the arrival of Godot. In waiting for Godot, distractions come along their way throughout the day. In both acts, Pozzo and Lucky pass by, distract Vladimir and Estragon for a bit, and then go on their way. In a similar way, we all have our goals—whatever they may be. Some goals appear to be more “noble” or worthwhile than others, but ultimately, we die and the goals one has achieved in one’s life remain in this world as we exit from the world. The previous statement implies no type of metaphysics.
Having just described but a glimpse of what existentialism tries to capture about the human condition, existentialism fails in some respects. Existentialism as a type of philosophy about life is, ultimately, a stepping back—or a type of withdrawal—from life. Existential themes are still to be found in this action of withdrawing from life: freedom, death, meaninglessness, etc. To say that one is an existential philosopher or that one is doing existential philosophy implies an understanding of what existentialism means. What I am trying to delineate here is that there are two ways of maneuvering through life: one can live a life that is guided either by thought or action. Existentialism reflects on the human condition; in order to be able to reflect, one has to dedicate time for it. Every human being has the possibility to reflect ; some reflect more than others though. The type of reflection that existentialism employs is one that is concerned with a more critical examination of what death might mean, of what freedom in a world devoid of meaning might entail. Not everyone has the time to dedicate some time to these questions; some might even say that in reasoning out such questions one is merely being foolish. One can come off as foolish in reasoning out such questions because such reasoning can inflate one’s own ego by making one come off as having an air of superiority. To know or have an understanding about the state of the human condition does not necessarily mean that one knows how to make the best of life. Simply to write “one should affirm life” on a piece of paper does not mean one has affirmed life. Similarly, the person reading existential writings can come to understand the “why” of why one should affirm or take responsibility for one’s own life, but, in the end, the author of the work and the reader must have the actual experience of knowing what it means to affirm life in the world through action.
That we live in a society that is differentiated by social classes, that is a fact. People in the higher classes that have the time to dedicate it to thinking, reading, or writing, have this possibility of indulging with existentialism. Regarding those people of the lower classes that have to live a life in which all they seek is to maintain a sense of human dignity, these people have no choice but to do whatever it takes to maintain their dignity. To be fair, it is their choice in deciding whether keeping their human dignity is worth the struggle. The main point being expressed here is that these people actually live the life of action. These people can not reflect—though they do have the possibility of doing so—on existential ideas due to their station in life. Evidently, though, these people are making choices, they have to deal with death, and they have to fight against a life that refuses to give them any worthwhile meaning. Even though, they may not realize it, they are finding some type of meaning to life that allows them to say “yes” to life.
Ultimately, the criticism of existentialism here is that if everyone did not have the time required to think such profound issues of the human condition, existentialism would not have built up speed. Individuals would perhaps have a thing to say here and there about the human condition, but the depth of thought that breathes out from Heidegger and Camus—among other existential writers—would not have come to fruition. Existentialism requires time to think.
Existentialism, if it did not have the experience of life from which to draw its reflections, would never come to fruition. Existentialism, being a type of philosophy, requires a certain type of freedom from the demands that the world places on the individual. The choice made by existential philosophers to reflect on the human condition marks the point of departure from the unexamined life. Death, the absurd, and the meaninglessness of the world are just some of the different concepts that existentialism attempts to tackle. These concepts are all embedded with meaning because they reflect varying aspects of our existence. If existentialism is to have any weight to it, it is that one must not impede that dancing that is involved between the life of action and the life of reflection.
Works Cited
Marino, Gordon, ed.
Basic Writings of Existentialism. New York: Modern Library, 2004.
Print.
Beckett, Samuel.
Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove, 1954. Print.
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