Just Another Day in Fallen Paradise

 Reflections on excerpts from "The Humanism of Existentialism"

-Contemplation is referred to as a luxury. My question would be, what intellectual activity, activity in general that is not aiding one's survival or the survival of others not in fact a luxury activity?

-we have the problem of the human as individual vs human solidarity.
one could ask if either of these are able to be considered on their own as binary

• I am aware that I think that I am. I believe that "you" think that "I" am as well as I think (believe) that "you" are(exist) I assume that we automatically feel this way. We are faced in philosophy with the choice to believe anything exist. I rather choose to believe or automatically believe this to be true. 
• Even when I am not thinking I still exist.

Sartre's criticism of a Christian existentialist- is that a Christian is are incapable of condemning points of view and acts of others.  

A Christian is warned in the bible not to judge, this seems pretty clear. Maybe because we are incapable of accurately judging. If we judge one can escape pure subjectivity by becoming aware of our subjective viewpoint, and aware that we do not have total knowledge of that which we are judging. Only God can "know" a man's heart. Therefore only God can make an honest judgement of another and this knowledge of the "other(individual)" is unattainable from man to man. In this respect the subjective exists, and to not able to transcend completely. One can never know completely the subjective experience of another.  This is stated in regards to the definition of mankind and good and evil- not for the management of society.

"Any action that doesn't conform to humanity is seen as romantic"    - a criticism of existentialism.

Common ground of Atheistic and Christian Existentialist: Existence precedes essence. Or subjectivity must be the starting point.

Sartre presents us with the paper cutter analogy: as in the invention/existence of the paper cutter as an analogy for the existence of man.

"We have here a technical view of the world whereby it can be said that production precedes existence" -Sartre

"When God creates he knows exactly what his is creating"- viewpoint of Descartes/Leibniz

• we cannot claim to know this unless we claim to know God and know what God knows.

This writing was interrupted due to the fact I was not feeling well physically and it was affecting my ability to think clearly and I was unable to will myself better.

Sartre presents us with the relationship of man creating a paper cutter to God creating man.
I think that this is an interesting thing to deconstruct.
Man creates the paper cutter out of a desire, a need to be more efficient at cutting paper. Before this need or desire would arise, there would be preexisting conditions present man with this desire. Man would conceive and then create the paper cutter from pre-existing materials.
Man also creates music and art out of different pre-existing materials, but this seems to be clearly to me a different utility.

• Man as God's artistic expression?
• Man as God's utilitarian object?

"On the universal concept of man" pg.292

• Instead of this existed before that, rather I feel that both man and his essence are evolving over time. There is no fixed template so to say. Especially if one believes in evolution. We are now then in the bracket of "human kind" man as we know now and can track back throughout history. At some point looking back we cut off, mark a point in time in which man evolved. One could assume then looking forward and following the trajectory there may be another point in time where out definition of just the structure of man, is not what we see it to be defined by today. And certainly our environment is changing- speaking here of the human's relationship to the environment, the comforts of modern life. Why would we assume that this form would no longer continue to evolve unless we would accept that man is the "end-all" of the evolution goal. In this scenario the Singularity Theory seems quite plausible. 

• God as a fixed entity-man as floating
• Man as prenominal? Binominal? postnominal?
• Evolution + Sartre = infinite regress

Mankind as concept preceding existence?

Individual as concept preceding existence?

"In choosing myself I choose man"

Anguish and Action:

While Sartre tells us that we feel anguish over our free-will, "we are condemned to be free"- this anguish he states is not over our own lives but that we feel anguish over our responsibility for man-kind. 

I think so far that the only thing this could mean to Sartre- not being able to transcend his subjectivity (at all?) Would be that we feel anguish because through our actions we are forming our personal definition for ourselves and for all of mankind, forming our definition, creating our template for how we perceive and answer the question to ourselves-"what is mankind?"

• Individual identity
• Identity of mankind

Back to the Christian Existentialist for a moment: and awareness

-this came up in class discussing whether or not a Christian could be an existentialist:

with regards to the fall of man and the original sin.

In regards to my interpretation of "the fall" or original sin- here man used his free will to choose, and in choosing he became self-aware. And now man-kind, instead of being born into a state of innocence we are now born into a state of evil, by nature we are evil, and have the free will to choose good.

So far- I still believe in free will but I don't believe that the answer to the question - Do we have free will?, Is not a yes or no question.