Art Project Description: Technology Beyond Enframing

In his 1954 essay The Question Concerning Technology, Martin Heidegger strives to engender a philosophy that goes beyond an instrumental and anthropological conception of technology. He argues that technology should not only be conceived in terms of individual technologies, but also in how it has become the dominant way of revealing truths about the world. In doing so, it suppresses all other forms of revealing, in a manner he calls enframing (Gestell). But if technology is now the dominant way of understanding the world, that is not to say that other forms of revealing have become defunct. If this were the case, why would we keep making art, fight for social justice, philosophise?

For my art project, I want to explore how we might represent our encounters with technology in a way that acknowledges these different, and often paradoxical, ways of revealing. As an artist, I will focus on the aesthetic — but I also want to reflect the emotional, phenomenological, political, as well as technological, ways in which the world is revealed to us. How might this lead to a more fluid understanding of technology’s place in the world? In doing so, I hope to contribute to the tradition of landscape painting in a manner that utilises classical concepts such as the sublime to address contemporary questions.

As my artistic practice has progressed, I have started to notice certain motifs and recurring points of interests - shadows lurking beneath the surface, occasionally revealing themselves in my artwork and artistic thought. In particular, that which has haunted me more than any other has been the concept of the sublime. I was first introduced to this concept in first year aesthetics in the writings of Immanuel Kant, who discussed the differences between the beautiful and the sublime. His words struck me as they made a distinction which I had always intuitively experienced but never consciously acknowledged.

Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.

References to the sublime are found throughout History, from the ancient Roman Longinus’s On Sublimity which looks at how it emerges in lofty speech, to the Northern Song dynasty artist Guo Xi’s theory of distance within landscape painting. But a comprehensive philosophy of the sublime only starts to emerge within western thought during the Enlightenment, with Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. In the following passage, he discusses how the sublime relates to terror.

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger […] is a source of the sublime, that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. […] When danger and pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, […] they are delightful.

In these terms, sublimity is related to a certain encounter with mortality and the unfathomable, but one that is at a safe enough distance to allow for aesthetic excitement. Depending on a person’s temperament and character, this distance may vary; experiences of the sublime may range from feeling the strength of a gust of wind, witnessing the sheer height of a mountain or skyscraper, sadomasochism, getting lost within the eternal depth of an abstract painting…

Where does technology fit into this? Traditionally, representations of the sublime tended to revolve around God or nature. After all, since the sublime infers a certain level of existential threat it tends not to occur so much in the comfort of our own home. Where technology, such as housing, did appear in landscape painting, it tended to be used to put us in context next to the immensity of the natural world. Though it was mostly dominated by nature, this is not to say that technology did not evoke such feelings. After all, for technology to work it must utilise natural powers, often even elevating their strength and danger. We witness technological wonder in mythology: Icarus for the Ancient Greeks, Babel in the Bible… There is also a certain sense of magic, especially regarding new technologies. From the prehistoric discovery of fire to Daguerre and Niépce’s invention of the camera, technology breaks down our sense of reality and what is humanly possible, provoking exhilarating but also frightening awe. This undeniably makes the sublimity of specific technologies culturally and historically relative, as they start to become banal.

With the industrial revolution, technology takes such leaps in power, scale and innovation that it can increasingly elicit sublimity. In parallel to the rise of industry, the Romantic movement recentres art’s focus away from the rationalism of the time and onto powerful feelings and emotions. Many Romantic artists express a sense of nostalgia and distance themselves from technology. Others instead strive to contextualise the sublime within the changing times. Although the bulk of JMW Turner’s work represents the perils of the natural world, much of it is also anchored in modernity. In Rain, Steam and Speed, the focus is on the velocity of the train and the way in which the steam engine’s vapour takes over the landscape, combining with the force of the rain. I find this piece particularly effective in its combination of the natural and technological sublime. The train is also intangible, conjuring that sense of technological magic which evokes the possibility of new futures. Nowadays, even though we may not experience the train as something magical anymore, the way Turner depicts it allows us see it through the awe-inspired eyes of his time.

Technology has drastically evolved since the steam locomotive and daguerreotype. Modern technology is far more pervasive, interconnected and destructive. Little needs to be said about how much it has changed and continues to change our lives; and I will not go beyond referencing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report on the impacts of global warming to discuss its destructive effects. What interest me is rather how these technological leaps, one industrial revolution after another, impact the mood of our time.

First of all, we see a continuation of the industrial sublime of the early 19th century as machines become more powerful, skyscrapers reach higher to the heavens, space travel taking us even further… Alongside this, globalisation has allowed multinationals to grow on an unprecedented scale, now across the entire world. This has certainly lead many to feelings of awe, but we also see a growing sense of nihilism.

In Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Frederic Jameson analyses the nihilism of contemporary society. For Jameson, the global economy has become so powerful and automated that it is impossible for us to even grasp. This means that it is increasingly hard to find meaning in our lives, leading to nihilism. But Jameson argues that we can find meaning in the technological sublime as it offers a comprehensive glimpse into this system.

The technology of contemporary society is therefore mesmerizing and fascinating, not so much in its own right, but because it seems to offer some privileged representational shorthand for grasping a network of power and control even more difficult for our minds and imaginations to grasp-namely the whole new decentered global network of the third stage of capital itself. […] It is therefore in terms of that enormous and threatening, yet only dimly perceivable, other reality of economic and social institutions that in my opinion the postmodern sublime can alone be adequately theorized.

Alongside this growing sense of nihilism, we also notice an increase in nostalgia, especially among young people. In the introduction to his writing collection Ghosts of My Life, Mark Fisher makes a similar analysis to Jameson of contemporary cultural, philosophical and artistic nihilism. He looks at how the recent history of music and pop culture can reflect our evolving cultural mindset. He describes a progressive loss of innovation in music which he finds representative of the growing nihilism of the 20th century. This was marked, Fisher argues, by an inability to imagine the future, accelerated by the social cuts of neoliberalism and the post Cold War so called “end of history”. This culminates in the 21st century’s “crushing sense of finitude and exhaustion”, which can also be linked to the growth of surveillance and mobile technology, which reinforce the idea that there are no alternatives, no escapes. Fisher relates this attitude to the concept of “hauntology”, coined by Jacques Derrida to refer to the persistence of elements from the past. He goes onto compare the upbeat nostalgia of popular music, using the producer Mark Ronson as a notable example, to a variety of “hauntological” artists, such as Burial and The Caretaker, that express this sense of lost future more directly.

What [hauntological artists] shared was not so much a sound as a sensibility, an existential orientation. These artists […] were suffused with an overwhelming melancholy; and they were preoccupied with the way in which technology materialised memory — hence a fascination with […] the sounds of these technologies breaking down.

As much as these two types of music have opposing emotional outlooks, they are really two sides of the same coin, much like the various facets of Romanticism: one seeking comfort in nostalgia, another representing technology to reflect the mood of the time. The difference today is that, faced with the growing economic inequality and threat of climate change which has been accelerated by our use of technology, the culture of our time no longer shares the same optimism. Instead, disillusion has emerged regarding the promises of technology. But technology in itself cannot free us, rather the political will to steer it in the right direction. As such, the emancipatory potential of technology continues to haunt us.

For my work, I want to utilise the concepts I have discussed in regard to my own experience of technology. I want to paint places around me, in or near Dundee where I can have a personal encounter with technological infrastructure. I then want to emphasise how they change my relationship to the landscape in the way I paint them. These may include oil rigs, abandoned factories, wind turbines...

How does the interaction between these pieces of technology and nature make me feel: scared? awe-inspired? depressed? serene? How might their degradation evoke the disillusion to the “glitz and glamour” and false promises of our age, but also a return to nature? How does their interconnectedness evoke the global forces of capitalism? How could this relate to their interconnectedness with nature? And do we represent them in a way that allows for multiple levels of meaning?

Bibliography

Beaven, Clare (dir.), The Genius of Turner: Painting the Industrial Revolution, (London: Fresh One Productions, 2013).

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/ [accessed 3 November 2021].

Burial, Untrue (Hyperdub, 2007).

Burke, Edmund, “From Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”, The Sublime Reader (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).

Caretaker, The, Everywhere at the End of Time (History Always Favours the Winners: 2016-2019).

Derrida, Jacques, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2006).

Guo Xi, Early Spring, 1072 (Taipei: National Palace Museum).

Guo Xi, “From The Interest of Lofty Forests and Springs”, The Sublime Reader (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).

Fisher, Mark, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (London: Zero Books, 2014).

Heidegger, Martin, The Question Concerning Technology (London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1977).

Jameson, Frederic, “From Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”, The Sublime Reader, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).

IPCC, Global Warming of 1.5°C, 2018, https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ [accessed 3 November 2021].

Longinus, “From On Sublimity”, The Sublime Reader (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).

Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Mandel, Ernest, Late Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1972).

Morley, Simon, The Sublime (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2010).

Turkle, Sherry, Alone together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other, Chapter 14 (New York: Basic Books, 2011).

Turner, Joseph Mallord William, “Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway” (London: National Gallery).

Intimate Revolt

Julia Kristeva is a multidisciplinary Bulgarian-French writer, most recognised for her works in semiotics, intertextuality, psychoanalysis and philosophy. Her writings primarily focus on the creation of meaning, through her exploration of the abject, the symbolic and semiotic and more broad cultural analysis. In her lecture ‘New Forms of Revolt’¹, Kristeva argues that contemporary political struggle has lost “its moral and aesthetic significance”.

In a version of the lecture given at the 2014 Holberg Prize, Kristeva discusses the etymology of the word revolt. Derived from the latin volvō, meaning to roll or tumble, the verb révolter first appeared in French in the 15th century in the sense of re-turn, return or turn around. The word’s current meaning dates to the French Revolution, which “made from this [...] a political revolt [and] a synonym of dignity”². Revolt thus involves a process of revaluation that, Kristeva argues, must happen internally in the form of an intimate revolt. How might the Kristevan idea of ‘revolt’ be a way of thinking processes of aesthetic and political renewal?

We will first explore Kristeva’s work on developmental psychology, laying the groundwork to better understand the concept of “intimate revolt”. We will then move to adolescence, the period of life which, for Kristeva, best encapsulates the need to believe that contemporary society continually longs for. Lastly, we will consider how the conception of revolt as re-turn can help resolve these issues, allow for the creation of new meaning, and ultimately form a more mature society.

A large part of Kristeva’s work focuses on the creation of meaning. As a philosopher, she observes the role meaning plays within society and how it is conducive to political change; as a psychoanalyst, she explores how the subject creates meaning of the world throughout its various developmental stages. The two discussions are of course deeply interconnected, working simultaneously in a “polylogic”³ and versatile manner extending beyond these two spheres. In order to understand Kristeva’s argument on revolt, we must therefore draw connections with the rest of her philosophy. As such, we will look at how intimate revolt ties into her concepts of the Semiotic, the abject and the subject in process.

One of Kristeva’s major contributions in the field of semiotics (the study of how meaning is created/communicated), is the distinction she draws between two types of meaning, the Symbolic and the Semiotic. The former refers to referential meaning such as grammar, definitions and the logic of discourse. The latter refers to non-linguistic, implicit aspects of meaning: vocal rhythm, displacement, metaphors, alliterations... In Kristeva’s rewriting of Lacan’s theory of psychosexual development, whereas the Symbolic only arises around the mirror stage and with the development of language, the Semiotic emerges during the developmental stage called the chora. Being the very earliest stage of development (0-6 months of age), you cannot yet distinguish yourself from the mother or the world around you. The meaning produced in the chora is therefore intuitive, drive-based and linked to the maternal.

The pre-linguistic development of identity which follows occurs in two phases. The mirror stage (6-18 months), coined by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, is the phase when you first recognise yourself as a separate entity from the world. Beforehand, however, is a phase (4-8 months) when you first acknowledge yourself as distinct from the mother. Kristeva describes it as “a violent, clumsy breaking away, with the constant risk of falling back under the sway of a power as securing as it is stifling”⁴. It is a traumatic, disorienting moment in which you first experience what Kristeva calls the abject. Put simply, the abject is the reaction to being confronted with the ambiguity of your borders as a being. This causes great distress, as it blurs the lines between what you consider as yourself, and what you have abjected (what you absolutely are not/the Other). The abject dissolves the symbolic order, thrusting you back to the chora’s pre-objectal experience of the world, most powerful when manifesting the ambiguities of your existence as a living (and dying) being⁵. But Kristeva argues that in art, confronting the abject is actually beneficial to the subject as it provides protection through catharsis.

Aesthetic encounters with the abject thus contribute to the development of the subject in process/on trial (sujet en procès). The subject in process is one who finds balance between the Symbolic and Semiotic. This involves a purification of the abject so as to no longer repress it, but rather embrace it as part of life. The subject in process is inquisitive, creative and strives to produce her own meaning. Much like Nietzsche’s Übermensch, who “must be ready to burn [himself] in [his] own flame“⁶, she “sets ablaze and transforms all laws, including - and perhaps especially - those of signifying structures”⁷. In other words, the subject in process continuously practices self inquiry, questioning and reinvention - a process Kristeva calls intimate revolt.

Intimate revolt involves a questioning of the self and of the world which leads to the creation of meaning, so as to balance the Symbolic and Semiotic. It entails a purification of the abject, allowing for the deconstruction of identity. It is a painful process, as it “exposes the subject to unbearable conflict”⁸ but it is ultimately fruitful to individual, self assured and meaningful experience. Therefore, Kristeva believes intimate revolt is essential to the society’s progress; “it is not enough to have a plan. It is necessary to have men and women with inner experiences that are unique, inquisitive and uncompromising. It is only under this condition that they can be reformers”⁹.

However, Kristeva observes that revolution lost its aesthetic and political significance in the 20th century. This is because contemporary political movements have emphasised the collective, without encouraging intimate revolt, leading to passive, overly-idealistic and hopeless individuals which she compares to adolescents.

For Kristeva, adolescence is the age of belief. During childhood, you were primarily occupied with the desire to know. The child, having yet to sexually develop, is a “polymorphous pervert”¹⁰ interested in the workings his body and its relation to the world. However, “whereas the child is [...] a laboratory researcher, the adolescent is a believer”¹¹. This is because, along with sexual development, the adolescent separates himself from the parent couple. In doing so, the Ego strives for meaning elsewhere: “the adolescent acquires the certainty that there is an absolute satisfaction, [...] that he or she can rush towards a new love that will open the door to new paradises.”¹². This need to believe may lead to erotic love but it also strives for “images, ideologies, different forms of knowledge, and existential models”¹³. But since the adolescent never reaches paradise, his search for absolute meaning is necessarily “in a state of crisis [which] inexorably mixes with [...] nihilism”¹⁴. Through proper care and understanding, the adolescent eventually accepts the ambiguities of life, balancing the need to believe (Semiotic) with the desire to know (Symbolic), and starts to create his own meaning¹⁵. But left to fester, the paradise syndrome brings about desperation, resentment and angst: “vandalism [...] self-destructive behaviour [...] drug addiction [etc.]”¹⁶. In more serious cases, it may lead to political extremism and fanaticism.

Kristeva posits that contemporary society is in a perpetual state of adolescence¹⁷, manifested by a need to believe which increasingly leads to radicalism. Indeed, you could argue that modern day capitalism encourages complacency, thoughtlessness and suppresses the creativity required for intimate revolt.

Guy Debord describes modern society as a Society of the Spectacle¹⁸ where the combination of commodity fetishism and capitalist exploitation leads to a devaluation of lived experience. He argues that the exploitation of the working class breeds apathy, restlessness and a sense of meaninglessness, which is doubled by the fact that consumerism offers a false sense of meaning in the form of consumer goods. Meaning itself thus becomes a commodity, rather than something you construct through experience.

This is emphasised by the role art and media take within the capitalist system, which Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer coin as the culture industry¹⁹. Adorno and Horkheimer argue that mainstream art has lost its autonomy and thus its ability to be critical of society, as capitalism makes it far riskier to shake things up than to use pre-established formulas. This applies to any artist who wishes to earn a living making art, but it’s particularly the case of music and film since they are the most profitable, hence widespread, and generally (exclusively, at the time of the book’s writing) require a budget and team to produce. As such, artists are jeopardised in their ability for social critique, which Adorno defines as the main purpose of art. It also leads to art’s homogenisation, since its primary aim is no longer to express meaning but rather be profitable.

Furthermore, you could argue that the collective trauma caused by increasing pressures in contemporary society may lead to a repression of critical thinking and possibility for revolt. In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein discusses how the paralysis caused by global crises is incessantly utilised to push neoliberal policies that would have otherwise been contested. Indeed, “in moments of crisis, people are willing to hand over a great deal of power to anyone who claims to have a magic cure—whether the crisis is a financial meltdown or [...] a terrorist attack.”²⁰.

As we can see, many facets of contemporary society discourage the creation of meaning in order to maintain the status quo. So how might we forge a society more fruitful to intimate revolt?

Individually, we might practice what Jacques Derrida calls deconstruction. This is an approach to philosophy which dissects traditional binaries in order to question the hierarchies they imply. Deconstruction might interrogate the assumed merit of mind over body, men over women, reason over passion... Kristeva’s work in linguistics questions the value we accord to the Symbolic versus the Semiotic, for example. Deconstruction aims to consider the faults and merits of each side, so as “to overturn” (re-turn) “the hierarchy”²¹ and come to an understanding less shrouded by societal presuppositions. This approach actively encourages critical experience, thus contributing to internal revolt.

A notable example of deconstruction in action is Bernard Stiegler’s work on technics. In general, Stiegler agrees with Adorno and Hockheimer’s analysis of the culture industry. However, he is sceptical of their aversion to technology, which implies a binary opposition between humanity and technology. Stiegler argues that humans are in fact technical beings: through technics, which encompasses tools and technology, we fashion our identity by interacting with the world²². We must therefore reclaim technology in order to be more active users, by developing deeper individual understanding of how it functions and how it’s used to manipulate us. In doing so, Stiegler argues that we can emancipate ourself from our subservience to the culture industry and utilise technology to reinvent human destiny.

We might further consider how the abject can be used to advance the process of deconstruction. Since it exposes boundaries, the abject has the potential to disrupt hierarchies by making us re-examine the things we have abjected. This has notably been done by feminist artists in regards to our attitude towards menstruation. In Menstruation Bathroom²³, Judy Chicago places the viewer in the literal space of societal (and physical) abjection, where “abjected and rejected female bodies are confined to ‘deal’ with ‘dirty’ processes”²⁴. In her open depiction of menstruation, with blood drenched knickers hanging from a line and sanitary products “[threatening] to overflow onto the floor”, Chicago opposes traditional menstrual etiquette of “concealment and cleanliness”²⁵, absolving the taboo of what is ultimately an extremely banal experience.

Lastly, the disruption of meaning may also be a way of fighting the hegemony of multinationals. In No Logo, Naomi Klein explores how brands have invaded our political, education and sociocultural spaces, as well as exerted unprecedented pressure on small businesses and the labour market, leading to a suppression of many of our basic freedoms²⁶. The book later explores various ways activists are reclaiming political space through culture jamming, illegal raves, sit-ins, ad-busting, etc. Klein argues that since multinationals rely on the power of their brand image to exert domination, it makes them particularly fragile to its defilement. As such, the desecration of brands resists commodity fetishism, allowing for the creation of new meaning. Therefore, we might consider how the abject could be further used to galvanise the public towards anticorporate activism.

To conclude, even though politics currently lacks the moral and aesthetic significance necessary for revolutionary change, there is nonetheless an increasing push towards the disruption of pre-established meaning and intimate revolt. This might occur in the way we write; in her essays, Kristeva deliberately employs a combination of genres, registers and writing styles, so as to utilise both Semiotic and Symbolic in her argumentation. Increasingly, political campaigns are also adopting less hierarchical forms of organisation to promote critical thinking and dialogue at the grassroots. So much as the global superpowers Naomi Klein discusses in her books are undoubtedly more powerful than ever, public opinion is also becoming increasingly critical²⁷. What might come of that revolt?

Notes

1. Julia Kristeva, ‘New Forms of Revolt’, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy (University of Pittsburg, 2014), <http://jffp.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jffp/article/download/650/660> [accessed 5 April 2021].

2. Holberg Prize, YouTube, Julia Kristeva: New Forms of Revolt (2018) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI6nozttUhs> [accessed 5 April 2021], 7:09.

3. Julia Kristeva, Polylogue (Paris: Editions Seuil, 1977).

4. Julia Kristeva, Power of Horror (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1980), p. 20.

5. Ibid., (p. 11).

6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (London: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 90.

7. Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1974), p. 105.

8. Kristeva (2014), p. 6.

9. Ibid., p. 2.

10. Sigmund Freud, Complete Psychological Works Of Sigmund Freud, The Vol 7: "A Case of Hysteria" (London: Vintage Classics, 2001), p. 191.

11. Kristeva (2014) p. 14.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., p. 15.

15. Ibid., p. 18.

16. Ibid., p. 15.

17. Ibid., p. 17.

18. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (Olympia: Last Word Press, 2016).

19. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (London: Verso, 1997), p. 120.

20. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine (London: Penguin, 2008), p. 168.

21. Jacques Derrida, Positions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), p. 41.

22. Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time 1 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p.17.

23. Judy Chicago, Menstruation Bathroom (1971) <https://www.judychicago.com/gallery/womanhouse/pr-artwork/> [accessed 5 April 2021].

24. Ruth Green-Cole, Bloody Women Artists (2014), <https://enjoy.org.nz/publishing/the-occasional-journal/love-feminisms/text-bloody-women-artists> [accessed 5 April 2021].

25. Ibid.

26. Naomi Klein, No Logo (New York: Flamingo, 2000), p. XXI.

27. Dan Hancox, ‘No Logo at 20: have we lost the battle against the total branding of our lives?’, The Guardian, 11 August 2019 < https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/11/no-logo-naomi-klein-20-years-on-interview?CMP> [accessed 5 April 2021].

Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (London: Verso, 1997).

Barkardóttir, Freyja Jónudóttir, Hope of Failure: Subverting Disgust, Shame and the Abject in Feminist Performances with Menstrual Blood (2016).

Chicago, Judy, Menstruation Bathroom (1971) <https://www.judychicago.com/gallery/womanhouse/pr-artwork/> [accessed 5 April 2021].

Debord, Guy, The Society of the Spectacle (Olympia: Last Word Press, 2016).

Derrida, Jacques, Positions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press).

Felluga, Dino, "Modules on Kristeva: On the Abject." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory, Purdue U, <http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabject.html> [accessed 5 April 2021].

Freud, Sigmund, Complete Psychological Works Of Sigmund Freud, The Vol 7: "A Case of Hysteria" (Vintage Classics, 2001).

Green-Cole, Ruth, Bloody Women Artists (2014), <https://enjoy.org.nz/publishing/the-occasional-journal/love-feminisms/text-bloody-women-artists> [accessed 5 April 2021].

Hancox, Dan, ‘No Logo at 20: have we lost the battle against the total branding of our lives?’, The Guardian, 11 August 2019 < https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/11/no-logo-naomi-klein-20-years-on-interview?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other> [accessed 5 April 2021].

Holberg Prize, YouTube, Julia Kristeva: New Forms of Revolt (2018) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI6nozttUhs> [accessed 5 April 2021].

Klein, Naomi, The Shock Doctrine (London: Penguin, 2008).

Klein, Naomi, No Logo (New York: Flamingo, 2000).

Kristeva, Julia, Polylogue (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1977).

Kristeva, Julia, Powers of Horror (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1980).

Kristeva, Julia, ‘New Forms of Revolt’, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy (2014), <http://jffp.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jffp/article/download/650/660> [accessed 5 April 2021].

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (London: Penguin Books, 1969).

Stiegler, Bernard, Technics and Time 1 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

What are the moral implications of Existentialism?

Traditionally, philosophy aimed to define morality in relation to absolute higher powers. In ancient Greece, Socrates judged moral systems based on emotion as illusory, as they did not strive to attain the transcendental “form of good itself” (Plato, Republic, Book VI). From a Judeo-Christian perspective, morality is defined in relation to the teachings of God and whether or not you are allowed into heaven. Existentialism, on the other hand, denies the existence of such higher powers; it thus has to define morality through other means. This makes reaching judgements far more difficult, as there are no points of reference on which to judge someone. What are the moral implications of Existentialism? First, I will consider why the question of morality is still relevant to Existentialism. Then, I will argue that it implies a morality of actions. Lastly, I will explore the concept of moral and legal justice and how it should be treated from an Existentialist perspective.

Our first encounter with ethics happens in childhood, through our parents. This morality is one of submission: the child is forced to eradicate certain spontaneous behaviours in favour of what fits the social group. Our conception of morality is therefore rooted in that of our education; this forms what Freud calls the superego, the part of our psyche that encompasses the social norms and pressures we have internalised. As such, morality is originally defined in relation to higher powers. But unlike the aforementioned higher powers of traditional morality, these do not hold absolute value: our parents have themselves internalised much of their ethical code from their parents, and developed the rest from personal experience. Most people’s morality is thus heavily influenced by the biases of their culture.

Friedrich Nietzsche saw Christian morality, which he emphasised still exists in most “post-Christian” ideologies, as a great sign of spiritual illness. He criticised how it promotes such values as humility which, for him, encouraged self-loathing, weakness and a lack of creativity. By declaring “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” (1882: Section 125), Nietzsche was not simply saying that God does not exist, but rather that His teachings are perverse and obsolete. Instead, Nietzsche proposes the ideal of the Übermensch, whose values are creative and original and who stands apart form the herd. The herd most often refers to the crowd, but it can just as well be those who define their values in reactionary opposition to it, since such forms of morality are not creative either. The death of God does not therefore imply nihilist amorality, as it is not rooted in creativity. Indeed, what truth can a value hold if it has been taken for granted?

Furthermore, I would argue that in hiding behind pre-established morals, we deny our own humanity. In his lecture Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre discusses how, because we are both mortal and self-determining, there is huge pressure on how we choose to live our lives (1946). Since I am not pre-destined, in acting a certain way I express my standard for how I think a life should be lived. In a way, this is in line with traditional morality, such as the religious golden rule (“do to others what you would have them do to you”, Matthew 7:12) or Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative: “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law” (1795: Section 1). However, Sartre’s justification is not that of God nor of a greater good, but rather an observation of the human condition. For him, mortality implies that we set the standard for how we should live, since we have chosen to live our finite life in such a way. As such, everything we do necessarily carries moral connotations (even if we are not aware of them) and can therefore be judged. Sartre would argue that to live your life according to pre-established maxims is to live in bad faith since, in doing so, you deny your own freedom.

Another aspect in which Sartre’s view differs from Kant’s is in the importance of our actions. Kantian morality saw the value of our actions as being defined by our intentions - in other words, whether they came from the “right place”. But, as we see in the following excerpt from his lecture, Sartre places far more emphasis on acts themselves.

“There is no such thing as a cowardly temperament. There are nervous temperaments; there is what is called impoverished blood, and there are also rich temperaments. [...] A coward is defined by the deed that he has done. What people feel obscurely, and with horror, is that the coward as we present him is guilty of being a coward. What people would prefer would be to be born either a coward or a hero.” (1946:38)

In this passage, Sartre presents the argument that we are responsible for how we are perceived since, while we may have certain predispositions of temperament, we ultimately hold the power to define ourselves through our actions. He acknowledges that the realisation of this freedom is most often accompanied by great Anguish, since we see the pressure it implies, but he argues that this feeling is important as it motivates us to devise our own moral code. However, as he points out, many continue to perceive this as a constraint rather than a source of liberation. Here, I will try to deconstruct the most common misconceptions about this aspect of Sartre’s view on being.

It can indeed be disturbing to think about how our actions are what define us rather than our thoughts, especially when it feels like our intentions are in the right place. This is not to say that we should completely reject the importance of intentions (one can, after all, do something positive entirely out of self interest). But intentions are only the first step towards action, they are not acts in themselves. Thus, taken alone, they have no bearing on the world outside us. I may feel bad for my friend as he goes through hardship, but if I do not reach out or try to help him, this feeling means nothing - certainly not to him. When dealing with chronic anxiety or “impoverished blood”, for example, to be defined by ones actions can be particularly disconcerting as these very actions appear beyond our control. This can add to the shame already felt, but is ultimately in vain: feeling bad about yourself will just lead to further inaction. And again, good intentions may not mean anything by themselves, but they nevertheless find meaning when channeled into action. As such, when overwhelmed, we have two possible responses: either we wallow in self pity, damning ourselves to a life of inactivity, or we take steps to act on it. For it is only our actions that can be judged.

In the meantime, we can continue to do the reflective work to make our action more meaningful and informed. Imagine, for example, someone who followed the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 but could not attend the protests due to the pandemic. They may feel like they cannot do much in the meantime and give up on the cause, when in fact they could be better informing themselves so as to make their activism far more charged once they are able to protest again. And, especially thanks to the Internet, there are still many ways for them to fight in the movement from home. As such, when judging someone’s actions we should of course take into account their specific situation and hope they adapt to said situation. Every case is necessarily unique and should be judged as such. But we cannot be judged on what goes on inside our heads.

This leads us to the question of justice. This is a term that is both used in moral and legal contexts. Morally, it means to be fair and reasonable; legally, it refers to the administration of the law in the name of such values. In this part, we will explore the instances in which legal justice should be exercised, from an Existentialist perspective.

For Sartre, an act is considered immoral if it goes against the freedom of others. We can refer to the most famous quote from his speech, “existence precedes essence” (1946:52): we exist first, then define who we are through our actions. As such, freedom is something we inherently value since it is something we all experience to some degree by our very nature. However, there are plenty of factors that limit our freedom. Some of these are part of the human condition (our mortality, the passage of time, our physical limitations...) but others are not. And when such restrictions are avoidable, then we can deem them immoral, since they go against our ability to self determine. If the aim of law is to apply justice, then this is what it should strive to maintain. There are of course plenty of other moral questions, but those pertain to people’s individual opinions and thus should be resolved through individual means (if the means themselves go significantly against someone’s freedom, however, then it is logical for the law to intervene). If the goal of legal justice is to increase freedom, then it should avoid impeding civilian freedom as much as possible - including for those who go against the law. From this perspective, the idea of punitive justice makes little sense.

This is where we need to make the distinction between moral responsibility and accountability. Someone may be held accountable for a felony - this could be monetarily, in paying their fair due to the victim, or psychologically, in encouraging the victim’s healing through dialogue. Their action cannot be undone of course, but in the name of justice they can be required to make up for it as much as they can. We would call this application of the law compensatory or restorative. The term responsibility, on the other hand, refers more to the perpetrator’s character (which, as we have discussed, cannot be judged in isolation from the actions one has done or is likely to do). From a legal perspective, character also needs to be considered as there is always the possibility of recidivism. Once again, this can be done through dialogue with the victim, for example, or encouraging the perpetrator’s personal growth. This form of justice is also restorative, since it regains the trust of the community at large. In cases where the perpetrator shows no signs of wanting to rejoin society safely, restorative justice still applies. Indeed, there is no use in further punishing them once they are locked up since it goes against our definition on justice. As such, removing their freedom of movement should be an end in itself, to protect the freedom of larger society, not a means to further abusing them. The ultimate goal should be to increase freedom for every party involved.

We must also address the socio-economic conditions that push many to commit felonies so as to avoid them happening again (and thus make the community feel more safe). As such, restorative justice goes hand in hand with social justice. As Angela Davis argues in Are Prisons Obsolete?:

“[Prison] relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism”.

Going beyond punitive justice necessarily implies addressing inequality and prejudice, since this allows more people to self actualise. This applies to the victims of racial, social and economic persecution, but it also makes us question society at large. In the wake the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a high-ranking Nazi commander, Hannah Arendt coined the term “the banality of evil” (1958:199). This refers to the everyday acts of evil which could lead to such atrocities as the Holocaust. For Arendt, this form of evil, which is epitomised by Eichmann, is not caused by evil intentions but rather by a lack of thinking. In no way, as we have previously seen, does this mean that Eichmann was not morally responsibility for his actions. But we must also acknowledge that society at large was responsible. As a solution, Arendt speaks of “spaces of appearance” in which dialogue and intellectual engagement happen within society at large. This space is not a part of government but rather a form of grassroots organising in which the public is directly engaged. For her, this is the base on which democracy and justice should be built.

To conclude, even though Existentialism does not have higher points of reference, its focus on existence nonetheless has moral implications. For one, our mortality means that we must choose the rules according to which we live our life. This means that our actions are of utmost importance, since they express how we think a life should be lived. Furthermore, since our life is not predestined, freedom is something we inherently value. As such, unnecessarily restraining ones freedom is considered universally immoral. It can therefore be dealt with legally, unlike other moral quarrels. But by the same principle, the law must itself avoid restraining people’s freedom as much as possible. As such, Existentialism encourages us to realise ourselves through creative morality, but it also pushes us to fight intellectual disengagement, prejudice and inequality, since they go against others’ right to realise themselves.

Bibliography

Plato, Emlyn-Jones, C. and Preddy, W., 2013. Republic.

Kant, I., 1785. Groundwork Of The Metaphysic Of Morals.

Nietzsche, F., 1882. The Gay Science.

Sartre, J., 1946. L'existentialisme est un humanisme.

Arendt, H., 1958. The Human Condition.

Arendt, H., 1963. Eichmann in Jerusalem. The New Yorker.

Davis, A., 2011. Are Prisons Obsolete?.