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Sartre's Anxiety Before the 'Nothingness' of a Self Responsible for Creating Values Is Discussed and Found Wanting

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Sartre's Anxiety Before the 'Nothingness' of a Self Responsible for Creating Values Is Discussed and Found Wanting Durham E-Theses Anxiety's ambiguity: an investigation into the meaning of anxiety in existentialist philosophy and literature Hanscomb, Stuart Roy How to cite: Hanscomb, Stuart Roy (1997) Anxiety's ambiguity: an investigation into the meaning of anxiety in existentialist philosophy and literature, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4992/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Anxiety's Ambiguity An Investigation into the Meaning of Anxiety in Existentialist Philosophy and Literature Stuart Roy Hanscomb The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the written consent of the author and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Submitted in fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Durham 1997 3 JAW 1998 Abstract Anxiety's Ambiguity An Investigation into the Meaning of Anxiety in Existentialist Philosophy and Literature Stuart Hanscomb The dissertation has two primary aims: 1) To investigate the significance and role of anxiety in the work of existentialist writers; 2) To synthesize a unified account of its meaning within this tradition. There are seven substantial chapters, the first concerning the divergence between clinical anxiety and the existential version using the fear-anxiety distinction as a foil. Existential anxiety is then defined in terms of anxiety A (before the world as contingent), anxiety B (before the self as free), and urangst (an unappropriable disquiet caused by the incommensurability of anxieties A and B). Chapter 2 concerns Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety. His emphasis on choice, guilt and ambiguity lay the foundations for existentialism , but the suggestion that anxiety can be overcome in faith distances him from later existentialists. Chapter 3 reads Heidegger as secularizing Kierkegaard's ideas. Here we find the origins of the anxiety A/B structure, but I find that his attempt to define an 'authentic' comportment which embraces these two sources fails. In Chapter 4 Sartre's anxiety before the 'nothingness' of a self responsible for creating values is discussed and found wanting. However, his ideas on bad faith and authenticity seem to be more alive to the ambiguity of existence that anxiety reveals. The relation between anxiety and death is a primary concern of Chapter 5 (on Tillich). I contend that death is important (though not in the way Tillich thinks it is), but that otherwise he underplays urangst and the dynamism required in an authentic response to anxiety. The complexities of this process are further explored in Chapter 6 with respect to Rorty's version of 'irony'; and in the final chapter where two novels (Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Camus' The Fall) are read as demonstrating the subjective dynamics of authenticity in terms of the anxiety structure that has been developed. Contents Preamble 7 Chapter 1 17 Even in the Quietest Moments: Philosophy, psychology, and a reassessment of the anxiety—fear relation Chapter 2 48 Infinity's Messenger: Kierkegaard's Psychologically Orienting Deliberation Chapter 3 92 The Sense of Nothing: Heidegger Chapter 4 131 Anxious Engagement: Sartre Chapter 5 158 'The Existential Awareness of Non-Being': Tillich's The Courage to Be Chapter 6 178 The Ironic Remedy: Rorty Chapter 7 204 Unending Ordeals: Conrad and Camus Conclusion 232 Bibliography 240 (The painting on the acknowledgements page is The Wayfarer by Bosch) The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without their prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Acknowledgements I would primarily like to thank my supervisor David E. Cooper for his unflagging support and encouragement throughout this dissertation's lengthy gestation. He has always made himself available when I've needed his time and advice, and the example set by his own work has been a profound influence. 1 would also like to acknowledge the following people for their intellectual stimulation and /or professional, emotional, financial, practical or 'recreational' support (or all or any combination of these): In the South: My Mum and Dad, brother Greg and uncle Roy (esp. for comments on Ch.l); Steve Bayliss, Matthew Bird (and house-holds), Phil Davis, Steve Heme, Mike and Charlotte (cheers for the footy); the staff at the Northern Ireland Tourist Board (especially Jim Paul for the four-day week (the nearest I came to funding)). In the North: Primarily the heroic 'Thought Gang' (Barry Stobbart, Paul MacDonald, Alan Brown, Phil Diggle, Martin Connor, Bill Pollard), and the departmental secretary Kathleen Nattrass; but also Richard and Heather Hyett, Fiona Price, Tom Battye, Nick Tallentire, Soren Reader, Dawn Phillips, Robin Hendry and Chris Long. • 4lM < r • • \ • m t In a word, human life is more governed by fortune than by reason; is to be regarded more as a dull pastime than a serious occupation; and is more influenced by particular humour, than by general principles. Shall we engage ourselves in it with passion and anxiety? It is not worthy of so much concern. Shall we be indifferent about what happens? We shall lose all the pleasures of the game by our phlegm and carelessness. While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone; and death, though perhaps they receive him differently, yet treats alike the fool and the philosopher.—David Hume (Essays Moral, Political and Literary) Abbreviations Kierkegaard COA The Concept of Anxiety. Princeton, 1980 CUP Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Princeton, 1992 E/O Either/Or. Penguin, 1992 (although, where stated, I use the Princeton (1987) edition) FT Fear and Trembling. Penguin, 1985 REP Repetition. Princeton, 1983 SUD The Sickness Unto Death. Penguin, 1989 Heidegger BT Being and Time. Blackwell, 1990 WIM What is Metaphysics. In Kauftnann (ed.) Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Meridian, 1975; or in Basic Writings of Martin Heidegger. Routledge, 1993. Sartre BN Being and Nothingness. Washington Square Press, 1966 (except, where stated, Routledge, 1969 edition) NE Notebooks for an Ethics. University of Chicago Press, 1992 WD War Diaries. Verso, 1985 Tillich CTB The Courage to Be. Collins (Fontana), 1962 Rorty CIS Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Cambridge, 1989 EHO Essays on Heidegger and Others. Cambridge, 1991 Conrad HOD Heart of Darkness. Dent, 1974 (except, where stated, Penguin (1973) edition) Nagel VFN The View from Nowhere. Oxford, 1986 Life seems to me essentially passion, conflict, rage; moments of peace are brief and destroy themselves.—Bertrand Russell (The Essence of Religion) K. was haunted by the feeling that he was losing himself or wandering into strange country, farther than ever man had wandered before, a country so strange that not even the air had anything in common with his native air, where one might die of strangeness, and yet whose enchantment was such that one could only go on and lose oneself further.—Kafka (The Castle) Our birth ... is the basis of our activity and individuality, and our passivity or generality—that inner weakness which prevents us from ever achieving the density of an absolute individual. We are not in some incomprehensible way an activity joined to a passivity ... but wholly active and wholly passive, because we are the upsurge of time.—Merleau-Ponty (The Phenomenology of Perception) The search for unity is deeply natural, but like so many other things which are deeply natural may be capable of producing nothing but a variety of illusions.—Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good) We live in a world of at least two sides. We live in a world of opposites, and to reconcile these two opposing things is the trick. The more darkness you can gather up, the more light you can see.— David Lynch (Lynch on Lynch) When the old campaigner approached the end, had fought the good fight, and kept his faith, the heart was still young enough not to have forgotten the fear and trembling that disciplined his youth and which, although the grown man had mastered it, no man altogether outgrows—Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling) Preamble 'There must be some way out of here / Said the joker to the thief—Bob Dylan (All Along the Watchtower) «« »» My task here is essentially two-fold: firstly to critically examine the philosophical literature on anxiety in the work of writers in the existentialist tradition; and secondly, by distilling essential structures and features from these and adding more recent ideas and commentaries, to formulate, as far as I can, a unified account of the overall meaning and significance of existential anxiety. These aims are not confined to separate sections, but instead coexist over the course of seven main chapters. As I progress with my critique the idea is to gradually extract what I see as the essentials of existential anxiety and develop them into a basic structure. My reading of the seven principle philosophers and novelists does not become less faithful, but perhaps becomes more selective as this structure attains a more pronounced form. Chapter 1—in some respects a second and more substantial introduction—orients existential anxiety in relation to everyday and psychological meanings of the word and uses fear as a foil for highlighting its uniqueness.
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