Existentialists at the Nineteenth Hole
At a three-day golf outing recently, rife with the existential angst of decadent athletes wielding senescent muscles to advance a 1-3/4-inch sphere over the surface of an 8,000 mile sphere, the conversation at one wine-drenched dinner inevitably turned to existentialism.
Someone noted that such non-philosophers as talk show hosts, newspaper columnists, sportswriters, and play-by-play announcers were increasingly finding “existential” moments in everything they covered, and he wondered if any of them had the slightest idea what the word means.
“Can you define existentialism?” he asked me.
“I wouldn’t even if I could,” I said. A challenge to define a term is always a trap, and I had played out of enough traps for one day.
What emerged was the appalling fact that none of the golfers were French (though some were actively supporting the Free French of Bordeaux that night) and only three had studied even a smattering of philosophy, except for the kind dispensed at management seminars (Time is money. Think outside the box. Change is not what it used to be. Only the paranoid survive.)
Four of the participants were hampered in their efforts to characterize existentialism by their inability to pronounce it. These are much more brilliant people than talk show hosts or sportswriters, so this may have been the voice of Bordeaux, which silences the “x.” Another had spent two years in a Jesuit seminary learning that Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir were the Axis of Evil.
In order to resolve this matter and get back to telling bawdy jokes, the decision was made that I would write a post about existentialism and they would all read it, a self-defining individual responsibility which – given the demands of their existence between being and nothingness – they are not likely to fulfill.
The first principle to note is that French existentialists write thin books and German existentialists write fat ones. This is because resveratrol, the ingredient in red wine that supports cardiovascular health even among people who eat pate de foie gras, also causes flat chests and astringent prose. Then too, people who take three hours to eat dinner have little time to write.
After one such dinner, Jean Paul Sartre wrote a novel called La Nausee about the overwhelming unease of a person in La Havre thrown into existence without a roadmap and struggling to define who and what he is. The English equivalent is nausea – as distinct from exanthema, which is a skin rash — and we usually get our nausea from unrefrigerated salad dressing.
This is not to take the existential dilemma lightly. To Plato, Aristotle, and a long line of European philosophers down through Thomas Aquinas and Descartes, it is the essence – the fundamental nature – of a person or a thing that matters. To many such thinkers, this underlying nature was determined by God, so the individual could turn to religion to learn about God’s plan and then spend his life trying to fulfill it. A questionable deal, to be sure, but not at all confusing. To Plato and Aristotle, it was not so simple. The ancient Greeks had dozens of gods who were constantly feuding with each other, turning into birds to seduce earthlings and/or transforming humans into trees or animals or carrying them off to Hades. So the divine plan was a bit more complicated.
To Descartes, it was thinking that counted, and thinking established his existence – Cogito ergo sum. To which the existentialist replies, “Hey, froggy – you wouldn’t cogito a goddam thing if you didn’t already exist.”
To most existentialists, there is no preordained essence, purpose, or plan. The individual finds himself stranded in an unasked for, nonrational existence. He has to create his own meaning and destiny – and is responsible for doing exactly that. “Responsible to whom?” you might reasonably ask, and that will get you an existential moment but no convincing answer.
The philosophers at our golf outing all had enjoyed successful careers, cunningly exploiting some of the most exploitative corporations in America from their outposts at various advertising agencies. They had happily shrugged off the existentialist’s fixation with dread, boredom, and alienation and had reveled in absurdity rather than trembling in fear of it. They assumed human destiny was a matter of providing for your family (commitment) but living it up when you’re out of town (nothingness).
And through all this time, the word “existential” was quietly creeping into common parlance, probably facilitated by Woody Allen’s film dialogues, so that now the first definition of existential in the dictionary is, “pertaining to human existence.” A very broad, nay, inescapable category.
Assuming you’re human, from now on everything you do will be an existential act.
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Al:
Brilliant! … but at this point, that’s merely par for the golf course. I suspect – nay, fervently hope – young people will understand intuitively that with the essay under their belts, they’ve saved themselves the trouble and sheer, unmitigated boredom, of idling away their precious computer time in freshman and sophomore philosophy classes. And they’ll be able to go directly to their careers as insurance salesmen, tour guides or soda jerks.
Comment by Steve Alber — June 28, 2008 @ 8:23 am
Many thanks, Steve. And you’re quite right — philosophy goes down more easily in short swigs. Richard Sheridan pointed out that even this essay is too long for most folks — I think he meant most golfers — and might be better administered in smaller packages. But the fact remains that we probably witnessed history being made, with the first discussion of existentialism ever to take place at a golf outing.
Comment by Al — June 28, 2008 @ 8:19 pm
Al, your enlightening essay on existentialism is terrific. The wonderful truth about the word is that it can be used by almost anyone in almost any situation to make oneself sound learned. I’ve read French existentialist writers and still have no real philosophical grasp of wht it means. It’s like reading the reconstructionists and wondering what all that is about. What one wants to read is a hell of a good story.
I assume your golfing buddies who, like the rest of us, don’t understand existentialism, were corporate types you met when you were an existentialist ad copy writer.
Comment by Dick Dell — June 29, 2008 @ 11:30 am
Exactly! Though they (with one or two exceptions) were also on the advertising agency side of the fence rather than working in corporate headquarters. Agencies are unwittingly existential in the sense that have to invent themselves in the face of mandated divine plans handed down by corporate management. This was often a case of “La Nausee” because the corporate brass in the 1960s and 70s believed they were the smartest people on earth while, in fact, the Japanese and others were eating their lunch. For the agency people who created their ads, this could have been a bleak existence except for the fact that anytime you were stuck for an idea, you knew that if you suggested an ad with a photograph taken off the coast of California, at Harbortown or Pebble Beach or in the Caribbean, all the executives would happily agree and would somehow find time to lend their personal presence to the shoot. That’s how to convert alienation into a perfectly pleasant existence.
Comment by Al — June 29, 2008 @ 2:56 pm
A masterful exposition, wrapped around a definition even I can comprehend. “…no pre-ordained essence, purpose or plan…” Deliciously desperate, and applicable to soccer/futbol as well as the musings of Sartre, Camus, Heidegger, et al. Hail to Brillat-Savarin and his philosphy of hedonistic pleasure incorporating essence, purpose and plan. At the very least, ol’ BS was one Frenchman who knew what he was up to and why.
Comment by John DePaul — June 29, 2008 @ 3:31 pm
Ah, so! This requires deep consideration and possibly a battlefield promotion to a religious conversion. You’re saying that an exuberantly corrupt, hedonistic lifestyle is one of the joys of religious belief but denied to those miserable atheists like Sartre. Well, like the guy in the joke said when Satan showed him the beautiful golf courses of hell — sign me up!
Comment by Al — June 29, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
The Philosopher’s Drinking Song
(from Monty Python)
Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable.
Heideggar, Heideggar was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel.
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nieizsche couldn’t teach ‘ya ’bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stewart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shanty was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
“I drink, therefore I am.”
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed
—————————
Sing along here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQycQ8DABvc
Comment by Barb — June 29, 2008 @ 5:52 pm
Ah, yes. And the lost stanzas (drink will do that):
And then there was Aquinas
who in highness lost his shyness
And Jacques Maritain, a Cognac-loving man
(One sniff of the cork, he called in to take off work)
And holy St. Augustine — bishop of Hippo?
Who every Sunday morning turned bread and wine to zippo
Comment by Al — June 29, 2008 @ 8:49 pm