The way of objective reflection makes the subject accidental, and thereby transforms existence into something indifferent, something vanishing.

Søren Kierkegaard

The problem of detachment and objectivity

One of the enduring contributions of existentialism has been its critique of what Merleau-Ponty called “high-altitude thinking” (penseés de survol) (1968, 73). Beginning with Plato, this way of thinking has been associated with genuine truth and knowledge because it allows the philosopher to rise above the prejudices of history and the distorted flux of sense perceptions in order to gain access to the way things really are. The aim of philosophy, then, is to adopt a ‘God's-eye view’ or ‘view from nowhere,’ a dispassionate standpoint that gives us an objective and eternal perspective on reality, one that transcends our own temporal and historically situated view of things. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) sums up this detached attitude in the following way:

For Plato, it is only by means of detached contemplation that we are able to comprehend the essential, unchanging form of things. In his famous ‘Allegory of the Cave,’ the philosopher is described as one whose intellect is freed from the worldly prison of fleeting images and shadows, who climbs up and out of the cave and is dazzled by the knowledge of abstract ideas that are immutable and timeless.

The model for this kind of philosophical knowledge has always been mathematics. Unlike the mutability of visible objects, the abstract objects of arithmetic and geometry are eternal and unchanging. This is why proper training in mathematics has been so important in the Western philosophical tradition. “It leads the soul forcibly upward,” as Plato says in the Republic, “and compels us to discuss the numbers themselves, never permitting anyone to propose for discussion numbers attached to visible or tangible bodies” (525d). On this account, when the sun appears to me through the situated perspective of my senses, as something warm, small, and yellow, I am not being provided with genuine knowledge. But when I detach myself from the contingencies of my physical body and my historical situation and employ the faculty of reason alone, I am able to encounter the essence of this particular object in terms of numbers that are timeless and universal. Instead of seeing a small circular thing, I see the unchanging essence of a circle expressed in the geometrical formula of, for example, πr². It is the faculty of reason or the intellect, then, that gives us a ‘perspective of eternity’ (sub specie aeternitatis), allowing us to transcend the world of particular things and enter a world of timeless ideas or essences. And, as we saw in the preceding chapter, because this faculty gives us knowledge of objects that are eternal, it follows that the faculty itself must also be eternal. Thus, reason not only gives us the classical configuration of the human being as the ‘rational animal,’ it also makes us immortal, providing an escape from death and the frailties of time (see Barrett 1958, 79–91; Olson 1962, 41–50).

The Greek focus on rational detachment, objectivity, and the enduring certainties of mathematics was formalized into a method in the modern era beginning with early Enlightenment philosophers like Descartes. Understanding that arithmetic and geometry provided ‘the certainty and self-evidence of its reasoning,’ Descartes sought to use the deductive methods of mathematics to gain genuine knowledge of all things, including those in the physical world. In his Discourse on Method (1637), he describes his aim this way:

Descartes's method would provide knowledge that was ‘clear and distinct’ by creating an accurate picture of the external world that was represented in the intellect or mind. This could only be done by detaching ourselves from our normal way of experiencing things and abstracting out the contingent qualities of our senses and our historicity. It is through this logical, step-by-step method of abstraction that we begin to encounter nature in its mathematical form, where physical bodies are reduced to de-animated matter that is ‘extended, flexible, and mutable,’ whose qualities can be measured, and whose movement can be explained and predicted mathematically according to law-governed causal processes. And, to the extent that we too are physical bodies and part of the natural order, our decisions and actions can also be mathematized in terms of the same mechanistic laws. The French rationalist Paul Henri Holbach (1723–1789) describes how this method can be applied to human behavior when he writes, “Let [man] study nature, that he learn its laws, that he contemplate its energy and the immutable way it acts; let him apply his discoveries to his own felicity, and submit in silence to laws from whose binding force nothing can remove him” (cited in C. Taylor 1989, 326). With the rise of ‘methodologism,’ the classical conception of the human being as the ‘rational animal’ is recast. Reason is not simply the supreme faculty that gives us access to timeless truths and distinguishes us from other animals; there is now an underlying belief that in principle, every human decision and action is grounded in rational explanation (Williams 1985, 18).

It is this enduring philosophical assumption, that by adopting a standpoint of theoretical detachment and objectivity we can arrive at a rational explanation of human behavior, that informs much of the existentialist protest. For the existentialists, when it comes to the concrete concerns of the human situation, reason is inadequate. As beings who are self-conscious, our existence is always penetrated by feelings of uncertainty and doubt; we experience anguish in the face of our own death, in the radical contingency of our choices, and the sheer arbitrariness that anything, including ourselves, exists at all. The existentialists challenge the assumption that our actions are grounded in rational explanation, arguing that this creates the comforting illusion that there is a mechanism of stability, order, and control to the universe and to human existence. But, as Nietzsche says, this is nothing more than an invention, an intellectual “fable” we tell ourselves to deny how “transient, aimless and arbitrary” human existence actually is (1954b, 42).

On the existentialist view, the human situation cannot be grasped through detached reason. It is grasped primarily through penetrating emotions or moods that bring us face-to-face with our existence and the concrete choices and actions that define us. This is one of the reasons why existentialists reject the classical configuration of the human being as a rational animal. As Unamuno writes, “Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason” (1954, 3, my emphasis). It is in the unique way that we feel and suffer in confronting our own situation that distinguishes us as human beings, and the more intensely aware of our situation we become, that is, the more intensely we feel it, the more we suffer. To be sure, existentialists are still concerned with issues of truth and knowledge, but knowledge of what it means to be human. They reject the standpoint of methodological detachment because it is removed from the concrete feelings and concerns of the existing individual. On their view, knowledge of human existence begins from inside one's own situation and the affective commitments and values that matter to the individual. It is a truth that cannot be thought; it can only be felt with intensity and passion. We can get a sense of what this means by turning to Kierkegaard's conception of subjective truth.

Subjective truth

Kierkegaard's critique of rational detachment and objectivity is directed primarily at G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), whose aim was to construct a vast metaphysical system that would provide absolute knowledge of reality. In his first and most important systematic work The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel offers a panoptic account of Western consciousness as a dialectical process shaped by opposing principles – such as subject/object, freedom/determinism, temporal/eternal, and particular/universal. The tension between these oppositions is resolved through the rational mediation of history itself. Hegel's system is understood as ‘Absolute Idealism’ because it holds that all of reality is shaped by ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’ (Geist), where spirit is not interpreted in terms of a singular individual but as a shared historical spirit. By describing earlier stages of spirit, Hegel shows how consciousness is evolving from non-conceptual knowledge derived from naïve sense perception, to more advanced conceptual forms of knowledge that are mediated through rational reflection and are, therefore, more universal and abstract. This dialectical process eventually culminates in the final stage of Absolute knowledge. At this stage consciousness becomes self-consciousness as we realize that all previous forms of knowledge are produced by and belong to the dialectic unfolding of consciousness itself. And the various modes of thought and experience that have emerged in the progressive stages of history are grasped as part of the long painful process of self-recognition. This rational culmination resolves the dichotomies and conceptual tensions that plague earlier developmental stages.

Although he was indebted to Hegel's interpretation of the human condition as a dialectical tension, Kierkegaard believed this tension could never be resolved through rational mediation but only through the passionate commitments of the existing individual. In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard describes how Hegel's universalizing system requires taking the ‘perspective of eternity,’ and how this detached standpoint invariably cuts the philosopher away from existence, from the finite and temporal needs of the individual. Referring to Hegel sarcastically as ‘Herr Professor,’ he writes:

Because it is detached from the flesh and blood particulars of individual existence for the sake of abstraction and objectivity, Kierkegaard describes Hegel's project as one that represents “an age [that] has forsaken the individual in order to take refuge in the Collective Idea” (318). He responds to Hegel and the entire Western philosophical tradition when he argues that dispassionate theorizing invariably “makes the subject accidental,” turning it into “something indifferent, something vanishing” (173).

For Kierkegaard, abstract philosophy never engages one's own subjective truth, that is, “the highest truth attainable for an existing individual” (182). Of course, subjective truth cannot give me absolute knowledge about the nature of reality, but it is more fundamental because it gives me knowledge about who I am and how I should live my life. In this sense, Kierkegaard's view echoes the ancient Greek aphorism: “One must know oneself before knowing anything else” (1959, 46). In this light, he offers what is perhaps the most definitive statement in all of existentialist philosophy.

With these lines, Kierkegaard illuminates how objective truths are not my own because, to the extent that they are universal and abstract, they ignore the concrete and particular concerns that matter to me, that tell me what I should do with my life. And for Kierkegaard, it is only by committing to my own subjective truth that I can “lead a complete human life” (45), and this commitment can never be grasped through appeals to disinterested reason because it is constituted by my own singular experiences, emotions, and needs.

Interpreting truth this way allows Kierkegaard to undermine the traditional view of the self as a disinterested mind or ‘cogito.’ This is because prior to detached reflection, I exist, that is, I am already choosing a particular kind of life and carrying the burden of responsibility in becoming the person that I am. Thus, “the real subject,” says Kierkegaard, “is not the cognitive subject … the real subject is the ethically existing subject” (1941, 281). Given this account, my existential commitments are always prior to thought or reason. After all, “I must [first] exist in order to think” (294). On this view, whether a belief is rational or objectively true is irrelevant. What matters is the intensity and passion of my commitments because they alone belong to my existence. But for Kierkegaard, this exposes the “paradoxical character” of subjective truth (183); it is a truth grounded in anguish because it is objectively uncertain and unintelligible to others.

In privileging subjective truth, Kierkegaard captures two of the central themes in existentialism. First, to follow one's own truth may require suspending one's universal duty to others. As we will see in more detail in , we are all confronted with painful, life-defining moments when we have to choose between being true to objective moral laws or being true to oneself. For the existentialists, it is only the latter choice that manifests ‘the highest truth attainable.’ Second, Kierkegaard shows how theoretical detachment cannot give us access to our own truth. The truth of one's own existence is not thought but felt in penetrating emotional experiences of dread and anguish. These truths are dreadful because they have no objective or rational justification and are, therefore, incomprehensible to others. No one else can understand the commitments that matter to me as an individual. It is important to note, however, that this position does not make Kierkegaard an ‘irrationalist.’ It shows, rather, that rationality and objectivity are only a part of what it means to be human, but when it comes to one's own concrete concerns, it is of little or no use. Subjective truths cannot be reasoned about; they must be lived. This idea, that the ‘highest truths’ emerge out of the situated concerns of the individual, is further developed by Nietzsche, who radicalizes Kierkegaard by rejecting the notion of objective truth altogether and suggesting that all we have access to is our own finite and limited ‘perspective,’ and there is no way to detach or to step outside of it.

Perspectivism

Nietzsche, like Kierkegaard, was highly suspicious of systematic philosophy, largely because it was self-legitimating, that is, it uncritically assumes the truth of a set of principles and then uses these principles to construct the system. On Nietzsche's view, this kind of philosophy is ‘weak’ and ‘dishonest’ because it fails to rigorously question the principles that hold the system together. This is why he proclaims, “I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity” (1990, 35). For Nietzsche, metaphysical systems do not reveal the way the world really is because there is no ‘real’ world to begin with. “The ‘apparent’ world is the only one. The ‘real’ world has only been lyingly added …” (46). All systems, whether religious, philosophical, or scientific, are simply human constructions that express a psychological need for stability and control that protects us from the terrifying mutability and impermanence of existence. Indeed, to be human means to already inhabit and tacitly accept a socially constructed perspective that “we cannot see around” (Nietzsche 1995, 374).

Nietzsche's account of the interpretative or perspectival character of existence undermines the assumption that, through a method of rational detachment, the philosopher can attain ‘the perspective of eternity’ and gain knowledge of timeless truths or empirical ‘facts.’ From the point of view of perspectivism, “facts are precisely what there is not, only interpretations. We cannot establish any fact ‘in itself’. … [The world] has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings” (Nietzsche 1968, 481). The upshot of this account is that reality or truth is not discovered by means of reason; it is created. Throughout human history we invent different names for things and then call them true. Nietzsche calls this “the greatest difficulty … [that is] to recognize that unspeakably more depends on what things are called than on what they are” (1995, 58). Truths are viewed as “a mobile army of metaphors” that are invented and that continue to endure only insofar as they are “useful” (1954b, 46–47). They are passed down from generation to generation until they become “worn out” (47) and uncritically accepted as fact. Today, for instance, Euro-Americans generally accept the democratic ideals of equality, justice, and individual rights. But in Nietzsche's view, these are just calcified interpretations that have emerged historically from a contingent series of events that happened to take hold of the public imagination several centuries ago and over time came to be uncritically regarded as true. This is why Nietzsche says, “That you perceive something as [true] may be caused by the fact that you have never reflected on yourself, and are blindly accepting what has been designated as right to you since childhood” (1995, 335).

This means, of course, that consciousness itself is a social construction. All of our so-called inner beliefs, values, and thoughts are shaped by a particular sociohistorical perspective, and we can make sense of ourselves – and the social roles that we play – only in terms of this perspective. In this sense, our thoughts are not our own because consciousness does not belong to us. In order to have a thought, a need, or a desire we must have a word for it, because “all consciousness occurs in words” (354). Consciousness, therefore, is conditioned by a social world and the linguistic conventions that shape it. Nietzsche explains:

For Nietzsche, growing into social conventions in the way that we do has resulted in a standardized, leveled-down, and conformist consciousness, where “everything that becomes conscious becomes, by the same token, shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general … a signal of the herd” (354). With the conformity of herd consciousness, everything “strange, unusual, questionable, [and] disturbing” is explained and understood against the secure and stable backdrop of what is familiar and known. Nietzsche calls this the “instinct of fear” (355). It is flight from the horror that our perspectives are not secure and timeless but historically contingent and that there are innumerable ways of knowing the world, and this makes us afraid to question what we know, namely, the perspective that is most comforting and “familiar to us” (355).

To be sure, perspectivism serves important psychological and social functions because it allows us to arrange and make sense of an otherwise frightening and absurd existence. This is why Nietzsche says, “Truth is that sort of error without which a certain species of life could not live” (1968, 293). His critical aim, then, is not to deny the social utility of our belief in truth but to come to grips with the fact that the alleged stability and permanence of our truths is an “illusion” (1996, III, 24). Here, Nietzsche captures an important theme that will take center stage in twentieth-century incarnations of existential phenomenology: the idea that philosophy always begins from within the particular, embodied, sociohistorical context we grow into, a context that cannot be represented or explained by means of detachment and objectivity. This is because all rational explanations are parasitic on our own situated existence. As Heidegger will later write: “The existential nature of man is the reason why man can represent beings as such and why he can be conscious of them. All consciousness presupposes … existence as the essential of man” (1956, 205). And if an objective explanation of existence is impossible, then the best we can do is describe our experience as it ‘appears to us.’

Phenomenology

Inaugurated by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) in 1900, the method of phenomenology was conceived as a return ‘to the things themselves.’ Rather than trying to systematically explain ‘what things are’ in terms of their material or psychic composition, phenomenology is a method that is concerned with describing ‘how things are,’ that is, how things reveal themselves or appear to us in ordinary experience. Phenomenology, then, is the science of phenomena, where ‘phenomena’ refers to that which appears, shows up, or is given to us in the immediacy of our everyday lives. This does not mean that appearances are somehow different from the way things really are. Phenomenology is not concerned with the traditional philosophical problem of discovering the enduring essence or reality that is hidden behind the flux of appearances. Indeed, the core epistemological distinction between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’ is rejected altogether. Phenomenology is concerned simply with the phenomenon as it appears, as it “shows itself in itself” (Heidegger 1962, 51). The aim is to show that there is no reality or ‘thing-in-itself’ to be found behind the appearance. Indeed, the method of phenomenology demonstrates that appearances (or phenomena) are the things themselves. “This is why,” as Sartre explains, “we reject the dualism of appearance and essence. The appearance does not hide the essence, it reveals it; it is the essence” (1956, 4–5).

Phenomenology introduces two key points that reflect the existentialist project. First, phenomenologists contend that any theoretical demonstrations or proofs about the nature of reality are derived from and made possible by what is originally given in lived experience. Thus, in order to gain access to what is given, the phenomenologist can only describe what shows up and tries to suspend or ‘bracket out’ the theoretical frameworks of philosophy and the empirical sciences (e.g., psychology, biology, physics, etc.) in order to encounter what presents itself in experience as it presents itself. Second, phenomenologists agree that all experience has an intentional structure, that is, my experience is always about or of something; it is always directed toward an object. This is a rejection of the Cartesian view of the self as an encapsulated mental receptacle of ‘inner’ thoughts, desires, and beliefs that is somehow separate and distinct from ‘outer’ objects. In my everyday acts and practices, there is no ‘inner/outer’ distinction because I am already involved with and directed toward intra-worldly things. As Sartre says, when I am late for work and chasing the bus down the street I do not encounter myself as a bundle of desires and beliefs in a mental container; rather, I encounter my self as “running-toward-the-bus” (1957, 49). My being is found not in my head, but with the bus, and my experience is nothing apart from what it is directed toward. The self or ‘I,’ on this account, is not an object or thing but the ongoing activity of being directed toward things in the world.

It is important to note, however, that existentialists break with Husserl in terms of understanding how phenomena are encountered. Husserl contends that through a series of intellectual reductions (what he calls the ‘epoché’), the phenomenologist can bracket out or negate the worldly prejudices of the ‘natural attitude’ that tend to distort what is given in our conscious experience. By bracketing out these prejudices, the phenomenologist is able to arrive at a ‘presuppositionless starting point’ and attend to what is given to consciousness in a way that is pure and undistorted. Existential phenomenologists reject the possibility of a complete reduction, arguing that what is given in experience is always colored by a particular historical world, where ‘world’ is understood not as a spatial container or the sum total of objects but as a background of affective meanings that we are always already involved in. As we go to work, talk with friends, shop, and travel we are immersed in this background which allow the things that we deal with to show up and matter to us in the ways that they do. And it is impossible to bracket out or negate our involvement in this background because it constitutes what it means to be human. Against Husserl's conception of the reduction, then, existential phenomenologists argue that there is no pure, undistorted consciousness that constitutes the world after the natural attitude has been bracketed out. “The most important lesson which the reduction teaches us,” says Merleau-Ponty, “is the impossibility of a complete reduction” (1962, xiv). What appears to us in lived experience is always colored by the worldly significance we grow into and intentionally attribute to things. We are, for this reason, “condemned to meaning” (xix).

As we will see in proceeding chapters, interpreting existence in terms of our situated involvement in a world of meanings creates a new way of understanding the self. Whereas traditional philosophy has been largely concerned with ‘what we are’ as a particular kind of entity or substance – an autonomous mind, a causally determined body, or some combination of the two – existential phenomenologists are concerned with ‘how we are.’ Heidegger is helpful by referring to human existence in terms of the colloquial German expression ‘Dasein.’ For Heidegger, ‘Dasein’ is a term that expresses our unique way of being and avoids the usual interpretation of the self as an entity or substance with ‘what-like’ properties. “When we designate this entity with the term ‘Dasein,’” says Heidegger, “we are expressing not its ‘what’ (as if it were a table, house, or tree) but its being” (1962, 67). On this account, humans are distinct because we already embody a pre-reflective understanding of how to exist in the world, and this understanding can never be made theoretically explicit. It is a result of being ‘thrown’ into a shared social context that tacitly shapes how we make sense of things such as equipment, our social identities, and our relationships with others. This means Dasein can only be understood in terms of its concrete worldly involvements, and it helps explain why Heidegger refers to being-in-the-world as a “unitary phenomenon,” where “self and world belong together in the single entity, the Dasein” (1982, 297). Understanding existence this way means that phenomena are always given to us as ‘interpretations’ because they have already been colored by our own way of being-in-the-world. As Merleau-Ponty contends, it is “naïve” for philosophers to assume that we can adopt a completely detached and objective standpoint (1962, vii–ix). This is because any theoretical description or explanation of things presupposes one's own situated and embodied point of view.

The existentialist emphasis on situated and pre-reflective understanding not only breaks with the traditional idea of the cognizing mind as the source of genuine truth and knowledge; it also allows us to rethink the role of the body. As we will see in more detail later, existential philosophers like Heidegger, Marcel, Sartre, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty all explore the ways in which the ‘lived body’ is itself the source of pre-reflective understanding or knowledge that endows things with meaning and value. On this account, the body is not regarded as a material object extended in space and set against the dispassionate gaze of the subject. The body is how I am, a relational way of being-in-the-world that dissolves the subject/object opposition altogether. This means I do not ‘have’ a body as if it were a thing or object I possess. Rather, as Marcel proclaims, “I am my body” (1950, 103). In the course of my everyday life, in seeing, hearing, touching, and sensing, the body is already entwined with worldly meanings, and this intra-worldly relation always underlies our theoretical understanding of things. We do not, for instance, interpret ourselves as a man or a woman because we are born with a particular anatomy. We identify ourselves in terms of sexual differences only on the basis of the sociocultural background and the embodied meanings that we grow into. This is why, in The Second Sex, Beauvoir says that “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman” (1952, 301, my emphasis). It is through being acculturated into the oppressive social patterns, institutions, and prejudices of Western culture that a woman learns how to interpret herself as an inferior and subordinate being. This does not mean that biology and anatomy are unimportant to questions of personal identity. It simply means that biological facts are always derived from the relational background of social norms and practices that we are immersed in as embodied ways of being. It is this situated relation that makes it possible for us to interpret ourselves as the particular persons that we are, as men or women, as sick or healthy, as charming or boorish and so on. We will discuss in more detail phenomenology's contribution to existentialism in later chapters, but we can conclude by summarizing the key points of the insider's perspective.

First, existentialists are in agreement that philosophy does not begin from a standpoint of detachment and objectivity because it can never address the concrete concerns of the existing individual. This means that any account of what it means to be human has to start from my own first-person experiences and the situated understanding that I have of myself. Indeed, as the phenomenologists have shown, I have no choice but to start out from the insider's perspective, from my sense of things as they initially appear to me from my own perspective and modes of apprehension.

Second, existentialists reject the configuration of the human being as a self-contained subject that is separate and distinct from objects. In my everyday life I am bound up with the meanings, values, and practices of the world. As an embedded way of being, I am limited and constrained by the world that I find myself in, and this influences how I interpret myself and make sense of who I am. This means that any attempt to address the question of human existence must also address how I am situated in a shared world.

Finally, the standpoint of detachment and objectivity cuts us off from the affective meaning and worth of things. When I adopt the standpoint of objectivity, I am often left in a dispassionate state, where I am alienated from what matters to me as an individual, and the world shows up as a “gray collage of facts” (Bergmann 1983, 41). Detached in this way, my choices and actions are stripped of their emotional significance. I may be able to know what is objectively true, but without feelings I cannot know what is true for me, because it is the passion, focus, and intensity, not the correctness, of my choices that determine their truth. As Kierkegaard says, “In making a choice, it is not so much a question of choosing the right way as of the energy, the earnestness, [and] the pathos with which one chooses” (1946a, 106).

But if intellectual detachment results in an emotionally desiccated and bleached-out view of the world, the insider's perspective presents its own problems. Specifically, if we are embedded in a world of meanings that invariably distorts and colors our view of things in ways that we are not explicitly aware, then how can we ever be true to ourselves and commit to an identity that is genuinely our own? In order to address this question, we have to first get a clearer sense of the ways in which existentialists contend that we are bound up in the world. In the next chapter we will explore a number of influential accounts of being-in-the-world and show how they not only undermine the view of the philosopher as a detached spectator but also challenge a number of entrenched dualisms that have been central to Western thought.

Suggested Reading

Cooper, D. (2012). Existentialism as a philosophical movement. In S. Crowell (ed.), The Cambridge companion to existentialism (pp. 27–49). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Joseph, F. and J. Reynolds (2011). Existentialism, phenomenology and philosophical method. In F. Joseph, J. Reynolds, and A. Woodward (eds.), The Continuum companion to existentialism (pp. 15–35). London: Continuum.

Moran, D. (2000). Introduction to phenomenology. New York: Routledge.

Richardson, J. (1986). Existential epistemology: A Heideggerian critique of the Cartesian project. Oxford: Clarendon Press.