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In Kierkegaard's view, an individual is not automatically a self but has to become one. A human being merely embodies the possibility of becoming a self. For Kierkegaard, there is no "true core" that an individual already "is" or "has" and that underlies selfhood. Becoming a self is the task of human life [...]
The tragic fate of the aesthete raises the question: how can the individual liberate himself from the ironic-aesthetic attitude and realize a meaningful life? Kierkegaard's answer is deceptively simple: by choosing. In Either/Or, the ethicist affirms that "the ethical constitutes the choice" and that this choice is "the main concern in life, you can win yourself, gain yourself" [...] The aesthetic life is characterized by not-choosing; the aesthete wants to retain his negative freedom. To overcome the empty despair in which this life-view runs aground, the negative freedom established through irony should be followed, as mentioned above, by taking up the responsibility to give shape and meaning to one's life, thereby realizing a positive freedom. This is the choice that, for Kierkegaard, characterizes the ethical life view.
referring to the father of the contortionist boy from TPK, who became addicted to seduction (405)
Choice is always an action in which the individual connects to reality, to the world. Choice always means taking responsibility for a certain commitment to the world. And it is through that choice, through that connection to reality, in consciousness transcending itself toward the world, that the self emerges.
i love reading literary criticism not expecting much but then coming across something like this. this is what i live for
This emphasis on the importance of what is right in front of of our noses is a central theme in Wallace's work (cf. This is Water). Like existentialism, it is about the experience of concrete human existence. One of the more valuable things that Wallace's fiction can contribute to our philosophical understanding of the current age is that it points out the real world and urges us to pay attention to it, to commit to it, and thereby, to become ourselves.
[...] Camus's description of the solidary community of individuals who all suffer from the same absurdity--from the uncertainty and meaningless--of human existence. [...]
on some sidewalk graffiti ("love me till my heart stops")
[...] The highest that any literary interpretation--including mine--can (and should) strive for is plausibility [...]
he later quotes from the book "Is Literary History Possible" to support this. also mentions that he uses not only the work itself, and the context around it, but also things like author interviews because they influence the typical reader's reading process
In the existentialist view--the view that Kierkegaard, Sartre and Camus (and Wittgenstein also can be said to) share--, an individual is not automatically a self, but has to become one. A human being merely embodies the possibility of becoming a self. According to existentialism, there is no 'true core' that an individual always already 'is' or 'has,' and which underlies selfhood. Becoming a self is the task of human life. A human being has to integrate his individual imitations and possibilities into a unified existence; this is the process of developing a self. If an individual does not assume himself in this way, he does not acquire a self; he is just an immediate natural being, a thing among the things. Such a human being does not 'exist'; he just 'is'. Throughout this study, we will recognize this view of the self in Wallace's writing.
i like this, but on the other hand, i don't know if i agree with the implication that one is either a "self" or not. i feel like a better characterisation would be that everyone is in the process of becoming a self, and in fact the notion of "self" cannot be separated from this very process
For Sartre, the consequence of consciousness existing as nothingness is that human being has two aspects: transcendence and facticity. As nothingness, the human being is characterized by 'transcendence,' the freedom to 'transcend' all the determinations of his existence: 'the condition on which human reality'--by which Sartre means being-for-itself--'can deny all or part of the world is that human reality carry nothingness within itself as the nothing which separates its present from all its past'. To which Sartre adds: 'the for-itself is perpetually determining itself not to be.' At any moment, man is free to distance himself from, to transcend what he is (which means: what he has been until now), and choose new attachments. This transcendence does not just manifest itself at a particular moment; it is the continuous process that characterizes conscious being: 'consciousness continually experiences itself as the nihilation of its past being'.
Yet, observes Sartre, the for-itself 'is', in spite of this constant nihilation. He explains: 'It is in so far as there is something in it something of which it is not the foundation--its presence to the world'. A human being always finds himself in a factual situation, with a factual past; he is born in a certain country, raised in a certain family, environment and culture, with a certain education. Sartre calls this situatedness 'facticity'. It is on the basis of this facticity that we can say that being-for-itself 'is', exists. It does so, however, without ever coinciding with this facticity: as 'transcendence', the human being can always distance himself from the facticities that situate him; he 'transcends' them, does not fully coincide with them, is able to relate to and distance himself from them. For example, I am not a Dutchman in the same way that a stone is a stone. I am Dutch, but at the same time I do not completely coincide with my being-Dutch. I am more than my nationality, if only because I am conscious of that nationality, and therefore already at a certain distance to it; I am always free to be more than what I am at a certain moment.
the grammar here is confusing ... worth thinking about more
[...] Catalano formulates it as follows: 'the self is a product and not an a priori principle of activity'.
quoting Joseph Catalano from Good Faith and Other Essays
Despite the specificity of Sartre's view of consciousness, it fits the general existentialist view of the individual having to become a self, instead of having a self as some sort of inner core. For example, Kierkegaard--as we will see further on in this study--describes the self in similar terms.
In a talk that he gave on Franz Kafka, a writer who is also an important representative of the existentialist tradition, Wallace formulates an almost identical view of the self. Wallace remarks that in our present age it is a common mistake to think 'that a self is something you just have.' According to Wallace, we should acknowledge the central insight of existentialism, 'that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home' (Wallace also explicitly compares Kafka to Kierkegaard in this respect). And in this context Wallace's statement, 'Although of course you end up becoming yourself' (which became the title of David Lipsky's 300-page 'road trip' interview with Wallace from which it is derived), has a strong existentialist ring to it, asserting the need to become yourself. Also, the Sartrean view that the self arises outside consciousness, that consciousness has to be directed towards the world in order to discover the self, fits Wallace's (in this respect quite Sartrean) credo - mentioned in the Introduction--that consciousness needs to be facing outward and not be bent-inwards.
great summary