Existentialism

Staring into the Abyss

At the fragile edge of a sheer cliff there awaits a dark abyss for those who struggle to climb the mountain of their existence. Likewise, there is an abyss that eagerly waits to swallow up humanity at the end of the Ð''technological' road we are drifting down. For Camus and Heidegger each abyss poses its own fatal danger to humanity and for both, an accurate assessment of the situation is the first step towards the solution.

For Camus, the abyss Ð'-that stark realization that the individual life is, in itself, meaningless and insignificantÐ'--is, in a word, absurdity. In a world which assumes that life is worth living, a world in which humanity seeks meaning and acknowledgement, we wait for an answer but there is no reply. Though the very awareness of our own consciousness screams for and demands its own significance, the blackness of the abyss reveals nothing. The path that led us to this danger is seemingly unavoidable since "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined" (Camus). When one does reach "Ð'...that last crossroad where thought hesitatesÐ'...", that "Ð'...universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, [where] man feels an alien, a stranger"(Camus), where only absurdity stares back at you, the challenge then becomes maintaining ones balance through vigilant thinking and corresponding action , without retreating from that edge and without plunging oneself into the abyss.

To throw oneself into that abyss is to think that the only logical conclusion of a life without external meaning is physical suicide. Though one may have arrived at this conclusion by way of thought, "Ð'...such an action is never prepared in the mind alone" (Camus). Like "a great work of art Ð'...An act like [suicide] is prepared in the silence of the heartÐ'..." (Camus) In the struggle to achieve "simultaneously emotion and lucidity" (Camus), we reject the false dichotomy between mind and body and recognize that feelings carry great weight because they are a part of our being and cannot be abstracted, objectified or discounted. We are most true to our being when we stare into the abyss and contemplate it, and then boldly face the feelings of Anguish, Forlornness and Despair that rise up in response. To Ð''inauthentically' shrink away in fallenness from this recognition is Ð''complicity and bad faith' and as such represents a retreat from vigilant thinking which is,in effect, to commit philosophical suicide.

For Heidegger, philosophical suicide will be the unintended outcome of falling into the abyss which lies at the end of the road where the essence of Ð''technology' becomes a Ð''destining of revealing'. Because "Technology treats everything with Ð''objectivity'" (Lovitt xxvii) and "Ð'... Ð''sets upon' everything, imposing on it a demand that seizes and requisitions it for use" (Lovitt xxix), mankind becomes locked into a mode of revealing in which "Ð'...man becomes the subject, when from out of his consciousness he assumes dominion over everything outside of himself, when he represents and objectifies and, in objectifying, begins to take control over everything" (Lovitt xxix). By ordering everything everywhere "Ð'...to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for further ordering" (Heidegger 17), mankind is deprived of an intrinsic revealing of Being and once again falls into a false dichotomy, only this time it is the subject-object dichotomy. Then, when Enframing as "Ð'...that challenging claim which gathers man thither to order the self-revealing as standing-reserveÐ'..." (Heidegger 19) begins to reign as a Ð''destining', humanity