Existentialism's Demon

The Existentialist Demon is Postmodernist Commentary-ism.

1) One of the goals of existentialist thought is to get you to live your life as you are living it.

Our Law of Identity reads like this:

x = x


Such that if you want to live your life, you have to live your life. If you want to be happy, you have to be happy.

This is part of the reason Sartre said, "Existence precedes Essence." This simply means you exist before you figure out how you function.

There is no God or moral hierarchy to tell you how to live your life. Before, when everyone believed in God, they basically thought you had a designed function, much in the way that scissors are designed to cut or cars are designed to drive.

I think one of the ideas here is if you want to know how to live your life, you actually have to live. You have to experience life in the moment and create life in the moment because there is no other time that it could be created. You create your originality right now. You live your life right now.

Let's play hopscotch a bit with Philosophy Through the ages. Nietzche says that we do not have free will because free will ascribes reasons for punishing people. But Nietzche still thinks we have to be responsible. Feuerbach believes in the divinity of the moment as people simply live their lives. Divinity is living to Feuerbach. Meanwhile, about a hundred years back, Spinoza cryptically posited this as he Naturalized God or Deified Nature (the words Deus sive Natura appear in some of his letters: God or Nature). People like Roger Scruton in his easy-reader Spinoza think that Spinoza was trying to say something like Feuerbach with the attributes, which are two interpretations of living (Scruton specifically notes music: you can see it as sound waves, or you can see it as melody, both are correct). Finally, Schopenhauer says that you can escape The Will by listening to music and living a very Ascetic life (where you give up your possessions and want of possessions).


2) The Demon

We know better because of Postmodernism. Look at the structures. These philosophers are saying something to the extent that you can simply live life.

Can life simply be lead?

The problem is that the commentaries themselves are part of life. Every time you make a commentary, you cannot separate such commentary from life.

In the case of music, for example, you could not separate listening to the melody and considering its physics structure. The two are inseparable.

Or consider the critic who gets joy from critiquing movies: such is the raw power of life. Consider a chemist who has fun playing with chemicals. At what point can we divide the commentaries of life with the joys of living it?

This, right now, my writing and your reading, is this the joy of life, just reading it? There's this uncontrollable aspect to it all. There is no division between the originality of the moment and the commentary on the originality of this moment because that moment will be gone, too. Which was original? They both were. Which was divine? All of it. How can you escape the Will and realize the divinity of life as compared to the un-divine? You can't.