The Shared Condition of Uncertainty

The Bloom of Sweet Vernal Grass

My own view of Sartre's existentialism is positive. His idea of a Shared Condition is a rather beautiful one. My own negative view of Sartre's critics essentially revolve around the accusation that they've allowed themselves to become the hapless subjects of quasi-religious quackery, a form of wish-fullness that offers hope to the frail of mind, the wide eyed, the trustful and the bitter of heart.  A group to which Sartre applied the title Bad Faith. We used to be called Cynics, and even Nihilists by the Cretin-hood of Elders who'd given up on the perchance to dream and needed a bunch of confident softies to sneer at. The central theme of such a classic human reaction is the ever present uneasiness inherent in certainty. I use the word Cretin for a positive reason. It describes the moment when certainty asks you to just start making stuff up to demonstrate your point. Oddly, the origin of that splendid word Nihilism - from the Latin Nothing - was in an adverse intellectual reaction to the approximately 47,000 words of Wilhelm Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit that had shamelessly announced the end of worry because a great mind had rationally demonstrated that our fate was obviously beyond our control. The funny thing is, any respectable definition of Life, particularly the human experience of the condition, might suggest it's actually the other way around. Our fate isn't handed down, nor is it already in place when we arrive, thanks to uncertainty from beginning to end we have something to say about pretty much everything until we surrender to idea.

Condemned to be Free

The Bloom of Orchard Grass

Strictly, the phrase is "Man is condemned to be Free." It's a quote from Sartre's 1946 essay "Existentialism is Humanism." Round here, Orchard Grass is a big pollen producer, the breeze chases it around the fields. Orchard Grass has no other pollinator than the movements of air. It has no motivated bee to deliver it. In that sense it's "As Free as the Wind." Doesn't suit everyone, least of all those who claim to be Free. Hence the title of Sartre's major work, "Being and Nothingness" in which he explores the emptiness in nothingness that motivates us to take interest. He wrote "Being and Nothingness" when he was a prisoner, it was published in 1943 in Occupied France by the Gillimard Publishing House.  An English translation was published in 1956 when I, apparently, was an ill behaved four year old yearning to be both free, properly entertained and well fed

The Lutheress

Katharina von Bora by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Katharina von Bora, sometimes called The Lutheress, from the age of five years old until she was twenty three was educated and lived in a nunnery, first as a child and then as a nun. This cloistered life did not suit Katharina. In the year 1523 she sent a letter to Martin Luther explaining her dire situation. She and a couple of her sister nuns wanted only to free themselves from the bondage of Catholicism. It was a tricky moment for Martin Luther. The politics weren't good, there was little prospect of freeing Nuns from Nunneries ever being a winning argument and in the name of the Good Lord what would happen to the nuns once they were beyond the Nunnery Walls. Soon enough Martin Luther came to one of those why not conclusions, he contacted a respectable citizen who delivered Herring to Mary's Thrown, the Nunnery where Katharina was living, and lo Katharina and her sisters were soon hiding in a covered wagon containing empty Herring Barrels being smuggled out of their cloistered world into the enticing world of the Protestant Reformation. Today of course everyone knows the story of how a forty one year old Martin Luther met his twenty six year old wife, and go ahead call me fragile if you wish to, but I'd like to think that when Immanuel Kant was doing his Sunday School and worrying about the spelling of his first name, most of the other children in his class had a healthier interest in the generous Lutheran understanding that we are all sinners, some more lovable than others, there is no currying favor, whether the Lord likes us enough to grant us grace is entirely up to him or her, or something gynandrous such as an Orchid or a Dutchman's pipe.

Kant's Christian Name

This guilty Tom Turkey has just finished ravishing an infinitely respectable Hen Turkey. Without wishing to disappoint anyone I don't think Immanuel Kant was ever arrested for anything. But, while Kant was baptized Emanuel Kant, he changed his name to Immanuel Kant. The vague answer to the question Why bother? is that his name change had something to do with him being a young Lutheran in a Lutheran Sunday School that insisted on reading the central parts of the Old Testament in Hebrew. All kinds of sensible reasons for doing that, including an overwhelming sense of guilt. Oddly enough when I was kicked off Facebook for Jay walking with intent to whistle, I changed my name from Tim to Timothy, in the hope that I might open a new, perhaps more Christian account. But, and this is just an opinion, you'd sort of think Kant had better things to do than go to the effort of formally replacing an Em with an Imm. Back then in the mid to late 1700's, long before the Zuckster and his odious sycophantic clones repeatedly effed with us all, it was probably easier for a person to tinker with his or her name. In the end if Emanuel Kant had been arrested, and maybe tried in a court of Star Chamber, spent time in the stocks, there's a good chance Baxter might not lump him in the same addendum as Plato. There again there's still hope. Emmanuelle is the female version of Immanuel, meaning "God Is With Us". And Emmanuelle Arsan was the pen name of the novelist who wrote Emmanuelle, a book that became a series of somewhat spicy feature films that inspire hundreds of millions.