赫胥黎《美麗新世界》與歐威爾《1984》中本真生活之追尋

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(1)國立中山大學外國語文學系研究所博士論文. A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE INSTITUTE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE NATIONAL SUN YAT-SEN UNIVERSITY 赫胥黎<<美麗新世界>>與歐威爾<<1984>> 中本真生活之追尋 The Quest for the Authentic Life in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty- Four. 研究生: 郭晉榕撰 By Ching-Jung Kuo. 指導教授: 田偉文教授 Advisor: Professor Rudolphus Teeuwen 中華民國九十七年七月 1.

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(3) 論文名稱：赫胥黎《美麗新世界》與歐威爾《1984》中本真生活之追尋頁數: 190 頁校所組別: 國立中山大學外國語文研究所畢業名稱及題要別: 九十六學年度第二學期博士學位論文提要研究生: 郭晉榕. 指導教授: 田偉文教授. 論文提要: 本論文旨在研究赫胥黎《美麗新世界》與歐威爾《1984》中本真生活之追尋。在二十世紀，由於極權主義的產生與科技之進步，人類對於自身自由備感威脅。赫胥黎與歐威爾在各自的小說中，即對現代社會朝向非人性化發展提出警告。另一方面，存在主義哲學家海德格、沙特等，在他們各自的哲學著作中，對個人本真生活的探討與肯定，也反映了現代人在現實環境的壓力下，對於自我生命意義的追尋。第一章導論概述沙特與海德格各自的哲學著作中，對於本真性之探討，在《存在與時間》中，海德格提出非本真生活之特點，焦慮感、良心之召喚、與本真性等，在《存在與虛無》與《存在主義與人文主義》中，沙特則探討人類的本然自由，強調透過個人自由選擇以創造自我價值。顯然，兩位哲學家對人類創造自我生命的價值持肯定態度。第二章則透過比較赫胥黎《美麗新世界》、歐威爾《1984》、柏拉圖《理想國》這三部著作，探討赫胥黎與歐威爾在各自小說中對當代世界的批評，與暗示柏拉圖的烏托邦思想，如何可能成為當代獨裁者所濫用之對象。第三章論述赫胥黎的反烏托邦小說《美麗新世界》中之世界秩序與對生命的理念，實為當代存在主義之夢魘。透過小說中主要人物的反叛，赫胥黎暗示讀者，真正的人類本真生活實為真、善、與美之追求。第四章討論歐威爾小說中主角對於本真生活之追求。藉著忠實紀錄過去事實，開始一段真實的感情生活，與加入兄弟會，主角溫斯頓.史密斯實為歐威爾對於人類追求本真生活理想之代言人。 2.

(4) The Quest for the Authentic Life in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Abstract This dissertation intends to study the quest for the authentic life in both Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In this dissertation, I attempt to examine how Huxley and Orwell criticize the modern trend toward dehumanization and how both writers assert the value of the authentic life in their individual dystopian novels.. In the twentieth century, the. rise of totalitarianism and the development of science and technology threaten the independence of the individual.. In their respective dystopian novels, both. Huxley and Orwell reflect this crisis of the death of individuality in the modern world and warn us against it by portraying the quest of the characters for an individual meaningful life.. On the other hand, the rise of existentialism also. reflects the human desire to live a life of authenticity in this excruciating modern condition. Philosophers like Heidegger and Sartre all try to assert the value of the individual authentic life in this modern world where traditional values seem no longer sufficient to guide the individual in his life.. Thus, it seems that the four. authors Heidegger, Sartre, Huxley and Orwell all share the concern for the freedom of humans in the modern world. has a value in itself.. To them, an authentic individual life. It overrides the past utopian concern for rational order that. overlooks the freedom and independence of the individual. The introduction focuses on presenting the major tents of Heidegger’s and Sartre’s ideas on authenticity.. In his Being and Time, Heidegger mentions the. characteristics of a life of fallen-ness, the individualizing effects of anxiety, the call of conscience and the authentic life. 3. And in his Being and Nothingness, and.

(5) Existentialism and Humanism, Sartre emphasizes the freedom of the individual to define himself through his own free choice of actions.. In their individual. philosophical works, both of them emphasize the freedom of the individual to take the initiative to create an authentic life.. Chapter two focuses on a comparison. between three works, Plato’s The Republic, Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four.. In my discussion of their similarities and. differences, we try to point out both Huxley’s and Orwell’s reflections on the modern world and their implied criticism of Plato’s utopian ideals which can be taken advantage of by the modern dictators.. Chapter three treats Huxley’s. dystopia Brave New World as essentially an anti-existential world in which there exists no possibility for the individual to lead a truly authentic life.. Through the. characters’ rebellion, Huxley suggests to the reader that the true authentic life consists in the quest for beauty, love and truth.. Chapter four focuses on the. protagonist’s quest for the authentic life in Orwell’s dystopia Nineteen Eighty-four. By starting a diary to keep a faithful record of the past, by developing a love affair and joining the Brotherhood to revive the past authentic life, Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith actually serves as the novelist’s alter ego to express his ideal for the individual authentic life.. 4.

(6) Table of Contents. Chapter 1: Introduction ………………………………………………………. 6 Chapter 2: Plato's Heirs: Orwell, Hexley and Repressive societies …………... 48 Chapter 3: Brave New World: A "Bland" New World and Its Discontents …… 88 Chapter 4: Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Fight for the Authentic Life ………….. 145 Chapter 5: Conclusion ……………………………………………………….…180 Works Cited …………………………………………………………………….187. 5.

(7) Chapter I. Introduction. What is existentialism?. And how is it related to the two novels Brave New. world and Nineteen Eighty-Four?. In this first chapter, I need to give an account of. this philosophical direction and analyze its major ideas.. And in light of these ideas, I. may interpret the two novels in the following chapters. To start this analysis, I need to account for the historical conditions that give rise to this philosophy.. After the Second World War, existentialism arose out of man’s. deep self-reflection on the human condition and its dilemmas.. As William Barrett. pointed out, existentialism is not a passing fad or a mere philosophic mood of the postwar period, but a major movement of human thought that lies directly in the main- stream of modern history (18).. Indeed, the philosophy and literature of a. specific time and place often arise out of the faithful reflection of its social, political, and spiritual problems that humans confront and need to cope with.. In the modern. period, several historical factors contributed to the rise of existentialism.. First and. foremost, it is the decline of religion. Commenting on the significance of the decline of Christianity, Paul Roubiczek remarks that in the nineteenth century, the most significant event is the loss of faith in Christianity among the majority of Europeans, especially intellectuals.. What follows then is a void at the very heart of the. European civilization, which had been based upon the Christian concept of God. Instead of God, “there is nothing, das Nichts, le Neant” (39).. This is a very. disturbing situation since this sense of emptiness is not static. Actually, what ensues from this loss of faith is the fact that “more and more concepts, values, beliefs, creeds--hitherto the foundations of human lives--crumble and have to be discarded” (39).. This decline of religion thus renders man spiritually disorientated.. 6. To.

(8) medieval man, Christianity was not just a theological system but it actually offered a way of life in which man could find spiritual peace.. With this loss of faith, man lost. his connection with a transcendent realm of being and was therefore left free to deal with this world in all its harsh objectivity.. He is bound to feel homeless in such a. world, which can no longer satisfy his spiritual needs. Without spiritual guidance, he actually becomes a wanderer upon the face of the earth. As history develops, Protestantism, science and capitalism mark the coming of a new age, our modern world.. The spirit of Protestantism, though seeming to have. little to do with that of the New Science in its emphasis on the irrational datum of faith, fitted in very well with the New Science. “By stripping away the wealth of images and symbols from medieval Christianity, Protestantism unveiled nature as a realm of objects hostile to the spirit and to be conquered by Puritan zeal and industry” and like science, “Protestantism helped carry forward that immense project of modern man: the de-spiritualization of nature, the emptying of it of all the symbolic images projected upon it by the human psyche” (Barrett 27).. As the modern world moves. onward and becomes more and more secularized in every department of life, the Protestant faith consequently becomes attenuated: “Protestant man begins to look more and more like a gaunt skeleton” and “the more severely he struggles to hold on to the primal face-to-face relation with God, the more tenuous this becomes, until in the end the relation to God Himself threatens to become a relation to Nothingness” (Barrett 29). Not only fitting well with science in its de-spiritualization of nature, Protestantism was also in accord with the spirit of capitalism in its secular ethic. Both believe in the validity of zeal and industry. And “for several centuries the two went hand in hand, ravaging and rebuilding the globe, conquering new continents and territories, and in general seeming triumphantly to prove that this earth is itself the 7.

(9) Promised Land” but “even in the midst of the nineteenth century, Capitalism had also succeeded in erecting the worst slums in human history” (Barrett 29). Citing the great German sociologist Max Weber, William Barrett remarks that he “has provided one of the chief keys to the whole of modern history by describing its central process as the ever-increasing rational organization of human life.”. As Max Weber observes,. what characterizes the capitalist is the enterprising and the calculating mind who must organize production rationally to win a favorable balance of profits over costs. Thus, in capitalism, it follows that. everything is schemed according to this principle of. organizing economic activities in the interests of efficiency such as “the collectivization of labor in factories and the consequent subdivision of human function; the accumulation of masses of the population in cities, with the inevitable increase in the technical control of life that this makes necessary; and the attempt rationally to control public demand by elaborate and fantastic advertising, mass pressure, and even planned sociological research” (Barrett 30).. This process of. rationalizing economic activities knows no bounds and actually comes to cover almost every aspect of our social life.. In the twentieth century, over large areas of. the world, though communism with its form of total collectivization has taken the place of capitalism, yet it does not alter the fundamental human issues involved. Actually, “the collectivization becomes all the more drastic when a mystique of the state, backed by brutal regimentation by the police, is added to it” and “collectivized man, whether communist or capitalist, is still only an abstract fragment of man” (Barrett 30). This collective life of man in the modern society only causes man’s alienation. By this, he suffers the disintegration of his self-identity, becoming only a functionary in the great machine of society.. And with the power of the state growing. ever stronger, man gradually loses his individuality.. Man becomes alienated from. his fellow beings. Because of this ever-increasing collectivization of modern life, 8.

(10) human relationships become ever more superficial.. And with the loss of faith in. God, man’s life stays on the practical level of hedonism.. In his Existenzphilosophie,. Karl Jaspers observes that “the community of masses of human beings has produced an order of life in regulated channels which connects individuals in a technically functioning organization, but not inwardly from the historicity of their souls” (140). Actually, caused by dissatisfaction with mere achievement and the helplessness that results from the break-down of the channels of relation, there is “a loneliness of soul such as never existed before, a loneliness that hides itself, that seeks in vain in the erotic or the irrational until it leads eventually to a deep comprehension of the importance of establishing communication between man and man” (140). In both. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, we can see very clearly these modern phenomena as described above, such as the death of God and his subsequent replacement by some degenerate form of worship, Big Brother in Nineteen Eighty-Four and “Our Ford” in Brave New World. And we can also see how the collective life of man leads to the soul-less hedonism in Brave New World and the complete death of individuality in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Science and technology, in both worlds, serve not to better man’s life but instead are taken advantage of by the sinister rulers as a means of domination.. In Brave New World,. such technological inventions as biotechnological hatchery, conditioning, sleep teaching, the feelies, and soma work as the means to prevent people from developing a sense of individuality and personal meaning. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, such means as surveillance through technological means also serve the same effect. In both the two authors’ fictional worlds, the abstract fragment of man as Barrett describes indeed becomes a reality. The First World War in fact marked the ending of the European bourgeois civilization.. In his poem “The Wasteland,” T. S. Eliot faithfully portrays the spiritual 9.

(11) dryness of the western world after the war. In “The Burial of the Dead,” Eliot presents many death images, such as the Hanged Man, and the drowned Phoenician Sailor.. And water, commonly used as a symbol of life and regeneration, is. associated with death here. modern men.. It seems Eliot wants to suggest the spiritual death of. In this modern world, man has lost his faith in God, and being. spiritually bewildered, can only trust a fortune-teller.. Still, after the lines of the. fortune-teller section, the reader reads these lines describing the collective life of modern man: Unreal city, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled. And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. (60-66) From this typical modern scene of men hurrying on their way to their offices, Eliot suggests the alienation modern men feel in their relationship to their environment. They can find no joy in their collective life, as Eliot describes: “Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled. / And each man fixed his eyes before his feet” (64-5). No one feels kinship with his fellow-beings.. They are, actually, spiritually dead. automatons, not unlike the phantoms in hell which Dante describes in his Divine Comedy.. The anonymous viewer of the scene, therefore, begins his laconic. comments on the scene, with a short word “unreal city.” To him, this life is only inauthentic.. It is death-in-life, as he explicitly comments, quoting a line from. Dante’s Inferno: “…so many/ I had not thought death had undone so many” (62-3). This feeling of alienation, of estrangement of humans from their fellow beings 10.

(12) and surroundings and finally from themselves finds its most powerful expression in Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis. At the beginning of the novella, the reader reads these words: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect” (I). The protagonist never knows why this happened to him.. In his world, he is only a man holding a. little job under his boss and he finds no self-fulfillment in his work: Oh God, he thought, what an exhausting job I’ve picked on! Traveling about day in, day out. It’s much more irritating work than doing the actual business in the office, and on top of that there’s the trouble of constant traveling, of worrying about train connections, the bed and irregular meals, casual acquaintances that are always new and never become intimate friends.” (2381) Maybe, this life of constant striving for mere survival, of shallow human contact only plunges the protagonist into a deep sense of worthlessness. He can only feel himself dehumanized, living like an insect. Not only writers such as T. S. Eliot and Franz Kafka join in the reflection and serious criticism of the modern human condition but also philosophers come to see the inadequacies of traditional philosophy and thus try to find a way to help humans out of this predicament by their philosophies. From their viewpoints, traditional philosophies are inadequate in their failure to account for man’s existence.. In their. concern with objective knowledge and with the nature of ultimate reality, they fail to offer men spiritual guides to live their lives, which, in this age of collectivism and dehumanization, are desperately needed.. In the nineteenth century, both Friedrich. Nietzsche and Soren Kierkegaard have individually voiced their discontentment with traditional philosophies. 11.

(13) Nietzsche suggests the possibility of establishing new values according to new principles. The West has founded all of its values on Christianity. Yet when the doubt on the existence of God becomes prevalent, the foundation of all moral values becomes shattered. to Christianity.. Yet Kierkegaard, nevertheless, intends to reintroduce Christians. Himself a devout Christian, Kierkegaard was disappointed with his. age’s concern with objective, scientific truths and its neglect of ethical and religious truths.. Like Socrates, he tries to awaken his contemporaries to these subjective. religious and ethical truths, which can never be substantiated by human reason and yet are essential to our very existence. He began his work by criticizing traditional rationalistic philosophy.. He asserts that traditional rationalistic philosophy,. beginning with Plato, then passing on to Descartes and finally culminating in Hegel’s idealistic philosophy, has dissociated itself from our true existence. In these grand systems created by the philosophers, the individual loses his significance; as William Barrett puts it: “Philosophers before Kierkegaard has speculated about the proposition. ‘I exist’, but it was Kierkegaard who observed the crucial fact they had forgotten: namely, that my own existence is not at all a matter of speculation to be, but a reality in which I am personally and passionately involved” (Barrett 162). Indeed, in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard criticizes Hegel and other philosophers by remarking: A system of existence cannot be given. Is there, then, not such a system? That is not at all the case…..Existence itself is a system – for God, but it cannot be a system for any existing spirit.. System and conclusiveness. correspond to each other, but existence is the very opposite. Abstractly viewed, system and existence cannot be thought conjointly, because in order to think existence, systematic thought must think it as annulled and consequently not as existing. (CUP 197) 12.

(14) Therefore, Kierkegaard asserts that only God can be this systematic thinker, for God is the only one “who himself is outside existence and yet in existence and who in his eternity is forever concluded and yet includes existence within himself” (CUP 198). By contrast, “the human knower, as a creature in a state of becoming, is situated in existence, which means that both the subject and often the object of knowledge are in process” (Westphal 296); thus, it is impossible for him to have an objective knowledge of reality, as Kierkegaard expresses: If…being is understood as empirical being, then truth itself is transformed into a desideratum〔something wanted〕and everything is placed in the process of becoming〔worden〕because the empirical object is not finished, and the existing knowing spirit is itself in the process of becoming.. Thus. truth is an approximating whose beginning cannot be established absolutely, because there is no conclusion that has retroactive power. (CUP 199) By this argument, “Kierkegaard, like Kant before him and Derrida after him, considers the radical temporality of the human condition to be the barrier to absolute knowledge” (Westphal 296).. Thus, he argued in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. that “subjectivity is truth” and “truth is subjectivity.”. Elucidating the difference. between objective and subjective truth, Paul Roubiczek remarks that “the subjective method should reveal a truth which, in contrast to factual information, can become a personal experience and thereby have a deep influence upon what we believe and do—an influence such as is exercised by any kind of faith. (101). Considering man to be an “existing spirit,” Kierkegaard thinks man has to take the initiative to take responsibility for his own relationship to God.. Since truth is. subjectivity, one’s very attitude to the Christian idea of God’s entering human history for the salvation of mankind can be of great importance to him.. For Kierkegaard,. true faith involves absolute commitment to this paradoxical religious truth. For this 13.

(15) faith in God transcends reason alone and belongs to the existential sphere of the individual who must take decisions that may influence his entire life and eternal salvation. Thus, according to Kierkegaard, what is in question here is one’s own personal appropriation of the truth – “appropriation” coming from the Latin root proprius, meaning “one’s own” (Barrett 171).. Elucidating Kierkegaard’s idea of the. relationship between creed, life, and action, Paul Roubiczek remarks: What the method itself means is perhaps best illuminated when Kierkegaard says ‘An objective acceptance of Christianity is either paganism or thoughtlessness.’ Christianity is a way of life; to accept it as an interesting line of thought, as an abstract explanation of the universe, or as ritual, but without acting on it, makes it well nigh meaningless. The subjective method always establishes first the relationship between creed, life and action; to give reality to the creed, the method involves us in its consequences. (103) In a word, the individual can only learn from the experiences he gains through his commitment to what he believes.. To Kierkegaard, true faith consists in an. individual’s absolute commitment to his beliefs.. By this commitment, one actually. reaches his authenticity. Truth, as lived out by the individual, is no longer outside of him but becomes the very essence of his existence. Following Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the individual comes Martin Heidegger’s criticism of traditional philosophical trend.. Concerning this point, William Barrett. remarks that from the beginning, the thought of western man has been preoccupied with the thing-which-is, while ignoring the to-be of what is. Traditionally, “that part of philosophy which is supposed to deal with Being is called ontology – the science of the thing which is – and not einailogy, which would be the study of the to-be of Being as opposed to beings” (Barrett 212). Thus, Heidegger’s philosophy is an effort to 14.

(16) redirect the attention of western man from an over concern with ontology to einailogy. The approach that Heidegger adopts to describe, without any obscuring preconceptions, what human existence is in his great philosophical work Being and Time is Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology.. Defining phenomenology, Calvin O.. Schrag remarks that “phenomenology, in its broadest intention, is an attempt to return to the immediate content of experience, and to analyze and describe this content as it actually presents itself” (10).. The phrase “Zu den Sachen selbst!” was first. formulated by Edmund Husserl as the guiding principle of the phenomenological method.. As appropriated by Heidegger in his existential analytics, “phenomenology. as the method of existentialist philosophy thus seeks to disclose and elucidate the phenomena of human experience as they present themselves in their existential immediacy” (Schrag 10-11).. By this approach, “Heidegger maintains that. phenomenology enables us to consider our being as a possibility rather than a simple actuality” and “he reveals that we are beings who exist beyond our present selves, always extending ourselves along ever expanding temporal horizons” (Kearney 300). By this approach, Heidegger discovers men “as beings in time, continually moving beyond the actual givens of the present towards the future and the past: those dimensions of ourselves which we possess as absences, as possibilities” (Kearney 300). By this approach, Heidegger also destroys the Cartesian world view that there exists an unbridgeable chasm between man and nature, or between consciousness and the external world. He asserts that “My Being is not something that takes place inside my skin (or inside an immaterial substance inside that skin); my Being, rather, is spread over a field or region which is the world of its care and concern” (Barrett 217).. Heidegger calls this field of Being Dasein.. Dasein (which, in German,. means literally Being there) is his name of man.. He avoids using the term. consciousness, which may bring us back into the Cartesian dualism. 15. In “Becoming a.

(17) Self; the Role of Authenticity in Being and Tim,” Charles Guignon elucidates that as Heidegger suggests, “the ongoing happening of our lives never exists in isolation from the wider context of the world” (123). Actually, as the common state of our everyday activities makes clear, we are always involved in concrete situations in such a way that “there is no way to draw a sharp distinction between a “self” component and a “world” component” (Guignon 123). Thus, “there is usually such a tight reciprocal interaction between self and situation that what is normally given is a tightly interwoven whole” (Guignon 123).. In a word, Heidegger’s claim is that. “when everything is running its course in ordinary life, the distinction between self and world presupposed by the tradition simply does not show up” (Guignon 123). By pointing out Dasein as being in a state of openness to our everyday existence, Heidegger defines Dasein as characteristic of care: “For as ‘care’ the Being of Dasein in general is to be defined” (BT 157). And Dasein, as a being of care, is living in a “with-world,” “the one that I share with others” (BT 155).. And living in. such a “with-world,” Dasein has two modes of existence. The first mode he calls “the inauthentic existence” and another he designates as “the authentic existence.” As Michael Gelven points out, what Heidegger means by “authentic” is the awareness of one’s own self; by “inauthentic”, the awareness of the self merely as others see it, or perhaps to see one’s self as having a meaning or essence that is prior to and hence ‘other’ than one’s existence” (Gelven 51).. Elucidating the two modes of existence,. Charles Guignon remarks that “the German word for ‘authentic’ eigentlich, comes from the stem eigen which means ‘own,’ so an inauthentic life would be one that is unowned or disowned”(126).. Actually, characterized by “falling, fleeing, and. forgetting,” an inauthentic life lacks any focus or cohesiveness. fragmented and disjointed.. It is actually. A person leading such a life drifts with the latest fads. and preoccupations, blind to one’s ownmost ability- to-be and to the possibility of 16.

(18) realizing what, as an authentic Self, one truly is (51).. On the other hand, “authentic. Dasein seizes on its ‘mineness’ and lives in a way it is already making as a participant in the they” (126).. By “choosing to choose,” in Heidegger’s words, it is “answerable. and or responsible (Verantwortlich) for one’s life” (129). Thus, what distinguishes the authentic existence from the inauthentic is the individual’s awareness of his or her life orientation.. In the state of inauthentic existence, an individual’s life orientation. is actually deprived by the dictatorship of the ‘they-self.’ This ‘they-self’ dominates an individual’s everyday existence and deprives this individual’s possibilities of making meaningful choices for himself.. But what is this ‘they-self?’ Elucidating. the term, Thompson M. Guy remarks that “both Nietzsche and Heidegger saw anxiety as a necessary accompaniment to acting authentically” (148). In the modern age, he argues, man feels his anxiety due to a deep sense of alienation that Nietzsche suggests comes with the belief in the non-existence of God. have solid, universal values to cling to.. As modern man, we no longer. Sensing our alienation, in Heidegger’s. phrase, we feel “thrown” into a world that is indifferent to our very existence. Nevertheless, we are obliged to project a future course for ourselves by the choices we make, “even if our so-called choices are predominantly unconscious” (Guy 148). In this condition, troubled by a sense of loneliness in our decisions and the world we live in, “we mitigate our anxiety by complying with what we imagine others want from us” (Guy148).. This ‘they-self’ is thus formed.. And as dominated by this. ‘they-self,’ people in this state of inauthentic existence tend to lose their independence: This Being-with-one-another dissolves one’s own Dasein completely into the kind of Being of ‘the others,’ in such a way, indeed, that the others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more.. In this. inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the 17.

(19) “they” is unfolded.. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they (man). take pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the ‘great mass’ as they shrink back; we find ‘shocking’ what they find shocking.. The “they”, which is. nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of Being of everydayness. (BT 164) This ‘they-self’ is responsible for our everyday decision-making and value judgment, for it has its characteristic of having to make meaningful choices: “The ‘they’ presents every judgment and decision as its own, it deprives the particular Dasein of its answerability” (BT 165).. By its taking away the anxiety of freedom, the “they-self”. becomes the means for Dasein to escape from itself.. It thus becomes a common way. of living: “By thus disburdening it of its Being, the ‘they’ accommodates Dasein if Dasein has any tendency to take things easily and make them easy.. And because the. ‘they’ constantly accommodates the particular Dasein by disburdening it of its Being, the ‘they’ retains and enhances its stubborn dominion” (BT 165). Elaborating on the state of fallen-ness, Heidegger observes three everyday phenomena; they are, idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity.. Defining idle talk,. Heidegger points out that it is not to be used in a disparaging signification but regarded as a positive phenomenon which constitutes the kind of Being of everyday Dasein’s understanding and interpreting. Idle talk, as Heidegger elucidates, is “the possibility of understanding everything without previously making the thing one’s own” and “it releases people from the task of genuinely understanding and develops an undifferentiated kind of intelligibility, for which nothing is closed off any longer” (BT 213).. In other words, people engaged in. idle talk never take the burden of discovering the truth. believe in the truthfulness of what is groundlessly said. 18. Instead, they actually. “For what is said is always.

(20) understood proximally as ‘saying’ something – that is, an uncovering something” (BT 213).. Things are so because people say so.. Gradually, what is said-in-the-talk. spreads. In this modern age, thanks to the development and flourishing of public means of communication, idle talk is not just spread by word of mouth but by other means as well, until finally it takes on an authoritative character. The general public can’t tell the truth from the fabrication, and in fact they don’t take the pains to differentiate. Thus, a state of closing-off is reached. disputation is discouraged, suppressed and held back.. Any new inquiry, and any Besides, as Heidegger points. out, “the dominance of the public way in which things have been interpreted has already been decisive even for the possibilities of having a mood – that is, for the basic way in which Dasein lets the world ‘matter’ to it” (BT 213).. The “they”. prescribes one’s state-of-mind, and what and how one “sees.” People in this modern world are thus “conditioned” in their ways to see and interpret things. Their taste, views of things and their ideas and attitudes never get out this arena. For life, they are used to this condition and are lost themselves, leading an inauthentic life without knowing it. The second phenomenon that Heidegger observes is curiosity.. As defined by. Heidegger, curiosity “concerns itself with seeing, not in order to understand what is seen (that is, to come into a Being toward it) but just in order to see” and it seeks novelty only in order to leap from it anew to another novelty” (BT 216). In other words, a curious man never seeks to understand; rather, by having his attention distracted from one thing to another, he only seeks to entertain himself with new excitements.. He has no concern with discovering truth, and in his hunger for. knowing for the mere sake of knowing, he only loses himself. typical of our everyday living.. This kind of life is. In this kind of living, one loses his sense of. authenticity. As Heidegger puts it, “Curiosity is everywhere and nowhere. This 19.

(21) mode of Being-in-the-world reveals a new kind of Being of everyday Dasein–a kind in which Dasein is constantly uprooting itself” (BT 217). Furthermore, idle talk also controls the ways in which one may be curious, as Heidegger puts it: “These two everyday modes of Being for discourse and sight are not just present-at-hand side by side in their tendency to uproot, but either of these ways-to-be drags the other one with it” (BT 217).. Indeed, as Michael Gelven puts it,. “the curious human being allows its attention to drift everywhere its desire for the new directs it, that is, to nowhere in particular. And what it sees in this attitude gets expressed in idle chatter” (Gelven 113). But in its conceited self-delusion, in which nothing is closed off and nothing is not understood, the human being only lives in a state of inauthenticity. The third phenomenon that Heidegger points out is ambiguity.. It is the. understanding engendered by idle talk and an unbounded curiosity. In our everyday life, we encounter the kind of thing which is accessible to everyone, and about which anyone can say anything. truth.. Soon it becomes impossible to decide what is the actual. As Heidegger points out, “this ambiguity extends not only to the world, but. just as much to Being-with-one-another as such, and even to Dasein’s Being towards itself” (BT 217). In the state of ambiguity, “the two possibilities of interpreting the curious world of idle chatter reveal the following dilemma: either, by the effects of conventional wisdom, everything already seems said and therefore understood, and yet is not because we are curious to see something new; or, by our curiosity, everything does seem understood, yet is because all we can say about what we discover is what has already been said by someone else” (BT 217). This self-defeating character of our “openness to the everyday world” is likewise apparent when we see that what everyone says is what we are impelled by curiosity to 20.

(22) find out. But once that happens, no room is left for surmise.. Not only are the. genuine and the new already out of date when we encounter them, but “one” already understands and has stated what the result of any investigation has to be.. And. whether we are talking of events or of other people, gossip and surmise are taken for reality. In the everyday relationship, this gossip and surmise sometimes play a major role. As Heidegger puts it: Into primordial Being-with-one-another, idle talk first slips itself in between. Everyone keeps his eye on the other first and next, watching how he will comport himself and what he will say in reply. Being-with-one-another in the “they” is by no means an indifferent side-by-side-ness in which everything has been settled, but rather an intent, ambiguous watching of one another, a secret and reciprocal listening in. Under the mask of “for one another,” an “against-one-another” is in play (BT219) Camus’ The Outsider clearly furnishes an example of society’s dependence on conventional wisdom for its judgment of truth.. In the novel, the protagonist. Meursault suffers from society’s misunderstanding and condemnation because of his “unconventional” behavior. Reading the novel, the reader clearly sees that he is not a cold-blooded murderer. As a matter of fact, he did not kill the Arab willfully, but merely because he acted impulsively, being dazzled and blinded by the glaring sun and suffering from its heat.. Besides, the reader can also see that he did not weep at. his mother’s funeral not because he hated his mother but merely because he felt indifferent. Having not much emotional attachment to his mother, he simply could not exaggerate his feelings, succumbing to the rituals of emotional breast-beating. Furthermore, the reader also knows that he sent his mother to a nursing home not because he was heartless and unfilial, but because he could not afford to pay the rent 21.

(23) and buy food for them both.. Besides, he thought his mother needed someone to be. around her a great deal of time.. Yet, the fact that he sent his mother to a nursing. home, combined with the fact that he behaved callously (according to rumor) at her funeral, becomes strong evidence for the jury to be convinced of his “essentially heartless” nature, which makes his “cold-blooded” murder possible. In a word, as Camus’ title indicates, the protagonist is indeed an outsider of his society. After his elaboration of the three everyday phenomena, idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity, Heidegger points out that these three phenomena mark the characteristics of our everyday existence: “In these, and in the way they are connected in their Being, there is revealed a basic kind of Being which belongs to everydayness; we call this the ‘falling’ of Dasein” (BT 219).. The term “fallen-ness,” as Heidegger defines, does. not express any negative evaluation. Rather, it is used to signify that Dasein has lost itself as an authentic potentiality for Being its self and has fallen into the world, lost in the publicity of the “they,” since it is proximally and for the most part alongside the “world” of its concern.. Indeed, as we have explicated, the three everyday. phenomena have a common characteristic of being rootless, as Heidegger points out: Idle talk discloses to Dasein a Being toward its world, towards others, and towards itself – a Being in which these are understood, but in a mode of groundless floating.. Curiosity disclosed everything and anything, yet in. such a way that Being-in is everywhere and nowhere. nothing. from. Dasein’s. understanding,. but. only. Ambiguity hides in. order. that. Being-in-the-world should be suppressed in this uprooted “everywhere and nowhere.” (BT 221) But why is it that Dasein is liable to stay in the state of fallen-ness? lists several causes.. Heidegger. First, it is tempting to be in such a state, owing to our being. disburdened by adopting the attitudes of an impersonal self: “If Dasein itself, in idle 22.

(24) talk and in the way things have been publicly interpreted, presents to itself the possibility of losing itself in the “they” and falling into groundlessness, this tells us that. Dasein. prepares. for. itself. a. constant. temptation. towards. falling.. Being-in-the-world is in itself tempting” (BT 221). Second, since everything seems to be understood, the removal of all doubt and personal anxiety can tranquilize us, as Heidegger puts it: Idle talk and ambiguity, having seen everything, having understood everything, develop the supposition that Dasein’s disclosedness, which is so available and so prevalent, can guarantee to Dasein that all the possibilities of its Being will be secure, genuine, and full. Through the self-certainty and decidedness of the “they,” it gets spread abroad increasing that there is no need of authentic understanding or the state-of-mind that goes with it. The supposition of the “they” that one is leading and sustaining a full and genuine ‘life,’ brings Dasein a tranquility, for which everything is “in the best of order” and all doors are open.” (BT 222) Third, since it is doubt that motivates the ontological questions such as “Who am I?”, “What am I doing?”, “Why?”, and they are obviated by the first of our two characteristics, the condition of falling becomes exacerbated until the acting self is alienated from its own true possibilities (Gelven 114). “When Dasein, tranquilized, and ‘understanding’ everything, thus compares itself with everything, it drifts along towards an alienation in which its ownmost potentiality-for-Being is hidden from it” (BT 222). Fourth, since the alienation of self from self denies the authentic possibilities for human action, the fall becomes entangling: “The alienation of falling--at once tempting and tranquillizing--leads by its own movement, to Dasein’s getting entangled in itself” (BT 223). 23.

(25) Fifth, as there is no ground for the world into which one is falling, the fall of the self into an essentially foreign world is turbulent, as Heidegger puts it: This downward plunge into and within the groundlessness of the inauthentic Being of the “they,” has a kind of motion which constantly tears the understanding away from the projecting of authentic possibilities, and into the tranquillized supposition that it possesses everything, or that everything is within its reach.. And since the understanding is thus constantly torn. away from authenticity and into the ‘they,’ the movement of falling is characterized by turbulence. (BT 223) The state of fallen-ness, as Heidegger maintains, characterizes our everyday life. “Dasein remains in the throw, and is sucked into the turbulence of the “they” inauthenticity (BT 223).. In other words, Dasein can’t help being thrown into the. turbulence of the “they-self,” since in essence, it is in the state of Being-in-the-world, never separated from the world it is involved.. Frances Bernard Kominkiewicz. comments that “the concepts discussed by Heidegger establish a rationale or explanation of a person’s environment and how that environment influences that person” (50).. Indeed, as Heidegger contended, every person is nurtured and. therefore influenced by his or her culture.. And since we actually have no control. over our social environment, we then become a part of that environment and consciously or unconsciously learn behaviors from the culture of our social environment.. The social environment into which we are born becomes our world.. But what is authentic existence? fallen-ness?. How is it different from the state of. Heidegger asserts that “authentic existence is not something which. floats above falling everydayness; existentially, it is only a modified way in which such everydayness is seized upon” (BT 224).. Thus, the state of authentic existence is. reached through Dasein’s being conscious of itself. 24. But how can Dasein reach the.

(26) state of self-consciousness?. It is through the anxiety of Dasein.. But what then is anxiety?. How can it have the effect of individualization and. “making manifest in Dasein its Being towards its ownmost potentiality-for-Being – that is, its Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself”? (BT 232). In defining anxiety, Heidegger especially distinguishes it from fear.. He. defines fear as always a fear of something, “a detrimental entity within-the-world which comes from some definite region but is close by and is bringing itself close, and yet might stay away” (BT 230). But anxiety, however, is not a fear of something. It does not have something definite as its object: “That in the face of which one has anxiety is characterized by the fact that what threatens is nowhere. Anxiety ‘does not know’ what that in the face of which it is anxious of” (BT 231). fact, what anxiety is anxious of is the world itself.. As a matter of. “In that in the face of which one. has anxiety, the ‘It is nothing and no-where’ becomes manifest.. The obstinacy of the. ‘nothing and nowhere within-the-world’ means as a phenomenon that the world as such is that in the face of which one has anxiety” (BT 231).. Describing the state. of anxiety, Heidegger remarks: In anxiety what is environmentally ready-to-hand sinks away, and so, in general, do entities within-the-world.. The world can offer nothing more,. and neither can the Dasein-with of others.. Anxiety thus takes away from. Dasein the possibility of understanding itself, as it falls, in terms of the world and the way things have been publicly interpreted. Anxiety throws Dasein back upon that which it is anxious about – its authentic potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world. Anxiety individualizes Dasein for its ownmost Being-in-the-world, which as something that understands, projects itself essentially upon possibilities. (BT 232) Indeed, this is the significance of anxiety. With this anxiety, entities within the 25.

(27) world are absolutely irrelevant, and therefore, in moments of heightened anxiety, the world (suddenly rendered “unfamiliar”) seems to collapse into insignificance.. This. state of anxiety pierces through the crust of the they-self under which the self is hidden and tranquillized, leaving it feeling “uncanny” and “not at home.”. Though. this puts the self into flight back into the comforts of inauthentic everydayness, yet “in anxiety there lies the possibility of a disclosure which is quite distinctive; for anxiety individualizes” and “this individualization “brings Dasein back from its falling, and makes manifest to it that authenticity and inauthenticity are possibilities for his Being” (BT 235).. This disclosure brings the message that the individual is free, free. for determining one’s ownmost potentiality, and when that is understood, the realization occurs that Being is always “beyond itself”; that is, Being always comports itself towards its own possibilities. These possibilities, which formerly have been submerged in the domination of the collective they-self, emerge solely as my possibilities.. Elucidating the individualizing effects of anxiety, H. J. Blackham. remarks that in the state of anxiety, an individual is withdrawn from his preoccupations, enclosed in a solitude, where he is forced to choose whether he will be himself or not.. In this moment, the individual sees its personal reality and. henceforward he has chosen what he wills to be. For anxiety separates him from the interests and meanings of his life in the world, absorbed and lost in his relations and preoccupations, and isolates him in this recognition that he can either continue this impersonally determined inauthentic existence or by heroic effort takes personal charge of his own existence, and that in any case he never is but always will be, because he can will to be (94-95). Thus, in the state of anxiety, there may occur a turning point for the individual from a life of fallen-ness to that of authenticity. Dasein’s being lost in the they-self, Dasein has ensnared itself in inauthenticity. The “they-self” has always kept Dasein from taking hold of its possibilities of Being. 26.

(28) It even hides the manner in which it has tacitly relieved Dasein of the burden of explicitly choosing its possibilities. It then remains indefinite who has “really” done the choosing.. So, carried along by the nobody, Dasein actually makes no choices.. As for this point, Richard Kearney comments: The horizon of the possible is always covered over by the anonymous crowd (das Man) which reduces life to the uniform, compelling the past and future to conform to the one form of an insular present. The crowd hides the possible because it threatens to expose the mediocrity and inertia of our daily life. The crowd protects its subscribers from the responsibility of having to choose their actual manner of existence from a host of possibilities. It isolates the present from the unsettling dimensions of past and future. It assures us that all is well and could not be otherwise. (302) In the state of inauthenticity, the individual is thus carried away by the nameless crowd.. Situated in this state, he can not see that his daily life is a kind of. death-in-life. He lives unreflectively in the present, and being blind to his true possibilities, takes no actions for his future.. He does not try to find meanings from. his past experiences. The past, to him, can only be a host of broken, unrelated events that come to his mind sometimes like a remembered but meaningless dream.. Afraid. of the future and forgetful of the past, by losing himself in the crowd, he escapes from his self, from the future that casts before him a shadow of uncertainty and from the past that may offer him helpful experiences for his plans for the future. In a word, spiritually, he is dead. itself.. To reverse this process, Dasein must first find. The individualizing effects of anxiety, regarded by Heidegger as “the call of. conscience,” help Dasein to see its potentiality for authentic living: Conscience manifests itself as the call of care: the caller is Dasein, which, in its. thrownness. (in. its. Being-already-in), 27. is. anxious. about. its.

(29) potentiality-for-Being. The one to whom the appeal is made is this very same Dasein, summoned to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being (ahead of itself…). Dasein is falling into the “they” in Being-already-alongside the world of its concern and it is summoned out of this falling by the appeal. The call of conscience – that is, conscience itself – has its ontological possibility in the fact that Dasein, in the very basis of its Being, is care. (BT 322-3) The call awakens a sense of guilt in Dasein, for Dasein realizes that one is responsible for the self; therefore, “in understanding the call, Dasein is in thrall to its ownmost possibility of existence.. It has chosen itself” (BT 334). This sense of guilt,. as Heidegger explicates, is out of Dasein’s being, care.. It is the base of all morality,. as Heidegger expresses: Not only can entities whose Being is care load themselves with factical guilt, but they are guilty in the very basis of their Being; and this Being-guilty is what provides, above all, the ontological condition for Dasein’s ability to come to own anything in factially existing.. This. essential Being-guilty is, equiprimordially, the existential condition for the possibility of the ‘morally’ good and for that of the ‘morally’ evil – that is, for morality in general and for the possible forms which this may take factially.. The primordial “Being-guilty” cannot be defined by morality,. since morality already presupposes it for itself. (BT 332) The self who listens to the call coming from the soundlessness of uncanniness is brought back from the loud idle talk which goes with the common sense of the “they.” As a contrast, the “they,” who hear and understand nothing but loud idle talk, can not ‘report’ any call and is held against the conscience on the subterfuge that it is “dumb” and manifestly not present-at-hand. As Heidegger sees, “the ‘they’ merely covers up 28.

(30) its own failure to hear the call and the fact that its ‘hearing’ does not reach very far” (BT 343). Hearing the call of conscience, the individual then chooses to “have a conscience.”. No longer enslaved by the they-self, the individual becomes resolute:. “‘Resoluteness’ signifies letting oneself be summoned out of one’s lostness in the ‘they’” (BT 345).. Although the irresoluteness of the ‘they’ remains dominant. not-withstanding, it cannot impugn resolute existence (BT 345). It is just as Mariana Ortega asserts: “The call of conscience leads to the appropriate understanding of our ontological make-up, our Being-guilty, and subsequently our making the choice “to choose” and “another way of making this point is to say that conscience ultimately discloses one’s freedom as well as one’s responsibility” (24). In the condition of resoluteness, as authentic Being-one’s-self, Dasein is not detached from its world, nor does it isolate it so that it becomes a “free-floating ‘I’.” Rather, “to experience the Augenblick, to be in the authentic situation after we understand the call of conscience, is to be at a time in which we are faced with concrete possibilities and situations that include others” (Ortega 24).. Instead,. resoluteness “brings the Self right into its current concernful Being-alongside what is ready-to-hand, and pushes it into Solicitous Being with Others” (BT 344). This resolute Dasein then frees itself for its world and it helps others to free themselves, to see their potentiality-for-Being, as Heidegger puts it: “Dasein’s resoluteness towards itself is what first makes it possible to let the others who are with it ‘be’ in their ownmost potentiality-for-Being, and to co-disclose this potentiality in the solicitude which leaps forth and liberates” (BT 344).. When Dasein is resolute, says Heidegger,. it can become the ‘conscience’ of others.. In other words, as Mariana Ortega. maintains, “authentic care involves acting in such a way that we help others understand their Being guilty, their responsibility for their lives” (24). And only 29.

(31) when people are authentically Being-their-Selves in resoluteness can they authentically be with one another. The authentic self, in resoluteness, can see its own situation.. As a contrast to. the “they” who knows only the general situation, loses itself in those opportunities which are closest to it, the authentic self “does not withdraw itself from ‘actuality,’ but discovers first what is factically possible; and it does so by seizing upon it in whatever way is possible for it as its ownmost potentiality-for-Being in the ‘they’” (BT 346). In this knowledge of its own particular situation, Dasein sees its potentiality-for-Being and takes action: “Resoluteness does not first take cognizance of a situation and put that situation before itself; it has put itself into that situation already. As resolute, Dasein is already taking action” (BT 347). In resoluteness, the authentic self sees its potentiality-for-Being.. But only when. individuals see also their Being-towards-the-end do they achieve the state of true authentic life: “When the call of conscience is understood, lostness in the ‘they’ is revealed.. Resoluteness. potentiality-for-Being-its-self.. brings. Dasein. When. one. back has. to an. its. ownmost. understanding. of. Being-towards-death – towards death as one’s ownmost possibility – one’s potentiality-for-Being becomes authentic and wholly transparent” (BT 354). In the state of fallen-ness, however, our Being-towards-death is covered up by the they-self.. The they-self regards death as “an indefinite something which, above. all, must duly arrive from somewhere or other, but which is proximally not yet present-at-hand for oneself, and is therefore no threat” (BT 297). Dying, which is essentially mine in such a way that no one can be my representative, is thus leveled off to an occurrence which reaches Dasein, to be sure, but belongs to nobody in particular, as Heidegger puts it: “In Dasein’s public way of interpreting, it is said that ‘one dies,’ because everyone else and oneself can talk himself into saying that ‘in no 30.

(32) case is it I myself,’ for this ‘one’ is the ‘nobody’” (BT 297).. In Leo Tolstoy’s The. Death of Ivan Illich, the protagonist’s sudden realization of his impending death reflects clearly people’s everyday attitude to death: Ivan Illich saw that he was dying and he was in continual despair.. In the. depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.. The. syllogism he had learned from Kiesewetter’s logic: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself.. That. Caius,…man in the abstract…was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. (D I I VI) This way of viewing death gets death passed off as always something “actual,” but its character as a possibility gets concealed.. By such ambiguity, then, “Dasein puts. itself in the position of losing itself in the ‘they’ as regards a distinctive potentiality-for-Being which belongs to Dasein’s ownmost Self” and “the ‘they’ gives its approval, and aggravates the temptation to cover up from oneself one’s ownmost Being-towards-death” (BT 297). To reach an understanding of one’s Being-towards-death, the individual has to come to see death as one’s ownmost possibility: “Death, as possibility, gives Dasein nothing to be ‘actualized,’ nothing which Dasein, as actual, could itself be. It is the possibility of the impossibility of every way of comporting oneself towards anything, of every way of existing” (BT 307).. If the individual can see this possibility as his. ownmost possibility, he’ll then be wrenched away from the “they,” for, as Heidegger expresses: “Death does not just ‘belong’ to one’s own Dasein in an undifferentiated way; death lays claim to it as an individual Dasein. The non-relational character of 31.

(33) death, as understood, in anticipation, individualizes Dasein down to itself” (BT 308). With the understanding of death as our ownmost possibility, “all Being-alongside the things with which we concern ourselves, and all Being-with others, will fail us when our ownmost potentiality-for-being is the issue” (BT 308). Just as Richard Kearney comments: Death presents the finitude of my temporalization; it cannot belong to another. In order to live our life, as a ‘being-towards-death,’ authentically we must live it as our own, as individuals over and against the collective ‘they.’ In thus authentically experiencing death as my supreme possibility, I experience the possibility of the impossibility of my existence, the possibility of being–no-longer-able-to-be. Death is the end of all our possibilities. I exist authentically when I live my possibilities towards my death. (303) Charles Guignon also maintains that “facing death, and recognizing the ultimate contingency of the ways of living made accessible by the ‘They,’ we are able to see possibilities as ‘possibilities,’ something we choose, and we see our lives as something we are defining through our choices”(130). In a word, the individual is awakened to his authenticity by the very consciousness of death that allows him to consider that his life has a limitation and thus he must take immediate actions to realize his true possibilities or else his life will be meaningless, just like that kind of life led by a they-self. By this, the true authentic life is reached.. Life will then no. longer be “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Macbeth 5. 5. 27-8). Commenting on Heidegger’s idea of authenticity, Richard Rorty remarks that for Heidegger, it is “the practices that one engages in, especially the language, the final vocabulary one uses” that determine what one is. In Heidegger’s terms, he 32.

(34) argues, “to say that Dasein is guilty is to say that it speaks somebody else’s language, and so lives in a world it never made” (109).. But while most people would not feel. guilty about this, people “with the special gifts and ambitions shared by Hegel, Proust, and Heidegger do” (109).. Thus, Rorty thinks that Heidegger “seems genuinely to. have believed that the ordinary states of mind and life plans of non-intellectuals were ‘grounded’ on the ability of people like himself to have spectacularly different anxieties and projects” (110).. Here we can say that Heidegger considers that most. people easily follow conventions because it relieves them of the burden of having to make choices and taking responsibilities for their choices. Yet, as he believes, there exists the call of conscience that is coming from his very being, care. This call of conscience may be ignored by the individual or it may be accepted and then propels him or her to a life of authenticity. So if Heidegger’s observation is true, it should be common of humanity. Concerning an individual’s possibility of leading an authentic life, Mary Warnock asserts that “it may be that a man can go through the whole of his life in the inauthentic state, and he may never emerge from it” but “reflection may bring his attention to the true state of affairs and may open his eyes to his position in the world, which is above all a position of responsibility” (57).. In such a state of. anxiety, fearing the burden of freedom, “he may throw himself entirely on the mercy of people in general, defend the orthodox, the bourgeois and the normal, and go on frantically pursuing his inauthentic goals” (Warnock 58).. Or listening to the call of. his conscience, “he may determinedly change the character of his concern for the world, and keeping before his eyes his lonely and responsible position, he may exercise resolution, and launch himself forward into authentic existence” (Warnock 58). To end this part of discussions about Heidegger, I may compare Heidegger’s ideas of authenticity and fallen-ness with that found in a chapter entitled “The grand 33.

(35) Inquisitor” in Dostoevsky’s The Bothers Karamazov.. In this chapter, there is a rather. impressive portrayal of the conflict and struggle between freedom and security.. In. this chapter, Dostoevsky portrays a grand inquisitor who plans to put the reincarnated Christ to death as a heretic in the belief that Christ’s reappearance will only disrupt the people’s sense of security as established by the church. Believing that most people are by nature weak and therefore afraid of taking the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility, the Grand Inquisitor thinks that he is offering them happiness with his mechanical way to salvation.. By this way, people know exactly. what to do and expect in order to achieve salvation. This mechanical way, though false and deceptive, yet offers men a sense of comfort and security and takes away the anxiety of freedom and responsibility: “The most painful secrets of their conscience, all, all they will bring to us, and we shall have an answer for all.. And they will be. glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves” (BK 259). Christ, as the cardinal believes, will only break this illusion and instead burden them with the unbearable weight of freedom and responsibility.. Concerning the. similarities between Heidegger’s ideas of authenticity and fallen-ness and those found in Dostoevsky’s chapter “The Grand Inquisitor,” Michael Gelven remarks that “both authors focus their remarkable acumen on the twofold characteristic of freedom: first, that it places a terrible burden on the free man, often forcing him to seek almost any means to avoid its full significance; and second, that it isolates the free man from the comfort and security of an ordered existence” (157).. Furthermore, he continues,. both Heidegger and Dostoevsky recognize that a loss of one’s freedom entails a loss of one’s authentic character: “the cardinal really thought that he was a Christian even at the moment when he was denying the true essence of Christianity; the inauthentic self is most confident of having solved all his problems when it covers up that which 34.

(36) it really is, something capable of choice” (Gelven 157). Thus, for both the they-self and the cardinal, there are no more choices to be made.. What is left for the. individual is just to live out the implications. Indeed, as Heidegger asserts, people tend to escape from the responsibility of making meaningful choices for themselves. By living as a they-self, they feel safe and secure, immune from the anxiety of freedom and responsibility.. But at the same time, they also live an “unexamined. life,” never questioning the meaning of their being. unexamined life is not worth living.”. Just as Socrates asserts, “the. Only by the individualizing effects of anxiety,. they begin to see their essential freedom and then can take full responsibility for their being.. The authentic life can then be a possibility in their life.. Except for this comparison between Heidegger’s ideas of authenticity and fallenness with that of Dostoevsky’s in his The Brothers Karamazov, I may still discuss Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. This novella, as Gary Saul Morson asserts, is an “anti-utopia” (117). And its Part One is regarded by Walter Kaufmann as “the best overture for existentialism ever written” (14).. For “anti-utopia,” Krishan. Kumar defines it as the “mirror–image of utopia” (100). He sees that “it is utopia that provides the positive content to which anti-utopia makes the negative response”; that is, “anti-utopia draws its material from utopia and reassembles it in a manner that denies the affirmation of utopia” (100). Notes from Underground, in fact, “parodies What is to Be Done? as a contemporary, and especially dangerous, example of a kind of literature and thinking extending back to The Republic” (Morson 116). As for The Republic, it “served not only as positive models for utopia but also as negative models for anti-utopia” (Morson 116).. In Chapter Two, I will especially discuss The. Republic and its influence on both Huxley’s and Orwell’s dystopias. In Notes from Underground, the protagonist refuses to be dehumanized: “Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an 35.

(37) intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything” (N FU 55).. He argues against the idea that human life can be regulated. according to the principle of reason: “Then ‘the Palace of Crystal’ will be built. Then….In fact, those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then” (NFU 71). Here, the protagonist actually treats ‘the Palace of Crystal’ as a symbol representing all utopian dream of building an ideal human state according to the principle of reason. This utopian dream actually starts with Plato. By his criticism of such an ideal human existence as being essentially ‘dull’ and his refusal ‘to become anything,’ he actually expresses his essentially anti-utopian ideas that run counter to Plato’s utopian ideals, which I will discuss in Chapter II. Besides, the protagonist also asserts the value of the supremacy of man’s free will: “What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead” (NFU 71-72). To him, rationalism seeks to deny the freedom of the individual: “…science itself will teach man that he has never really had any caprice or will of his own, and that he himself is something of the nature of a piano key or the stop of an organ” (NFU 70). Thus, only through stressing the transcendence of the individual in his freedom to take choices, the protagonist is assured of his essential freedom.. By his assertion of the. value of man’s free will, the protagonist actually influences later existentialists.. In. Sartre’s philosophy, the reader can see Sartre’s idea of man’s unconditional freedom to take free choices in his act of self-definition.. Thus, by this work, we see the. possible link between existentialism and dystopia, as both stress man’s freedom and fight against dehumanization. Jean Paul Sartre also concerns himself with the state of human existence. Heidegger, his philosophy is centered on man himself.. Like. But as pointed out by. Frances Bernard Kominkiewicz, while Heidegger views each individual as part of, 36.

(38) and a product of, his environment, “in Sartre’s conceptualization of existentialism, each person is viewed as an independent self” (2).. In his philosophical work Being. and Nothingness, he distinguishes two modes of being: Being-for-itself (conscious Being, i.e. man) and Being-in-itself (non-conscious Being, e.g. a table). Concerning the difference between the two modes of being, Alan D. Schrift elucidates that Being-in-itself--the being of objects, of things—can be defined in terms of the properties it has.. In other words, being-in-itself is what it is, it has a predefined. essence. But Being-for-itself--the being of human being, of consciousness, of subjects—cannot be defined in this way.. While being-in-itself is what it is, being-for. itself is “a being which is what it is not and which is not what it is; it is a lack of being, a project of acquiring being” (Schrift 33). Thus, in contrast to the non-conscious, massive and opaque Being-in-itself, the Being-for-itself is essentially free: “Man does not exist first in order to be free subsequently; there is no difference between the being of man and his being free” (BN 25). Sartre reaches this conclusion by his study of consciousness. He argues that since consciousness is always consciousness of something beyond itself, it cannot exist in isolation from the things of the world. And because consciousness can only appear through the existence of other things, it is perpetually aware of a distance between the world and itself.. And because of its. absolute dependence on things beyond itself, consciousness is never complete in itself, therefore experienced as a ‘lack’ of Being. Besides, because consciousness is always present to something it is not, and depend on what it is not in order to exist, negation is constitutive of consciousness. In a word, these two aspects, lack and negation, are definitional of consciousness. The two characteristics of consciousness, therefore, determine the state of human existence, as William Barrett expresses: “Being-for-itself (pour-soi) is coextensive with the realm of consciousness, and the nature of consciousness is that it is 37.