| | Deanna,
I'll reply to you before Mike, because dealing with him is more difficult. Oh crap, that didn't sound very flattering. For the record, I like Mike (I like you, Mike!), but he thinks so far outside of the box that sometimes I have to be careful to tether myself to reality in order to wander out there and converse with him (which I still do, and which I often enjoy). Regarding existentialism, Merriam-Webster online has a good entry, showing that while holding onto the mindset, worldview, or outlook of existentialism you are for-better-or-worse faced with:
... an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad So, locked inside of existentialism, you cannot know reality, or right from wrong, or good from bad -- but you can know your personal choices while you navigate the impossible-to-chart waters of life. All you can do is introspect on your inner longings and desires -- and then act on them. This is the philosophy of a 3-year-old. It is infantile narcissism lauded as a bona fide school of philosophy. It is an embrace -- welcoming or not -- of solipsism (a denial of the possibility of objective knowledge). So, when Peikoff says:
People, they say, know what they want, so no hierarchy of importance is required. ... then he is alluding to the fact that these folks are basically just acting on their feelings, but that is not the worst of it. Peikoff continues:
... he is moved by emotionally charged concretes in the here and now. ... to be picked up piecemeal, fought against, and, if the emotional charge runs down, dropped piecemeal. So it's not just your wants and desires, it is your immediate and possibly short-lived wants and desires -- with some of them getting dropped out of the blue for no other reason than that you have somehow come to feel differently about them. Imagine a 3-year-old that asks for a toy from the top shelf of the closet. Then, after receiving the toy they wanted, dropping it and asking for a different toy, then, after ... [repeat sequence]. Under existentialism, you get to change who you are from minute-to-minute. The worst case of this is perhaps Ian Brady (the Moors Murderer), who wanted to see what it felt like to be a child-rapist/murderer.
Since reality is unfathomable under existentialism, there are no moral principles or rules. You can't say that anything is wrong, you can only say what is wrong for you -- and only after you've tried it. Even then, you can change, and the same things that were right for you become wrong for you (and this may even switch back and forth based on the to-and-'fro pull of your inner longings and desires). Nothing is right or wrong, but your immediate and possibly short-lived feelings make it so. The following mission statement for an existentialist begins with the word "I" but still leaves much to be desired (pardon the pun):
I want what I want when I want it. Ed
p.s. Mike mentioned I was an "exy" before I went full-blown Objectivist. This is an insight not available to me at the time. Looking back, he's right about me. I had a long run with Christianity and socialism and even a short stint as a vigilante. In all 3 cases, I had merely put my personal feelings up onto an alter and then proceeded to worship them. Notice how there are often victims when you do that sort of a thing. In Peikoff's words, I was emotionally reacting to a "perceptual-level flux of social sores." And, as a vigilante, I sought to "remedy" these perceived sores with the use of force against others. But I've grown since then.
:-)
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/01, 6:45pm)
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Since all demands for equality are by definition meritorious regardless of merit, and since consequences are irrelevant, some interpreters say that inequalities anywhere should be fought against equally. But some inequalities are more egregious, say others, and thus more deserving of society's immediate concern. ... People, they say, know what they want, so no hierarchy of importance is required. [The moral man] starts anywhere, singling out for crusade the specific injustice about which he feels strongly; he is moved by emotionally charged concretes in the here and now. His eyes are not on a vision of an ideal human future, but on a perceptual-level flux of social sores--inequality of health insurance, of gender pay, of wheelchair access, et al--sores to be picked up piecemeal, fought against, and, if the emotional charge runs down, dropped piecemeal.
