Essence and existence
In his groundbreaking essay entitled “Existentialism is a Humanism,” French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre argued that, when it comes to man, “existence precedes essence.” By this, he meant that man should not be relegated to the status of a knife, insofar as a knife’s fundamental purpose, essence and identity were already predetermined before the knife was even manufactured in the first place.
In the case of a knife, essence precedes existence. In the case of man, it is the other way around: existence precedes essence.
In other words, a knife’s identity (essence) is already (pre)determined before its existence. Before the knife was ever finished, it already had a purpose.
Man, Sartre argued, is first born. He exists. Only after he first exists does man define himself, does man volitionally acquire his essence–afterwards. Unlike a knife, whose purpose is already preordained by design, man decides what his purpose in life ultimately should be: what he should believe in, what goals to achieve, etc.
The existentialists and humanists, who hold man’s free will, locus of control and power of volition above all else, would deplore the common view that the a man’s essence already preceded his existence. A man’s race, for example, should not automatically determine his attitudes, values, and beliefs through culture.
A Chamorro does not have to be a Catholic. A Korean does not have to like Kimichi. A Japanese person need not be group-oriented. If he is to be a human being, the individual must decide these things for himself. To hell with culture!
Man, the existentialists, humanists and individualists would insist, should be the author of himself. He should be allowed to conform to his nature as a self-made being. All efforts to define him from without only serve to imprison him and restrain his natural freedoms.
In the same way that the feminists would argue that the shackles of patriarchy should be broken, the individualists would also argue that men should not be defined by their nation state or culture, even though many of them are still largely defined in precisely such a manner.
Yet ordinary citizens and stuffy intellectuals alike still insist on looking at the world from the old, declining nation-state perspective, in which “essence precedes existence” instead of the other way around: “existence precedes essence.”
The collectivists often commit the vile crime of supplanting individuals with “social constructs,” as the feminists would call gender. Sex is biological. Gender is artificial. Notions of femininity or masculinity are artificial, contrived, socio-political. Like race and ethnicity, they only serve to affirm the fundamental problem with traditional thinking: namely, that individuals do not exist for themselves, for their own sake; everything has to be politicized in a socialist, collectivist way. And like patriarchy itself, this is a form of oppression perpetrated by the very intellectuals ironically sworn to its ultimate eradication.
Strictly a personal view. Charles Reyes Jr. is a regular columnist of Saipan Tribune. Mr. Reyes may be reached at charlesraves@hotmail.com
