“Existence precedes essence.”
Jean Paul-Sartre
Existentialism Is a Humanism – 1946
“The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,”
SCOTUS Justice Anthony Kennedy
Writing for the Court
Obergefell vs. Hodges – 2015
Dr. Stephen Wolfe
Comments @ the “Just Say It” Conference
Ideas have consequences. The consequences of the ideas of existentialism wherein existence precedes essence has now become the cornerstone of not only Judicial pronouncements but also of our current civilizational parameters.
It is existentialism as a philosophy, incarnated into our culture, that allows Wolfe to correctly observe that “modern liberalism is the belief that civil society is a space for the abstract human.” Liberalism, whatever it once was, has been morphed into being a Worldview that has been co-opted by existentialism.
When Sartre claimed that existence precedes essence he was saying that humans are not born with any hardwiring, or in philosophical terms, humans have no nature out of which their actions proceed. Prior to the existentialists the philosophers would ask, “what does it mean to be human.” Sartre’s point was it doesn’t mean anything be human. Man does not come as designed or from the hand of a divine artisan who had a fixed purpose for man. Man is his own divine artisan and as having a preceding existence he defines for himself as he desires his own essence.
Of course the effect of this move was to cut the final string to the thought that any objective reality existed outside of man. Man is thrown into the world unbidden and man must create himself once in this world. His existence is the only given. His essence is something he makes up as he goes. The implication of this is that the only reality man has is a subjective reality.
Of course, Kennedy, in the above quote, is whistling past the graveyard when he tries to allow for a “lawful realm.” Obviously, the idea of a “lawful realm,” is just as subjective as the idea that what was previously understood as “lawful marriage” can be redefined so as to include what has for millennium been considered “unlawful marriage.” When “existence precedes essence” is given its head, the whole notion of any objective “lawful realm” is as relevant as teats on a boar.
We would also note that the word “liberty” that Justice Kennedy uses in the quote above is a gross misnomer. It is not “liberty” that Kennedy was talking about but rather license. In order for true liberty to have any meaning it must exist within an ordered reality. Kennedy, however, along with the concurring Justices, has given up on an objective ordered reality with the result that what we have is ever increasing licentiousness which stands in opposition to liberty.
Wolfe’s quote captures the implications of Sartre’s quip and Justice Kennedy’s ruling. Man is now a cipher. He is independent of and prior to any received meaning that he may have been born into or been assigned to by a Deity. Not only is his cultural and familial setting irrelevant to his or her identity, not even his or her genetics or gender can impinge upon who he or she decides themselves to be. This is the premise of the sovereign individual tetched with madness.
Now, combine this subjectivity of modern liberalism with the fact that since existence precedes essence there is no stopping point for the whirligig of options one can choose throughout life. Theoretically, one can, in one lifetime be as many different personas as one desires to be. In this world there is no stable personality or character. All is flux.
Of course, modern philosophy since Descartes has been inherently subjective but with the rise of first existentialism and then postmodernism with its variants of Critical Theory and Deconstructionism, man has reached the apogee of subjective existence. It has never been more true than what was observed in the poem, “Invictus,”
Because this is so, anyone who arises who would put constraints on this rampant subjectivity of human existence is now considered the madman. On the island of the insane only the sane are considered insane.
Of course, all of this accounts for the breakdown of Western civilization. No civilization can function in this kind of flux. It has almost impossible to see how any of this arrests itself short of some kind of Christian Reformation. It is only Christianity that has been able to bring objective meaning to a people without also bringing in tyranny. Christianity, being the faith it is, allows for both “liberty,” (particularity) and the “order” (universals) by which that liberty can exist. Other religions (Islam, for example) may be able to restore order but Islam can only do so by eliminating particularity. With Islam we would go from the anarchistic universal man that we now have to the tyrannized universal man. Islam, whose byword is “subjection” does not know the concept of ordered liberty.
So, we are in a conundrum. We cannot continue to swirl in the direction that we are swirling. This kind of subjectivity promises only chaos. Similarly, since modern man will not bow the knee to the only true God who alone can provide an objectivity that allows for particularity all that can be done is the continuation of our downward spiral.
Any Reformation that might deliver modern man must be a Reformation where this institutional malaise is addressed or else it is just one more “jump a pew,” pietistic or Charismatic “revival.” Like the so called revival that happened in Asbury, Kentucky a few years ago it will just be so much sound and fury meaning nothing. We must have Reformation that reverses existentialism, postmodernism, and modern liberalism.
To exist is to be; and to be is to be a particular thing that possesses therefore a particular or determinate (as opposed to an indeterminate) nature. Generic “things” are abstracted or conceptual or IDEATIONAL things, namely, ideas ABOUT particular existent things. But even generic or general concepts originated from (and reside in) particular minds (or in records of human thinking, like books), whether from God’s or an angel’s or a man’s.
Therefore, existence CANNOT precede essence. Rather, existence entails essence, and essence entails existence. To be a thing is to be a thing of a particular kind, with a particular or determinate nature.
The Law of Identity is a fundamental metaphysical axiom that says a thing A IS itself (A).
As an axiom it is true and is the foundation of many other truths.
If Sartre intended his “existence precedes essence” assertion as a literal metaphysical or moral claim, then he was just flat wrong.
Sartre was a metaphysical rebel who wanted to escape from God and His creation. He used his God-given existence to deny the Lord and to be “free” to somehow create or re-create himself. That is delusion and rebellion against God, plain and simple. Such perverse thinking led logically to other existentialists saying that the only rational response to life for man is suicide.
As a false-philosophical atheist, he hated the Scriptural truth that, before the beginning of the world, the Lord determined the natures, paths, and personal destinies of us all.