Existentialism, part 1

Well, I bought into this courseware on CD thing. I now have over a hundred hours of CDs/DVDs of various college courses from which to learn. I started with the Existentialism on CD series back in December. 12 hours later, I am almost done with this class - I only listen in the car and I do not drive much.

I found I disagreed with the professor on his interpretations of various philosophers' writings. He would state things like "Camus says that real world doesn't matter since it is absurd, but he couldn't have really believed that so it must be a hint at something else." Kind of like he really knows all of the dates and all of the authors, but since he really isn't an Existentialist, he maps the authors to a more modern acceptable point of view. All of this has made it hard to write over the past month.

See, I always thought I was an Existentialist, so I thought I understood the authors and the movement. But, after hearing this professor, I'm not so sure, I have to think about it some more. My thoughts have been on this philosophy stuff, but I haven't been able to create a coherent set of blog posts about these thoughts. I definitely feel that I have learned a lot from listening to the CDs, since he has brought up many of the points that the original philosophers argued about. I figure I can draw my own conclusions from the original sources.

Emotions are ones point of view on The World. This was the most interesting idea that was presented in the lectures. In thinking about it, I'm not sure I am 100% behind it, but it does lead to some interesting ideas. If one had no emotions, one would just record events without bias. Walking down the street and stepping in dog crap would just be something that happened. With emotions, if one was in a good mood, one would wipe off the dog crap and move on. If one was in a bad mood, one might curse the gods for putting dog crap right there where one was walking. Emotions are a way to experience the world.

But, are emotions a choice? Can one choose to always be happy? What would that mean? It might mean just seeing events as not negative. If one can put oneself in a good mood then all experiences can easily be dealt with. Emotions become the excuse for why one isn't dealing with the situation. "I stepped in dog crap which put me in a bad mood, which is why I yelled at someone later in the day." But it didn't actually cause this. Ones mood is used to determine what one feels about the events. If something one labels bad happens then one can feel that one has a free pass to take it out on others. There is no pass, one needs to take responsibility for all of ones moods and how one deals with everything. There are no excuse in Existentialism.

I'll try to put it all together for future posts. I just wanted to get some of the basic ideas down from the most recent CD.

The Edward