During this time of lock-down, I think we should take time to reflect about where we are going in life and also take time to appreciate our loved ones. Going through life, we sometimes take for granted our friendships and relationship with others. We always assume that the next day will be just as normal as the previous one, but that is not always the case. Tomorrow is not a guarantee. As is pointed out in the New York Times article, “Plague or no plague, there is always, as it were, the plague, if what we mean by that is a susceptibility to sudden death, an event that can render our lives instantaneously meaningless.” This possibility should makes us focus on the things that truly matter to us, rather than waste time on things that are of no importance. I can personally think of many times in which I have wasted hours just scrolling through my phone, or watching YouTube videos, while taking the people around me for granted. Even though the coronavirus has taken the lives of many already, and will certainly take the lives of many more, it may serve as a wake up call for the people that have just being going through the motions in life. It may help them to see how precious life is and how easily it can be taken away from us.

As far as the cultural response to the coronavirus, it has changed dramatically from what it was in the beginning to what the response is now. In my own social media feed, I would see posts by people saying that the virus was aggrandized by news outlets and that the virus was no big deal. I must admit, I had that same line of thinking myself. When I initially learned about the outbreak in Wuhan, and later in other parts of the world, I just thought it would go away eventually. Even when some cases started popping up in the U.S. I still thought that the virus would be taken care of rather quickly. In a way, I was like one of those townsfolk that Camus refers to in his novel “The Plague.” As Camus states in the first part of the novel “A pestilence isn’t a thing made to man’s measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.” I certainly thought that this was a “mere bogy of the mind” that would eventually pass.

Currently there have been some protests by some people wanting places to reopen. Many have criticized these people for not caring about the health of others. I personally understand where their coming from and understand the frustration they may be going through. Many people have lost their jobs and many are losing their small businesses. I personally know of someone who has a restaurant business and is going through some pretty tough times financially.Another friend of mine, that worked in a restaurant, is also currently struggling to pay his bills. Some are making a strong case that we should reopen the economy, and others are saying that we should stay at home until we find a cure for the virus. The way I see it, we are in a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” type of situation. The lock-down will, and probably has, led to an increase in suicide rates, stress related heart attacks, in-home abuse going unchecked, and delays in treatment for people going through other health related issues. An opening of the economy will, however, lead to more deaths at the hands of the virus. This is the “absurdity” of life that Camus refers to. We want to fix everything perfectly but we can’t. We lose either way. For me it seems like the only thing we can do is pray and, in Dr. Rieux words,”‘…fight the plague…. with decency.” We must do what we can with the people closest to us and with the people in our community.

When, or if, this virus is contained, I don’t believe things will go on business as usual. Life is going to be weird for quite a while. Its funny, in my mind I have this fantasy that we will go back to the normality of the past in just a week or so. The reality, however, is that its going to be a while until that happens.

“When a man commits himself to anything, fully realizing that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind – in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility.”

Reading “Existentialism is a Humanism,” I found it interesting to learn how Jean Paul-Sartre puts a heavy emphasis on the moral weight we each carry as individuals. I do think we have an immense responsibility of creating the world we want to live in, but often times we don’t recognize this in our day to day lives. For example, when I was a freshman in high school, I would cheat on every test in my geometry class. At the time, I didn’t think it really mattered. I wasn’t hurting anybody and all I cared about was getting an A in the class. The problem was that I was creating a false image of myself for my classmates. My peers started to see me as smart, and so did my teacher, but this image that they were attributing to me was all based on a lie. On top of this, I was teaching others how to cheat and encouraging my peers to engage in behavior that was detrimental for learning. This may be a silly example, but following Sartre’s train of thought, I was making lying and deception a permissible action for other people. My actions may have caused others to also get into the habit of cheating which may have also had ramifications in their learning for years to come. The point i’m trying to make is that all our actions have an impact on others, no matter how small or big. Our small acts of kindness may have an immensely positive impact on the future even though when we look at them in the present, it looks like we haven’t created any change at all. Reading Sartre, I got the sense that our actions have a lot of power, for good and for evil, and that we must not think of ourselves as helpless individuals.

In his essay, he also defines the word “abandonment” within existential philosophy by saying the following : “And when we speak of “abandonment” – a favorite word of Heidegger – we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end.”   In here,he is trying to make the point that we must seriously consider what it means to say that God doesn’t exist. He goes on to explain how some of his fellow philosophers still try to find moral values outside of ourselves without God, but Sartre sees this as a lack of understanding of what the belief in no God actually entails. Without God, we are responsible for our own actions, our own morals, and the morals of the world. We are living not in a world that has existing values outside of ourselves, rather we are living in a world in which we create those values ourselves. To make this point clear he states that an existentialist would agree with Dostoevsky’s quote “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.” I agree with Sartre that if there is no God everything is permissible. This is not to say that if you don’t believe in God you can’t act ethically. It means that if you don’t believe in God, you have to accept that there is no objective standard of what is Good and what is Evil. We are the ones responsible for determining what is Good and what is Evil. Since we are the ones dictating what is Good and what is Evil, we can make Good and Evil whatever we want them to be. Therefore, everything is permissible.

This line of thinking, however, seems a bit problematic for me. Can we trust our standard actually seeks to bring about Good? Can we trust that our standard is actually a standard that benefits society as a whole? What is Good? How do we prevent only a certain group of people from gaining power and dictating what is Good and what is Bad? How do we prevent the powerful from dictating a morality that oppresses those below them and only benefits the powerful? These are some of the questions that come up for me when entertaining Sartre’s idea of freedom. It seems that it turns into a battle of wills. Whoever has the most power dictates what is Right and what is Wrong rather than Right and Wrong being actually things that exist outside of ourselves.

It seems to me that Simon De Beauvoir tries to build an ethics that doesn’t allow everything to be morally permissible. She rejects this view that everything is permissible within existentialism. De Beauvoir makes it clear that we are condemned to be free and that our freedom is intertwined with other peoples freedom. Meaning, in order to be truly free, we must also will the freedom of others. Seeking to diminish the freedom of others, whom have also been condemned to freedom like yourself, would diminish your freedom and therefore hurt you. Following this train of thought, what ever diminishes your freedom is Evil, and whatever protects your freedom, and increases your freedom, is Good. It seems that Simon De Beauvoir does try to create a standard by which we can truly judge certain things to be Wrong, and certain things to be Right while still being an Existentialist.

I personally believe that there is a God and disagree with Sartre’s assertion “existence precedes essence.” I also believe there are objective standards for what is Good and what is Evil. Nevertheless, I do find Sartre’s and De Beauvoir’s take on morality interesting and engaging.

Nietzsche claims that the truth we claim to have as human beings is really a sea of metaphors and accepted deceptions. In Nietzsche mind, there is such a thing as Truth itself, but it could never be fully grasped, or even adequately approached. In his essay “On Truth and Lies in a non-moral sense” Nietzsche points out how  “The ‘”thing in itself”‘ (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for.” In other words, not only is it impossible to capture the pure reality of an object through language, the truth itself of an object isn’t even worth trying to describe.

For Nietzsche, seeking Truth itself, or even obtaining some part of the Truth, is not necessary to live an enriching and fulfilling life. For this reason, Nietzsche sees it as pointless to seek the Truth. In his mind, the intellect should be used to project meaning, or a reality, that is empowering to our own lives. We should see ourselves as an “artistically creating subject” that paints the reality of the world with metaphors rather than arrogantly cling to our perception of what we believe to be the truth. He claims that “the drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive” and is a drive that “continually manifests an ardent desire to refashion the world which presents itself to waking man, so that it will be as colorful, irregular, lacking in results and coherence, charming, and eternally new as the world of dreams.”

Nietzsche is nihilistic by representing humans as nothing more than “clever beasts” that “invented knowing” and that later die in an indifferent universe. Taking the universe as a whole, he sees no purpose in the intellect. The intellect only has importance to us, but has no real importance to the outside world. If there is no God, as Nietzsche claimed, than this is the cold and harsh reality of life. He is, however, anti-nihilistic by urging us to not to despair of this fact. Even though we don’t fully capture the truth, we can still have a beautiful life without it. We ourselves can create our own purpose and come up with a view a world of that helps us to live happy lives, so long as it doesn’t harm others.

Contrary to Nietzsche, I do believe that capturing a true view of the world around us is important to living a happy life. Finding the truth about our own purpose as human beings, and trying to see the world around us as it really is, is a natural instinct in us. We want to be in the right and uncover universal truths.I do agree that there are limitation to how much our language can capture of reality, but, nevertheless, with our limitations we are still able to capture enough of the Truth to lead meaningful and fruitful lives.

This desire to know the truth is something that even Nietzsche recognizes, but he struggles to understand how this desire came about in human beings. People deceive, lie, and present distorted images of themselves so frequently, for their own advantage, that Nietzsche finds nothing “less incomprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.” and later asks “where in the world could the drive for truth have come from?” given this tendency for us to distort reality in a negative way. The only reasonable answer that I have found for this question is that we were born with this desire. It’s not a desire we ourselves developed, but a desire that we were created with. This desire was most likely dormant early on in human history, where we were just trying to survive and reproduce. But as we evolved, and as we started to live in more sophisticated societies, where all our basic needs where met, this desire began to awaken in us, leading us to seek truths beyond those necessary for survival. We began to ask questions, out of this desire, such as: What is the meaning of life? What is our purpose as human beings? What is there after death? How did we as human being come about? and many other questions that didn’t have to do anything with our own survival. This was the birth of philosophy, I believe, as we sought to find answers to these existential questions through our own reason.

I believe we don’t physically perceive the objects around us as they really are, but we can come to understand their purpose and the reason for their existence. In this way we can seize part of the truth, which is beneficial for our own lives.

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In Double indemnity, Phyllis isn’t happy because of the way Mr. Dietrichson is treating her. Phyllis feels like a prisoner, locked in, trapped, and unloved. Ultimately her hatred for Mr. Dietrichson, and her desire for freedom and power, are what lead her to kill him. Neff, on the other hand, seems pretty happy. He has a job that he likes to do and that pays him well. However, based on Neff’s shameless and bold moves toward Phyllis, it seems he lusts after women.

Analyzing both characters, it seems that Phyllis values freedom and power while Neff just wishes to be desired and wanted by women. In this way, Phyllis is a much more complex character, while Neff is a simple character with a simple desire. The fact that Neff ultimately decides to agree to kill Dietrichson for Phyllis, and also because he thinks he can get away with it, shows how far his willing to go to satisfy his own selfish desire.

It is interesting, however, that at first Neff refuses to have any part in Phyllis’s devious plan, but later rethinks the whole situation and ultimately decides to go through with it. It is this scene that shows a stark difference between Neff and Phyllis. Neff still has a conscience, and wrestles with it throughout the movie. He feels the weight of it. Phyllis, on the other hand, doesn’t once feel remorse for the evil deeds she’s done and manipulates rather easily. It seem as if Phyllis is accustom to acting evil, and has formed the habit of doing so. Neff is lustful but he hasn’t undermined his conscience as much as Phyllis has.

Later on, while Neff is confessing how he killed Mr. Dietrichson, he recalls how he “couldn’t hear” his “own footsteps” and how he “had the walk of a dead man.” This marks the death of his conscience and his mortal soul. It is at this point that Neff truly becomes evil and a murderer, like Phyllis.

Phyllis later reveals that she indeed just used Neff for the money and that she was also manipulating Zaccatti, making him think that Lola was with another man so he could go into one of his “jealous rages” and kill Lola. Taking into account that Lola had earlier confessed her belief that Phyllis had killed Lola’s mother, this gives us a clear picture of who Phyllis is. She is manipulative, evil, and selfish.

However, in one of the final scenes between Neff and Phillys, it seems that there is still some good in Phyllis. She decides not to kill Neff, stating that she was unaware that she was in fact in love with him until she was unable to fire a second shot. Phyllis’s heart of stone finally has melted a little and has allowed love to pierce her heart. Neff, however, is indifferent to her, having seen her manipulative motives, and kills her because he no longer sees any good in her. He is filled with hatred and only sees Phyllis as an evil being, with no soul, that would be better off dead.

Taking the movie as a whole, it doesn’t seem that this is what a nihilistic world looks like since the exact same situation could have happened in a world where God actually exists. The movie starts with Neff’s confession, and it ends with his ultimate demise. It may seem that Neff was fated to commit this crime, but the reality is that throughout the movie Neff had many opportunities to not kill Mr. Dietrichson. Neff could have chosen to not listen to Phyllis’s and chosen not to be lured by Phyllis’s beauty. Neff knew what he was doing was wrong but decided to do it anyways. He had choice.

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“What is the point of it all?” “What is the meaning of life?” “What happens when we die?” “Is there a God or is there not a God?” These are all questions that at one point or another we all ask ourselves and our answers to them have a profound impact in our everyday lives. If we come to the conclusion that there is no point to it all, there is no objective meaning to human life, there is no God, there is nothing after death, then the question “Is life worth living?” or ‘”Should I kill myself?”‘ is a question that would naturally arise within us and indeed, as Camus argues, would be an urgent and fundamental question that would need to be addressed by philosophy. Camus argues that the only way to find meaning in life is by being fully conscious of its inherent meaninglessness and to continue to live despite knowing this fact, without seeking solace in religion, or belief in God, to alleviate this painful reality. He, in fact, criticizes other philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Husserl who seek to escape these truths by appealing to the transcendent, rather than encountering the meaningless of life with courage. Living fully in the present moment, while being fully aware of the absurdity of life, is the only proper way to live according to Camus.

‘“But although Camus seeks to avoid arguing for the truth of his claims, he nevertheless concludes this “absurd reasoning” with a series of categorical assertions addressed to “the intelligence” about the inevitable frustration of the human desire to know the world and to be at home in it.”

Reading the essay on Albert Camus, I found the above quotation interesting. He recognizes how we, as human beings, don’t seem to find full satisfaction in this world. We want to know everything about everything, we want to know the full Truth about the world, we want the fullness of Justice, and we want the fullness of the Good but this desire never seems to be satisfied. Camus recognizes how this desire is never met and how frustrated this often leaves us. This is what Camus characterizes as the absurd.

This frustration that Camus describes reminds me of an interview I heard recently of Michael Phelps. In this interview, Phelps talks about how after winning a gold medal at the Olympic games, and experiencing this immense high, the following day an intense depression sweeps over him. He talks about how athletes don’t usually talk about this “low” that they experience after a big win. In other words, they are not completely satisfied even after achieving their most outrageous dreams. They are still left wanting more.

I would agree with Camus that we have this desire that never seems to be satisfied. We don’t seem to find our place in this world. As someone who believes in God, however, I would characterize that desire as a desire for God. Camus sees this as an escapist effort and as a refusal to accept reality but I would disagree with him. Indeed, we won’t be fully satisfied in this world, but I do think that this desire points us to a reality that is there, namely God. I don’t think we make up God to satisfy this desire, rather I think this desire points to the reality that there is a God.

In classical Christianity, God is described as the Good itself, Justice itself, and as the Truth itself. In this way, Christianity views our desire for the fullness of Truth, Justice, and the Good as a quest for God.

Our hunger for food is built into us and, biologically, our bodies have been built to take in food and gain nutrients from it in order to live and thrive. In much the same way, I would argue, our desire for God is built into us pointing us to an objective reality that seems to be the only thing that can satisfy our hunger for the Good, the Truth, and the Beautiful.

Going back to Camus. In the beginning of the essay, it is stated that Camus doesn’t actually try to explain what the “absurd” is but rather believed that it was something that needed to be experienced in order to be understood properly. This is made evident in the following statement: ‘”But he doesn’t argue for life’s absurdity or attempt to explain it—he is not interested in either project, nor would such projects engage his strength as a thinker. “I am interested … not so much in absurd discoveries as in their consequences.”’ Camus concept of the absurd rests on the assumption that there is no meaning to life and that the world is unknowable. These assumptions are what trouble me the most. It seems to me that Camus states there is no meaning to life without providing persuading reasons to believe in this. “What is the meaning of life?” seems to me a question that Camus wouldn’t try to seek an answer to under the assumption that there is no answer. Camus just believes the world is unknowable. Its the assumption that there is no answer, without providing, in my opinion, adequate reasons for his assumption, that disturb me the most. I think we should be asking these deep and thoughtful question with the possibility that there might me answers to them. We shouldn’t assume that there is none to them.

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