Relation to oneself· Identity and freedom
Existentialism
Axis: Essence and existence — Do we have a nature that precedes us, or do we become what we choose to be?
Existence precedes essence: a human being is at first nothing definite and makes itself through its choices and actions. No nature assigns us a destiny, and invoking an essence to justify what one is amounts to bad faith.
Movements 6
Existentialismexplicit
A manufactured object, a paper-knife, presupposes in the artisan's mind the concept and function that define it: its essence precedes its existence. Lacking an artisan God, the human being cannot be thought this way: there is no prior essence to realize, the person first exists and only then defines themselves by what they make of themselves. The movement thus overturns the whole of , from to theology: there is no model of man preceding singular men, and already set the existing individual's becoming-a-self against the system's Hegelian essence.
Existentialism Is a Humanism · Being and Nothingness
Transhumanismexplicit
There is no fixed human essence that enhancement would betray: what we call "human nature" is a transitory state within a process of self-transformation. The human is an unfinished work, a bridge toward the rather than a completed form; its value lies in the capacities and experiences a being can unfold, not in the preservation of a type. The stance remains naturalist, however: it does not deny any given nature, it denies that nature is sacred and final.
More, 'On Becoming Posthuman' · Bostrom, 'Why I Want to Be a Posthuman When I Grow Up'
Marxismexplicit
Marxism historicizes human nature: there is no fixed essence inherent in the individual, man is the product of social relations that change with modes of production. What we are is not a prior given but the transformable result of a material history.
Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, VI · Marx and Engels, The German Ideology
Show inferred positions (3)
Pragmatisminferable
Pragmatism distrusts fixed essences posited before experience: concepts, species and institutions are products of a history and a practice, shaped by their functions rather than given once and for all. Dewey, marked by Darwinism, thinks of forms as provisional stabilizations within a becoming: doing and becoming take priority over finished being. The leaning is existentialist in the broad sense of the primacy of existence over essence.
Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy (1910) · James, Pragmatism (1907), lecture IV
Buddhisminferable
Buddhism denies any permanent essence: there is no self (anatta), only a flux of impermanent, conditioned aggregates, with no substantial core that would persist. The denial of essence is radical, but it issues in no freedom of self-creation: it is the very idea of a fixed self that dissolves.
Samyutta Nikaya, XXII (the aggregates) · Milindapañha (the parable of the chariot)
Empiricisminferable
Empiricism undoes essences: we know only nominal essences, our classifications, not the real nature of things (Locke), and the self is but a bundle of perceptions (Hume). The newborn mind is a blank page, so that what a person becomes owes to experience, not to an innate nature, though without a free self-fashioning.
Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, III, 3 · Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, I, 4
Philosophers 11
Beauvoirexplicit
Beauvoir takes up the existentialist thesis that, for the human being, existence precedes essence: no nature defines in advance what one must be. Her formula one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman is its most famous application: the feminine is not a given essence but a becoming shaped by culture, which each woman must nonetheless take up in a free project.
The Second Sex (1949), vol. II, opening ("one is not born a woman") · The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Sartreexplicit
For a manufactured object, the paper-knife, essence (the artisan's concept) precedes existence; tradition thought of man likewise, created according to a human nature conceived by God. Remove the creator, and the order reverses for man alone: he exists first, with no prior definition, and it is from being nothing at the outset that he draws the full responsibility of making himself.
Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946) · Being and Nothingness, Introduction and Part 1 (the for-itself)
Nietzscheexplicit
"Become what you are": there is no fixed human essence to realize, but a task of self-creation. The subject, the soul, the substantial "I" are grammatical illusions; what we are is the ever-open work of self-fashioning, of giving style to one's character.
The Gay Science, §290 · Ecce Homo, subtitle "How One Becomes What One Is"
Nāgārjunaexplicit
The argument is a reductio on the very notion of essence: an (svabhāva, the essence by which a thing would be of itself, independently of everything else) would, by definition, have to be unproduced and unchanging; yet everything we meet arises from causes and conditions, and so changes. An essence that came to be would be fabricated, which contradicts its concept. Nāgārjuna thus turns the Abhidharma's own analysis against it: the substantialist schools resolved things into ultimate factors (dharmas) endowed with inherent existence; he shows that these factors, being themselves conditioned, are in turn . It must be distinguished from existentialism: the thing is empty of essence not so that it may freely create itself, but because the notion of a fixed essence is incoherent.
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way), ch. XV (the examination of svabhāva) · Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, ch. XXIV (the examination of the Noble Truths)
Marxexplicit
Marx rejects the idea of a fixed, ahistorical human essence: what human beings are changes with their mode of production. Human nature is not an abstraction lodged in each individual but the precipitate of historically determined social relations; it is a product of history, not a given prior to be fulfilled.
Theses on Feuerbach, VI · The German Ideology, I
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Camusinferable
Lacking a divine order or a given nature, man is defined by what he makes of the absurd: he has no prior essence and constitutes himself in and action. This nearness to existential thought stays tempered by Camus's refusal of an absolutely founding freedom, unlike the existentialists.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) · The Rebel (1951)
The Buddhainferable
and deny any fixed, substantial essence of beings: nothing has a stable nature of its own, all is conditioned process, arisen from causes and bound to dissolve. There is no substance-soul to be discovered beforehand, only a becoming to be understood, which sets Gautama clearly apart from essentialism without thereby making him a modern existentialist.
Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, Saṃyutta Nikāya 22.59 (the aggregates are impermanent and not-self) · Dhammapada, XX, 277-279 (all is impermanent, not-self)
Lockeinferable
Locke refuses innate essences: the mind is born a blank slate, and what a person becomes owes to experience and education. In metaphysics, we reach only nominal essences, our own classifications, not the real nature of things, which strips essence of its determining role.
Essay concerning Human Understanding, II, 1 and III, 3 · Some Thoughts concerning Education
Rousseauinferable
Man differs from the animal less by understanding than by , that faculty of transforming oneself indefinitely which leaves him with no nature fixed in advance. What man is, he becomes through his history; his very nature is to be undetermined, which distantly heralds the idea that existence precedes essence.
Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
Humeinferable
Hume dissolves fixed essences: we know no real essence of substances, and the self itself is but a bundle of perceptions in flux, with no permanent core. What we become is forged by custom and habit more than by an assigned nature, without amounting for all that to a free self-fashioning, the human being remaining largely shaped.
A Treatise of Human Nature, I, 4, 6 · An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
Millinferable
Against the idea of a fixed nature to be poured into the molds of custom, Mill holds that human nature is not a machine, but a tree that must grow and unfold from within. Each has to choose his own plan of life: individuality and self-development prevail over any preset model, even if an organic ground remains to be cultivated.
On Liberty, ch. III
- Descriptive Thought experiment"It's my nature": truth or excuse?
To appeal to one's nature, "that's how I am, I can't change," is it an honest acknowledgment of what one is, or an excuse to flee what one remains answerable for?
a person appealing to their nature - DescriptiveFinding oneself, or inventing oneself?
The injunction "be yourself" is itself divided: is self-realization bringing to light a self already there, or freely inventing one? "Become who you are" tries to hold both at once.
self-realization - DescriptiveWhere does the essence of things come from?
If things have an essence, where do they get it: from a plan that conceives them before they exist, from nature itself, from a convention of our minds, or from nothing?
the essence of things