Browsing by Subject "Existentialism"

"Existential Realism: Modernism and the Ethics of Agency in the Franco-American Existentialist Tradition, 1937-1955” unearths the pivotal role American fiction played in the development and dissemination of the French existentialist ethics of agency. French intellectuals regarded American fiction as a reinvention of novelistic realism based on its engrossing quality. Through readings of novels by John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, and Patricia Highsmith, I show how such immersive narratives invite readers to inhabit characters’ agency. These novels illuminate a dimension of character agency that has gone overlooked in the prevailing modernist accounts of twentieth-century literature in that they allow the reader experience by proxy moral clarity and blindness. By tracing agency through the motif of gratuitous murder, I show that this fiction critiques a notion of authenticity that prizes overweening ability of one’s own ability to act. Ultimately “Existential Realism” shows both how existentialist thought enriches our appreciation of a strain of American fiction, and also how action-driven fiction dramatizes the triumphs and failures of agency.

I have observed that contemporary Christian believers and churches often have distorted views of the meaning of faith as they seek to live out their Christian life. Such distorted views can translate into a variety of forms. For example, the phrase “the faith” may collectively denote a set of doctrines or theological beliefs. It is also adopted by the prosperity gospel movement to attain health and wealth. So, how does one learn the true meaning of faith as expressed in the New Testament and avoid the distortions in today’s Christendom?This thesis looks at the lived-out definition of faith as expressed in the book Fear and Trembling, written by Søren Kierkegaard under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio. In this book, the author uses the narrative of Abraham and Isaac in the Akedah to define the concept of faith, and he states that he has never met a person with the kind of faith that Abraham possessed. However, across the North Sea, in Bristol (England), there was a contemporary of Kierkegaard whose name was George Müller. His autobiography and the annual reports published to document the donations in support of his orphanages, schools, and missionary efforts that he had received through the power of his prayers describe well his life of faith. Last year, I published a novel featuring a fictionalized George Müller set in the twenty-first century. This contemporary setting makes this exceptional character accessible to today’s culture and society while preserving the original meaning of his mission and his faith in God. My novel was positively received and “inspired” a film that is currently being developed for release in 2023. The methodology that I employ to communicate the meaning of faith to Christians consists of a teaching model for small groups known as generational mentoring. Gregory Scott Massey developed this model in his 2019 dissertation Generational Mentoring: Using Past Saints as Present Examples. As the title suggests, the author uses small groups as a setting where Christians can learn specific character qualities from the model of Christians from the past who exemplified such qualities. I have included five chapters of an original workbook designed for small groups which help leaders teach the meaning of faith: (i) as defined by Søren Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling through the life of Abraham, and (ii) as was lived out by George Müller, both the real nineteenth-century man and the contemporary fictional character from my novel.  

In this project, I define existential vulnerability as the idea that the meaning and value of our actions depends on other people’s responses to us. We depend upon others to make our lives meaningful. Others do this by taking our actions as points of departure for their own projects and goals. I argue that existential vulnerability is a foundational concept for understanding Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy. I show that Beauvoir discovers the idea in Pyrrhus and Cineas, her first philosophical essay, further uses and refines it in her short book, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and finally puts it to work in her most famous text, The Second Sex.

Across her oeuvre, Simone de Beauvoir develops an ethics that integrates freedom and vulnerability. In Pyrrhus and Cineas, Beauvoir teaches us that our existential vulnerability originates not in our own freedom, but in the freedom of others. This vulnerability is painful for us and we desperately try to avoid it, often by minimizing or denying the freedom of others. It is also the basis of a responsibility we have towards others. Our actions create their situations—the background against which they exercise their freedom. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir shows us how we are all both free and vulnerable. Her concept of subject/object ambiguity defines our relationship with others; each of us is both a transcendently free subject and an object of judgment to others. Her ethics demand that we face up to and accept both our own and others’ ambiguity. To value the other’s freedom requires us to accept and choose our own vulnerability. Finally, in The Second Sex, Beauvoir shows us that under patriarchy, woman is the Absolute Other to man. This famous analysis depends on her existential ethics of vulnerability. Women are existentially vulnerable to men because men’s judgments create their situation; but men are also still existentially vulnerable to women, a fact they try to avoid. Beauvoir’s philosophy criticizes those who try to avoid their vulnerability. These critiques are directed at the people in power—at the people who seem at first glance to be the least vulnerable.