Questions?

What about the suggestion that philosophy is not a disinterested activity, but instead an

individual search and quest for meaning? What about Jaspers’ claim that a hope for

objectivity is like a hope for utopia, with both being equally ‘illusory’? What about not

deliberately being a philosopher and not trying to think ‘as a thinker’, but instead, as

Feuerbach claims, thinking as a being ‘in existence’? What, in attempting to do this, might

we consider to be our most immediate and pressing questions?

What about the idea that if we are to have any understanding of what this existence is in

which we think, then we should ask: what is a human being’s kind of being? What about, in

the face of this question and the many resulting avenues of exploration, one considers the

apparent circularity and repetition found in the being of human beings? What about, then,

considering the reasons why so many of us live in such similar ways to others, often

repeating cycles of life and behaviour handed to us? What about exploring these reasons and

how it may be possible to 'be' as a human in a way that doesn’t repeat a cycle of actions that we did not consciously choose?

What about, then, beginning our exploration with Heidegger’s quiet conformity into which

we are ‘thrown’ and the thoughts, beliefs and words that ‘they’ - whoever ‘they’ may be -

have given us to hold? What about the possibility of us, through this conformity,

relinquishing control of our own lives to the unnoticed powerful forces of the cultures in

which we live and the decisions which ‘they’ have made? What about the ‘lostness’ of

ourselves in the ‘they’ - the removal, or surrendering, of agency from our lives which may

never be retrieved? What about, then, as we consider the prevalence of this type of being, the means and outlandish effort that might be required to wrest ourselves free from this

inauthenticity?

How might we repossess our lives and avoid an existence that simply repeats the cultural

cycle once more?

How about starting by noticing one’s conformity and lostness? How about noticing

Heidegger’s ‘average everydayness’ and how we are ‘falling’ into this lostness through our

simple and inane acts of constant conformity? How about wondering how much we live how 'they' expect us to, and who 'they' are? How about noticing one’s genetic programming,

cultural and social conditioning, and formative experiences? How about looking at the

choices that we make and considering how guilty we are of ‘bad faith’ in Sartre’s eyes? How

about, like Thoreau, trying to live ‘deliberately’?

Why not, then, try to become the authors of our own lives by owning up to who we are and

our actions? Why not compare ourselves to Sartre’s paper-cutter and consider that we are not

a ‘being-in-itself’ - we do not contain a given nature or purpose - that instead our existence

precedes our essence? Why not sit with the anxiety that this realisation may bring and use it

to super-power our realisation that significance is not something that we possess in a pre-

ordained way? Why not consider the possibility that in Heidegger’s ‘dasein’ there lies an

individual that is void of objective support and purpose?

Where do we go once we have acknowledged this ontological anxiety, and accepted

Heidegger’s ‘threat’ that derives from a lack of innate purpose or meaning? Where do we go

to avoid slipping back into the comfort of obscurity and instead become more free, unified and focused as authors of our own stories? Where do we go as ‘beings-towards-death’ to

wrest control of our journey until the final destination?

When we become our own projects (having done ‘philosophy with a hammer’ and moved out

of the shadow of Nietzsche’s idols) and strive to bend the world towards our own perspective

through sublimation, will we finally be free of the repeating the circularity of a herd-like

existence? When we have learnt to ‘reawaken ourselves and keep ourselves awake’, as

Thoreau suggested, will we be elevated above the conformity of cultural cycles? When I am

aware that the accumulation of my actions is creating me, and I am consciously the author of

my own life, will I be free? When I accept full responsibility for the choices that I make and

acknowledge Sartre’s claim that I am ‘condemned to be free’ in this way, will I be dictating

my own existence?

When I consider carefully what it means to ‘be’, aware of the threat of lostness, and make a

commitment to my own existence, standing fast in the face of challenge and owning my

actions in this world, will I be truly authentic and understand, at least in part, the answer to

our most immediate and pressing question - what is it to be a human being?

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R. D. STEVENS grew up in Kent, England, with an overactive imagination and a love of big questions. His award-winning YA debut novel 'The Journal' was released by Vulpine Press in August '22, and 'The Freeze', his sophomore novel, a dystopian thriller, was released in Jan '23. Recently, he has had short stories 'Biophilia' and 'Rebuilt' published by Carrion Press and Erropress respectively. Outside of writing, he loves to read books, play the guitar, and talk about existentialism. You can discover more about his journey on Instagram and Twitter with the handle @rdstevensauthor, or at www.rdstevensauthor.co.uk.