On the Meaningfulness of Man’s Existence: from the Existentialist Thinking to Phenomenology of Life

Abstract

Considering the question of meaningfulness of man in the world – an obsessive philosophical issue in Karl Jaspers’ existentialism – in this essay we try to emphasize some of the very own manner in which Phenomenology of Life offers new concepts and it opens a novel perspective in tackling the grave problem of human beingness in nowadays; by unfolding a different trajectory, beyond the existentialist doubtful approaches that remain somehow under the sign of pessimism. The reliance on the “creative virtualities” of man in a positive/constructive direction – that is permanently featured by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka – could be a very good model of following in a better self-understanding, social communication and, finally, in making our life a worthy one to be lived.

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After World War II, one of the founders of the German Existentialism, namely Karl Jaspers has tarried on the profound restlessness marking the human beingness in its attempt to transcend a chaotic situation of “revolting and hatred”, of “contempt face all there is exist”, of “boring, ... fearing or despairing”, and to look for its escape by the way of a “humanism of the future”. Some basic questions concerning “man”, the “effective conditions of contemporary human beingness” and the “route of humanism” highlighted by Jaspers in his effort to find the free rise of a spiritual reality for man as “self experience” within his ”moral force” come through phenomenological philosophy of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, too. As vectors of an original meditation and lucid assessment of the real potential of human being, such inquiries not merely traverse Phenomenology of Life, but they are accompanied by vigorous responses enlightening the main chance for man to inscribe his existence at its highest significance in “the great plan of life”. According to the phenomenologist of life, the meaningfulness of man’s living has to be revealed from the investigation of the “creative act” of human being which is “the Archimedean point” in the “ontopoietical design of the logos of life” – speaking in the original Tymienieckan philosophical language.

“What is the man? What are the effective conditions of the contemporary human beingness? Which is the possible way of our humanism?” These are the three major interrogations that Karl Jaspers has putted in his writing upon “Conditions and Opportunities of a New Humanism”.¹

Focusing on the human’s destiny under the auspices of rapid scientific and technical evolution and, at the same time, those of dramatic social and political changes after World War II, Karl Jaspers offers us a trajectory of “philosophizing” (“das Philosophieren”) as chance for a spiritual and moral rebirth of individual. That could be an opportunity of man’s escape from “Dasein” and of accessing into “Selbstsein” – as the authentic self-beingness. The life’s formula: “die philosophische Lebensweise” engages a profound subjective experience in the flux of a perpetual search of “Sein”/Being, by configuring the “enlightening” and “transcending” that defines philosophy itself with the purpose of a new arrangement of humanity on the route of the eternal values.

Karl Jaspers tried to make comprehended the human beingness in its “orientation in the world” (“Weltorientierung”) looking for the “being” and “self-awareness”, in its attempt to find its existential personality; eventually, the self-fulfillment. Therefore, as a prime dimension is emphasized the morality of man, viewed through the “unconditional acts” of ‘love’, ‘solidarity’, and ‘sacrifice’.²

The Jaspersian term of existenz/existence sends to “a beyond of” any immediate beingness, that is conceived like a possibility which does assume its freedom in revealing itself as a doubtful existence able to transcend exceptional situations in life; and to accomplish itself through communication, implying both ‘existential enlightening mediated by a dialogue of love’, and ‘presence of transcendence’ to be perceived in the core of the existence with the mysterious experience of the “gift” from transcendence; respectively, the “fact of being-given-itself” (“das Sichselbstgeschenktwerden”). ‘Reason’ and ‘love’ are in a mutual potentialization in the endeavor of man to reveal an integrator existence; and thus, to open the perspective of a supreme spiritual community of a more elevated self-awareness and moral conduct, engaging also the significance of “historicity”.

Karl Jaspers trusted the functioning of a new “philosophy of humanity” that could activate, on a high level, the existence from the point of view of historicity, by understanding the value of an ethics of spiritual intimacy. The becoming of existence in its access to the human historicity supposes the interaction ‘temporal’ and ‘eternal’ as concerns the comprehension of the encounter of ‘self-beingness’ and ‘transcendence’.

Scrutinizing the subjective existence, Jaspers looked for catching the act of philosophizing as the path for man’s strain to reach the authentic mode of beingness and to appropriate a part, at least, of its existential meaningfulness; all having relevance in the framework of humanism. Precisely, a “new humanism” deserves to be articulated, starting even from some questionable polarities: tradition and innovation, exceptional individuals and large populations, established human reality and endless chance for human beingness’ potentialization; finally, to consider the plural meanings moving between an educational ideal and a realized humanity as manifested value of dignity.

According to the existentialist philosopher, the examination of a “humanism of the future emerges exactly from the care for ourselves, the care for contemporary human being”, in the context of a frightful modality of “living in the absolute present moment, in the given situation and occurrence. … by advancing to the nothing, … by despondence or destructive impetus”.³

“What is the man?” involves a lucid conscience – beyond any definitions that limit our understanding – regarding the entire space of approaching man as ensemble of possibilities of accomplishment in the horizon of the peculiar human values such freedom and self-creation, putting in act the “certitude of being something else than merely a product of nature and of history. The man is much more than he is able to know about himself” – features Jaspers.⁴

Somehow, encountering the phenomenological issue of ‘object-subject’, Karl Jaspers tries to reveal the basic distinction between the knowledge of man as ‘object’/the man in its objective becoming, and the comprehensiveness that man is able to become on the route of an infinite freedom. The first way maintains us in terms of a sort of “hominism”, loosing the way of “humanism”; only the last giving the perspective of man’s understanding in ‘freedom’ and ‘dignity’, looking for the dialogue with transcendence. And, as the German philosopher states, this is the way to be found thanks to the process of philosophizing. “Man is … always opened to the future. … as a result of which that is achieved and lived coming from freedom. … Our conscience is always on the way”.⁵

To catch the human beingness in its possibilities – here we have a chance “to not be desperately as regards the destiny of man”.⁶

Going on, the existentialist thinker is asking himself about the “effective conditions of the contemporary human beingness”. And he names: technology, politics, and disintegration of Western spirituality.

Jaspers proves a realistic attitude by tackling the problem of new technology as double trajectory of rescue and no less of destruction. “A future humanism is possible provided that man will exercise an uninterrupted effort aiming the appropriation and domination of technology; which means a vast battle field for man”.⁷ This is an acute question that has been developed at the middle of twentieth century, in the language of a particular ethics, by Hans Jonas; and, recently, by Gernot Böhme, for example. Both of them insist on the importance of reconsideration of our reflexive and practical position as a co-partnership with nature, demanded by the radical changes in the science-tech progress; by imposing a transformation of man’s moral relationship to the cosmic universe that engages some values, like: decency, respect, care, responsibility.⁸

Alike the problem of the modern technology, the political apparatus can be one of man’s legitimating or sentencing in this world; an apparatus of giving or taking off any chance of beingness to man. The indifference face to politics is not a vital way for the man living in community. By contrary, the “future humanism” – as Jaspers has delineated – claims a commitment of man grounded on liberty and responsibility in disclosing a real human (and not brutal!) order, working for human rights beyond any kind of arbitrary or anarchy. The only way of human existence is, within the political conditioning, that of struggling in the cause of spirit’s freedom.

Seeing that, “technology and politics have almost completely dissolved the millenary spiritual configuration”; consequently, “the Western world does no more represent a community”, and the common conscience characterizes itself merely through “negations: the shattering of historical memory, the absence of a dominant fundamental knowledge, the rout as concerns a uncertain future”, Karl Jaspers stresses on the need for man to be in possession of a good science of the past – the only that would put him in a present and future adequate position –, to find and to assume a model of spiritual human beingness in togetherness, and to make from constructive ‘spontaneity’, ‘love’, ‘heroism’, ‘profound faith’, briefly from creation, the main instrument in overcoming the situation of “inner paralysis” and the great risk of “laying waste and even death” of mankind.⁹

Finally, inquiring about the “type of humanism which would be possible”, Jaspers emphasizes the necessity of an education oriented to the significance of the “authentic human beingness”. It must be tied to the Greek-Latin spirituality and to the strong good will for humanness; to the conquest of inner independence of man, too.

A “new humanism” enlightening the meaning of life becomes possibly just by proving self-awareness, living of inner freedom and working for spiritual affirmation by each individual as part of the whole mankind community.

At this point, the existentialist philosopher insists on the role of philosophy for the mankind of twentieth century, by drawing the following three basic ideas: (1) philosophy can enlighten the truth that has to be seen and realized by each of us; (2) through the theory of categories, through the methodology and epistemology, philosophy can transform us in masters of our own thoughts; (3) philosophy is the one that guides us to a free reasoning which allows the manifestation of our essence self-fulfillment and elevation (similarly to the situation of those who believe in the truth of revelation during their prayers).¹⁰

Actually, Karl Jaspers utters for a “modern heroism” of a real free human beingness within a life-experience working for an infinite self-conquering. The stake is quite the “moral force of man”: “the unique substance and factor for that shall happen to man”.¹¹

Over decades, the symptoms of the human crisis that Karl Jaspers has ascertained and he tried to discover a pathway for a “new humanism” have enhanced. And we face a global acute moral crisis – that claims more than ever the appeal to the philosophizing functions. We have to reconsider the ideal stated by Edmund Husserl, namely that of philosophers as “workers of humanity”, able to intervene by “responsibility and cultural commitment” in clearing up and restoring the meaningfulness of mankind existence.¹²

In the phenomenological tonality, an entitled praise of philosophy opening to a “new humanism” is made by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. The founder of “phenomenology of life” is one of the most representative philosophers of present times who sustain the value of philosophizing in the search for a “key to pursuing understanding of the meaning of all human endeavor”; especially, considering the situation of “our total disorientation” and our need for guide ourselves to the “specifically human significance of life”.¹³

To the marks of despair and destruction viewed by Karl Jaspers as specific features of the post-World War II age, at the same time sensing the general climate of anxiety in the last decades of twentieth century because the “anatomy of disarray” of humanity, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka has succeeded in elaborating an original direction in the contemporary philosophy that impresses – among many other contributions – by its avowed humanist referential. She is one of the most important upholders of a “new humanism” of nowadays – a note easy to be understood even from her option to pattern her philosophy like a “Phenomenology of Life and of the Human Condition”. This is, essentially, the thread of Tymieniecka’s original work unfolded in her magnificent four books of the treatise Logos and Life. ¹⁴

The three major interrogations identified in Jaspers’ Rechenschaft und Ausblick seem to persist, also, in Tymieniecka’s phenomenology of life. Certainly, we are speaking about a transparence of some obsessive motives that the North-American phenomenologist concerns with. And, what does matter is the fact that we can find good responses to the existentialist questions of Karl Jaspers; now, using the tools of phenomenological integrator and dynamic hermeneutics; all moving around the “meaning as the nexus of phenomenological methodology, epistemology, anthropology and metaphysics” in a complex analysis of existence and essence which might be “summarized by three statements: (a) neither essence nor existence may be dispensed with; (b) the features of essence determine its type of existence; (c) real existence is decided by the properties that en-world it”.¹⁵ And, circumscribing a central thesis of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, we are coming to the approach of Human Condition through the creativity dimension of human existence, as “the Archimedean point in the ontopoietical design of life”.

To awake toward the creative power which must be continuously activated as the climax of our human status in the total web of life is one of our prime duties to assure the metamorphosis from homo into humanus; or, using the terms of Jaspers: from “hominism” to “humanism”. In her turn, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka introduces some new concepts, like: “Promethean gifts” and “Imaginatio Creatrix”, in which she sees the elements of prompting and reorganizing of the life-world by the creative soul. At stake are, also, the three “sense-bestowing factors”; respectively, “the aesthetic/poetic, the intelligible, and the moral senses” that contribute in crystallizing and sustaining human singularity. All together “inspire the élan of human being transcending the confinements of concern with survival only and allows his weaving of his own universe”.¹⁶

The orientation toward a “new humanism” is one of conceiving man’s existence as a part of the world, engaged in it, while at the same time differentiating from and surpassing it by his inventive constructive virtualities; man’s existence being thought only in an intimate relation with the “unity of everything there is alive”. Within the whole expanse of life, man can reach his specific mode of being, and the “Human Condition” is revealed as “placed deep in the midst of the unity of everything there is alive”.¹⁷

Phenomenology of Life delves into a “new humanism” with the temptation of essence’s knowledge, of life’s explanation and understanding of man’s position in the world, by extracting his unique beingness “from an anonymous Nature” with its energies, dynamisms, forces.¹⁸

A “new humanism” is built on the idea of the union of internal and external man, as self-transcendence, through the creativity – man’s peculiar prerogative that makes from him an exceptional agent accessing to the “Ontopoiesis of Life”. Man appears in the diversity of his beingness’ circumstances (organic, vital, psychic, societal), in his life-individualizing process which “is simultaneously crystallizing the ‘outward’ framework of his existence within the world and manifesting ‘inwardly’ the entire spread of his vital existential and creative virtualities as they may unfold”.¹⁹

We have already written about the directory lines of this impressive original philosophy that could be very well taken like a creatology in a humanist general vision.²⁰ Here, we just resume to underlining that by her unshakeable trust – a Kantian one, we dare to say – in the sublime potential of man to do something significant with his life, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka enfolds a nuanced humanistic perspective that encourages us to continue to believe the functions of philosophy to help us in making our world much better; in the sense emphasized by Karl Jaspers, too.

It is not a simple accident that two great contemporary philosophers – one, belonging to the existentialism, and the other coming from the phenomenology – manifest such serious determination in elaborating the support for a “new humanism”.

Being veritable thinkers of philosophical refinement who assume the responsibility of their voice in offering a wise lesson in life to anyone wish and can receive their message of humanity, Karl Jaspers and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka inscribe a golden page in the history of humanism of all the times.

Eventually, each of them, Jaspers and Tymieniecka give us strong reasons to not fall in complaining because we are crossing a dangerous cultural crisis; neither to endorse a fashionable terribleness of so called “post humanism”. But, they lead us to maintain and to increase our belief and to work for the supreme human values of life and, finally, to find and to grow the meaningfulness of our existence in the world. First of all, by bringing in light and developing our creative potential; and thus, by realizing our greatest work: the self-creation, the accomplishment of personality in freedom, dignity and love.

“Al.I.Cuza” University of Jassy, Romania

Notes

• 1 See Karl Jaspers, Rechenschaft und Ausblick, Reden und Aufsätze, R.Piper & Co. Verlag, Münich, 1951.

• 2 Cf. Karl Jaspers, Einführung in die Philosophie, R.Piper & Co. Verlag, Münich, Fünfte Auflage, 1958.

• 3 Karl Jaspers, Rechenschaft und Ausblick, Romanian translation, in Texte filosofice/Philosophical Writings, Editura Politică, Bucharest, 1986, pp. 81–82.

• 4 Idem, p. 83.

• 5 Idem, pp. 87, 88.

• 6 Ibidem.

• 7 Idem, p. 90.

• 8 See Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, Chicago and London, Chicago University Press, 1984; Gernot Böhme, Ethics in Context. The Art of Dealing with Serious Questions, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2001.

• 9 Karl Jaspers, Rechenschaft und Ausblick, Romanian translation, op. cit., p. 93.

• 10 Cf. Karl Jaspers, op. cit., p. 104.

• 11 Idem, p. 106.

• 12 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis des europäischen Menschentums und die Philosophie, in Husserliana, Bd.VI, Den Haag: M.Nijhoff, 1953.

• 13 Cf. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “In Praise of Philosophy”, in Logos and Life, Book 4: Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason, Analecta Husserliana, Volume LXX, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/Boston/London, 2000, pp. xxx–xxxi.

• 14 See Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Book 1: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1988; Logos and Life, Book 2: The Three Movements of the Soul, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1988; Logos and Life, Book 3: The Passions of the Soul and the Elements in the Ontopoiesis of Culture. The Life Significance of Literature, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1990; Logos and Life, Book 4: Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/Boston/London, 2000.

• 15 Thomas Ryba, “Ana-Teresa Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life”, in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Phenomenology World-Wide. Foundations – Expanding Dynamics – Life-Engagements. Encyclopedia of Learning, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/Boston/London, 2002, pp. 432, 444.

• 16 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Creative Forces and Formation, Life’s Creative Matrix”, in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Volume LXXVII, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/Boston/London, 2002, p. xxv.

• 17 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Phenomenology of Life and the New Critique of the Reason: From Husserl’s Philosophy to the Phenomenology of Life and of the Human Condition”, in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Volume XXIX, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1990, p. 16.

• 18 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “The Theme: The Human Being in Action” in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Volume VIII, D.Reidel, Dordrecht, 1978, p. xiii.

• 19 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Truth – the Ontopoietic Vortex of Life”, in Phenomenological Inquiry, Volume 25, Belmont, Massachusetts, 2001, p. 8.

• 20 See Carmen Cozma, On Ethical in the Phenomenology of Life, Edizioni Eucos, Roma, 2007.