The Reasonable and the Absurd

Posted: Wed, Nov 12, 2025

Kant on Enlightenment

“Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority.”

  • What is Kant saying?
  • What are the implicit assumptions that Kant is invoking in order to say this?

Reason in philosophy

  • The world is governed by a higher power (Heaven, God).
  • Because of this there is an order (Dao, Logos) to this world; we do not live in pure chaos, even though things might sometimes appear so.
    • Appearance is deceptive; our senses and emotions are misleading.
  • A distinct feature of the Western tradition descending from ancient Greece as interpreted through the medieval Arabic world: This order is accessible to us through reason.
    • Reason is our connection to the higher power; our rational capacity is in an important way sacred.
    • While our senses and emotions are misleading, reason guides us towards deeper reality and real wisdom.
    • The body—defined by the sensory and the affective—is what limits us.

What if this is all a mistake?

Working with your group, think of a contemporary example that the parable could be analogous to and use this to try to work out its meaning:

  • Camus’s Sisyphus
  • Nietzsche’s Madman
  • Anderson’s Asteroid City

The existentialist project

Abandonment: God is dead (and has never lived), whose consequences we must face up to ourselves.

  • Anguish: We make our own decisions in a state of anguish—akin to the general who sends soldiers to die (p. 27).
    • The general is making their own decision and must bear the responsibility of its consequences; they do not merely follow orders.
  • Despair: We have to act without hope because we can control only what’s up to us.
    • There is no assurance that the train will come tomorrow; we just have to live with it.

Sartre: “Existentialists . . . find it extremely disturbing that God no longer exists.” Why?

  • Camus: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
  • Philosophy is not just thought, but action.
  • Without reason, there is nothing to lean on, “no values or orders that can legitimize our conduct.”
  • Everything is up for grabs.

Sartre’s proposal: Reverse the priority between essence and existence.

  • Essence precedes existence: We do what we do because of what we are/our nature.
    • Midge Campbell: “You took a picture of me. . . . Why?”
    • Augie Steenbeck: “I’m a photographer.”
  • Existence precedes essence: We are what we make ourselves to be.
    • Sartre: “man first exists: he materializes in the world, encounters himself, and only afterward defines himself.”
    • Example of the young man (pp. 33–34).
    • Note the plural: In choosing for myself, I’m defining not only my own nature but human nature. “Although it is true that in confronting any real situation, for example that I am capable of having sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex and of having children, I am obliged to choose an attitude toward the situation, and in any case I bear the responsibility of a choice that, in committing myself, also commits humanity [to monogamy] as a whole.”

For Sartre, existentialism is not ultimately interested in proving that God does not exist: “even if God were to exist, it would make no difference.”

  • We are our own legislators.

Kant's moral philosophy

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— Robert Talisse (@roberttalisse.bsky.social) November 12, 2024 at 1:09 AM