"There is no greater gift you can give or receive than to honour your calling."
So says Oprah Winfrey. "It's why you were born and how you become most truly alive."
In saying this, Oprah follows a long line of thinkers stretching back to Aristotle and Plato. Oprah is an essentialist. She believes that we each have a purpose, an essence, and that the secret of life, of our existence, is to find that essence. In other words, she believes that ... essence precedes existence.
For existentialists, this is complete gibberish. We are just hairless apes. Our lives have no more 'purpose' than gibbons, or horses, or lizards, or snails, or protozoa. We have no 'calling', as Oprah puts it. The only 'purpose' we have in life is what we invent for ourselves. In other words, existentialists believe that ... existence precedes essence.
"What is meant by saying that existence precedes essence?" asked Jean-Paul Sartre. "It means first of all man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and only afterwards defines himself."
For the existentialist, there is no point in searching for answers, because the world we live in has no answers. As Woody Allen said: "I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100."
Accordingly, to search for our 'calling' is an absurdity. It is a shouting into the existential void or, as Albert Camus described it, "the unreasonable silence of the world." There is no morality, no right and no wrong. There are no absolutes to live by, no justice, no fairness, no order, no rules. We live in a rudderless, directionless, purposeless world.
But the paradoxical consequence of a world without rules is that we have absolute freedom. We are shockingly, terrifyingly free. As Sartre put it, "man is condemned to be free".
Therefore, "it is up to you to give [your life] a meaning," says Sartre, not the church, not the state, nor any organisation, not 'society', not that little voice inside your head that says that 'they' wouldn't approve, not your parents, not your peers. You, and you alone, have responsibility. It cannot be delegated. If you try to delegate it, for example to Christian teaching, you are not acting authentically; you are acting in bad faith.
So what does one do? Well, here is an example that Sartre himself gave (albeit not using these words).
STUDENT: Monsieur Sartre, I have a dilemma.
SARTRE: Go on then. I'm good at these.
STUDENT: It is 1942 and I want to travel to England so that I can fight for the Free French against the Nazis.
SARTRE: Ah, huh.
STUDENT: But my mother is ill and I am the only one who can care for her.
SARTRE: Mm, hmm.
STUDENT: I feel that I have a duty to France, but I also have a duty to my mother. What is the answer?
SARTRE: That's easy. There is no answer.
STUDENT: But which should I do?
SARTRE: Whatever you choose to do. You, and only you, have that freedom. You are alone.
STUDENT: Cheers. Thanks, Jean-Paul.
SARTRE: No probs. I told you I was good at dilemmas.
For some, this realisation that we are free can be liberating, exhilarating. We are not restricted by our upbringing, our religion or our past. We are free, wonderfully free.
But, for others, this same thought may have the opposite effect; it may create a feeling of unease, a sense of existential dread, as we contemplate the near-infinite possibilities ahead of us. We are free, we are horrifyingly free.
But are we really as free as Sartre suggests? In her book, The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir - an existentialist herself and the partner of Sartre - made the point that society and political structures conspire to hold women back. Freedom in theory may be very different from freedom in practice.
Furthermore, Sartre's view of absolute freedom is not supported by the science of DNA, genetics and neuroscience, all of which suggest that there is at least some pre-programming.
And, when Sartre says that we should act authentically, is that not just another form of moral guidance? Why should we act authentically? Who says?
If we are free, that means that we are free to ignore the existentialists. If there are no answers, then existentialism is not an answer. If we are alone with our decisions, then we can choose to agree with Oprah Winfrey.
Next: F is for fairness and feminism.
Written by Pete Mansfield
