Individual vs. Humanity

As we move into early existentialist thought with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, the distinction between the individual or private self and the public realm becomes very important. With Hegel and Marx (but particularly with Marx) we have been concerned with the interaction of consciousness with the world, and specifically with other consciousnesses. Marx takes a political direction, which necessarily aligns itself with the public realm, as politics consist of interactions and relationships of power between beings; basically, you don't really get political when dealing with the self as an individual, existential being. Though this distinction can—and often does—lend itself to criticisms of both sides of the debate, something that I've been working with a lot is the individualistic basis for public action (which amounts to ethics, for the most part). Up to this point, most of us have probably dealt with ethics from the standpoint of there being correct and incorrect ways to treat other people, or that actions can be classified as "good" or "evil" based on either the intention behind them (in a deontological system like Kant's) or by their consequences (as in utilitarianism). What happens when we deny that there is such a thing as good or evil? Or even that there is no such thing as truth in an absolute sense? The question of ethics then becomes not about how we should treat others, but why we should care about other people at all.

It's my personal belief that a recognition of our selves as historically and cultural contingent—that is, the understanding that we are not wholly self-created beings, instead gaining our ideas of ourselves as individuals from the point in time and culture in which we are situated, not to mention the affect of other people like parents and teachers on these self-conceptions—gives us both a reason to discount fundamentalist or absolutist accounts of truth or ethics as well as a reason to care about others. By adopting an understanding of humanity as something evolving—a process of which we ourselves are a part—we first see that we are neither as we are "supposed to be" nor are we working toward an ideal being; this could be taken as a reason to despair or take an apathetic approach to existence. Despair, however, is not our only option; by viewing meaning as something created by humans working together in some manner (through conversation or more direct action), we can understand the need to take an active role in this meaning-making so that the things we do are meaningful for us as individuals as well as the group.

Something to think about, then, as we move through Kierkegaard and Nietzsche is the ramifications of their ideas on human interaction, and what that means for us as an evolving culture.