The joyful existentialist?
Read a blog tonight about that agreed with the notion that we can choose joy (look under "Just Dance." And, btw, Some Guy, the sermon referenced there seems to me revivalism.) I was thinking about this. It might be true that you can choose joy, but it would take an incredibly strong person to choose it. And, of course, in the midst of an introspective moment, my heart went to Camus.
Camus' short story "The Guest" is about a region's school teacher who has a prisoner turned over to him who he is supposed to transport to the magistrate. The schoolteacher, Daru, wants no part of the conflict in which this prisoner is part, though he is a suspected murderer, and says he will simply set him free. However, Daru puts the choice in the prisoner's hands: He takes him part way to the magistrate and lets him go, telling him he can go to prison or to some nomads who will shelter him. He leaves, but when he glances back he sees the prisoner taking the road to the magistrate. Daru returns to his one room schoolhouse where he sees the words, written by friends of the prisoner, "You handed over our brother. You will pay for this." Camus then closes with these words: "Daru looked at the sky, the plateau and beyond the invisible lands stretching all the way to the sea. In this vast landscape he had loved so much, he was alone." Could Daru have chosen joy?
The story leaves me with mixed feelings: It leaves me sad and a little hopeless because, well, that's what the best existentialist stories do. It also leaves me content because someone has captured what many feel -- a strong sense of love, desire to live the best they know how, estrangement from the affairs of others, and isolation. When I combine these feelings, it makes perfect sense that Camus would become a Christian.
But, I wonder, Can the existentialist choose joy?
Camus' short story "The Guest" is about a region's school teacher who has a prisoner turned over to him who he is supposed to transport to the magistrate. The schoolteacher, Daru, wants no part of the conflict in which this prisoner is part, though he is a suspected murderer, and says he will simply set him free. However, Daru puts the choice in the prisoner's hands: He takes him part way to the magistrate and lets him go, telling him he can go to prison or to some nomads who will shelter him. He leaves, but when he glances back he sees the prisoner taking the road to the magistrate. Daru returns to his one room schoolhouse where he sees the words, written by friends of the prisoner, "You handed over our brother. You will pay for this." Camus then closes with these words: "Daru looked at the sky, the plateau and beyond the invisible lands stretching all the way to the sea. In this vast landscape he had loved so much, he was alone." Could Daru have chosen joy?
The story leaves me with mixed feelings: It leaves me sad and a little hopeless because, well, that's what the best existentialist stories do. It also leaves me content because someone has captured what many feel -- a strong sense of love, desire to live the best they know how, estrangement from the affairs of others, and isolation. When I combine these feelings, it makes perfect sense that Camus would become a Christian.
But, I wonder, Can the existentialist choose joy?
posted by Aaron Perry at
4:27 PM
10 Comments:
Hey AP,
The first thing I notice is the "by and large" qualifier in that [article] sentence about choosing joy. "By and large" is not a confining and complete category. This means the speaker is acknowledging that there are possibly times when choosing joy is, perhaps, an impossibility.
By my definition, joy is something that sustains one, or at least something that lasts for a period of time. Existentialism doesn't seem to allow for that---a lasting state of being, a lasting emotion, right? If a person [an existentialist?] believes that life is just a series of random disconnected moments and choices that have no [humanly understood] meaning when put altogether than perhaps when that person makes a choice to "feel" joy in random singular moments, it IS "joy"--at least as much joy as their belief allows them to experience.
I think posing an answer to your question depends on how the existentialist would define the experience of "joy."
For me,(a nomadic Eeyore-ish skeptic), the definition of true joy would have to be a state of being--a longterm feeling---something that LASTS---in order to be joy.
BUT this is just the kind of thing that would be Joy to me, and what is joy to me may not indeed be joy to another.
Yet again, I have made little sense. Oh well.
"Can the existentialist choose joy?" could be a new circular question to posit directly underneath the title of your blog. :)
Can the existentialist choose joy?
No. But what difference does it make?
John
p.s. That was an incredibly sad story. Camus is more hopeless than all the famous Russian novels combined. Sad. Sad. Sad. I can't handle Camus. He's TOO true, it hurts. Camus wants to cut the last thread of hope that my worldview allows to exist. I need that thread. I don't know how you manage, AP.
i manage because my faith isn't rooted in my outlook of the world (or my feelings). my faith destroys my world's outlook. you just can't keep resurrection down. it's the moments that the faith breaks through in all its glory that the existentialist's outlook, honest as it is, becomes pretty...uh...pale and pathetic.
hmm....the difference, john, is that you should learn not to preach the honors and virtue of choosing joy when some of your hearers can't do it in the moment; when some of your hearers (unfortunately) can only do so when roused; and when some of your hearers (wonderfully!) recognize that *choosing* joy is a poor way to frame the issue, and tastes, just a pinch, of a different gospel. joy is part of the fruit of the Spirit--and the Spirit is a gift. if you have no joy, the exhortation is not to choose it; the exhortation is to have FAITH (which IS a theological virtue!), to trust that he--God forever praised!--who began the good work in you will himself be faithful to complete it. --even if he doesn't do it this moment and you have to stay faithFUL.
Perhaps the only sense in which we can choose joy is to choose to receive the joy that God offers us. Maybe it's more a matter of not resisting joy.
I rarely have a good time when I try to make myself do it, only when I let it happen.
John
I think Joy starts in the stomach.
Let the reader understand.
SGFMB
I guess I find the phrase "choosing joy" somewhat confusing. It seems to me that the Christian tradition (e.g. Augustine & Aquinas) do not separate the will and the appetite in ways that this phrase often functions. In other words, for my will to "choose" joy as if it is something externally related to my appetite (i.e. what I find joyful) is inappropriate on traditional Christian grounds. What we find "joyuful" already impacts what we "choose."
and we all know the wonderful road that (one vein of) augustine's thought on will has brought us... ;)
Can an existentialist choose joy? Sure, why not. Aside from Tim's quotation of Augustine and Aquinas (as usual), I'd say that joy is a common human emotion that, while not being chosen always, is still something that we participate within. Even an atheist is able to participate in joy. I'd even argue that a nihilist (if there is such a thing) is such because it brings some sort of joy. So, sure, why not.
i will never limit the Spirit's work and affirm that there is evidence of his fruit in all sorts of locations and in all sorts of people. i still cannot see "choosing" as being the best framework for something that is a gift. but, i also then lean to tim's notion of connecting will to desire and think john was correct in mentioning being open to joy. i suppose that's why i am an existentialist that sometimes you just can't explain the world.
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