Human beings exist as individuals against their will, and they experience existential anxiety in the contradiction with absolute existence and the conflict between individuals. Western philosophies have attempted to resolve this anxiety through debate, Eastern philosophies through complementarity, and primitive ways of relying on charisma, but each approach has its limitations. In the modern world, we try to overcome anxiety through a flexible combination of these methods.
Humans are doomed to exist as a single entity and then be extinguished without knowing where they are headed. This existential anxiety is due to the fact that every individual in the world is in a horizontal contradiction with every other individual and a vertical contradiction with an unknown absolute being that governs their existence and annihilation. Here, “horizontal contradiction” refers to the conflict that arises from the differences between individuals, and “vertical contradiction” refers to the conflict that arises from the fact that the absolute always remains unknown to individuals. How have humans dealt with this existential anxiety?
Western philosophy’s approach
In ancient Greece, before the formation of the polis, the Absolute remained unknown to each individual, but after the formation of the polis, Western philosophy began to attempt to identify it. It sought to resolve both vertical and horizontal contradictions by revealing the nature of absolute existence through the power of reason. Western philosophy believed that by identifying a universal principle that corresponds to the nature of absolute existence, it is possible to find a universal sameness that encompasses the differences of individuals, and thus secure the identity of individuals by defining them as legitimate components of a system without contradictions. However, individuals may differ in their understanding of what constitutes a universal principle. Therefore, in Western philosophy, “argumentation,” the process of arguing over the nature of absolute existence through a process of logical justification, became important.
Eastern philosophical approaches
Even in the Shang dynasty of China, the absolute being that governs human life was an unknown object. However, after the Ch’an dynasty, the scholars who inherited Confucius’ ideas shifted their attention from the vertical relationship with the absolute being to the horizontal relationship between humans and other humans, the in-as relationship. They dismissed the idea of a relationship with an absolute being as unnecessary and focused on finding ways to harmonize the horizontal entities that were in conflict with each other. They sought to resolve conflicts between entities by establishing specific moral values, such as honor or courtesy, that could be shared by the group. They prioritized the order of the group over the individual, making the values of the group their identity. Thus, “complementarity”-the practice of conforming to moral values and refraining from revealing oneself in order to maintain harmony and order in a group-became important to them.
Existential anxiety in the modern world
These two approaches to existential anxiety are fundamentally similar in that they both assume that humans are capable of resolving their contradictions, albeit in different ways. However, in the former, it is difficult to escape the limitation that even if an individual answers endlessly about what an absolute being is in order to resolve the anxiety, it is only the individual’s own interpretation of the absolute being. The latter has the limitation that it is only a partial solution in that it ignores the relationship with the absolute being to resolve anxiety and focuses on resolving contradictions between individuals within the group. Both of these methods are anthropocentric methods that were devised at a time when urban civilization was in full swing and began to seek a perfect governing order within the walls of the city.
Primitive methods and their importance
On the other hand, there is another way of doing things. The most primitive of these begins by acknowledging the inevitability of the vertical and horizontal contradictions that loom over the object, leaving the absolute unknowable. It recognizes not only the limitations of an object’s ability to define the nature of an absolute being, but also the futility of attempting to do so. For this reason, contradictions between entities are also not seen as something that can be resolved. Since each entity is doomed to subordination to the Absolute, entities entrust themselves to objects endowed with charisma by the Absolute and live in total dependence on them. In this context, “charisma” refers to the ability to be granted unilaterally by an absolute being. Individuals temporarily parasitize on objects that are endowed with charisma and represent absolute beings, gathering and dispersing in response to changes in the environment in which they live. In this way, they neither identify nor turn away from the Absolute in order to resolve their existential anxiety. For them, existential anxiety is not resolved. They merely parasitize on the objects they are charismatized by, each of which becomes their identity.
Comparison and reflection
Compared to the previous two approaches, this approach is characterized by its view of contradictions as unresolvable and its view of an individual’s identity as temporary and therefore subject to change. If the logic of contestation and complementarity is the logic of human-centered cities that has emerged as civilization has developed in the last two or three millennia, this logic is the logic of the wilderness that humans have been living in for hundreds of thousands of years and have imprinted on their bodies as a way of being with all living things. According to this logic, our superior sentience is actually no different from other animals’ specialized survival abilities in terms of our inability to resolve existential anxiety.
The complexity of human existence
To understand the complexity of human existence, it is therefore necessary to consider these different approaches collectively. The polemics of Western philosophy, the complementarity of Eastern philosophy, and the reliance on charisma in primitive ways are solutions that have evolved in different cultures and times. In the modern world, these three approaches are mixed, and individuals try to resolve their existential anxiety by flexibly combining them according to their environment and circumstances. Ultimately, humans seek to overcome existential anxiety through the search for the absolute, harmony among individuals, and a humble acceptance of nature. It’s important to recognize that this is not a simple solution, but a process that requires constant thought and reflection.
