Every human being living on the planet Earth experiences life differently although some may argue for monism, dualism, and several other philosophies about existence and reality we all end up choosing otte, which is the best story for our life and circumstances. Rene Descartes is one of the most widely looked upon intellectual persons in western philosophy his most famous phrase “I think, therefore, I am “ has been acknowledged and followed for many of years along with the idea that human thought is logic and rational. However, Jean-Paul Sartre refuted the Cartesian dualism view on reality and formed anew — a reality based on the acting, living, and feeling individual. In this paper I will argue for existentialism and how it contributes to the world with a parsimonious explanation of reality, rather than the complicated, doubting Cartesian Dualist.
Upon everyday of human life we take in stimuli from our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and fingers to guide is in making decisions and socially interacting with others around us Unlike Descartes, Sartre believes that we do not think of existence but we feel it. Ashe states in his book Nausea: “To exist is simply to be there: those who exist let themselves be encountered, but you catt never deduce anything from them”. His idea of each and every being feeling their reality on their own is relatable attd easy to comprehend because even though we all see similar things in our clay mold of reality, we cannot ever understand what another being experiences as they shape their incoming stimuli into a visual perception of the surrounding environment. Each and every day I walk to class up the same hill arid the satne streets with my iPod blasting, although I have habituated to the surrounding environment that I perceive I always seem to notice different small details such as colors, smells. and sounds that I had never noticed before.
These new. novel stimuli that my brain receives creates new schemes of the environment and accommodate and assimilates it into other familiar categories that my senses have already stored in my brain. This mental process in the brain accounts for the idea that each individual creates different schemes every day to environments they may or may not have seen before. and the new schemes create another perception of reality in one’s mind that could be completely different from a person standing next to them. Although one may have already created schemes for one portion of the environment (reality) a new set always will present itself and the body/mind will accommodate and add another dimension to the absurdity of reality. Dualism, on the other hand, tells one to doubt our senses because they “have deceived us before,” yet how could the brain and tltought alone only function on knowledge floating througlt our mind.
Humans absorb information only through the senses and if we can’t rely on them tlten how could we even have rational, logical thought? Now, a Cartesian Dualist would argue that well maybe we cannot doubt our senses however, how do we explain the fact that we can only experience perfection in our mind, but not in the stimuli our senses detect and create into our own perception of the physical world? Descartes claims that since humanity has not experienced “perfection” in our physical reality, we can picture that “perfect,” innate being in our head. therefore God tnost be all-knowing. an innate, immaterial substance that created us. Though God is a being that seems to help guide people through life throughout human history when has his entity expressed its perfection attd given light to the chaos life ltas constantly brought to each attd every once of us. There has been so tnuch violence, death, racism, slavery, and rape. attd several other terrible acts of mankind that God seemingly doesn‘t make an “effort” to stop. Even though the belief in God and Descartes‘ idea that his being is innate in our minds to guide is may be easier to believe, due to the fact that humans desire to find meaning in life, facing reality and knowing that there isn’t a God or immaterial being watching over us is truly the simplest to follow for once an individual comes to acceptance with their ever-changing. meaningless life one can per say “live lile to the fullest.“
Once we can take the reins to our “condemn to freewill“ we can change our course of me whenever we want because the morals and nonexistent eyes of God have been erased. Ultimately, just as in the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, Meursault (main character) at the end of the novel comes to terms with the idea that reality is absurd and humans will always try to find meaning and order to feel safe. In most circumstances God is a tool used by humans to add meaning to their life, yet when you face reality and that you are alone you become happy Meursault came to terms with his lack of belief itt God, evett though he was condemned to public decapitation, and knew dying would cotne no matter what. He demonstrated that we should all think about life as a matter of chance for it has no purpose there is no order to reality just what you feel attd the absurdity, chaos, attd nonsense that you can develop your own order of and live life because “every existing thing is bortt without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness attd dies by chance.“
