Accepting the Paradoxical Nature of Human Existence: A Dialogue

The following essay was originally submitted as an asignment for my Existential Psychotherapy module. Our lecturer asked us to critically evaluate the claim “that existentialism encourages people to accept, and learn how to negotiate, the paradoxical nature of human existence”.

While the essay was intended to be an APA academic paper, I decided to change it into a dialogue of three acts prior to its submission. This felt more appropriate to philosophical nature of the module.

Jean: Dearest Blake, a proposition! The philosophy of Existentialism encourages people to accept, and learn how to negotiate, the paradoxical nature of human existence.

Blake: I’m not sure I understand this proposition.

Jean: That existentialism encourages people to accept…

Blake: No, the part about human existence being paradoxical in its nature… How is that so?

Jean: Oh, I believe that is predicated on various premises that find approximate convergence on intertwining tenets pertaining to the endemic givens of existence such as Agency, Death, Freedom, Meaning and Isolation. These givens intrinsically include within in them a reference to their dialectic opposite (Cohen, 2014. p.32).

Blake: …WHAT!?

Jean: As I understand it, this ‘paradox’ alludes to a duality within a unity; an opposing nature existing within a single phenomenon such as, but not limited to, the human being. The experience of this duality instantiates a sense of ’schism’, that is a fundamental, a-priori feature of being a human (Cohen, 2014).

Blake: What do you mean by a sense of schism?

Jean: In existentialism this unified experience of opposites, and our embodied perception of it, is a well-established conceptualization of humanity’s character (Cohen, 2014). How a human may conceive of themselves is, what Becker (1973) refers to as, being a union of opposites: the combination of conscious and unconscious experiences that constitute a person’s sense of their own being is a unique essence of that person. However, while this uniqueness is grounded in a concrete embodiment that is generally shared among living persons, this unique self transcends constitution of the universal embodiment (Cooper, 2016. pp.43–47).

Blake: So, despite us all being biologically predisposed to the same ubiquitous kind of bodies, fundamentally our ipseity is unique?

Jean: [checking the dictionary for the definition of Ipseity] Eh… In essence, yes! Another aspect where opposites meet is the human need for absolute meaning in a universe that is both inherently devoid of such certainties, and silent to our need for such meaning (Hawkins, 2018). This unrequited need characterizes a tension that Camus (1942) called ‘the absurd’: the clash between human longing for rationality, objective meaningfulness, and the apparent irrationality or objective meaninglessness assumed in existence. Furthermore, despite shared characteristics of our being, the individual is fundamentally alone. This aloneness, or isolation, Yalom (2020) terms as an ‘unbridgeable gap’ that besets all humans despite how close two or more individuals may become. Within this is its inverse corollary; man by their nature strives for autonomy yet denies the isolation that is intrinsic to it, as to be alone entails accepting the sole responsibility of our lives which, it is argued, we dread (Yalom, 2020).

Blake: Dread… huh, all of this is making me a little anxious… is this the schism?

Jean: Interestingly, dread, or anxiety has a privileged position in existentialism, particularly in existential psychotherapy as it is linked with people’s reaction to the unfathomable and ineffable paradox of being in relation to the universal (Wulfing, 2008). For it was Yalom (2020. p.251) who stated mankind’s reckoning with paradox is our congenital “Achilles’ heel” that drives humans to actively deny or overcome the dread of these existential givens. Denial responses, be they anxiety driven, conscious or otherwise, is a universal norm of the primary human condition (Becker, 1997).

Using a highly specific example of suicide, Yalom (2020. pp.121–122) illustrates how defenses against the perils of existence may become overextended and contradict their purpose; very generally he posits that the committing of suicide itself may be done in order to establish a sense of control that is lost from the inevitable lack of control which death ultimately renders upon all living things. In this case it is the human fear, suffering and futility the prospect of death subjects us to which prompts an important distinction yet one that is ultimately without a difference*: the human attempts to subvert the lack of control by an act of their choosing yet death is the result whether they choose or not.

Blake: Accept death, deny death… die anyway.

Jean: Quite right!

Blake: So, paradox not only characterizes the hereness and suchness of existing but permeates how we handle the unease of existential givens?

Jean: Indeed. Human awareness entails such chiasmic irony… whereby innate survival instincts are paired with an awareness of death. We may comprehend the divine beauty of living and the terror of dying. Within this terror is posited as further reinforcing the motivation for shielding ourselves from awareness of mortality, thus death-transcending beliefs emerge to overcome this fear and anxiety that this awareness creates (Vahrmeyer & Cassar, 2017).

Blake: Doesn’t the assumption that all people will fear death give little space for advocating those who claim they have already found a means to reconcile their awareness of death? (Cooper, 2016). Despite death anxiety being an undoubted aspect of being-in-the-world, to limit our conceptualization of people as such, do we potentially negate an experiential reality of individuals when faced with their mortality and being-towards-death? (Vahrmeyer & Cassar, 2017. p.163).

Jean: I’m not sure what you mean.

Blake: Apropos existential psychotherapy; the risk of labelling an emotional experience as being necessarily terrific or dreadful may arguably perpetuate the very ‘denial experience’ it seeks to elucidate and further overcome. For example, in an analysis by Vehrmeyer and Cassar (2017) it was found that the term ‘anxiety’ paralyzes the spectrum of experiences that being-towards-death may evoke. Therapeutic models are substantiated on conceptualized frameworks of mental illness, as such there is no ubiquitous explanation for the mental illness a person may suffer from (Hawkins, 2018. p.137). Might the connotations that pathologize ontological experiences reify yet another shield, thus propagate meaning-making propositions against the full surrender to those emotionally variable experiences of death and the unknown, where ultimately no meaning may be garnered?

Jean: Is that to say, if we assume death must be one thing, do we deny it can be another thing?

Blake: Yes, if we preoccupy ourselves with what death must or ought to mean for a person, do we leave absent possibly meanings of what or how death could be experienced for that person?

Jean: Well, a specific tenet of existentialism is that the absence of meaning does influence people’s mental health: such voids are correlated with depression, anxiety and drug addiction. When an individual’s meaning system — which allows them to function in the world — becomes threatened, the ensuing panic may result in mental disarray or even violence (Hawkins, 2018. p.35).

Albeit I do take your point about pathologizing. Remember, denial is rarely a conscious choice but serves a protective function like many defenses (Trevithick, 2017). Indeed, Becker (1973) posits mental illness as an adaptation following the inability to assimilate with prevailing cultural systems that usually function to reconcile or mitigate the terror of the paradoxes *cough* religion *cough*. Avoiding the terror of death enmeshes with the personality in extremis so much so that the ordinary capacity to bear up under terror becomes crippled.

As for no meaning, an individual’s responsibility is to give one’s life meaning, yet when this is prevented, their freedom becomes severely compromised (Cohen, 2014. p.29). Cooper (2016) summarizes that death is an uncrossable roadblock that none of our projects and possibilities may extend beyond. Neither can we fully control the facticity of our inevitable endings, rather what can be chosen it is argued is how we embrace these ontological limits; in an unfree and limited existence, we are free to decide how we approach those limits and what attitude to take to them. Of the multifarious attitudes to choose from, Hawkins (2018. p.137) suggests that cultivating “lucid awareness of the human condition” serves to liberate an individual’s restricted view of world (and ultimately of self).

Blake: With choice in mind the question remains, which praxis of existentialism is conducive for ‘acceptance of’ and ‘flourishing within’ these absurdities? At least, how can therapy be utilized for mitigating the possibilities of mental illness or self-destruction?

Jean: As discussed, Existential psychotherapy is predicated on the assumption that the client experiences anxiety with issues of existential conflict from ontological paradox. It is specifically the therapeutic relationship that mediates the person’s growth from their own defense mechanisms regarding these conflicts and their destructive influence (May & Yalom, 1989). Regarding attitudes and lucid awareness of the human condition, it is the human-to-human relational praxis itself which facilitates an awe-based attitude to the mystery of existence, which in turn offers individuals a means for flourishing in existential paradox (Hawkins, 2018).

Blake: An ‘awe-based attitude’?

Jean: Awe-based attitude is an outlook, the cultivation of which gradually allows one to accept the existential paradox (including its terror) without the immediate ascent of settling on reified, yet ultimately impermanent, meanings. The profundity in being moved by our consciousness experience of the mystery of existence, from the constrictions of humility to the expansiveness of wonder, defines the ‘awe’ within fully accepting of paradoxes, absurdity and our place within this cosmic condition (Schneider, 2003; Hawkins, 2018. p.18).

Blake: Whoa…

Jean: Exactly! This verbose definition aptly articulates the human capacity of grasping all phenomena that ranges within finite and infinite… including that of all human potential. Essentially, it’s an open-minded practice that balances the limiting nature of the human condition with and acceptance of the ambiguity, paradox and mystery (Hawkins, 2018). This balance aligns with what Kierkegaard (1942) suggests as synthesizing how we view all existing phenomena in existence along the infinite with finite. Holding these two factors together allows for, what Schneider (2003) believes, the person’s capacity for being expansive yet centered, versatile yet constrained and to wonder despite their terror concerning the mystery and paradoxes when there is a need to be.

Blake: Okay that’s, like, the ‘what’…but what’s the ‘how’ of acceptance in this outlook?

Jean: As a therapist, our own ability to embrace paradox and uncertainty is positively correlated with attending to the client’s unfolding and reckoning with their existential distress (Adams, 2014). I’m thinking back to your “pathologizing” proposition: as therapists, the willingness to let the client’s experience of dreaded death-awareness into the room (and by and large into our own experience, without attaching to our defenses, labels and prejudices to it) affords a congruent encounter that may essentially benefit the client as it levels the playing-field permitting a relationality (Varhmeyer & Cassar, 2017. p.156).

This encounter in practice parallels Buber’s ‘I-Thou relationship’, where two individuals remain open to their interlocutor’s fundamental uniqueness and how the ‘betweenness’ of this relationship is mutually co-constructed (Yalom 2020). Each client’s felt subjective experiences of death awareness will differ greatly (Vahrmeyer & Cassar, 2017). In cultivating an I-Thou attitude of encountering all phenomena, including people as their uniqueness and mystery unfolds, not only do we remain in a mutually constructed open relationship to the other but maintaining an interest in experiencing this other in all their aspects (Hawkins, 2018).

The importance of this shared engaging with the client cannot be overstated as the more a client’s experience is heard the more their being-in-the-world is disclosed (Varhrmeyer & Cassar, 2017. p.15). The role of an analyst here is to understand and give the conditions that enlighten these troublesome fictions that individuals cultivate to shield death anxiety, meaningless and isolation. To point the way from horror to an ‘aporia’ that may grant freedom.

Blake: Is not the freedom these conditions bring, at best, only a hope… a hope that can only potentiate overcoming these fictions rather than guarantee it? For if we are to provide a ‘clear’ and ‘absolute’ solution for acceptance, do we run the risk of kicking against the ineluctable prick that existence assumes?

Jean: To elucidate the destructive reactions existential paradox may afford is to create the means for avoiding them and thus give imperative for improving life (Hawkins, 2018) and other therapeutic implications that the self-reflective animal stands to benefit from with the acceptance of the paradox.

Blake: I get that, but doesn’t this ‘acceptance’ denote a static state? The progression toward such having connotations of linearity, rather than seeing the reconciliation of the given paradoxes as a transient form of self-relating that is an ongoing grapple of living? (Cooper, 2016).

Jean: Have you ever read Merleau-Ponty’s ‘Phenomenology of Perception?’

Blake: I haven’t.

Jean: I don’t blame you… it’s all in the Preface anyway!

But he does highlight how examining the breakdown of the system reveals how that system works. Furthermore, to accept the paradox idiosyncratic to nature itself is to break away from our general acceptance of it (Merleau-Ponty, 2002. p.xv). In essence, reducing something so it can possibly be understood gives us the understanding that it is impossible to completely reduce something. Ontology itself implies a plurality that prevents understanding human nature as a singular reference point (Biricheva, 2009. p.608)

Blake: Another chiasmic irony?

Jean: Possibly so… Irony certainly has its place in existentialism. The jist of Merleau-Ponty (2002) is the argument of there being no singular thought that embraces all thought. From which one might infer there is no singular consistent acceptance of something that is by its nature not singularly consistent. To accept existential paradox does not imply conjuring a clever reconciliation of said paradox as to nullify it completely as though it were a matter of simple contraction for want of a logical sublation, but to illustrate how wry irony pervades the questioning endeavour if one chooses to see it as such. Paradox through numerous modalities of philosophical inquiry is instrumental for indicating a sophisticated, if not problematic, situation within Being that inspires investigation. As such, it is the actual personal absorption one experiences with paradoxical irrationality that makes it difficult to deal with in any succinct, explanatory way (Biricheva, 2019. p.611).

Recognizing the paradox of human existence is what Cohen (2014) refers to as the irony of the human comedy, the irony which is further conducive to the capacity of self-detachment. Kierkegaraad (1971) posits that no authentic life for humans is possible without irony, thus self-detachment is a key element in phenomenological freedom as it enables the capacity to radically evaluate our ingrained personal values (Kierkegaard, 1971; Cohen, 2014). One must go through their anxiety experience (to a state beyond reason, where logic fails and no-one can follow) to become certain there is nothing rationally certain at all (Wulfing, 2008).

Blake: So, if I understood you, by examining paradox we can choose to detach from how we are defensively predisposed to accept paradox as something innately dreadful? The acceptance of ontological paradox engenders an embrace of paradox, yet recognizes that with the absurdity the givens of existence afford, this acceptance may not always occur.

Jean: I believe you are getting it, that seems consonant with your prior retort at least… The absurd is conceived of as only the starting point whereby lucid consciousness of the tension inherent in the absurd may potentiate a worthwhile living, without the anxious need to escape it! (Camus, 1942; Hawkins, 2018). Not only escape, rather, the mysteries of paradox are bound to evoke varied and bespoke reactions to them. Becker and Camus respectively proffer ‘absurd creation’ as contribution to the ecology of living within existential paradox (Hawkins, 2018). As such, might we in turn creatively proffer that the existential practice of an awe-based human relating synthesized with cultivating an I-Thou attitude sufficiently accounts for such ecologically varied interpretations? As a hermeneutic relational and ongoing dialogue may be practiced, the subsequent increased self-knowing and self-awareness may grant a person’s recognition of choosing their attitude to these paradoxes (Gadamer, 1989).

Blake: And with choice comes the dizziness of freedom. For assuming responsibility as individuals against the demands of life is to encounter the angst conducive for a reflective, meaningful life (van Deurzen, 2003). Through existentialism, there is the means to desist fleeing from mortality and to own the responsibility that is intrinsic to life, as appose to the conquest of anxiety that comes with the fixation to it (Vahrmeyer & Casser, 2017. p.161).

Jean: And within the context of existential therapy, each client’s conflict with the givens of Being are unique to the person. Thus, as therapists being able to receive each client’s inner encounter may deepen mankind’s differentialist understanding of paradox and the inherent struggle of holding dialectical opposites (Biricheva, 2019).

Blake: By holding the presence of their tension, we practice acceptance of their perspective being-in-paradox?

Jean: “Being-in-paradox”… huh, I like that! More succinctly the I-Thou relationship may be viewed as acceptance practiced in a participative experiencing. By holding this space, we introduce an opportunity of bearing something that is experienced as unbearable, the aforementioned “schism” which presents as a sense of incompatibility that arrests our thought toward either immediate resolution or escape from that incompatibility (Biricheva, 2019). Presently this schism was made accessibly tangible through your experience of anxiety. Despite your solitary experience, there are various situations in which acceptance may be afforded, such as the I-Thou dialectic. Despite being separate, dialectically opposing this, each person in Being universally confronts ontological paradox. And if humans are collectively beset by the same predicament of absurdity, who is to say this does not imply a means for solidarity?

Blake: An absurd solidarity… I feel we have circled back to where we have started.

Jean: The question remains, do you accept that absurdity?

Blake: Well… I’ve heard the justification for human existence as being paradoxical in its nature and the means for encouraging one to accept it as such… but, I don’t think…

Jean: Good, negotiate that schism!

References:

Adams, M. (2014). Human development and existential counselling psychology. Counselling Psychology Review, 29(2), 34–42.

Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: The Free Press

Biricheva, E. V. (2019). The nature of conflict: Ontological paradox and existential effort of acceptance.

Camus, A. (1942). The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays, Albert Camus.

Cohen, S. (2014). Human being as existential paradox. Appraisal: A Journal of Constructive and Post-Critical Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies, 10, 28–32.

Cooper, M. (2016). Existential therapies. Sage.

Gadamer, H. G. (1989). Truth and method (J. Weinsheimer & DG Marshall, trans.). New York: Continuum.

Hawkins, M. A. (2018). Giving the void its colours: The art of living in existential paradox (Doctoral dissertation, Education: Faculty of Education).

Kierkegaard, S. (1942). Concluding unscientific postscripts. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 95(6), 776

May, R., & Yalom, I. (1989). Existential psychotherapy. Current psychotherapies, 363–402.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge Classics) (Volume 85) (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Schneider, K. J. (2003). The fluid center: An awe-based challenge to humanity. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 43(3), 133–145.

Trevithick, P. (2011). Understanding defences and defensiveness in social work. Journal of Social Work Practice, 25(4), 389–412.

Vahrmeyer, M., & Cassar, S. (2017). The paradox of finitude in the context of infinitude: is death denial an essential aspect of being in the world?. Existential Analysis: Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, 28(1).

van Deurzen, E. (2003). 13 Existentialism and existential psychotherapy. Heart and soul: The therapeutic face of philosophy, 216.

Wulfing, N. (2008). Anxiety in existential philosophy and the question of the paradox. Existential Analysis, 19(1), 73–81.

Yalom, I. D. (2020). Existential psychotherapy. Hachette UK.

Footnotes:

*the committing of suicide itself is done in order to establish a sense of control that is lost from the inevitable lack of control which death ultimately renders upon all living things. In this case it is the human fear, suffering and futility the prospect of death subjects us to which prompts an important distinction yet one that is ultimately without a difference*

While I was primarily referencing Yalom here, my lecturer had subsequently pointed out this statement is too general and that there are many who would disagree with this statement such as:

• Kierkegaard- Seen as a finality and a certainty, however he further states there is no absolute proof only consequences of your actions. His religious beliefs are evident in meaning to death.
• Tillich - “Trans-temporal Unity”
• Rollo May - “The Courage to Create”