The EXISTENTIAL CHOICES of MAN

Confronted with his distinctive existence, Man must tacitly or explicitly choose to adopt one of these approaches to the otherness around him. This choice determines the intellectual commitments informed by it while at the same time those commitments appear to influence initial choice. None can escape the circular relationship of choice and commitment; nevertheless, the freedom of the personal existent rests on this circularity. For the sake of clarity, I propose a 4-square diagram of existential stances:

“Principled” – The person who adopts this stance believes that 1) reality is essentially ordered such that things necessarily happen as they do because things happen for a reason and 2) the essential order is rational in such a way that the human intellect can gain knowledge of it. With proper application, reason can bring the human intellect to understand the actual and active agencies working to proscribe the nature and behavior of sensible bodies. The pretense of this stance is that it can speak authoritatively about any philosophical concern. Apparent paradoxes serve as signs to reconsider premises that result in incoherent or mutually exclusive conclusions.

“Pragmatic” – The person that adopts this stance believes that 1) reality is essentially ordered; however, 2) neither the evidence of the senses nor the artifices of reason can be relied upon to explain how things actually are rather than just how they appear to be. By severing the relationship between phenomena and an assumed nomena, this stance produces intractable paradoxes which its advocates generally embrace.

“Magical” – By adopting this stance a person professes that 1) reality is accidentally ordered such that things happen as they do for no reason; and yet, 2) this order can still be rationally discerned by identifying symbolic relationships between phenomena. As such, no necessary constraints exist on the power of some things to exert influence on other things; nevertheless such efficacies of affect are taken as brute facts.

“Serendipitous” – People who take this stance believe 1) that reality is accidentally ordered and 2) reason can only construct passive interpretations of subjective experience that may or may not coincide with reality as it actually is. This stance produces many of the same dilemmas of the “Pragmatic” stance; however, its advocates generally ignore them.

Based on their existential choices people get led to different theological doctrines and conclusions about the findings of natural science. I see this all the time. Two people may each have perfectly logical positions and yet vehemently disagree based on their existential pre-commitments. I believe that recognizing these pre-commitments is necessary to foster healthy and productive discussions about the ‘big picture’ questions about human life.