#existensialism

He's not taking it as well as he seems to. It's easier because of his Vessel to completely forget he's not a Pikachu. It's easy to use his ghostly body to do things he would have loved to do as a Pikachu.

It's still a moment of shock when he is brutally reminded that- no, he's not a Pikachu anymore.

Seeing his vessel doesn't trigger this- its always another party. Mimikyu pointing out that he's just like them- or when other Pikachu's avoid him and he's reminded he's an outsider.

No Pikachu will match up to his prowress because he's not a Pikachu- he can never evolve anymore. He doesn't *get* the option to choose to evolve or not to evolve because the choice was ripped away from him.

I can't decide, whether I should live or die 🎶

'Cause there might not be a heaven, but I no longer need to try 🎶

No wonder why I'm feeling dead inside. 🎶

It's way too long since last I cried. 🎶

Lock your doors and stay inside. 🎶

French existentialism

French existentialism has developed into a separate school within existential philosophy. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) is considered its main representative. This French school of thought must be clearly distinguished from German existential philosophy – both from Jaspers, who rejects existentialism as a "degeneration" of the original existential philosophical approach, and from Heidegger, because although French existentialism was inspired by Heidegger, it then went its own way. Apart from Sartre's particular talent as a writer, it is significant that a philosophy can be presented in the form of novels and plays. Like no other, the philosophy of existence always focuses on concrete existence. Sartre also wrote theoretical works.

One of the most important is "Being and Nothingness". It was published in 1943, during the German occupation of France. This is not without significance for our understanding. The external collapse of 1940 was also a collapse of ideals and ideologies. Mistrust, bitterness and doubt about an order that had so quickly succumbed to the onslaught of an enemy were the prevailing mood. On the other hand, the French were united by the desire to drive out the enemy. Doubts about everything fundamental were combined with absolute certainty about the most immediate practical task: resistance.

As Albert Camus said, what was needed was a philosophy that could "reconcile negative thoughts with the possibility of positive action." Sartre created this philosophy. In some respects, Sartre can be regarded as a student of Heidegger. He knows him well. Many of Heidegger's concepts reappear in Sartre's work in apt French translations. Nevertheless, he deviates considerably from Heidegger, even in fundamental matters. This applies above all to the basic concept of existence. Existence in Sartre's sense is simple, pure, naked being, being in itself, something "that is not even what it is, but simply is."

The following passages from La Nausée perhaps best illustrate what I mean: "It was breathtaking. Never before had I realised what it meant to exist. I was like the others, like those who stroll along the seashore in their spring clothes. I said, like them: the sea is green; that white dot up there is a seagull, but I did not feel that it existed, that the seagull was an existing seagull; usually, existence is hidden ... And now, all of a sudden: with one blow, it was there, it was clear as the sun: existence had suddenly revealed itself. It had lost its inoffensive appearance of an abstract category: it was the substance of things themselves, this root was made of existence...' 'To exist is simply to be there; what exists appears, can be encountered, but can never be deduced.'

*Existence is not something you can think about from a distance: it must suddenly overwhelm you, it remains above you, it weighs heavily on your heart like a large immobile animal – otherwise there is nothing at all. Let us now look at human beings! It should be noted that Sartre has something in common with Jaspers and also with Heidegger: In contrast to the philosophical tradition since Plato, he does not regard man as a being whose possibilities of existence are predetermined. Man does not "be" in the sense that things are. Rather, he is initially "nothing." And he must first, as it were, in constant creation out of nothing, make himself into what he is. He is "condemned to freedom." This thesis has earned Sartre the accusation of nihilism – not entirely unjustified, as we can see. Man is free. This brings us to the second task that Sartre's philosophy should fulfil, according to Albert Camus: to enable "positive action". Man can "engage" in the world. Through action, they can establish values. "In this world in which I engage, my actions flush out values like partridges." Human self-realisation occurs in free design ("projet fondamental"). The nothingness from which humans rise up thus constantly surrounds them; their freedom is in constant danger of falling back into hardening, into mere existence. "Nothingness annihilates" – Sartre coined the new verb "néantiser" for this Heideggerian concept.

It is clear that values do not have an existence of their own for Sartre, nor can they be timelessly valid – regardless of whether we strive for them or not. "My freedom alone is the foundation of values." Sartre's teaching places an extraordinary responsibility on human beings. Human beings can only pull themselves out of nothingness through their own efforts, as it were by their own bootstraps, and defend themselves against its constant threat. They are solely responsible for themselves – no one else, especially not God, as Sartre is an atheist. And human beings are not only responsible for themselves and to themselves, but always at the same time to others and for others. Sartre's ethics are rooted in the inextricable intertwining of the one self with all others, in intersubjectivity, as his plays in particular show. It is therefore logical that Sartre strove from the outset to understand and shape social and political life. The main criticism levelled at Sartre is that his radical concept of freedom overlooks the fact that human beings are not absolutely free without any preconditions, but are bound by conditions that are not subject to their choice, such as being born into a particular people, a particular gender, a particular time — a circumstance that Heidegger calls "thrownness." Other representatives of existentialism in France include, above all, the aforementioned Albert Camus (1913-1960), who, like Sartre, wrote novels and plays in addition to theoretical works – he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 – and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961). Merleau-Ponty's thinking is indebted to Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger; he was originally friends with Sartre, but the two later fell out. Camus sees humans in an absurd world that is alien, incomprehensible and unknowable to them. Sisyphus appears as a parable of this human situation ("The Myth of Sisyphus – An Essay on the Absurd", 1942, German 1950). Merleau-Ponty's central concept of "ambiguité" (literally: ambiguity, uncertainty) also refers to the paradoxical, anti-logical character ...

[taken from Kleine Weltgeschichte der Philosophie by Hans Joachim Störig, translated with the help of linguee]

Dear grandfather-I-never-had,

First, I hope that grandmother and you are doing well and that the summer has gifted you with some shiny moments in-midst of your green oasis. 

In your last letter, you asked me how I liked the book "Being and Nothingness". Let me explain why it took me so long to read it and why I think, it was a little bit more an act of surviving rather than learning. 

As you know, there are people who say Hegel is difficult. They whisper his name like frightened children whisper “monster” in the dark. But after reading Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, I must tell you: compared to Sartre, Hegel is a sweet, clear-singing poet of the Rhine, a man who would bring you roses and read you bedtime verses. Sartre, however, brings you no roses … he brings you sentences so long that by the time you reach the end, you have forgotten the beginning, and in between there are only two lonely little words holding the whole megalomaniac thing together like a thin rope-bridge in a thunderstorm.

I read on, like a stubborn pilgrim through a forest of French philosophy, the undergrowth thick with “being-for-itself” and “nothingness,” until I found the one clearing where the sun broke through: his thoughts on time. Oh, grandfather, that was worth the journey. Sartre shows how we live in three time-lines at once: past, present, and future - and how, curiously, the moment we speak of ourselves and our habits, we are already turning into the past. Like when you tell me, “I always take a walk in the morning,” and then the next day it rains, and you stay in. Already the habit is history. It is both beautiful and a little sad, like finding last year’s spring flowers pressed between the pages of an old book.

But let me confess once more: the reading was so heavy, so exhausting, that I began to suspect I did not love reading as much as I thought I did. Three months, grandfather! Three months for one book, and in between I fled into other books like a man escaping from a too-serious dinner party into the street, just to breathe.

Still, there is a strange pride in having survived him. One feels like a mountaineer who has climbed not the Matterhorn, but an especially difficult paragraph.

Thank you for being there, for introducing me into worlds my legs are actually not trained for, for inviting me into landscapes my mind is not extended enough, because it helps me to get a better idea of how limited I am and how much more lessons I need to become a conversation partner, who is worth your intellect.

I love you, 

Elvin

PS: Give grandmother a kiss on her forehead-head for me <3