But the question of authenticity (which more or less corresponds to the
subjectivity-reflexion pair of attitudes discussed earlier) is another
matter. If this mode of thinking can be achieved, it is capable of
making a great deal of difference to one's life. Once one recognizes
that one is totally responsible for all one's decisions and actions, one
can no longer hide behind convenient ready-made excuses; and this,
though it makes life rather less comfortable by removing one's habitual
blinkers, endows one with unexpected self-reliance and resilience in
difficult situations.
And once it becomes habitual to think in this way the task of living is
discovered to be a full-time job and not merely a drudge to be got
through by killing time as best one can. In other words, it abolishes
boredom.
Finally, as I think I mentioned some time ago, it is only in this
authentic or responsible attitude that the Buddha's Teaching becomes
intelligible.
You say that I am one who thinks not only of other people but also of
himself as 'they'. I see what you mean and I will not deny it, but it
needs stating differently. Two paragraphs back I pointed out that it is
inherently impossible to see oneself (unless one is simply thinking of
one's body) as one sees another person (at least, not authentically), so
I cannot be 'they' to myself as others are 'they' to me. People, for
the most part, live in the objective-immediate mode (discussed earlier).
This means that they are totally absorbed in and identified with
positive worldly interests and projects, of which there is an unending
variety. That is to say, although they differ from one another in their
individual natures, the contents of their respective positivities, they are all alike in being positive.
Thus, although the fundamental relation between positives is conflict
(on account of their individual differences), they apprehend one another
as all being in the same boat of positivity, and they think of men
generally in terms of human solidarity, and say 'we'.
But the person who lives in the subjective-reflexive mode is absorbed
in and identified with, not the positive world, but himself. The world,
of course, remains 'there' but he regards it as accidental (Husserl says
that he 'puts it in parentheses, between brackets'), and this means
that he dismisses whatever positive identification he may have as
irrelevant. He is no longer 'a politician' or 'a fisherman', but 'a
self'. But what we call a 'self', unless it receives positive
identification from outside, remains a void, in other words a negative.
A 'self', however, is positive in this respect—it seeks identification.
So a person who identifies himself with himself finds that his
positivity consists in negativity—not the confident 'I am this' or 'I am
that' of the positive, but a puzzled, perplexed, or even anguished,
'What am I?'. (This is where we meet the full force of Kierkegaard's
'concern and unrest'.) Eternal repetition of this eternally unanswerable
question is the beginning of wisdom (it is the beginning of
philosophy); but the temptation to provide oneself with a definite
answer is usually too strong, and one falls into a wrong view of one
kind or another. (It takes a Buddha to show the way out of this
impossible situation. For the sotāpanna, who has understood the
Buddha's essential Teaching, the question still arises, but he sees
that it is unanswerable and is not worried; for the arahat the question no longer arises at all, and this is final peace.)
This person, then, who has his centre of gravity in himself instead of
in the world (a situation that, though usually found as a congenital
feature, can be acquired by practice), far from seeing himself with the
clear solid objective definition with which other people can be seen,
hardly sees himself as anything definite at all: for himself he is, at
best, a 'What, if anything?'. It is precisely this lack of assured
self-identity that is the secret strength of his position—for him the
question-mark is the essential and his positive identity in the world is
accidental, and whatever happens to him in a positive sense the
question-mark still remains, which is all he really cares about. He is
distressed, certainly, when his familiar world begins to break up, as it
inevitably does, but unlike the positive he is able to fall back on
himself and avoid total despair. It is also this feature that worries
the positives; for they naturally assume that everybody else is a
positive and they are accustomed to grasp others by their positive
content, and when they happen to meet a negative they find nothing to
take hold of.
It quite often happens that a positive attributes to a negative various
strange secret motives, supposing that he has failed to understand him
(in a positive sense); but what he has failed to understand is that
there is actually nothing there to be understood. But a negative, being
(as you point out) a rare bird himself, is accustomed to positives, by
whom he is surrounded, and he does not mistake them for fellow
negatives. He understands (or at least senses) that the common factor of
positivity that welds them together in the 'we' of human solidarity
does not extend to him, and mankind for him is 'they'. When a negative
meets another negative they tend to coalesce with a kind of easy mutual
indifference. Unlike two positives, who have the differences in their
respective positivities to keep them apart, two negatives have nothing
to separate them, and one negative recognizes another by his peculiar
transparency—whereas a positive is opaque.
Yes, I had my tongue in my cheek when I suggested mindfulness of death as a subject of meditation for you. But also,
though you could hardly know this, I had a perfectly serious purpose at
the back of my mind. It happens that, for Heidegger, contemplation of
one's death throughout one's life is the key to authenticity. As Sartre
has observed, Heidegger has not properly understood the nature of death,
regarding it as my possibility, whereas in fact it is always
accidental, even in suicide (I cannot kill myself directly, I can only
cut my throat and wait for death to come). But death of one's
body (which is always seen from outside, like other people's bodies) can
be imagined and the implications envisaged. And this is really all that
is necessary (though it must be added that there are other ways than
contemplation of death of becoming authentic). Here, then, is a summary
of Heidegger's views on this matter (from 6ET, pp. 96-7):
Death, then, is the clue to authentic living, the eventual and omnipresent possibility which binds together and stabilizes my existence.... I anticipate death...by living in the presence of death as always immediately possible and as undermining everything. This full-blooded acceptance...of death, lived out, is authentic personal existence. Everything is taken as contingent. Everything is devalued. Personal existence and everything encountered in personal existence is accepted as nothing, as meaningless, fallen under the blow of its possible impossibility. I see all my possibilities as already annihilated in death, as they will be, like those of others in their turn. In face of this capital possibility which devours all the others, there are only two alternatives: acceptance or distraction. Even this choice is a rare privilege, since few are awakened by dread to the recognition of the choice, most remain lost in the illusions of everyday life. To choose acceptance of death as the supreme and normative possibility of my existence is not to reject the world and refuse participation in its daily preoccupations, it is to refuse to be deceived and to refuse to be identified with the preoccupations in which I engage: it is to take them for what they are worth—nothing. From this detachment springs the power, the dignity, the tolerance, of authentic personal existence.
Sydney Smith on suicide sounds most educative—on the condition that he is approached not too hastily so as to avoid lack of reaction (objectivity) or inappropriate reaction (immediacy). One needs to be subjective enough to taste the horror of the human situation one's own situation—and reflexive enough to face it without panic.* And to think that human birth is accounted by the Buddha a good destiny, hard to come by!
*The relationship between these four attitudes—objectivity, immediacy, subjectivity, and reflexion—is worth consideration. At first sight it might seem that there is no difference between immediacy and subjectivity, or between objectivity and reflexion. Subjectivity and objectivity, certainly, are opposed; and so are immediacy and reflexion. But immediacy (which is naive acceptance of whatever is presented) is compatible with objectivity, as we see from Thomas Huxley's advice to the scientist: 'Sit down before fact as a little child'—; and reflexion is compatible with subjectivity (for subjectivity is 'being oneself', and reflexion, being 'self awareness', is within subjectivity). Thus*:
In emotional excitement objectivity and reflexion alike tend to vanish, and subjectivity then approximates to immediacy. It is this that gives subjectivity its bad name; for few people know of any subjectivity beyond emotional immediacy. Their escape from emotion is towards objectivity, in the form of distractions, rather than towards reflexion, which is the more difficult way of self control. Goethe once described the advice 'Know Thyself' (inscribed in the temple of Apollo at Delphi) as 'a singular requisition with which no man complies, or indeed ever will comply: man is by all his senses and efforts directed to externals—to the world about him'.
*A loose undated note found among the Ven. Ñānavīra's papers, not part of his letters but apparently written after this letter, included a more complex version of the diagram. The top line was labelled 'multiplies into COMPATIBLES'; the bottom line was labelled 'divides into COMPATIBLES'; and the diagonal line between OBJECTIVITY and REFLEXION was extended in both directions. To the upper left it was extended to the label 'Statistics'; to the lower right to the label 'Ontology'.
**
[On Heidegger's notion of the 'inauthentic' man:] The word 'inauthentic' is used by Heidegger to describe the ostrich-like attitude of the man who seeks to escape from his inescapable self-responsibility by becoming an anonymous member of a crowd. This is the normal attitude of nearly everybody. To be 'authentic' a man must be constantly and deliberately aware of his total responsibility for what he is. For example, a judge may disclaim personal responsibility for sentencing people to punishment. He will say that as a judge it is his duty to punish. In other words it is as an anonymous representative of the Judiciary that he punishes, and it is the Judiciary that must take the responsibility. This man is inauthentic. If he wishes to be authentic he must think to himself, whenever he sits on the Bench or draws his salary, 'Why do I punish? Because, as a judge, it is my duty to punish. Why am I a judge? Is it perhaps my duty to be a judge? No. I am a judge because I myself choose to be a judge. I choose to be one who punishes in the name of the Law. Can I, if I really wish, choose not to be a judge? Yes, I am absolutely free at any moment to stop being a judge, if I so choose. If this is so, when a guilty man comes up before me for sentence, do I have any alternative but to punish him? Yes, I can get up, walk out of the courtroom, and resign my job. Then if, instead, I punish him, am I responsible? I am totally responsible.'
