David Foster Wallace Human Nature and Existentialism Questions Quality should be assured. No plagiarism, no grammar errors please. Questions 6 to 9 should | Course Hero
David Foster Wallace Human Nature and Existentialism Questions Quality should be assured. No plagiarism, no grammar errors please. Questions 6 to 9 should be 200 words each and should be provided in separate documents. For the Last question 10 should be a 4 page double spaced Follow the instruction keenly Answer the following questions. After completing the following
readings for each question.
Your answer should be at least two paragraphs ending with a question
for peers.
I need all work answer by Tuesday July 19 Noon the latest. Please note
that the answer must have two quotes. One from the link reading and
one from the INFORMATION I have added here.
QUESTION NUMBER 6
For this week’s Discussion you must post a reflection that compares and integrates
Wallace’s argument for belief in (a) God with/to those arguments for Belief in God found
in Kierkegaard and Marcel. Of course, without quoting directly from the text/speech
explain what Wallace’s argument is (reasons are) for belief in the Divine. How is his
position influenced by both Kierkegaard and Marcel. (You must provide a brief recap of
both philosophers’ position.) 2% for an explanation of Wallace’s argument; 1% for an
explanation of how you see his position influenced by Kierkegaard; 1% for an
explanation of how you see his position influenced by Marcel. (Total 4% of your overall
grade in the course.)
READINGS
David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)
(source https://www.stedavies.com/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/)
WATCH VIDEO https://youtu.be/2doZROwdte4
David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) was an American author, essayist, and
philosopher. He penned a number of novels, short stories, and pieces of creative nonfiction. He is probably best known for Infinite Jest (1996). He’s also well known for being a
critic of postmodernism, specifically regarding the negative effects of irony, selfreferentiality, and cynicism on culture. (He primarily critiqued television as the dominant
cultural medium; as he died before more contemporary media — e.g., social media -became super fashionable, it is interesting to think of what he would say about
something like Instagram or Tinder.)
Wallace might be thought of as an exemplar of what in some academic circles is called
Metamodernism, or sometimes called post-postmodernism. Metamodernism is the
name given to the period (undefined) following the ‘end’ (again, undefined) of
postmodernism. The ‘end’ of postmodernism might be thought of as a phase of culture
in which people, whether producers or consumers of culture, effectively become tired of
the cynical, ironic, self-reflexive style that saturates media under postmodernism. In
other words, metamodernism might be thought of as a return to the genuineness and
sincerity of gesturing toward the authentic while simultaneously understanding that such
a gesture is probably hopeless. (Perhaps another way to theorize the metamodern is to
think of surrendering to hopelessness rather than submitting to it.)
Watch the following YouTube clip that summarizes some of Wallace’s arguments and
provides helpful contemporary examples.
This cultural shift is important because it signifies the return of themes such as authenticity and sincere,
genuine selfhood that reigned with early existentialism. The piece by Wallace that we’re going to examine
in this module is a commencement speech that he presented at Kenyon College, Ohio, in 2005. It’s one of his
most famous and accessible pieces of writing and it’s one that I think helps us make the troubling transition
from postmodern challenges to existentialism to anything we might consider calling existentialism today.
David Foster Wallace and Human Nature:
If we reach all the way back to Plato and other ancient philosophical traditions we might
read about how humans (and other living things) have a nature, something that they
are essentially. In the modern era, philosophers like Jean Jacques Rousseau argued that
humans are originally good by nature, only to be corrupted by society later. On the other
hand, philosophers like Thomas Hobbes argued the opposite: humans are essentially
cruel and wicked things that require harsh government rule to keep them acting “good”.
For the post-moderns, as we saw with Baudrillard, talk about anything essential to
humanity is turned suspect because of the extent to which our relationship to ourselves,
others, and the world has become so heavily mediated by — well — media. This foray
into postmodernism gave us pause for thought: given the deep trans-generational
encroachment and penetration of media into the human (both individually and at the
level of culture), to what extent can we talk about objects and categories proper to
existentialism such as, but not limited to: the self, freedom, God, choice, consciousness.
There are philosophers that continue to hang onto the legacy of the postmodern,
arguing that history has effectively been achieved in a proverbial End Game of late
capitalism and the society of the spectacle. It’s like in The Simpsons episode “Lisa
Simpson, This Isn’t Your Life” where Lisa discovers that Marge was a straight A student
until she met Homer, when he marks started to tank. Lisa expresses her concern to her
father, Homer, that because she’s interested in a boy at school that she too will fall off
with her schooling and decline intellectually. Home responds with what it probably one
of my favourite Simpsons reference.
(Homer): “Sooner or later, everyone meets their Homer: scrapbooking, high stakes
poker, the Santa Fe lifestyle. Just pick any dead end and chill out till you die”
The point here is that there’s no escaping the thick medium of what is the case. There’s
no use transcending it the given. The chips are down; the games are set.
Well, not everyone is convinced of the postmodern hold on culture and the imagination.
Enter David Foster Wallace. Watch the following video, which is a visual narration of a
commencement speech delivered at a college in Ohio, somewhere in 2005.
This is Water
One thing I really like about this piece is how it engages with the notion of a human
nature, without saying it explicitly. As a meta-modernist (or post-postmodernist),
Wallace is affected by the promises of an unfinished modern project of up-building and
progress, while at the same time be indelibly affected by the postmodern claim that
such a project was always-already bunk! Nevertheless, Wallace and other meta-modern
like thinkers (see also Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, and Dave Eggers in the realm of
literature studies) feel that even though gestures such as those of the modern is less
than likely (if at all possible), we should try anyway. This might sound like a hopelessly
romantic stance to assume, but it’s a stance less self-effacing and less fatalist.
Wallace talks not of a human nature or even condition as such, but rather posits a “sort
of natural, basic self-centeredness”; “my natural, hard-wired default setting.” The main
culprit Wallace identifies as responsible for propagating this sensibility is the FirstPerson Point of View: “Think about it:” he says, “There is no experience you’ve had that
you were not at the absolute center of.” This is odd because Sartre has made it his
purpose to demonstrate for us that this First-Person POV is the priviledged seat of our
freedom, but now Wallace has us second guessing this. It seems, to the contrary, that
the default setting of the First-Person is what provides the easy tendency into placated
ignorance and un-freedom. Real freedom, for Wallace, comes about by way of an
arduous process of sustaining an awareness of difference and altered possibilities. He
says, “The thing is that there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of
situations”, and he provides some examples. He then continues on, later, to add that “It
is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.”
Reflect for the moment on some scenarios wherein you slip into your default-setting.
Building Strategies to Resist our Default-Setting:
I’ll begin this Activity with a quotation from This is Water:
“But if you’ve really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will
know that you have other options [than that of your default-setting]. It will
actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumerhell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same
force that lit the stars — compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.”
Wallace is quick to qualify that it’s not that this mystical stuff’s necessarily
true, but that what’s really important to understand is that “The only thing
that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it.
You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t.” And it is
here where I think anything that might be called Wallace’s existentialism
shines brightest. (It’s a position similar to Sartre’s interpretation of human
consciousness and how consciousness introduces negation into every
situation; which is to say, again, that consciousness negates what presents
itself and shows me absence or something that needs to be filled with
meaning — meaning that I posit in the world, but that it is not in the world
first.)
His rhetorical flare notwithstanding, Wallace’s use of the phrase “the subsurface unity of all things” suggests a philosophical stance akin to that of some
of the early modernists such as John Locke, Sir Isaac Newton, and Bishop
George Berkeley. These and other philosophers and scientists divides the
world into to categories: primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities
are properties of a thing that are proper to that thing and are not contingent
on a subjective perceiving consciousness. For example, mass and extension.
Secondary qualities are properties of a thing that are determined by a
subjectively perceiving consciousness. For example, smell and taste. These
latter qualities are not essential to the thing itself, but are rather accidentally
attributed to it; the former — primary — are expressions of the thing itself that
are not accidental, that are reliable traces of the thing itself — even though we
might not be able to reach the thing-itself proper. Wallace seems to be
claiming awareness of something universal “unity” the name of which cannot
be given as such, but which nonetheless is inviting of our consciousness in
order to give it life. (This need not sound mystical or “new-agey”; one could
easily replace the term “life” with “action” or “motion”.) In any case, what we
might see here in Wallace is a repetition of Marcel Gabriel’s bearing witness
(i.e., Martyr) and the mode of Attestation; the loving binding of necessity and
liberty, or freedom.
Is this “sub-surface unity” an necessary condition of our humanity? Is it
something that we have lost sight of (by way of the post-modern), only to
rediscover in our post-postmodern time?
Is there a religious core or undercurrent to Wallace’s presumed
existentialism.
Wallace’s Religious Existentialism ?:
WATCH VIDEO
Is there a closer tie between Kierkegaard, Marcel, and Wallace than one might suppose
upon first glance?
Consider the following from This is Water: “IN the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there
is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping.
Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding
reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship […] is that pretty
much anything else you worship will eat you alive.”
For example, worship:
money and things — you will never have enough
body, beauty, sexual allure — you will always feel ugly
power — you will feel weak and afraid
intellect and being smart — you will end up feeling stupid and on the verge of always being found out!
Wallace instructs us to exercise “attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort”
with an eye aimed at truly caring “about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and
over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.” We are told that “That is real
freedom.”
Below you will find a video by Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek.
Please watch this video. You might have to watch it a few time, perhaps for no other
reason than because of Zizek’s slurred accent and hyperbolic mannerisms and
technical jargon. (Consult a dictionary as required.) Zizek’s position is that real freedom
involves an interrogative process of debunking much of what is taken for granted in our
everyday experience — very similar to what Wallace suggests about fighting against the
natural default setting that all too often seems so right and feels so good!
Reflect on the significance of structure and organization in your life. Is there something
to be said for achieving freedom by renouncing what is commonly taken to be (radical)
freedom? Might the philosophical or theological God be a source of this
structured/organized freedom?
QUESTION NUMBER 7
CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING OPTIONS
1) For this Discussion Forum Option you are to reflect on the religious influences on
MLK’s existential philosophy. Specifically, I want you to compare MLK with Kierkeegard, Marcel,
or Frankl. Choose ONLY ONE of those thinkers. Feel free to elaborate beyond this guide. 2% for
an explanation of how MLK can be read as an existential philosopher and 2% for a comparison of
MLK with one of the existential philosophers listed. Total worth is 4% of your overall grade in the
course.
2) For this Discussion Forum Option you are to reflect on the significance of
violence/conflict/struggle in X’s existential philosophy. Specifically, I want you to compare X with
Nietzsche, Sartre, or May. Choose ONLY ONE of those thinkers. Feel free to elaborate beyond
this guide. 2% for an explanation of how X can be read as an existential philosopher and 2% for a
comparison of X with one of the existential philosophers listed. Total worth is 4% of your overall
grade in the course
3) For this Discussion Forum Option you are to reflect on Davis’s idea of freedom as the crux of
her existential philosophy. Specifically, I want you to compare Davis’s idea of freedom with either
Sartre or Wallace. Choose ONLY ONE of those thinkers. Feel free to elaborate beyond this
guide. 2% for an explanation of how Davis can be read as an existential philosopher and 2% for a
comparison of Davis’s idea of freedom with the view of freedom developed and argued for in one
of the existential philosophers listed. Total worth is 4% of your overall grade in the course
QUESTION NUMBER 8
For this Discussion Forum Option you are to reflect on the existential influences on Edelman’s philosophy.
Specifically, I want you to compare Edelman with either Nietzsche or Zapffe. Choose ONLY ONE of those
thinkers. Feel free to elaborate beyond this guide. 2% for an explanation of how Edelman’s theory of
sexuality can be read as an existential philosophy and 2% for a comparison of Edelman’s ideas with one
of either Nietzsche OR Zapffe. Total worth is 4% of your overall grade in the course.
QUESTION NUMBER 9
This course has thrown a lot of difficult material at you. My hope is that it has been more
rewarding than an arduous feat to complete and move on. This material is deeply
important to me and I hope it has become the same for you as you move forward on
your life journey. This brings me to the final Discussion Forum post for the semester.
For this post (if you choose), return to the Introduction week and re-watch (re-traumatize
yourself! haha) the ending of Melancholia. Post a reflection dealing with the same question
in that first week Discussion Forum: would you want to know when the world was going
to end? Why or why not? I’m mostly interested in whether or not your position has
changed. I’m thinking that for more than less of you, you will have changed…but we’ll
see. 2%. The other 2% will come from simply elaborating upon 2 iteams of importance
that you learned and will take away with you from the course. These two points should
be more deep and meaningful than “I learned that Kierkegaard was Danish” or “I forgot
how awesome Infomercials are!” Meditate…Reflect. What really impacted you about this
course and its content. Was there something about the persistence of a conversation
regarding God that struck you? Did the intersection of existentialism and critical race
theory and/or queer theory affect your view of some issue? Did something lift you up?
Did something drag you down? Let me know that you were treating the subject matter
with care and attention. Total of 4% of your overall grade in the course.
TEN (no question number ten but I need a 4 page final
paper, read details and rubric below)
Existentialism Term Paper
The topics for this term paper are as the following (You are to pick only one).
(1) What does it mean to live life authentically?
(2) What is the status of existentialism amid a postmodern
world and how has the entertainment industry contributed
to this?
(3) Develop a thesis that critiques the COVID pandemic.
(4) Develop a thesis that engages with the Black Lives Matter
movement.
(5) Develop a thesis that tackles the usefulness of existential
philosophy relative to Queer theory and LGBTQ+ social
issues.
There is a general rubric posted to Blackboard that will be
used to evaluate this essay. You are strongly encouraged to
consult it repeatedly in order to ensure your paper is
prepared in accordance with the utmost specifications.
You must use primary material (from this course) from at least 5 of the
following 9 figures: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Zapffe, Sartre, Marcel,
May, Baudrillard, Wallace.
Although you are not required to conduct any necessary
research outside of the material presented to you in this
course it is a good idea to perhaps read up on the subject
matter you choose to write on. (Be sure to reference all
sources used.) When referencing sources used in-class,
document the source to the fullest extent given the
information you have and include the detail that its used
in this course.) Otherwise, all referencing must be conducted
using MLA or APA style.
The paper should not be any shorter in length than 4 pages and should not be
greater in length than 5 pages. (This does not include Cover Pages, References, or
any other paratextual elements.) Double-spaced, Times New Romans, size 12
font, standard 1 margins. Please submit your work as a pdf.file directly
through the portal through this link.
Purchase answer to see full
attachment
