Christopher Panza

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-10-2022

No doubt you've heard someone speaking of an "existential crisis." What does that really mean, anyway? Existentialists believe that we're born without purpose into a world that makes no sense — but each person has the ability to create his or her own sense of meaning and peace. Discover who invented this relatively new school of philosophy as well as what concepts define existentialism.

Article / Updated 07-15-2021

Ethics is a central component of any happy, healthy, and mature life. But some critics still question the value of studying ethics and living an ethical life. After all, if you ignore ethics, you can just focus on yourself, right? Not so fast. Some great reasons to resist those critics include the following: Ethics allows you to live an authentic life. An authentic and meaningful life requires you to live with a sense of integrity. Integrity is making commitments and sticking to them through thick and thin — no matter how much violating them may benefit you. Having a firm character or set of principles to guide your life and the choices you make is what ethics is all about. Ethics makes you more successful. You may think that ethics can hold you back in all kinds of ways, but the truth is the opposite. Ethical people embody traits that unethical people have to work at to fake — they’re honest, trustworthy, loyal, and caring. As a result, ethical people are perfectly suited not only for interpersonal relationships generally, but also more specifically for the kinds of interactions that make for thriving business. Unethical people generally don’t do so well at these things. Ethics allows you to cultivate inner peace. Lives that are lived ethically tend to be calmer, more focused, and more productive than those that are lived unethically. Most people can’t turn off their sympathy for other human beings. Hurting people leaves scars on both the giver and the receiver. As a result, unethical people have stormier internal lives because they have to work to suppress their consciences and sympathies to deal with the ways they treat others. When they fail to properly suppress their sympathies, the guilt and shame that comes with harming or disrespecting one’s fellow human beings takes deep root within them. Ethics provides for a stable society. When people live ethical lives, they tell the truth, avoid harming others, and are generous. Working with such people is easy. On the other hand, callous and insensitive people are distrusted, so it’s difficult for them to be integrated well into social arrangements. A stable society requires a lot of ethical people working together in highly coordinated ways. If society were mostly composed of unethical people, it would quickly crumble. Ethics may help out in the afterlife. Some religious traditions believe ethics is the key to something even greater than personal success and social stability: eternal life. No one can be sure about an eternal life, but people of faith from many different religions believe that good behavior in this life leads to rewards in the next life.

Article / Updated 07-15-2021

Studying ethics can help you arrive at clearer positions and arguments on real life issues — and can help you apply them, too. In fact, thinking more about ethical theory may even change your mind about issues in today’s world. Here are some ways you can apply ethics to your life: Consider how you interact with animals. Some folks may think animals don’t ethically matter. However, most ethical theories disagree. So before you abuse a dog, take a bite out of that next steak, or raise cattle inhumanely, you have to consider some ethical arguments. After all, animals feel pain and suffer just like humans. Perhaps this possibility of pain and suffering entitles them to rights and considerations that you’re ethically expected to respect. Be kinder to the environment. People typically see recycling or using certain kinds of household products as neutral lifestyle choices. However, ethics may actually demand a particular sort of interaction with the world around you. Sawing down a tree is innocent enough, but when you think of trees as parts of ecosystems that keep humans alive, things become less clear-cut. Respect and defend human rights. What are the basic things to which humans are entitled just because they’re humans? This question forms the basis of an inquiry into human rights. Ethics has a lot to say about what those rights are, who has them, and why. Many 21st century debates about torture, genocide, women’s rights, free speech, and welfare all focus on human rights Become more ethical in your career. Ethical professionals are better professionals. Lawyers, engineers, doctors, accountants, and journalists must avoid conflicts of interest and be sensitive to the ethical requirements of their jobs. However, keep in mind that being ethical in your profession can lead to surprising results. Lawyers, for instance, have to defend some pretty shady characters in order to give everyone a fair defense. Engage with medical advances. Some of the most contentious ethical problems of today arise in the practice of medicine and with the use of biotechnology. Human cloning, abortion, euthanasia, and genetic engineering challenge long-standing beliefs about human life, identity, and dignity.

Article / Updated 07-15-2021

Ethical theory serves as the foundation for ethical solutions to the difficult situations people encounter in life. In fact, for centuries, philosophers have come up with theoretical ways of telling right from wrong and for giving guidelines about how to live and act ethically. Here are a few ethical theories to whet your appetite: Virtue ethics states that character matters above all else. Living an ethical life, or acting rightly, requires developing and demonstrating the virtues of courage, compassion, wisdom, and temperance. It also requires the avoidance of vices like greed, jealousy, and selfishness. Utilitarianism holds that the amount of happiness and suffering created by a person’s actions is what really matters. Thus, acting rightly involves maximizing the amount of happiness and minimizing the amount of suffering around you. Sometimes you may even need to break some of the traditional moral rules to achieve such an outcome. Kantianism emphasizes the principles behind actions rather than an action’s results. Acting rightly thus requires being motivated by proper universal principles that treat everyone with respect. When you’re motivated by the right principles, you overcome your animal instincts and act ethically. Contract theory proposes thinking about ethics in terms of agreements between people. Doing the right thing means abiding by the agreements that the members of a rational society would choose. So for contract theorists, ethics isn’t necessarily about character, consequences, or principles. Care ethics focuses ethical attention on relationships before other factors. As a result, acting rightly involves building, strengthening, and maintaining strong relationships. Acting rightly thus displays care for others and for the relationships of which they are a part. To care ethicists, relationships are fundamental to ethical thinking.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 07-15-2021

Ethics is the study of the way things ought to be. Ethics applies to topics as mundane as doing your taxes and as momentous as how to structure government. Studying ethics can give you deep insights into what people do and why they do it. If you let it, studying ethics also can motivate you to change morally questionable habits and live an ethical life.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

The meaninglessness of life, the absence of God, the loneliness of being a thinking individual — it sounds like the existentialists weren't the happiest group of folks, right? Not necessarily true. Read on to get an idea of what existentialism is all about. Absurdity: What human beings encounter when they come into contact with the world. Absurdity is brought about because the human instinct to seek order and meaning is frustrated by the refusal of the world to be orderly or meaningful. Anxiety: Kierkegaard said, "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." You feel anxiety because you recognize that you and you alone are responsible for your actions. This produces the two-sided feeling of simultaneous dread and exhilaration. Alienation: The sense that you're a stranger in the world, or a stranger to yourself. Many aspects of existence can be alienating. One of the primary sources is absurdity. Ironically, the stories and systems developed by philosophy and religion to address that absurdity can be just as alienating. Existence precedes essence: Sartre's phrase to describe the existential situation humans find themselves in. It refers to the fact that when you're born, you have no meaning, no purpose, no definition. Human beings exist first, and only later define themselves. The Übermensch: The word Nietzsche uses to refer to his ideal human being. Literally "overman," the word reflects the importance in his philosophy of overcoming — overcoming traditional values, overcoming the herd mentality, and, most importantly, overcoming yourself. You overcome these things so that you might attain something greater. Nietzsche's Übermensch is an unconventional creator of values, a joyous free spirit, and one who embraces the earth instead of pining away for heaven. The death of God: The death of the notion that belief in God alone, or belief in any religious or philosophical system, is sufficient to provide human beings with the meaning, purpose, and definition they crave. It's the recognition that, because no external system can provide you with the answers, you must take responsibility for providing them yourself. Subjectivity: Your first-person perspective on the world, including the needs, desires, and emotions that accompany that perspective. The existentialists take this as a valid and important starting point for genuinely human endeavors. This can be contrasted with the scientific mindset, which always starts with objectivity — seeing people in impersonal, objective terms without emotion or appreciation for their individual point of view.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Existentialism is a term applied to some late 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who may not have agreed about much, but who all believed that each person must define themselves in an absurd, illogical world. The following are the core figures of existentialist philosophy. Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855): The Danish son of a wealthy merchant, Kierkegaard never held an academic post, but he wrote voluminously. Seen by many as the founder of existentialism, particularly Christian existentialism. Key contributions: His analysis of religious experience, and the first developed analysis of many key existential concepts, including absurdity, anguish, authenticity, the weight of responsibility you bear for your choices, and the importance of the irrational to human life Key works: Either/Or (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), The Sickness Unto Death (1849) Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900): The devout son of a Lutheran minister in Prussia, Nietzsche eventually broke with the church to become one of its staunchest critics and another founding father of existentialism. Key contributions: Announcing the death of God; changing the human project from that of finding value and meaning to creating value and meaning; returning philosophy to its Greek roots and the concern for the health of the soul Key works: Human, All too Human (1878–1880), The Gay Science (1882–1887), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1891), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), The Genealogy of Morals (1887), Ecce Homo (1888) Martin Heidegger (1889–1976): The most thoroughly academic of the existentialists. His involvement with the Nazi party couldn't stop his magnum opus from being one of the most influential books of the 20th century. Key contributions: Turning existentialism into the systematic study of existence, particularly of Dasein; developing the concepts of being thrown and the situated subject Key work: Being and Time (1927) Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980): Heidegger's most celebrated pupil, and the leading French existentialist. Philosopher, novelist, playwright, and political activist, Sartre lived the existential mantra of engagement in the world. Key contributions: Popularizing existentialism; summarizing the existential perspective in the phrase existence precedes essence; developing existentialism as a philosophy of freedom Key works: Nausea (1938), Being and Nothingness (1943), No Exit (1943), Existentialism is a Humanism (1947), Anti-Semite and Jew (1947) Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986): Seen by some as a mere mouthpiece of Sartre, de Beauvoir was a brilliant thinker in her own right, and she made significant contributions to literature, feminism, and existentialism. Key contributions: Addressing the problem of other people; the development of a sophisticated existential ethics; grounding much of modern feminism in a largely existential framework Key works: The Blood of Others (1945), The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), The Second Sex (1949), The Mandarins (1954) Albert Camus (1913–1960): In many respects, Camus is the conscience of existentialism. A deeply compassionate man, his philosophy was centered on what he considered the universe's greatest injustice — death. Ironically, he died at a relatively young age. Key contributions: Writing the greatest and most accessible of all existential novels, The Stranger; developing existentialism as a philosophy of absurdity; infusing existential philosophy with compassion and genuine humanity Key works: The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Stranger (1942), The Plague (1947), The Rebel (1951)