by Ken Coates
The injunction to live life in an ‘authentic’ manner means that we should not be conformists who simply ‘go with the flow’ or make excuses for our attitudes and behavior, shifting the responsibility to others or to something external such as human nature. That is to act in ‘bad faith’ or in an ‘inauthentic’ manner. Our attitude and behavior should be based on our own thinking and feeling in full awareness of our situation and we should assume full responsibility for our acts. For it is through our action that we give meaning and value to existence.
Rejectionism also implies freedom of choice and the need to go against conventional attitude to existence. It is broadly in line with the key ideas of atheistic existentialism which, however, tends to dramatize its philosophy of freedom, choice and responsibility surrounding it with such notions as anguish, anxiety, dread, and despair. They are all about the burden of freedom and responsibility – moral and metaphysical - in the face of the void. The main difference between existentialism and rejectionism is that the former is in many ways a value-neutral philosophy. It offers an analysis of the nature of human existence and an approach or orientation to life without offering any substantive values and attitudes concerning existence. Authenticity, its key value, is formal and has no substantive content. Against the charge that one can, for example, be a good existentialist while choosing to be an authentic anti-Semite, existentialists argue that in choosing freely we must also choose and ensure the freedom of the other. Thus values are introduced through, as it were the back door, into what is essentially a formal philosophy of action. However, some secular thinkers labeled as existentialists, take a more substantive and value-based approach. For example both Nietzsche and Camus, in different ways, come down in favor of saying yes to existence. Emile Cioran, on the other hand, takes a rejectionist approach. He condemns existence in the strongest possible terms and states that one of the few things that he can feel proud of is his refusal to procreate.
Rejectionism is a value-oriented perspective on life with an emphasis not so much on individual choice and responsibility, which it takes for granted, but on substantive arguments and value judgments in support of rejecting existence. Thus it may be seen as a form of applied existentialism, a substantive and judgmental approach to existence. Another important point to note is that existentialism focuses on existing people, taking existence as given and reflecting on man’s being-in-the-world and interaction with others. Rejectionism, on the other hand, is more concerned with prevention, with preventing future possible people from coming into existence. It also presupposes freedom of choice and responsibility. Indeed we could say it goes further in its concern for freedom and autonomy in that it considers the act of procreation as a violation of the autonomy of the one who is brought into being. On the other hand it has none of the heroic notion of the lonely individual making his choices in a mood of anguish and despair which has been characteristic of at least some forms (Kierkegaardian and Sartrian) existentialism. True, late 20th century existentialism has acknowledged the importance of the social context or situation (’freedom is situated’) of the individual. However, as we pointed out earlier, rejectionism has yet to come to terms with the implications of the social context in which rejectionist ideas and decisions must take place. Existentialists (as well as others), on the other hand, would do well to develop a philosophy of procreation, one of the most under-theorized existential issues.
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