Taryn Haas – Existentialism and its Evidence within Borges

To properly understand Borges’ short stories, it seemed necessary to me to look into the philosophy behind them. I did this primarily by identifying what I believe to be the core elements behind his stories that could apply to a philosophical theory – namely, his focus on the individual not at their core but in regards to their actions and histories, in addition to the sense of absurdity through slightly unbelievable situations that are presented.

Existentialism arose at first from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Kierkegaard’s concept of existentialism spawns from his paradox concerning our relationship with God, that is, how we can have meaning by abandoning our singular purposes and following the universal credence of God, but also have meaning in our individual lives, as God believes that we do. Kierkegaard suggests following the subjectivity we find within our lives and abandon any attempts to find meaning in a grander scheme of things – that is, within a historical criticism, an objective exegesis, or any other attempts to make a single life universal. (1)

Nietzsche proposes a further step along this path – namely that, in the face of the statement “God is dead”, Nietzsche urges that we build our autonomous moral existence from what is around us, as opposed to the transcendental universals we so commonly invoke. (1)

These two ideas culminate in Sartre’s statement “Existence precedes essence”. This is the most basic principle of Existentialism, and essentially means that our mere existence cannot supply us with meaning because meaning follows. Meaning comes about through existing, and so our actions in our existence create the meaning our lives have. At this point Existentialism begins to take on key themes: transcendence, alienation, and authenticity. (1)

There is also a great focus on anxiety, nothingness and the absurd within Existentialism, and I think these can be found fairly frequently within Borges. Anxiety, as proposed by existentialists like Sartre and Heidegger, is a result of our loss of place within the world – we feel threatened because we cannot connect with the world, and have no direct object to attach our anxiety to. The absurd is when we have an anxiety and are drawn out of the world and so lose track of the connection we usually notice. This causes us to find the world absurd, in connection with our anxiety, and we are unable to find our place within it. (1)

We can see this in how Borges portrays his characters. For example, in The Improbable Impostor Tom Castro, Castro moves through multiple phases of life – he begins in Chile, travels on a ship for a while, then goes to Australia, and from there travels to Europe. In particular, we can see the effects of existentialism with Castro’s attempts to be Tichborne’s son – his actions are (nearly) all that is needed to make him essentially that person. There are no issues in giving up some grand sense of self or meaning he held previously, either in Australia or as a seaman, but a simple and clean-cut transition (if one can call lying a transition) into another person’s world. All that we are given are his actions – there is no inner turmoil, no drastic changing, but rather a focus on the act of saying that one is another person.

Another existentialist character can be found within Bill Harrigan. Harrigan goes through a drastic change from the kid that grows up in New York to a man of the West. In New York, he is a gang member raised by a family of “Negroes”, and somehow manages to use a pistol with great speed and accuracy later in life, in addition to riding horses and everything else that comes with living in the West. There is very little connection between the young Harrigan and the older one, only Borges’ presentation of their supposed sameness. It amounts to the fact that Harrigan has no core sense of self – he is what his actions are at that moment in time, whatever he decides to give meaning to.

As for anxiety and the absurd, this is clearly found within Bogle and his irrational fear of being hit by a car. This fear, called agyrophobia, which has very limited explanations (chemical imbalances in the brain, traumatic events, etc) so it is unclear as to what all the causes of a phobia are. In many cases, they do come across as absurd, and in Bogle’s case it causes him a great deal of anxiety which seemingly has no cause. To exacerbate the absurdity, Bogle is actually killed by a car in the end.