Waiting for Godot: Philosophical Contexts

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Waiting for Godot Philosophical Contexts
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• When considered in terms of twentieth-century
  secular philosophy, Waiting for Godot seems
  particularly congruent with the tenets of
  existentialism, which gained popularity (and
  notoriety) in the decades following World War II.
• Although origins can be traced back at least to
  the mid-nineteenth century in the writings of
  philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the fiction
  for Fyodor Doestoyevsky, its foremost twentieth
  century proponent was Jean Paul Sartre, whose
  major work Being and Nothingness was published in
  1943 in France and translated into English in
  1956.

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• Controversial because it was perceived as
  undermining the basis of Western philosophy since
  Plato and subverting virtually all traditional
  religions, existentialism asserted that human
  existence precedes any form of essence.
• There is, therefore, no preexistent spiritual
  realm, no soul, no god (Christian or otherwise),
  no cosmic compassion for or interest in human
  life, no afterlife, no eternal life, no heaven,
  no hell, no everlasting rewards or punishment for
  earthly deeds, no transcendence of worldly
  existence, no cosmic metanarrative, no angels and
  devils vying for human allegiance, no divine
  will, no salvation, no redemption (and no agency
  to perform it), no preset destiny, no inevitable
  fate, no revealed truth,

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• And no immutable commandments or other permanent
  but externally imposed rules. All of that is
  simply human invention or, as Nietzsche termed
  it, superstition, a culturally determined and
  socially enforced fiction that, in its
  effectiveness, fundamentally constricts human
  freedom and allows human beings to evade their
  own responsibility for the conditions of
  existence throughout the world.
• The best concise introductory explanation of
  Sartres doctrine is his essay now titled The
  Humanism of Existentialism. Although he briefly
  acknowledges the existence of Christian
  existentialism, he insists that the first
  principle of (his own atheistic) existentialism
  is that there is no human nature since there is
  no God to

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• Conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives
  himself to be, butman is nothing else but what
  he makes of himself. Because each individual
  must bear full responsibility for whatever he or
  she becomes and whoever he or she is (since it is
  not predetermined, shaped by Gods will, or
  otherwise from outside oneself, a constant state
  of anxiety is a defining human characteristic
  the first of three that Sartre identifies. Many
  people, however, seek desperately to avoid taking
  such responsibility for themselves, palliating
  (however dishonestly) their anxiety and trying to
  place responsibility on anyone or anything but
  themselves- an institution, a religion, even a
  Godot.

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• Yet such an evasion is itself an act of
  self-definition,a free choice for which they
  remain responsible, even if they consider it an
  obligation by which they are bound or a worldview
  not of their own design (or indeed, of their own
  liking.) The second of Sartres defining
  characteristics is forlornness, a term that he
  traces particularly to the philosopher Martin
  Heidegger, by which he means only that God does
  not exist and we have to face the consequences of
  this.
• Among the foremost of these is that there are no
  transcendent or a priori standards of goodness,
  virtue, or justice, just as there is no God to
  conceive or sanction them, as a result, man is
  forlorn, for neither within him now without does
  he find anything to cling to.

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• Neither is there any core human nature or other
  form of determinism, instead man is free, man is
  freedom. In an empty universe that is devoid of
  meaning, purpose, design or care the
  existential void represented by the coldness of
  interstellar space, the featureless Beckettian
  landscape, or simply darkness in Becketts later
  stage works- human beings are, Sartre contends,
  alone, with no excuses and condemned to be
  free.
• This situation leads to the third of his defining
  characteristics, despair, which is widely if
  wrongly alleged by Becketts detractors against
  his works as well. For Sartre, the term means
  that we shall confine ourselves to reckoning with
  what depends on our will, or on the ensemble of
  probabilities which make our action

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• Possible. For Becketts characters in Waiting
  for Godot, however, it is precisely the
  probabilities that are uncertain, the decisive
  action that is impossible (other than waiting,
  which is, of course, itself an action, and the
  will (including but not limited to their
  consideration of suicide) that remains paralyzed.
  To Sartre, however, existentialism can not be
  taken for a philosophy of quietism, since it
  defines man in terms of action, not for a
  pessimistic determination of man, for mans
  destiny is within himself.
• An equally important Sartrean concept was set
  forth in Part One of Sartres major work Being
  and Nothingness. As Vladimir and Estragon base
  their lives on the arrival (and indeed the
  existence) of Godot, the exemplify what

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• Sartre defines as bad faith, it prevents them
  from being sincere in Sartres sense, in that
  they cannot be what they are because they are
  preoccupied with the transcendent Other (Godot)
  that remains an absence rather than a presence in
  their lives. Action, by which existential man
  defines himself, is therefore precluded or
  perhaps endlessly deferred, any suggestion that
  they might actually do something (even depart or
  commit suicide) is countered by yet another
  reiteration of the core fact of their existence,
  that they must continue to await Godot.
• If this motive is considered to be like one of
  the drives that Sartre describges, this
  enterprise of waiting is itself realized only
  with their consent Furthermore, it must be

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• Realized that such drives are not forces of
  nature or innate within mankind, instead, the
  tramps lend the drives the efficacy by making a
  perpetually renewed decision concerning their
  value Such is, in effect, the plot of Waiting
  for Godot. Moreover, Sartre asserts that
  assuredly a man in bad faith who borders on the
  comic is one who acknowledges all the facts
  which are imputed to him (but still) he refuses
  to draw from them the conclusion which they
  imposethe crushing view that his mistakes
  constitute for him a destiny.
• The facts, in Becketts play, are to be found in
  Vladimirs admissions of multiple uncertainties-
  that they are in the right place, that it is the
  right day and time, even that they would
  recognize Godot if he came. Their crushing

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• Conclusion is that their purpose is futile, that
  Godot will never come, or that their lives have
  been in vain. Against such despair, they
  continue, unreasonably and implicitly, to hope,
  to wait, and idly pass the time- actions that do
  indeed border on the comic in a play that its
  author labeled a tragicomedy.
• Ultimately, however, as Sartre argues, the true
  problem of bad faith stems evidently from the
  fact that bad faith is faith. (Sartres
  emphasis). In other words, it bases ones
  existence on a sustained belief in and sustaining
  reliance on someone or something external to the
  self. To a Sartrean existentialist, such a being
  that transcends and transforms lives is by
  definition nonexistent- and thus not
  fundamentally unlike Santa Claus, the Easter
  bunny, wish-granting genies, leprechauns,
  fairies, and all other

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• Such fictions, however pleasant, popular,
  entertaining, or consoling belief in them might
  be among the credulous. Accordingly, those who
  consider Waiting for Godot an existential play
  tend to assume (with often aggressive and
  sometimes condescending certainty) that Godot
  does not actually exist that he will never come
  for the simple reason that he can never come,
  that there is no he to come, even if Vladimir
  and Estragon were to wait for all eternity. In
  this view, the plays many Christian allusions
  are little more than shards of a culture,
  signifiers of little or nothing, distractions or
  delusions that merely help to pass the time.
• Notwithstanding the striking congruencies between
  Sartres philosophy and Becketts play, to read
  Waiting

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• For Godot as nothing more than a dramatic
  illustration of a Sartrean thesis is no less
  reductive and simplistic than to regard it as a
  modern-day version of Christian allegory the
  committed atheist and the religious zealot have
  in common an unyielding ontological certainty,
  despite their irreconciliably opposite beliefs.
  Theirs is, however, a conviction that neither
  Beckett himself nor any of his characters seem to
  share. When, in 1937, Samuel Beckett was asked in
  a courtroom whether he was a Christian, a Jew, or
  an atheist, he replied None of the three, each
  presumably, was too certain about

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• Everything for Beckett to affirm anything that
  they believed. Becketts characters, non-knowers
  and non-caners as he himself described them,
  would be totally daunted by the prospect of
  having to be constantly commited (engage, in
  existential terms, continually self-defining, and
  wholly responsible for both themselves and the
  state of the world, as Sartres ideology contends
  that they must be. Their concerns are far more
  mundane hurting feet, lapsing memories, the
  scarcity of carrots, the protocols of hanging,
  their appointment with the unknown Godot.
  Although existential issues are

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• Unmistakeably present throughout Waiting for
  Godot, they are no less the subject of skepticism
  and humor than the precepts of Christianity.