Existence Precedes Essence?
Sartre, Kabbalah, and the Quarrel Between Ancients and Moderns
“Existence precedes essence,” writes Sartre. Here are three ways to parse this maxim:
1) Essentialism is false. Human beings (existence) decide on the nature of things (essence). Or in self-help speak, “Life is what you make of it.”
2) Essentialism is derivative. You can’t ask about the essence of things unless you care about things, unless you are oriented. The anchor of enquiry is the enquirer—not the object of enquiry.
3) Essentialism is a distraction. Trying to figure out the essence of things is misguided, less important than pursuing self-knowledge; regarding the essence of oneself, this is something you are better off discovering by living (existing) rather than contemplating in your room.
Sartre’s maxim helps elucidate an enigmatic saying of the Alter Rebbe (R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi) that “the lowest (divine attribute) is the highest.” Kabbalistically speaking, the Alter Rebbe is saying that malchut (sovereignty, immanence, concretion) is higher than binah (intuition, abstract wisdom).
Kabbalah distinguishes between two types of light—or yashar (direct light) and or chozer (reflected light), corresponding to binah (intuition) and malchut (immanence), respectively. In Sartreian-Kabbalistic terms, the Alter Rebbe is saying that live as lived takes priority over understanding.
Paradoxically put, the indirect light creates the direct light.
If you think of the ancients as concerned with essences and moderns as concerned with existence, the Sartreian-Kabbalistic formulation is true on a meta-historical level. Modernity creates antiquity. In overturning Plato’s and Aristotle’s search for the nature of things and replacing it with the Nietzschean command—“become who you are”—the modern declaration has become self-fulfilling.
For better and for worse, our age is the age of an indirect light retroactively causing its origin, an ancient direct one. What’s striking is that this quarrel, on my read, is anticipated by Kabbalistic theology. The overturning of essentialism need not entail the end of faith and theology; on the contrary, it can be understood as religion’s paradoxical fulfillment.
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“the lowest (divine attribute) is the highest.” This statement might also be ironic or sarcastic and not point out a philosophical truth. This is the psychology of vanity which together with pride represent the two solid pillars of personality blocking the very doors of perception. In order to penetrate the vale and enter into reality these two pillars must be bypassed as they likely cannot be extinguished or defeated by the very ego that depends on them for sustenance. This is the realm of the sly person and is often embodied in ANE stories of the daring thief ( for instance 1001 Nights or Aladdin).