“And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” — Genesis 1:3
(This is part two in the “What’s in a Name” series. Please feel free to read part one before proceeding).
The naming of anything is a rather odd endeavor.
My wife and I, torn for weeks between two names for our expected first-born child, ultimately flipped a coin to break the tie.
Heads equals this name. Tails equals that name.
It was a hot summer day gathered around the pool and we needed something to break the stalemate. We had been arguing and debating for weeks, unable to collectively land on the name. The birth was expected to occur very, very soon though. Something had to budge. Maybe this would help.
So we flipped the coin. Tails. The name was chosen. Done deal. Stalemate broken.
Oddly enough, though, Chance also makes poor choices. Twenty-four hours later, we had changed our minds. The name did not fit — there was something off about it.
And so option two it was! A name had been chosen!
Just a couple weeks later, my wife delivered our first child: given a name (kind-a-sorta) decided by a coin flip.
Tragic story? Epic story? I guess you can decide.
The launching of any project is intimidating, no doubt. Throughout the conceptualization stage of Between and Becoming, I agonized over many things. And perhaps no more agonizing happened than in determining the name of this project.
If you have read the previous article (found here), you know the question: What’s in a name?
I find the naming of a thing a vital part of any project of this magnitude. The existentialists often spoke of human existence preceding essence [1].
“What do we mean here by ‘existence precedes essence?’ We mean that man first exists: he materializes in the world, encounters himself, and only afterward defines himself.” — Jean-Paul Sartre
In other words, the experience of being human is often that we are — we exist — before any preconceived notion, idea, or pre-set formula of who we are or who we should be [2].
In existential terms: who we are is not as simple as developing according to a pre-set code, growing up naturally into “who we were meant to be.” Instead, we simply exist. And who we are — our essence — is largely determined by who we decide to be.
To exist. To be. These are the products of choice and responsibility: action.
You may wonder how this connects to Between and Becoming. Fine question indeed.
For the human, our experience is an outlier: we exist before it is decided who we are — this is what is meant by “existence precedes essence.”
But this is not true for all things.
Many of our creations have their essence before existence.
For the computer to exist we must have first the concept of what will make up the computer — we must have the essence before the computer’s existence.
Or, for another example: we know the shape and the form of the American football helmet before it takes shape in a factory. We even have the purpose in which it will be used: this game called American football.
For so much, essence precedes existence — at least for much of the world and our creations.
And as we create we are tasked like Adam in the garden, giving name to our creations.
“So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.” — Genesis 2:20a
Here we are in a paradoxical state of existence. In part, we totally lack in responsibility for our existence —we just exist, thrown into the world — yet we are completely responsible for our existence — we must choose who we are and who we be.
And as those responsible for crafting our existence, deciding who we are and what world we will live in, we are also tasks with the formation of what exists:
Even naming it.
To give such creations a name is to take responsibility for the shaping of existence itself.
And as the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once said [3],
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
Freedom. Choice. Responsibility. These are core parts of the human experience. Likewise, so is anxiety a natural part of the human experience authentically lived. At least this is the argument of many of the existentialists.
Anxiety, the anguish which I have described in the naming of Between and Becoming, is nothing less than the awareness of freedom, choice, and responsibility.
It is no less than to know that, even in naming, it is I who must be responsible for crafting and shaping what is.
And so it is named:
Between and Becoming.
The following articles are meant to more fully explore this topic. Read the next part here or explore other pieces in this series below:
[1] Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, trans. Carol Macomber, ed. John Kulka (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
[2] It should be noted, as Jean-Paul Sartre points out in Existentialism Is a Humanism, that there are mainly two kinds of existentialists: theistic and atheistic . Theistic existentialists (Christian existentialists, for example) may have a different or more nuanced view articulating “existence precedes essence” — due, perhaps, to theistic commitments and beliefs.
[3] Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin, trans. Reidar Thomte (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980).