An Existential Debate

[Okay so I actually do have a story I've been wanting to post for a while but the problem is that it's saved at school and not at my house. So it will have to wait a week. This is an assignment I had to write for a philosophy class last term. I didn't take it seriously and did poorly, but I find it kind of funny: a debate between the five most influential existentialist philosophers. Enjoy!]

The clock strikes noon on an early winter day as the Champs-Élysées’ whirling snowstorm suddenly dies off like a snow globe being thrust into nothingness. Café L’Existence rests on a cross street of the Champs-Élysées; an underground café, bohemian in its style and nearly one hundred years old, the location rests as a safe haven for the hip and intelligent beret wearing thinkers of Paris.

Today happens to be a day of monumental significance to the subjective thinkers of the world. As it turns out, the five greatest Existential philosophers only experienced death “in-itself,” but due to the on-going life of thought “for-itself”, the power of their contemplation materialized and their dead bodies regained consciousness for one more event: a debate on existence and death; mind, body and spirit.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is the first to enter the café, flipping a poker chip in his left hand, a long repulsive beard hanging down to the middle of his chest.
Friedrich Nietzsche is next to enter, a thick moustache protruding from his upper lip, madness sick within his eyes.
Kierkegaard enters, wondering whether facial hair was a pre-requisite for this affair.

The three sit silently at a long table and so do all the on-lookers in the café along the various tables and chairs. They await and stare into each other’s eyes though do not utter a word. The silence is deadly; one might even call it suicidal. Suddenly, it sounds as if there is a train crash out in front of the café. The door slams open and Sartre and Camus enter, yelling at the top of their lungs to each other, like a clash of the herd. The crowd gasps.

Camus: I am not… an Existentialist!
Sartre: eet’ is z’enough! I have heard enough! C’est fini!
[The scene is set]

Sartre: Silence everybody! You were all summoned here today for one purpose and one purpose only, and that purpose is zee’ existence! Existence of being in-itself, and being for-itself. And thus, it shall be discussed…
Dostoyevsky: Yes allo! Waiter! May I have a mezzo mocha chai latte, double sugar and extra whipped cream on top?
[The other Existentialists stare at him with a look a revulsion]
Dostoyevsky: [slams table] With extra vodka!
Sartre: [Chuckles in French manner] Fyodor, you once wrote, “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.”
Dostoyevsky: You cannot prove that.
Sartre: Umm, sure. But that, for Existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God did not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself… [E 211]
Nietzsche: Yes! I could not have said it better myself. God is dead after all. We must avoid the herd, find our own way, and create our own meaning.
Sartre: Yes… and there is no determinism – man is free, man is freedom. We are condemned to freedom.
Kierkegaard: I’m not quite sure I completely agree about the dead God you speak of.
Camus: Hah! Here talks the God-lover.
Kierkegaard: Now now, just because I am able to take that leap of faith, does not deem me useless. You cannot objectify a subjective leap, for life is a subjective individual experience after-all, as we all agree.
Sartre: But Kierkegaard… nothing can save man from himself, not even the valid proof of the existence of God.
Dostoyevsky: Depends who you’re talking to.
Kierkegaard: Yes yes, was that a witticism Fyodor? Very good one indeed. But Sartre, was it not you, who proposed that one must live a life through action! And the act of believing in God is a choice which involves an action of disregarding all of your attempts to re-direct me from my belief. God is subjective, not an excuse for man.
Sartre: Well…
Dostoyevsky: I don’t believe this is the question at hand.
Kierkegaard: You are right Dostoyevsky. I believe the real, ephemeral question at hand is how in God’s name, no pun intended, do you spell your last name properly? Is it Dostoyevsky with the S-K-Y or with the T-O-I-E-V-S-K-I, or is it the double I? And why is it that in every different publication it is spelled differently. Oh, how difficult it is to spell the names of us existential philosophers, we are such outsiders!
Camus: I am not an existentialist!
Dostoyevsky: You mock me, Soren.
Kierkegaard: Of course.
Dostoyevsky: Enough! Oh, how vile the human being is, the vilest creature on all of the earth! You, my dear sir, can go and take your leap of faith into a dark abyss of spikes and serpents.
Kierkegaard: My dear friend, you speak in platitudes.
Dostoyevsky: Go to hell! Since you believe in it!
Kierkegaard: Platitudes!!!
Sartre: [scoffing in a French manner] Enough! You bicker like zee’ children.
Nietzsche: Okay, let us reflect. God is dead because we have murdered him.
Kierkegaard: [muttering] in your subjective opinion…
Dostoyevsky: Therefore, with our own free-will we must create our own meaning in life, not by structuring it, but by acting through whimsical caprices.
Sartre: Thus, existence precedes essence, and every day we are consumed by anguish to escape and discover our meaning…
Kierkegaard: Amen! And all of this originates from the fact that all humans are truly subjective creatures, not objective.
Nietzsche: Naturally.
Dostoyevsky: Of course.
Sartre: Undoubtedly. Being-for-itself!
Camus: I am not an Existentialist!
Sartre: And in that respect you are right, my revolting, and otherwise silent friend, Camus. For Existentialism is merely a concept, a name given for a school of thought which, whether we agree on the concept or not, has come to define our thought. The concepts are created subjectively, but then passed on objectively, much like the roots of a chestnut tree. Unlike the actual “roots” which exist like being in-itself, the concepts only exist once we create them, and like the time I couldn’t remember it was a root anymore, I cannot remember what a God is anymore, because he too is a concept of an abstract cosmos. But our subjective free will has created them for a purpose, what that purpose is must be discovered subjectively, like in your case Kierkegaard. But why shouldn’t I decide to jump out of the window of a ten-storey building? It would cease my anguish…
Kierkegaard: Or angst.
Sartre: Yes, but this nothingness at the heart of our being-for-itself tantalizes me, and edges me to continue on. But whether I do or not, it is the action in doing so or not which determines man. Action, my friends, action.

[All of the philosophers sit and ponder, and the crowd gapes at the awe-inspiring message foretold, wondering about their own life and their life to come.]