Alone In The Universe

Some existentialists like Isaiah Berlin teach that we are alone in the universe (this is from one of his Youtube videos on Stirner), that we must decide how to proceed, that we have nothing to lean on, and that we are totally free and totally responsible for choices made, with no abstraction, no objective justification to hide behind.

God exists and we do have God and the Good Spirits to lean on. But the individual ethical responsibility, of the extreme subjective kind pushed by Berlin, may not be quite how it is, but a useful conceit to promote ethical behavior and individualism and self-sufficiency, all desirable characteristics that individuators and supercitizens should possess and convey.

Berlin, in the video, asserts that we wield pure free choice in a vacuum, a universal void of pure meaninglessness and absurdity--that we are alone in a cold, impersonal and indifferent universe, and that individual's duty and existential role is to make of life whatever you can, if you are brave enough to face tragic life. It is bit over the top, but I like the imposition by Berlin of heavy accenting personal responsibility and commitment.

Berlin criticizes Stirner as a Romantic that went too far, denying all common values and all universal understanding and lanuage to think, live, communicate and live sanely in society. Berlin is spot on. Some acceptance of abstractions and universal is necessary and basic to survival, although Stirner is right in warning involuntary and duped egoists turned fanatic in pushing forcefully onto resisting others the ism that they worship and serve, that they are lost and toxic to free individualism.