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PARTISAN REVIEW
enough to have created our solar system , perhaps . And if you ask what are
His limits , that might be my guess. But this is babbling . It isn ' t important
where God's limits are . What 's significant is the idea that God is not
all-powerful , nor is the Devil. Rather it is that we exist as some mediating
level between them . You see , this notion does restore a certain dignity to
moral choice .
Int:
Of course, it does.
Mazier:
It becomes important whether you ' re good or bad .
Int :
In trying to know what is good or evil aren ' t you in effect trying to take
existentialism to its logical end , that is ,
to
end existentialism?
Mazier :
Not end it, seat it. Of all the philosophies , existentialism approaches
experience with the greatest awe : it says we can ' t categorize experience
before we 've experienced it . The only way we're going to be able to discover
what the truth about anything might be is to submit ourselves to the reality
of the experience . At the same time , given its roots in atheistic philosophers
like Same , existentialism has always tended toward the absurd . By way of
Sartre , we are to act as if there were a purpose to things even though we
know there is not. And that has become the general concept of
existentialism in America . But it's not mine. I'm an existentialist who
believes there is a God and a Devil at war with one another. Like Sartre in
his atheism, I offer a statement of absolute certainty equally founded on the
inability to verify it. Atheism is as removed from logical positivism as
theology. Still, I don't give a God damn if I can verify this or not . There has
to be something out there beyond logical positivism . I want my brain to
live. I want to adventure out on a few thoughts . The fact that I can never
demonstrate them is not nearly so important to me as the fact that I may
come up with an hypothesis so simple, so central , that I may be able to
apply it in thousands of siruations . If it begins to give me some inner
coherence , if I begin to think that I know more as a result of this
philosophy , why not?
Int:
But isn ' t what you've identified as existentialism, extended to its logical
end, seeking to know what is finally unknowable?
Mazier:
That's not my definition ofexistentialism . I'd say we find ourselves in
an existential situation whenever we are in a situation where we cannot
foretell the end . Some of these situations are grave. If you get into a skid on
an icy road , at a speed that's uncomfortably high , you don't know if you're
going to be able to pull your car out of it without a smack up. That 's an
existential siruation. When people talk about it afterward they think of that
quality of time when it is slowing up . The first time people connect with
marijuana- not the first or the twentieth time they smoke it , but the first
time they
connect
with it-they' re in an existential situation . It 's not the
