Coens' Existentialism, Reivew on A Serious Man

"A Serious Man" continues the Coen brothers' consistent existential theme: existence is absurd. The absurdity of "A Serious Man" is that people are always encountered and encountered by uncertainty. In the face of such uncertainty, people are always passive, without the initiative and freedom of choice, even if you are in the face of uncertainty There is a late choice, and your choice can be defeated by any subsequent random chance. We can't expect chance to not come to us because of the uncertainty principle, because of the butterfly effect, because of chaos theory, because Life is made up of innumerable contingencies, and the sum of all the contingencies that a person encounters constitutes his destiny. Sartre said that people have the freedom to choose, but they have to bear the consequences of their choices. Sartre did not notice that before people's free choice, he has always been chosen. In Heidegger's words, man has always been thrown into the world. When a person begins to stand in front of the world and become complacent, he is already in the world. Sartre said that existence precedes essence, but essence does not choose itself, because your existence has been chosen. The important thing is that this is not an analyzable and reasonable proposition, it cannot be reduced by the dimension of traditional philosophy "determinism-free will", and it cannot be questioned in the following way: people's destiny is chosen by themselves Or is it determined by some prior conditions? Determinism does not help, because determinism still implies that life and destiny are in a strict and definite chain of causality, and contingency means that destiny is uncertain and absurd, which means that the above dimensions do not apply, you can neither To say that fate is chosen by you, it cannot be said that it is not determined by you but by other conditions, it is only "absurd".

View more about A Serious Man reviews

A Serious Man pictures