A philosophical movement, closely associated with Kierkegaard, Camus, Sartre, and Heidegger. Usually contrasted with empiricist or rationalist traditions, its most salient theses are that there is no ultimate purpose or order in the world; that the world is vaguely hostile; that persons choose and cannot avoid choosing their character and goals, by self-creating leaps, and have the obligation only to be authentic; and that truths about the world and our situation are revealed most clearly in moments of unfocused psychological anxiety or dread. These themes greatly influenced continental literature, psychoanalysis, and theology in the 20th-c.
Existentialism is a philosophical movement that is generally considered a study that pursues the meaning of life and seeks value for the existing individual. Existentialism, unlike other fields of philosophy, does not treat the individual as a concept, and values individual subjectivity over objectivity. As a result, questions regarding existence and subjective experience are seen as being of paramount importance, above all other scientific and philosophical pursuits.
There are several philosophical positions, all related to existential philosophy, but the main identifiable common proposition is that existence precedes essence, i.e. that a man exists before his existence has value or meaning. Man defines the value or meaning of both his existence and the world around him in his own subjectivity, and wanders between choice, freedom, and existential angst. Existentialism often is associated with anxiety, dread, awareness of death, and freedom. Famous existentialists include Sartre, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Camus, Fanon and de Beauvoir.
Existentialism emphasizes action, freedom, and decision as fundamental to human existence; More generally it rejects all of the Western rationalist definitions of being in terms of a rational principle or essence, or as the most general feature that all existing things share in common. Existentialism tends to view human beings as subjects in an indifferent, objective, often ambiguous, and "absurd" universe, in which meaning is not provided by the natural order, but rather can be created, however provisionally and unstably, by human beings' actions and interpretations.
Although there are certain common tendencies amongst existentialist thinkers, there are major differences and disagreements among them, and not all of them even affiliate themselves with or accept the validity of the term "existentialism". In German, the phrase Existenzphilosophie (philosophy of existence) is also used.
Historical background
Existential themes have been hinted at throughout history in Western philosophy, Abrahamic philosophy and Buddhist philosophy. This kind of political philosophy, although not existential in nature, provides a welcoming climate for existentialism.
In 1670, Blaise Pascal's unfinished notes were published in the form of the poem, Pensées. In the work, he described many fundamental themes of existentialism.
Existentialism, in its currently recognizable 20th century form, was inspired by Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky and the German philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger. It became popular in the mid-20th century through the works of the French writer-philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, whose versions of it were set out in a popular form in Sartre's 1946 Existentialism is a Humanism and Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity.
Gabriel Marcel pursued theological versions of existentialism, most notably Christian existentialism. Moreover, one-time Marxist, Nikolai Berdyaev, developed a philosophy of Christian existentialism in his native Russia, and later in France, in the decades preceding World War II.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer are also important influences on the development of existentialism (although not precursors) because the philosophies of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche were written in response or opposition to Hegel and Schopenhauer, respectively.
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
The first philosophers considered fundamental to the existentialist movement are Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, even though neither used the term 'existentialism'. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche wrote that human nature and human identity vary depending on what values and beliefs humans hold. Nietzsche argued that human existence is the "will to power", a desire to create and destroy as we please, in an artistic sense. Kierkegaard's knight of faith and Nietzsche's Übermensch are examples of those who define the nature of their own existence.
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche died too soon to be a part of the 20th century existentialist movement. They were unique philosophers and their works and influence are not limited to existentialism. Thus, it is unknown whether they would have supported the existentialism of the 20th century or accepted tenets of Jean-Paul Sartre's version of it.
Heidegger and the German existentialists
One of the first German existentialists was Karl Jaspers. Heidegger, who was influenced by Jaspers and the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, wrote his most influential work Being and Time which postulates Dasein, literally being there, a being that is constituted by its temporality, illuminates and interprets the meaning of being in time.
Although existentialists view Heidegger to be an important philosopher in the movement, he vehemently denied being an "existentialist" in the Sartrean sense, and responded to Sartre in "A Letter about Humanism" denying his philosophy was existentialism.
Sartre and the French existentialists
Jean-Paul Sartre is perhaps the most well-known existentialist and is one of the few to have accepted being called an "existentialist". Sartre developed his version of existentialist philosophy under the influence of Husserl and Heidegger. Being and Nothingness is perhaps his most important work about existentialism. In the 1960s, he attempted to reconcile Existentialism and Marxism in his work the Critique of Dialectical Reason.
Albert Camus was a friend of Sartre, until their falling-out, and wrote several works with existential themes including The Rebel, The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus. In the Myth of Sisyphus, Camus uses the analogy of the Greek myth to demonstrate the futility of existence. Camus believes that this existence is pointless, but he feels Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning and purpose in his task, simply by continually applying himself to it.
Simone de Beauvoir, who was a long time companion to Sartre, wrote about feminist and existential ethics in her works, including The Second Sex and Ethics of Ambiguity.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, an often overlooked existentialist, was a companion of Sartre's.
Michel Foucault would also be considered an existentialist through his use of history to reveal the constant alterations of created meaning, thus proving its failure to produce a cohesive form of reality.
Dostoevsky, Kafka, and the literary existentialists
Many writers who are not usually considered philosophers have also had a major influence on existentialism. Many of Dostyevsky's novels, such as Crime and Punishment have covered issues pertinent to existential philosophy while simultaneously refuting the validity of the claims of existentialism (notably the 'superman' theory advocated by Nietzsche).
In the 1950s and 1960s, existentialism experienced a resurgence in popular artforms.
Existentialist novelists were generally seen as a mid-1950s phenomenon that continued until the mid- to late 1970s.
There is overlap between the expatriate American beat generation writers who found Paris their spiritual home, and writers of road novels.
Existentialism since 1970
Although postmodernist thought became the focus of many intellectuals in the 1970s and thereafter, much postmodern writing considers themes similar to existentialism.
One should not, however, confuse postmodernism with existentialism. The feelings of alienation and loneliness consequent to being unique in a world of indifferent others, or, in Kierkegaard phrase, "the crowd" or Nietzsche's "the herd" The concept Alltägliche selbstsein ("Everyday-ness," or ennui) which Heidegger explicated in his book Sein und Zeit (1927), (English translation Being and Time).
Since 1970, much cultural activity in art, cinema, and literature contains postmodern and existential elements, which, ironically, would support the postmodern thesis of "borderlessness between concepts". Ideas from such thinkers as Foucault, Kafka, Nietzsche, Herbert Marcuse and Eduard von Hartmann permeate the works of writers such as Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Szymczyk, and Charles Bukowski, and one often finds in such works a delicate balance between distastefulness and beauty.
In cinema, postmodern editing techniques, showing the displacement, discontinuity, and temporal perspective of postmodernism, can go hand-in-hand with a purely existential story, thus synthesizing technique and function to give meaning. Moreover, this has created the neologism "Neo-Existentialism"--combining postmodernism's epistemology with the reflective ontological belief of existentialism.
The acclaimed 1976 film Taxi Driver, starring Robert DeNiro, is perhaps one of the most widely known existential films. The 2004 film The Machinist is also influenced by Dosteovsky's work, especially The Double: A Petersburg Poem, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. The 1972 film Deliverance, as well as the 1970 book of the same name, has also been credited as existentialist, as have the 1999 film Fight Club and 2001 film Donnie Darko.
Major concepts in existentialism
Existentialism differentiates itself from the modern Western rationalist tradition of philosophers such as Descartes and Husserl in rejecting the idea that the most certain and primary reality is rational consciousness. Descartes believed humans could doubt all existence, but could not will away or doubt the thinking consciousness, whose reality is therefore more certain than any other reality. Existentialism decisively rejects this argument, asserting instead that as conscious beings, humans would always find themselves already in a world, a prior context and a history that is given to consciousness, and that humans cannot think away that world.
On the existence of God, Sartre, unlike Kierkegaard, denies the existence of God. Sartre argues that without God, there is no higher power to define man. However, there are versions of existentialism that are religious. Theological existentialism as advocated by philosophers and theologians like Paul Tillich, Gabriel Marcel, and Martin Buber posits God's existence, as well as accepting many tenets of atheistic existentialism. Just as atheistic existentialists can freely choose not to believe, theistic existentialists can freely choose to believe in God and could, despite one's doubt, have faith that God exists and that God is good.
A third type of existentialism is agnostic. Like Christian existentialists, the agnostic believes existence is subjective. However one feels about the issue, through the agnostic existentialist's perspective, the act of finding knowledge of the existence of God often has little value because he feels it to be impossible, and/or believes it to be useless.
As mentioned above, philosophers associated with existentialism vary, sometimes greatly, over what "existentialism" is, and even if there is such a thing as "existentialism". One version, Sartrean existentialism, is elaborated below.
Sartrean existentialism
Some of the tenets associated with the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre include:
Existence precedes essence: This is a reversal of the Aristotlean premise that essence precedes existence, where man is created to fulfil some telos and life consists of fulfilling that goal. a pair of scissors is created for the express purpose of cutting things), Sartrean existentialism argues man exists without purpose, finds himself in the world and defines the meaning of his existence. Sartre argues that no one else, including God (if He exists), can choose your "identity" for you. Values are subjective: Sartre accepts the premise that something is valuable because the individual consciousness chooses to value it. Kierkegaard's works The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death are works that deal with such feelings.There are several terms Sartre uses in his works.
In Repetition, Kierkegaard's literary character Young Man laments:
How did I get into the world? To whom shall I make my complaint?Building on this, Heidegger, and later Sartre, dubbed the term "throwness" to describe this idea that human beings are exposed to or "thrown" into, existence - in that we have no choice to come into existence. Existentialists consider being thrown into existence as prior to, and the horizon or context of, any other thoughts or ideas that humans have or definitions of themselves that they create.
This explanation of existentialism strongly favors a non-religious approach. Even in quoting Kierkegaard, a Christian existentialist, his words are used to support the anxiety and nothingness of the philosophy- which are definitely two fundamental elements, but not any more important than free will and decision.
Criticisms of existentialism
Herbert Marcuse criticized existentialism, especially in Sartre's Being and Nothingness, for projecting certain features of living in a modern, oppressive society, such as anxiety and meaninglessness, onto the nature of existence itself: "In so far as Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine, it remains an idealistic doctrine: it hypothesizes specific historical conditions of human existence into ontological and metaphysical characteristics. Existentialism thus becomes part of the very ideology which it attacks, and its radicalism is illusory" .
Theodor Adorno, in his Jargon of Authenticity, criticized Heidegger's philosophy, with special attention to his use of language, as a mystifying ideology of advanced industrial society and its power structure.
Roger Scruton claimed, in his book From Descartes to Wittgenstein, that both Heidegger's concept of inauthenticity and Sartre's concept of bad faith were incoherent; He does recommend it, but, by his own argument, his recommendation can have no objective force." Familiar with this sort of argument, Sartre claimed that bad and good faith do not represent moral ideas, rather, they are ways of being.
Logical positivists, such as Carnap and Ayer, claim that existentialists frequently become confused over the verb "to be" in their analyses of "being". Borrowing Kant's argument against the ontological argument for the existence of God, they argue that existence is not a property.
Existentialism in psychotherapy
Many of the theories of Sigmund Freud, whom Sartre refuted systematically, were influenced by Nietzsche.
One of the major offshoots of Existentialism as a philosophy is existential psychology.
With complete freedom to decide, and through being responsible for the outcome of said decisions, comes anxiety--or angst--about the choices made. Anxiety's importance in existentialism makes it a popular topic in psychotherapy.
Humanistic psychology also had major impetus from existential psychology.
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