Philosophy Seminar on Existentialism

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PHILOSOPHY SEMINAR ON

EXISTENTIALISM

presented byDr. Jaseela.P

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It deals with the problem of existence. It is an irrational trend in bourgeois philosophy. It tries to differentiate between being and existing. The subject matter of philosophy is Being(Essence). Science deals with existence i.e. everything that belongs to

the empirical world, the world of experience. The philosophy of existentialism developed from thedisillusionment and waste-land feeling created during theWorld War II.

It was a revolt against the existing European philosophy.

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It emerged as a movement in twentieth-centuryliterature and philosophy, though it had

forerunners in earlier centuries. Existentialism generally postulates that the

absence of a transcendent force (such as God)means that the individual is entirely free, and,

therefore, ultimately responsible. It is up to humans to create an Ethos of personal

responsibility outside any branded belief system. In existentialist views, personal articulation of

being is the only way to rise above humanity'sabsurd condition of much suffering and inevitabledeath

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Existentialists emphasized the freedom of man Man is not a thing that is being shaped under the

influence of natural and social necessity, but heshould mould himself by his act.

He must continuously decide what is true andwhat is false, what is right and what is wrong,which to accept and which to reject.

The human choice is therefore subjective. Becausethe individual must make his own choice withoutany help from external standards as laws, ethicalrules and tradition(Freedom of Choice)

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Since he has freedom of choice, he is completelyresponsible for his choice, and for what results

from his actions. So he is not to justify himself bycircumstances. So freedom is necessarily followed

by responsibility. Since individuals are forced to make choices for

themselves, they are condemned to be free. Responsibility is the dark side of freedom. This

need for responsibility leads to anxiety. They try

to escape from his anxiety by ignoring or denyingtheir freedom or responsibility, and thereby theydeceive themselves(Self-deception).

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Soren Kierkgaad (1813 1855 )

Existentialism developed with Soren Kierkgaad a Danish

religious philosopher. He himself used the terms existential and existentialism in

relation to his philosophising, his heartfelt view was thatlife, existence, in all its aspects was subjective and

ambiguous. In his view individuals must be prepared to defy the

accepted practices of society, if this was necessary to their leading, what seemed to that person, to be a personally validand meaningful life.

He suggests that people might effectively choose to livewithin either of two "existence spheres.

He called these spheres the aesthetic and the ethical 6www.similima.com


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Aesthetical lives: lived in search of such things as pleasure,novelty and romantic individualism.

Kierkegaard thought that such "pleasure", such "novelty",and such "romantic individualism" would eventually tend todecay or become meaningless and this would inevitably leadto much boredom and dire frustration.

Ethical lives: meanwhile, as being lived very much in linewith a sense of duty to observe social and confessionalobligations.

Such a life would be easy, in some ways, to live, yet wouldalso involve much compromise of several genuinely humanfaculties and potentials.

Such compromise would inevitably mean that Humanintegrity would tend to be eroded although lives seemed to be

progressing in a bourgeois-satisfactory way.

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In his later works he suggested that therewas a third, religious, "sphere" where

people accepted that they could "live in thetruth" that they were "individual before theEternal" to which they belonged.

By living in this truth people could achievea full unity of purpose with all other peoplewho were also, individually, living in thesame truth.

This is the choice that he made for himself in his own efforts to live a life which heconsidered to be valid.

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Religious doctrine of paradox : Divine world and human world, faith and logical

thinking cannot be compromised. This idea led himto a conflict with the church officials.

In his later years, he revolted against religious philosophy and considered religion as irrational, onthe ground that religious beliefs are subjective. Itinvolves passion of the believer.

His ideas served as a source for existentialism. He became involved in controversies with the

Lutheran Church in Denmark - he had formed theview that the church was at that time open to beingseen as worldly and corrupt and he had made some

blatant public criticisms known to all.9www.similima.com


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Karl Jaspers (1883 1969) He was a German existentialist psychiatrist. For Jaspers, transcendence , as a unique and absolute Being and is

always beyond and just outside the existent being. The transcendence of Being is intangible to human experience.

The philosophical search of Jaspers may be divided into three stages: 1. The discovery of the world.

2. The clarification of existence. 3. The attempt to transcend world of objects. The first stage considers "the being in the world" understood as a

mere fact: I exist and things exist around me. In this first stage, man believes that he can reach being in its totality. This attempt is illusoryand hence it is destined to fail. Indeed, all knowledge of the "being inthe world" is a "limitation

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The study of "transcendence" belongs to metaphysics, and hence we

are in the third stage of philosophising.

Our existence is a search for transcendence; but transcendence cannot be reached, because if transcendence were attainable, it would not betranscendence.

Thus the transcendence of being is always something else, somethingmore; and any attempt to attain it is destined to fail.

However, the transcendent Being can be perceived in the form of "ciphers" or symbolic characters expressed by the things of the world.

Philosophy, in its search for being, reads these ciphers as possibletraces of God, as signs and signals pointing toward the ultimate depthand plenitude of Being

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His main concepts are:

1. Conscious manifestations of man (Science, Art &Religion) are based on the unconscious activity of existence.

2. Real meaning of existence becomes clearer to manonly during the periods of shock. (Illness, death etc)or when he is free from everyday cares and interests.He then faces a profoundly intimate existence and

his true experience of God.

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Gabriel Marcel (1889 1973): Catholic existentialism Most noted within existentialism for his disputes with Jean- Paul

Satre, Gabriel Marcel was a gifted essayist and playwright,specializing in matters of faith and morality.

Marcel is generally considered a Christian existentialist due to hisCatholicism and the influence of Soren Keirkegard, on his philosophy.

He held that the philosopher must be engaged, or personally involved, because existence and the human person are more significant than anyabstraction.

Involvement must be with other persons. To counter the impersonalityof the mechanistic modern world and to recall man to an awareness of the mystery of being, Marcel spoke of the development of theindividual in person-to-person dialogue.

Human existence finds its earthly satisfaction in a God-centredcommunion of persons that is characterized by mutual fidelity andhope .

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Science studies the world of objects, but does nottouch the existential experience of the inner spirituallife of the individual.

He denies the need for a rational proof for theexistence of God.

One can comprehend God through his existentialexperience.

He accepted the catholic doctrine of pre-destinationand freedom of will.

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Atheist existentialism:

Martin Heidegger (1889- 1976)

German existentialist: The central theme is the problem of Being. He analyses man in his relation to himself and to his environment and

to other men.

In his attempt to inquire into the nature of existence, Heidegger distinguishes two ways of living:

1. Inferior, called the unauthentic.

2. Superior called the authentic. Unauthentic existence is an uncritical participation in the world as it

is; authentic existence consists in an analysis of self. Althoughdistinct, the unauthentic and the authentic life have some commoncharacteristics

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Actual participation in the world: This means that the existent being has a relationship to surrounding objects, which he uses asinstruments of his existence.

Existence in a determined situation: This means that every situation is essentially individuated, limited

and presents only one of the infinite number of possible ways of realizing existence.

The unauthentic life is characterized by its banality. The subject of such a life is not the individual, but an anonymous and

featureless public ego ("das Mann"), the one-like-many, shirking personal responsibility and taking cues from the conventions of the

masses. The result is a self-estrangement of human existence, which leadseventually to the blotting out of its possibilities and to itsdisintegration in the irrelevancy of everyday life.

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Authentic existence is something decidedly different fromeveryday life.

To live authentically means "to exist"; this in turn means to

stand out ,from the Latin "ex-stare," i.e., to be outside theanonymous mass, to emerge from the world in which weourselves, and to accept our own situation with all itslimitations.

To exist means both to stand apart (to withdraw) and tostand out (to be offered as a target for the fullness of being).

Authentic existence, a conscious returning to oneself, is ameans of discovering and disclosing that the surrounding

banality of the world is vanity and disappears into"nothingness."

This universal sense of nothingness produces anguish.17www.similima.com


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Anguish must not be confused with fear. Fear has as its object some determined thing, a determined

danger; anguish, on the contrary is a dread of that indefinite

thing which, because it is indefinite, is a dread of nothing in particular.

The struggle with anguish and the outcome of this struggleopens new horizons as regards the interpretation of being.

I am aware that I am a finite being, and I can reach thefullness of my being only to the degree that mycircumstances permit.

The scope of my potentialities depends on time. Time is what I am not yet; it is my present situation in so far

as it is moving toward my possibilities. Time is the horizonopen to me. But time tells me that every being has its own

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Being is for death. Thus I am an "existent beingdestined for death." And since I acceptedexistence with all its ramifications, I accept my

death without fear.The whole human experience is permeated bythe tragic anxiety induced by the sense of inevitability of death.Man is facing his own death, confronted byabsolute nothingness.Mans existence is a being for death.

Heidegger's Existentialism is a valuablecontribution to the understanding of individuallife; but being guided by no spiritual principle,Heidegger ends with destruction and death.

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Jean Paul Sartre (1905- 1890): French existentialistTheological and Moral Nihilism: He combined existentialism with phenomenology. The existent is identified with the series of phenomena,

which tells us of its existence.

In other words, to be an existent means to be a series of appearances.

Ordinarily, appearance tells us of a dualism, i.e., theappearance and what is hidden in that appearance. Such adualism is denied by Sartre and he maintains instead thatappearance is the entire and only reality.

As a result God, who cannot be phenomenal, does not exist;and the existent is only one unit in the complete series of

phenomena, and is "without support and help. 20www.similima.com

Si di S G d d i d i


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Since, according to Sartre, God does not exist and man iswithout "support and help," the existent must construct hisexistence freely: "Man is damned to be free."

In regard to the free execution of the project of existence,Sartre repeats the maxim of Ivan Karamazov of Dostoevski's famed novel.

"If God does not exist, all is permitted"; hence freedomresults in arbitrary acts in the carrying out of the project of existence.

He reversed the theist doctrine of priority of Essence over existence, or rejected essence entirely in favour of existence.

Freedom is the essence of mans behaviour. Man is born with nothingness. Existence precedes Essence . The atheism and amoralism of Sartre may be considered as

the ultimate corruption of Existentialism, and of philosophy

in general. 21www.similima.com

Alb t C (1913 1960)


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Albert Camus (1913 1960) : French writer & Philosopher After World War II broke out, Camus used his literary talents to

support the French Resistance, taking on the editorship of Combat , animportant underground paper.

After the war, however, he gave up politics and journalism anddevoted himself to writing.

He soon established an international reputation with such works as

The Stranger (1946), The Plague (1948), The Rebel (1954) and TheMyth of Sisyphus (1955).Central Theme1. Mans existence is absurd and senseless2. He is a hopelessly lonely man in the absurd world3. Man is personified by the mythological image of Sisyphus, doomed

for ever to roll uphill a heavy stone, which always rolls down again4. Unable to bear this senselessness, man revolts and hence recurrent

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Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 1900): Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who

reasoned that Christianity's emphasis on the afterlifemakes its believers less able to cope with earthlylife.

Nietzsche argued that the ideal human being, theUbermensch, would be able to channel passionscreatively instead of suppressing them.

Nietzsche's written works include Beyond Good

and Evil and Thus Spake Zarathustra. Nietzsche is a major player in the Realm of

Existentialism.

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Ni t h h ll d th f d ti f Ch i ti it d


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Nietzsche challenged the foundations of Christianity andtraditional morality.

He believed in life, creativity, health, and the realities of theworld we live in, rather than those situated in a world

beyond. Central to his philosophy is the idea of life-affirmation,

which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines thatdrain life's energies, however socially prevalent those viewsmight be.

Often referred to as one of the first existentialist philosophers, Nietzsche's revitalizing philosophy hasinspired leading figures in all walks of cultural life,including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists,

philosophers, sociologists and social revolutionaries

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Reliance on abstract concepts in a quest for absolute

truth, he supposed, is merely a symptom of thedegenerate personalities of philosophers likeSocrates.

From this Nietzsche concluded that traditional philosophy and religion are both erroneous andharmful for human life; they enervate and degradeour native capacity for achievement

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P b d th t ltif i i fl f


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Progress beyond the stultifying influence of philosophy, then, requires a thorough "revaluationof values.

In Zur Geneologie der Moral (On the Genealogy of Morals) (1887) Nietzsche bitterly decried the slavemorality enforced by social sanctions and religiousguilt.( A change from Slave morality to Master morality with an adea of Superman).

Other works Death of God, Eternal values against immortality of

Soul

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Major concepts 1. A focus on existence Existentialism tends to focus on the question of human existence

the feeling that there is no purpose, indeed nothing, at the core of existence. Finding a way to counter this nothingness, by embracing existence, is

the fundamental theme of existentialism, and the root of the philosophy's name.

Given that someone who believes in reality might be called a "realist",and someone who believes in a deity might be called a "theist",therefore someone who believes fundamentally only in existence, andseeks to find meaning in his or her life solely by embracing existence,is an existentialist

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2. Existence precedes consciousness: Existentialism differentiates itself from the modern Western

rationalist tradition of philosophers such as Descartes in

rejecting the idea that the most certain and primary reality isconsciousness.

Descartes argues in his Meditations on First Philosophy thathumans can be certain of their consciousness (which istherefore the only truth ("Cogito ergo sum"), even thoughhumans can doubt almost all aspects of reality as illusions.

In opposition, existentialism asserts that a human finds

oneself already in a world and prior context that the humancannot think away. In other words, the ultimate and unquestionable reality is

not consciousness but existence ("being in the world", in the

words of Heidegger). 28www.similima.com

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3. Existence precedes essence A central proposition of existentialism is that humans define

their own meaning in life.

Philosophers might phrase such view technically, asexistence precedes essence; i.e. a human's existence

precedes and is more fundamental than the essence or meaning that may be ascribed to the life.

An older view was that essence precedes existence, so that"being human" might bind a person to such phrase's a prioridefinitions and connotations, and determining suchmeanings was seen as a central project of philosophy.

This older view was widely accepted from ancient Greek philosophy to Hegel's philosophy, which would focus onquestions like "what is a human being?" or "what is the

human essence?", and use the answer to seek to derive howhuman ein s should ehave29www.similima.com

4 Reason as a problematic defense against anxiety


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4. Reason as a problematic defense against anxiety Emphasizing action, freedom, and decision as fundamental,

existentialists oppose themselves to rationalism and positivism. Thatis, they argue against definitions of human beings as primarilyrational.

Rather, existentialists look at where people find meaning.Existentialism asserts that people actually make decisions based onwhat has meaning to them rather than what is rational.

The rejection of reason as the source of meaning is a common themeof existentialist thought, as is the focus on the feelings of anxiety anddread that we feel in the face of our own radical freedom and our awareness of death.

Kierkegaard saw rationality as a mechanism humans use to counter their existential anxiety, their fear of being in the world. "If I can believe that I am rational and everyone else is rational then I

have nothing to fear and no reason to feel anxious about being free."

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5 The absurd


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5. The absurd It then follows that 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, butrather can be created, however provisionally and unstably, by human

beings' actions and interpretations. During the literary modernist movement in the 1900s, authors began

describing dystopian societies and surreal and absurd situations in a

parallel universe, a trend that paralleled the existentialist movement. In Franz Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis , a man awakes to the

realization that he has turned into a creature known only as a"vermin". This story, which is certainly "absurd" and surreal, is one of many modernist literary works that influenced and were influenced byexistentialist philosophy.

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6 Perspectives on God


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6. Perspectives on God Some existentialists accept Nietzsche's proclamation that "God is

dead"; they believe that the concept of God is obsolete. Some existentialists, like Kierkegaard, conceive the fundamental

existentialist question as man's relationship to God. Theological existentialism, as advocated by philosophers and

theologians (including Paul Tillich, Gabriel Marcel, and MartinBuber), shares tenets and themes that are central to atheisticexistentialism.

Just as atheistic existentialists can freely choose not to believe in God,theistic existentialists can freely choose to believe in God and, despitedoubt, have faith that God exists.

Belief in God is a personal choice made based on a passion, faith, anobservation, or experience.

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Positive contributions of Existentialism to the Perennial


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Positive contributions of Existentialism to the PerennialPhilosophy:

It is really too early to tell what contributions Existentialism

will make to the Perennial Philosophy. Heidegger, Jaspers, and Marcel have certainly raised some

concrete issues, which must be addressed by commonsense philosophical realism.

But Sartre makes no positive contributions whatsoever. There are some traditional philosophical realists who are

making an attempt to bring about a synthesis of some of the

main points raised by the theistic Existentialists, butwhether or not they are successful will be seen in the future.

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Philosophy Seminar on Existentialism

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