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Existentialism provides a moving account of the agony of being in the world. The spirit of existent- italics has a long history in philosophy. But it be- came a major movement in the second half of the 20th century. Existentialism is not a systematic body of thought like Marxism or psychoanalysis. Instead, it is more like an umbrella under which a very wide range of thinkers struggled with sues- actions about the meaning of life. Much of the appeal and popularity of Existential- ism is due to the sense of confusion, the crisis, and the feeling of rejection and rottenness that Euro- paeans felt during World War II and its aftermath.
Existentialism’s focus on each person’s role in Cree- dating meaning in their life was a major influence on the Phenomenological and Humanistic traditions in psychology and on the “human potential” move- meet that emerged from them. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) said, “Conquer your- self rather than the world. “. To modern existential- sits this means that the World itself has no real meaning or purpose. It is not the unfolding express- Sino of Human Destiny or a Divine plan, or even a set of natural laws.
The only meaning is that which we create by acts of will. To have a meaningful life we have to act. But we should act without hope. Acting is meaningful but it doesn’t create meaning that lasts beyond the acts themselves or beyond our own lifetime. You are what you do – while you are doing it – and then nothing. (Very depressing. ) In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Campus (pronounced “Km-moo”) (1913-1960) describes life as a kind of hopeless, endless, uphill labor. Hence, the only true problem is that of suicide.
Yet, he rejects nihilism; for the human being must fight and never accept defeat. The problem is to be a saint without a God. The last judgment takes place everyday. The human being must do his best, try for what he can within the environments of his situation. Campus describes Sisyphus condemned by the gods to push a stone up a hill over and over, only to have it roll back down each time he reaches the top. A task that can never be completed. But he finds meaning in the fact that Sisyphus at least gets to decide each time whether to carry on or end it all.
Campus says, “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. ” Although there can never be any meaning in Sissy- pus’ task, there is meaning is choosing each time to continue. Despite encompassing a staggering range f phi- illogical, religious, and political ideologies, the underlying concepts of existentialism are simple: Mankind has free will. Life is a series of choices, creating stress. Few decisions are without any negative cones- quinces.
Some things are irrational or absurd, without explanation. If one makes a decision, he or she must follow through. Notes on Existentialism by Tawnier Kara The fundamental problem of existentialism is con- corned with the study of being. The human being’s existence is the first and basic fact; the human be- ins has no essence that comes before his existence. The human being, as a being, is nothing. This nothingness and the non-existence of an essence is the central source of the freedom the human being faces in each and every moment.
The human being Notes on Existentialism Compiled for PSYCH 345 (Fall 2004) Existentialism Notes 2 has liberty in view of his situation, in decisions which makes himself and sets himself to solves his problems and live in the world. Thrown into the world, the human being is con- damned to be free. The human being must take this freedom of being and the responsibility and guilt of his actions. Each action negates the other possible courses of action and their consequences; so the unman being must be accountable without excuse. The human being must not slip away from his re- susceptibilities.
The human being must take decide- signs and assume responsibilities. There is no gig- munificence in this world, this universe. The human being cannot find any purpose in life; his existence is only a contingent fact. His being does not emerge from necessity. If a human being rejects the false pretensions, the illusions of his existence have- ins a meaning, he encounters the absurdity, the if- utility of life. The human being’s role in the world is not predetermined or fixed; every person is com- peeled to aka a choice. Choice is one thing the human being must make.
The trouble is that most often the human being refuses to choose. Hence, he cannot realize his freedom and the futility of his existence. Basically existence is of two types: authentic and inauthentic forms of existence. Authentic existence is contrasted with dynamic and is the being-for- itself, rising from the human being’s bad faith, by which the human being moves away from the bur- den of responsibility, through this beliefs in dogma and by regarding himself as subject to outside in- fluencies and his actions to be predetermined.
There is striking contrast between the authentic and the inauthentic forms of being; the authentic being is the being of the human being and the Nina- authentic being is the being for things. Yet, authentic being is only rarely attained by the human being; still it is what the human being must strive to gain. The inauthentic being-in-itself is characteristically distinctive of things; it is what the human being is diseased with for his failure to see himself as and act according as a free agent and his impotency to reject bad faith. Things are only what they are. But the human being is what can be.
Things are deter- indeed, fixed, and rigid; the human being is free; he can add essence to his life in the course of his life and he is in a constant state of flux and is able to comprehend his situation. The human being does not live in a pre- determined world; the human be- Ins is free to realize his aims, to materialize his dreams; hence, he has only the destiny he forges for himself because in this world nothing happens out of necessity. The human being hides himself from freedom by self-deception, acting like a thing, as if he is a pas- Sieve subject, instead of realizing the authentic be- ins for the human being this is ad faith.
In bad faith, the human being shelter himself from re- sociability by not noticing the dimensions of al- iterative courses of action facing him; in bad faith, the human being behaves as others demand of him by conforming to the standards of accepted values and by adopting roles designed for him; in bad faith, the human being loses the autonomy of his moral will, his freedom to decide; in bad faith, the human being imprisons himself within inauthentic- itty for he has refused to take the challenge of re- sociability and the anxiety that comes along with his freedom.
Anxiety ascends from the unman being’s realize- Zion that the human being’s destiny is not fixed but is open to an undetermined future of infinite poss.- abilities and limitless scope: The emptiness of if- true destiny must be filled by making choices for which he alone will assume responsibility and blame. This anxiety is present at every moment of the human being’s existence; anxiety is part and parcel of authentic existence. Anxiety leads the human being to take decisions and be committed.
The human being tries to avoid this anguish through bad faith. But the free human being, in his authenticity, must be involved; for his own actions are only his, his responsibility is to himself, his being is his own. The human being must be com- emitted. To be committed means not to support this in place of that, but to attach a human being’s total- itty to a cause; it is the human being’s existential freedom that leads to total commitment.
Existentialist thinkers begin from the human situ- Zion in the world; the condition of despair, the modes of existence, the human being’s tendency to avoid authentic existence, his relation to things, his own body, and to other beings, with whom he can- not come into genuine communication, and the offerings of life. Starting from the study of being, each existentialist thinkers originate their own doc- trines, with their own emphasis on particular as- pests.
Very often their viewpoints is conflicting and sometimes contradictory; yet this philosophy- cal attitude of being, as a whole, can be described as the existentialist movement, which stresses upon the “being” of the human being. 3 Additional Notes on Existentialism Existentialism, philosophical movement or ten- Denny, emphasizing individual existence, freedom, and choice, that influenced many diverse writers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Major Themes Because of the diversity of positions associated with existentialism, the term is impossible to define precisely.
Certain themes common to virtually all existentialist writers can, however, be identified. The term itself suggests one major theme: the stress on concrete individual existence and, consent neatly, on subjectivity, individual freedom, and choice. Moral Individualism Most philosophers since Plato have held that the highest ethical good is the same for everyone; ions- far as one approaches moral perfection, one Reese- bless other morally perfect individuals. The 1 9th- century Danish philosopher
SёRene Segregated, who was the first writer to call himself existential, reacted against this tradition by insisting that the highest good for the individual is to find his or her own unique vocation. As he wrote in his journal, “l must find a truth that is true for me the idea for which I can live or die. ” Other existentialist writers have echoed Greensward’s belief that one must choose one’s own way without the aid of universal, objective standards.
Against the traditional view that moral choice involves an objective judgment of right and wrong, existentialists have argued that no objective, rational basis can be mound for moral decisions. The 19th-century German philosopher Frederica Nietzsche further contended that the India- Vidal must decide which situations are to count as moral situations. Subjectivity All existentialists have followed Segregated in stressing the importance of passionate individual action in deciding questions of both morality and truth.
They have insisted, accordingly, that per- sonar experience and acting on one’s own convict- actions are essential in arriving at the truth. Thus, the understanding of a situation by someone involved in that situation is superior o that of a detached, objective observer. This emphasis on the Perspex- dive of the individual agent has also made existent- titlists suspicious of systematic reasoning. Kier- guard, Nietzsche, and other existentialist writers have been deliberately unsystematic in the expose- Zion of their philosophies, preferring to express themselves in aphorisms, dialogues, parables, and other literary forms.
Despite their internationalist position, however, most existentialists cannot be said to be rationalists in the sense of denying all validity to rational thought. They have held that rational clarity is desirable wherever possible, but that the most important questions in life are not accessible to reason or science. Furthermore, they have argued that even science is not as rational as is commonly supposed. Nietzsche, for instance, asserted that the scientific assumption of an orderly universe is for the most part a useful fiction.
Choice and Commitment Perhaps the most prominent theme in existentialist writing is that of choice. Humanity’s primary disc- attention, in the view of most existentialists, is the freedom to choose. Existentialists have held that human beings do not have a axed nature, or sees- sense, as other animals and plants do; each human being makes choices that create his or her own an- true. In the formulation of the 20th-century French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, existence precedes essence. Choice is therefore central to human exes- thence, and it is inescapable; even the refusal to choose is a choice.
Freedom of choice entails com- mitten and responsibility. Because individuals are free to choose their own path, existentialists have argued, they must accept the risk and response- usability of following their commitment wherever it leads. Dread and Anxiety Segregated held that it is spiritually crucial to rice- agonize that one experiences not only a fear of esp.- civic objects but also a feeling of general apprehend- Sino, which he called dread. He interpreted it as God’s way of calling each individual to make a commitment to a personally valid way of life.
The word anxiety (German Angst) has a similarly cru- Cal role in the work of the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger; anxiety leads to the individual’s confrontation with nothingness and with the impossibility of finding ultimate justifies- Zion for the choices he or she must make. In the hilltop’s of Sartre, the word nausea is used for the individual’s recognition of the pure contain- agency of the universe, and the word anguish is used for the recognition of the total freedom of choice that confronts the individual at every MO- meet.
Existentialism Notes 4 History Existentialism as a distinct philosophical and liter- ray movement belongs to the 1 9th and 20th cent- rises, but elements of existentialism can be found in the thought (and life) of Socrates, in the Bible, and in the work of many preformed philosophers and writers. Pascal The first to anticipate the major concerns of mod- erne existentialism was the 7th-century French phi- loser Blaine Pascal. Pascal rejected the rigorous rationalism of his contemporary Rene?? Descartes, asserting, in his Pens??sees (1670), that a systematic philosophy that presumes to explain God and huh- amanita is a form of pride.
Like later existentialist writers, he saw human life in terms of paradoxes: The human self, which combines mind and body, is itself a paradox and contradiction. Segregated Segregated, generally regarded as the founder of modern existentialism, reacted against the system- attic absolute idealism of the 1 9th-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, who claimed to have worked out a total rational understanding of huh- amanita and history. Segregated, on the contrary, stressed the ambiguity and absurdity of the human situation.
The individual’s response to this situation must be to live a totally committed life, and this commitment can only be understood by the India- Vidal who has made it. The individual therefore must always be prepared to defy the norms of socio- TTY for the sake of the higher authority of a person. Ally valid way of life. Segregated ultimately Dave- coated a “leap of faith” into a Christian way of fife, which, although incomprehensible and full of risk, was the only commitment he believed could save the individual from despair.
Nietzsche Nietzsche, who was not acquainted with the work of Segregated, influenced subsequent existential- sit thought through his criticism of traditional metaphysical and moral assumptions and through his espousal of tragic pessimism and the life- affirming individual will that opposes itself to the moral conformity of the majority. In contrast to Segregated.