Existentialism

From FasciPedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Please upload an image and put the file on this page. Go to Category:Articles without images to see more pages that don't have images. If you do not agree that this article needs an image please discuss it on this article's talk page.

Existentialism [1][2]) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on the subjective experience of thinking, feeling, and acting.[3][4] Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. In the view of an existentialist, the individual's starting point has been called "the existential angst", a sense of dread, disorientation, confusion, or anxiety in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. [5]

Existentialism is associated with several 19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who shared an emphasis on the human subject, despite often profound differences in thought.[6][4][7] Among the earliest figures associated with existentialism are philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche and novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, all of whom critiqued rationalism and concerned themselves with the problem of meaning. In the 20th century, prominent existentialist thinkers included Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, and Paul Tillich.

Many existentialists considered traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in style and content, to be too abstract and removed from concrete human experience.[8][9] A primary virtue in existentialist thought is authenticity.[10] Existentialism would influence many disciplines outside of philosophy, including theology, drama, art, literature, and psychology.[11]

Concepts

Existence precedes essence

Sartre argued that a central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which is to say that individuals shape themselves by existing and cannot be perceived through preconceived and a priori categories, an "essence". The actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called their "true essence" instead of an arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them. Human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life.[12] This view is in contradiction to Aristotle and Aquinas who taught that essence precedes individual existence. Although it was Sartre who explicitly coined the phrase, similar notions can be found in the thought of existentialist philosophers such as Heidegger, and Kierkegaard:

Quotebubble.png The subjective thinker’s form, the form of his communication, is his style. His form must be just as manifold as are the opposites that he holds together. The systematic eins, zwei, drei is an abstract form that also must inevitably run into trouble whenever it is to be applied to the concrete. To the same degree as the subjective thinker is concrete, to that same degree his form must also be concretely dialectical. But just as he himself is not a poet, not an ethicist, not a dialectician, so also his form is none of these directly. His form must first and last be related to existence, and in this regard, he must have at his disposal the poetic, the ethical, the dialectical, the religious. Subordinate character, setting, etc., which belong to the well-balanced character of the esthetic production, are in themselves breadth; the subjective thinker has only one setting—existence—and has nothing to do with localities and such things. The setting is not the fairyland of the imagination, where poetry produces consummation, nor is the setting laid in England, and historical accuracy is not a concern. The setting is inwardness in existing as a human being; the concretion is the relation of the existence-categories to one another. Historical accuracy and historical actuality are breadth.
—Søren Kierkegaard, (Concluding Postscript, Hong pp. 357–358.)

Some interpret the imperative to define oneself as meaning that anyone can wish to be anything. However, an existentialist philosopher would say such a wish constitutes an inauthentic existence – what Sartre would call "bad faith". Instead, the phrase should be taken to say that people are defined only insofar as they act and that they are responsible for their actions. Someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, defined as a cruel person. Such persons are themselves responsible for their new identity (cruel persons). This is opposed to their genes, or human nature, bearing the blame.

As Sartre said in his lecture Existentialism is a Humanism: "Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards." The more positive, therapeutic aspect of this is also implied: a person can choose to act in a different way, and to be a good person instead of a cruel person.[13]

Jonathan Webber interprets Sartre's usage of the term essence not in a modal fashion, i.e. as necessary features, but in a teleological fashion: "an essence is the relational property of having a set of parts ordered in such a way as to collectively perform some activity".[14][6] For example, it belongs to the essence of a house to keep the bad weather out, which is why it has walls and a roof. Humans are different from houses because—unlike houses—they do not have an inbuilt purpose: they are free to choose their own purpose and thereby shape their essence; thus, their existence precedes their essence.[14]

Sartre is committed to a radical conception of freedom: nothing fixes our purpose but we ourselves, our projects have no weight or inertia except for our endorsement of them.[15][16] Simone de Beauvoir, on the other hand, holds that there are various factors, grouped together under the term sedimentation, that offer resistance to attempts to change our direction in life. Sedimentations are themselves products of past choices and can be changed by choosing differently in the present, but such changes happen slowly. they are a force of inertia that shapes the agent's evaluative outlook on the world until the transition is complete.[14]:5,9,66

Sartre's definition of existentialism was based on Heidegger's magnum opus Being and Time (1927). In the correspondence with Jean Beaufret later published as the Letter on Humanism, Heidegger implied that Sartre misunderstood him for his own purposes of subjectivism, and that he did not mean that actions take precedence over being so long as those actions were not reflected upon.[17] Heidegger commented that "the reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement", meaning that he thought Sartre had simply switched the roles traditionally attributed to essence and existence without interrogating these concepts and their history.[18]

The Absurd

The notion of the absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning in the world beyond what meaning we give it. This meaninglessness also encompasses the amorality or "unfairness" of the world. This can be highlighted in the way it opposes the traditional Abrahamic religious perspective, which establishes that life's purpose is the fulfillment of God's commandments. [19] This is what gives meaning to people's lives. To live the life of the absurd means rejecting a life that finds or pursues specific meaning for man's existence since there is nothing to be discovered. According to Albert Camus, the world or the human being is not in itself absurd. The concept only emerges through the juxtaposition of the two; life becomes absurd due to the incompatibility between human beings and the world they inhabit.[19] This view constitutes one of the two interpretations of the absurd in existentialist literature. The second view, first elaborated by Søren Kierkegaard, holds that absurdity is limited to actions and choices of human beings. These are considered absurd since they issue from human freedom, undermining their foundation outside of themselves.[20]

The absurd contrasts with the claim that "bad things don't happen to good people"; to the world, metaphorically speaking, there is no such thing as a good person or a bad person; what happens happens, and it may just as well happen to a "good" person as to a "bad" person.[21] Because of the world's absurdity, anything can happen to anyone at any time and a tragic event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the absurd. Many of the literary works of Kierkegaard, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Eugène Ionesco, Miguel de Unamuno, Luigi Pirandello,[22][23][24][25] Sartre, Joseph Heller, and Camus contain descriptions of people who encounter the absurdity of the world.

It is because of the devastating awareness of meaninglessness that Camus claimed in The Myth of Sisyphus that "There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide." Although "prescriptions" against the possible deleterious consequences of these kinds of encounters vary, from Kierkegaard's religious "stage" to Camus' insistence on persevering in spite of absurdity, the concern with helping people avoid living their lives in ways that put them in the perpetual danger of having everything meaningful break down is common to most existentialist philosophers. The possibility of having everything meaningful break down poses a threat of quietism, which is inherently against the existentialist philosophy.[26] It has been said that the possibility of suicide makes all humans existentialists. The ultimate hero of absurdism lives without meaning and faces suicide without succumbing to it.[27]

Facticity

Facticity is defined by Sartre in Being and Nothingness (1943) as the in-itself, which delineates for humans the modalities of being and not being. This can be more easily understood when considering facticity in relation to the temporal dimension of our past: one's past is what one is, in that it co-constitutes oneself. However, to say that one is only one's past would ignore a significant part of reality (the present and the future), while saying that one's past is only what one was, would entirely detach it from oneself now. A denial of one's concrete past constitutes an inauthentic lifestyle, and also applies to other kinds of facticity (having a human body—e.g., one that does not allow a person to run faster than the speed of sound—identity, values, etc.).[28]

Authenticity

Many noted existentialists consider the theme of authentic existence important. Authenticity involves the idea that one has to "create oneself" and live in accordance with this self. For an authentic existence, one should act as oneself, not as "one's acts" or as "one's genes" or as any other essence requires. The authentic act is one in accordance with one's freedom. A component of freedom is facticity, but not to the degree that this facticity determines one's transcendent choices (one could then blame one's background for making the choice one made chosen project, from one's transcendence). Facticity, in relation to authenticity, involves acting on one's actual values when making a choice (instead of, like Kierkegaard's Aesthete, "choosing" randomly), so that one takes responsibility for the act instead of choosing either-or without allowing the options to have different values. [29]

The Other and the Look

The Other (written with a capital "O") is a concept more properly belonging to phenomenology and its account of intersubjectivity. However, it has seen widespread use in existentialist writings, and the conclusions drawn differ slightly from the phenomenological accounts. The Other is the experience of another free subject who inhabits the same world as a person does. In its most basic form, it is this experience of the Other that constitutes intersubjectivity and objectivity. To clarify, when one experiences someone else, and this other person experiences the world (the same world that a person experiences)—only from "over there", the world is constituted as objective in that it is something that is "there" as identical for both of the subjects; a person experiences the other person as experiencing the same things. This experience of the Other's look is what is termed the Look (sometimes the Gaze).[30]

Religion

An existentialist reading of The Bible would demand that the reader recognize that they are an existing subject studying the words more as a recollection of events. This is in contrast to looking at a collection of "truths" that are outside and unrelated to the reader but may develop a sense of reality/God. Such a reader is not obligated to follow the commandments as if an external agent is forcing these commandments upon them, but as though they are inside them and guiding them from inside. This is the task Kierkegaard takes up when he asks: "Who has the more difficult task: the teacher who lectures on earnest things a meteor's distance from everyday life, or the learner who should put it to use?"[31]

Confusion with nihilism

Although nihilism and existentialism are distinct philosophies, they are often confused with one another since both are rooted in the human experience of anguish and confusion that stems from the apparent meaninglessness of a world in which humans are compelled to find or create meaning.[32] A primary cause of confusion is that Friedrich Nietzsche was an important philosopher in both fields.

Existentialist philosophers often stress the importance of angst as signifying the absolute lack of any objective ground for action, a move that is often reduced to moral or existential nihilism. A pervasive theme in existentialist philosophy, however, is to persist through encounters with the absurd, as seen in Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus ("One must imagine Sisyphus happy.")[33] and it is only very rarely that existentialist philosophers dismiss morality or one's self-created meaning: Kierkegaard regained a sort of morality in the religious (although he would not agree that it was ethical; the religious suspends the ethical), and Sartre's final words in Being and Nothingness are: "All these questions, which refer us to a pure and not an accessory (or impure) reflection, can find their reply only on the ethical plane. We shall devote to them a future work."


References

  1. ↑ "existentialism". Lexico. Oxford Dictionaries. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  2. ↑ existentialism|access-date=2 March 2020}}
  3. ↑ Nietzsche: A Biographical Introduction p. 43 Charles Scribner's Sons (1971).
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Macquarrie, John (1972). Existentialism pp. 14–15. New York: Penguin.
  5. ↑ Solomon, Robert C. (1974). Existentialism pp. 1–2 McGraw-Hill.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=encyclopaedia }}
  7. ↑ Oxford Companion to Philosophy p. 259. New York: Oxford University Press (1995). ISBN 978-0-19-866132-0
  8. ↑ Breisach, Ernst (1962). Introduction to Modern Existentialism p. 5. New York: Grove Press.
  9. ↑ Kaufmann, Walter (1956). Existentialism: From Dostoyevesky to Sartre p. 12. New York: Meridian.
  10. ↑ Flynn, Thomas (2006). Existentialism - A Very Short Introduction p. xi. New York: Oxford University Press Inc.. ISBN 0-19-280428-6
  11. ↑ Existentialism: Basic Writings p. xiii Hackett Publishing (2001). ISBN 9780872205956
  12. ↑ (Dictionary) "L'existencialisme" – see "l'identité de la personne".
  13. ↑ Baird, Forrest E. (2008). From Plato to Derrida. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-158591-1
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Rethinking Existentialism Oxford: Oxford University Press (2018).
  15. ↑ Existentialism.
  16. ↑ The Sartre Dictionary pp. 41–42 Continuum (2008).
  17. ↑ Heidegger, Martin (1993). Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964). San Francisco, California: Harper San Francisco. ISBN 0060637633
  18. ↑ Heidegger, Martin (1993). Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of thinking (1964) pp. 243. San Francisco, California: Harper San Francisco. ISBN 0060637633
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Wartenberg, Thomas (2009). Existentialism: A Beginner's Guide. Oxford: One World. ISBN 9781780740201
  20. ↑ Michelman, Stephen (2010). The A to Z of Existentialism pp. 27. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.. ISBN 9780810875890
  21. ↑ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Existentialism, 3.1 Anxiety, Nothingness, the Absurd.
  22. ↑ Luigi Pirandello in the Theatre Routledge (March 18, 2014). ISBN 9781134351145
  23. ↑ Understanding Existentialism: Teach Yourself Hodder & Stoughton (2010). ISBN 9781444134216
  24. ↑ Pirandello and the Crisis of Modern Consciousness University of Illinois Press (1988). ISBN 9780252014680
  25. ↑ Living Masks: The Achievement of Pirandello University of Toronto Press (2010). ISBN 9781442693142
  26. ↑ Jean-Paul Sartre. Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre 1946. Marxists.org.
  27. ↑ E Keen (1973). "Suicide and Self-Deception". Psychoanalytic Review 60 (4): 575–85. PMID 4772778. http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=PSAR.060.0575A. 
  28. ↑ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Existentialism", 2.1 Facticity and Transcendence.
  29. ↑ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Existentialism", 2.3 Authenticity.
  30. ↑ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Existentialism, 2.2 Alienation.
  31. ↑ Kierkegaard, Soren. Works of Love. Harper & Row, Publishers. New York, N.Y. 1962. p. 62.
  32. ↑ {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=encyclopaedia }}
  33. ↑ Camus, Albert. "The Myth of Sisyphus". NYU.edu.


| |

Retrieved from "http:///index.php?title=Existentialism&oldid=20552"