Existentialism

Summary

Existentialism is concerned with an individual's subjective existence in the world. Because we have such an intimate understanding of individuality and of existence, each of us a unique perspective on what it means 'to be.' Existentialism is a concept that anyone, regardless of educational background, can discuss and analyze. 

Although few philosophers have actually called themselves existentialists—Sartre being the exception—we now categorized a number of writers in this way including Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre and Camus. While existential writers are both religious and non-religious, the common thread is the importance of the subjective truths and subjective experience. 

The Individual

Prior to the nineteenth-century, philosophers from Aristotle to Kant explored objective human nature. Just as animals have an underlying nature, humans too must have an essence that can be discovered and described. Existentialists, however, argued that a persons essence, the who-we-are-in-the-world, is something we choose. There is no necessity to be and to act in any particular manner. There are no uniquely human behaviors. We can live as a nomad in the desert or a bon vivant in Paris. We can seek money and power or god and solitude. We can develop fabulous literature or remain illiterate. Our existence (life in the world) comes before our essence (human nature).  Life’s meaning does not come from finding an objective truth or basic nature, meaning comes through our subjective choices and experience.

This concept of the individual as something we can control is very prevalent in modern society, but this has not always been the case. One of the first works of literature to describe the inner experience was St. Augustine's in his Confessions 4th A.D. It was not until Petrarch's autobiography in the  fourteenth-century that anything similar appears in Western literature. Our modern concept of the individual as an autonomous person in the world, without a nature that determines what we are to do in this world, develops during the Renaissance.

In the nineteenth-century Dostoyevsky, in Notes from Underground, introduces a hyperconscious individuals who thinks and re-thinks every action and thought. This is one of the first pieces of literature to use this stream-of-consciousness writing. The text is written in the second-person, as though the the reader is being directly address and understands the experience of the protagonist. See chapter 1 of Firebelly as an example of this Dostoyevsky-like second-person writing.

Concerns of Existentialism

Death We do not come into the world knowing about death. We learn about it. First by observing other living things and by extrapolation that we too are living and will have a similar future. Although the concept of death is known to everyone, we often only live as though this is an intellectual abstraction that does not affect us. How will our life change when we confront death? When we answer this questions in a positive way, Heidegger says we become a-being-toward-death.

Freedom In a world devoid of meaning, we are not compelled to choose any particular path. Within the constraints of the time and place of our birth, every possibility is open to us. The existentialist argues that there is no external, objective structure to which we must conform. Therefore, we must take on the responsibility ourselves to create who we will become. This radical subjective freedom, a freedom more vast than that offered through any objective political structure, can be terrifying.  Comments on free-will and existentialism.

Meaning There is no objective method to find meaning in life and no logical or rational choice that will lead to an understanding of the world. If the world is no more than what we create, life becomes absurd. We become responsible for meaning in our own lives.

Despair and Care Realizing the world’s absurdity and our vast freedom amid a meaningless world, we may fall into a state of anxiety, hopelessness, and alienation. We may despair at the prospect of the blank canvas of our lives. Alternatively, we may choose to accept responsibility for ourselves, care for others, and dwell in the world.

Authentic and Inauthentic Choices Although choices cannot be rationally grounded, as in Aristotle’s Nichomachean ethics, this does not imply choices have equal value or that morality is relative. An inauthentic choice, for example, would be to follow the masses unquestioningly. An authentic choice acknowledges our responsibility in a vastly free world and accepts the finitude and anguish of life. Comments on free-will and existentialism.

Selected Primary Figures

Dostoyevsky (Russian writer and journalist) 1821 – 1881. "One can say many things about the history of the world—except that it is rational. Give man every earthly blessing, satisfy his every desire, quench his slightest thirst, and he would still destroy what he has—just to prove his freedom." Notes from Underground

Kierkegaard (Danish philosopher) 1813 – 1855. "How dreadful boredom is … I lie prostrate, inert; the only thing I see is emptiness. If I were offered all the glories of the world or all the torments of the world, one would move me no more than the other; I would not turn over to attain or avoid" Either/Or • "What I seek is a truth for which I can live and die." Journals

Heidegger (German philosopher) 1889 – 1976. "Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one" • "If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life–and only then will I be free to become myself."

Camus (French–Algerian writer) 1913 – 1960. "If something worth living for is worth dying for, what about something not worth dying for?" Myth of Sisyphus

Buber (Jewish writer and philosopher) 1878 – 1965. "When one says You, the I of the world pair I-You is said too. When one says It, the I of the world pair I-it is said, too." I and Thou

Sartre (French philosopher) 1905 – 1980. "I await myself in the future. Anguish is the fear of not finding myself there."