Regarded as the bridge of modernism and post-modernism in western modern philosophy, existentialism tends to explore the value of people’s being and power of people’s irrational strengths in creating value in the meaningless life. Including theism existentialism, atheism existentialism, and humanism existentialism, existentialism considers that life is meaningless, which is constructed by nothingness. In the meantime, claiming that human’s irrational initiative can create meaning and values in the meaningless life, existentialism substantially takes isolated irrational consciousness activities as the most real being in the world. In fact, being, freedom, meaningless, and herd mentality are main issues studied in existentialism. This essay thinks …show more content…
Existentialism considers that any external existences, ranging from material existence, to spiritual existence, such as religion, morality, and ideology are meaningless because the existences of these issues could not be established without the identification of people’s will (Webber, 2012, 3). As indicated by Sartre (1943, 310), “Each existence and external power does not exist originally”. The statement of Sartre shows that the existentialism denies original being of any external existence. Reversely, the existentialism believes that what exists originally in the universe is our “being”, which actually highlights the existing value of human’s “being”. Based on this illustration, existentialists argue that since human is the only original “being” in the world, any other existences are factually constructed by human’s creativity activities and the being of external existences is relied on the identification of human on them. Therefore, in the view of existentialism, any external existences are nothingness because their beings are decided and depended on consciousness of human. Furthermore, the existentialists deem that although there are not any other external existences in the world except for human, human should exercise its irrational instinct to create values, which is because people’s rational thinking is relied on external …show more content…
However, different from Hediger, Sartre divides being into two main types, being-in-itself and being-for-itself. Being-in-itself refers to an existence that is equivalent to the object itself (Sartre, 1943, 313). The being of certain object is decided by its own existence but not relies on external identification or judgment. Differently, being-for-itself is decided and identified by human’s subjective consciousness. Then, since the substance of consciousness consists in consciousness itself, the being of human is self-exceeding eternal. As a consequence, in the theory of Sartre, human is exceeding itself in its being forever long and human could not occupy the being of itself, which implies that “existence precedes essence”, as said by Sartre (Sartre, 1943, 315). In general, based on the Christian existentialism that recognizes externally spiritual existence, Sartre claims that human’s being exists and appears before the demonstration of human’s substance, which shows that in the view of Sartre, self-being of human is the mostly primary being and the non-existence of “me” means non-existence of any other things. Following this logic, Sartre raises that it is “myself”, the demonstration of “being” consciousness, which decides the nature of “me”. What’s more, Sartre
In his lecture, Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre discusses common misconceptions people, specifically Communists and Christians, have about existentialism and extentanitalists (18). He wants to explain why these misconceptions are wrong and defend existentialism for what he believes it is. Sartre argues people are free to create themselves through their decisions and actions. This idea is illustrated in the movie 13 Going on Thirty, where one characters’ decision at her thirteenth birthday party and her actions afterwards make her become awful person by the time she turns thirty. She was free to make these decisions but she was also alone. Often the idea of having complete free will at first sounds refreshing, but when people
Guignon, B. C. and Pereboom, D. (eds). (2001). Existentialism: Basic Writings. Indianapolis, IN: Hacket Publishing.
Existentialism is a branch of philosophy mostly concerned with the ideas of choice, meaning, and the limits of existence. Existentialism denies any form of predetermined systems, for they generally imply an external source of meaning, or power. Existentialism is often misconstrued of being nihilistic (if there is no predetermined meaning, then the world is completely meaningles...
One of the aims of Being and Nothingness is to describe consciousness, or human subjectivity. Sartre distinguishes two different modes of consciousness in order to accurately describe human subjectivity. These two modes are being-for-itself and being-for-others. Being-for-itself refers to a transcendent conscious being (Oaklander, 238). Transcendence is the antithesis of facticity. I will describe facticity first, in order to make the concept of transcendence more tractable. Facticity denotes the concrete details of the subject’s being including past decisions, plac...
The key belief of existentialists is that existence precedes essence. In order to understand that claim we must first understand what Jean- Paul Sartre means by the term “essence.” He gives an example of a person forging a paper-cutter. When an individual sets out to make any object, he/she has a purpose for it in mind and an idea of what the object will look like before beginning the actual production of it, so this object has an essence, or purpose, before it ever has an existence. The individual, as its creator, has given the paper-cutter its essence. Using the paper cutter example, Sartre argues that human beings cannot have an essence (or purpose) before their “production,” becaus...
Existentialism is a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining his or her own development through acts of the will. To Sartre, saying that som...
Ross, Kelly L. "Existentialism." The Proceedings of the Friesian School, Fourth Series. Kelly L. Ross, Ph.D., 2013. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.
The Merriam – Webster Dictionary defines existentialism as a chiefly 20th century philosophical movement embracing diverse doctrines but centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad (Merriam, 2011). In other words, an existentialist believes that our natures are the natures we make for ourselves, the meaning of our existence is that we just exist and there may or may not be a meaning for the existence, and we have to individually decide what is right or wrong and good or bad for ourselves. No one can answer any of those things for us. A good example of existentialism is Woody Allen’s movie, Deconstructing Harry. A man is haunted by his past and his past has followed him into the present. He is a wreck not because of the things that happened to him, but because of the choices he made. He is consumed by regret and insecurity and he tries to find blame in his situation with someone other than himself, however he cannot (Barnes, 2011). Throughout the rest of this paper I will be discussing two of the most prominent existentialists, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
John Paul Sartre is known as one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. He wrote many philosophical works novels and plays. Much of his work is tied into politics. The essay Existentialism is a Humanism is just one of his many works. Existentialism is a Humanism is a political essay that was written in 1945. Its purpose was to address a small public during World War II in Nazi occupied France. This essay stressed the public not to conform. Sartre introduced a great number of philosophical concepts in Existentialism. Two of these concepts are anguish and forlornness. They are simply defined, as anguish is feeling responsible for yourself as well as others and knowing that your actions affect others and forlornness is realizing that you are alone in your decisions. These two concepts are interwoven throughout the essay and throughout many of Sartre's other works. Sartre's view of anguish and forlornness in Existentialism is a Humanism addresses his view of life and man.
Existentialism is a term that was coined specifically by Jean-Paul Sartre in regards to his own life. Sartre had adopted the Atheistic approach to life and its meaning, and while he was not the first or only one to do so, was the first and only one to come up with a way to describe it. Under Existentialism, man lives without higher power or guidance and must rely solely on himself and what he is aiming to do in order to lead a fulfilling life. This can be anything. Critics of Sartre propose that, because such a vast array of options exists within the meaningfulness of life, this philosophy is obsolete and trivial in nature. This is not true, as it is seen in everyday examples – celebrities, namely – that a thirst
In his defense of existentialism, Sartre first defines the unifying factor of existentialism, (for both atheist and deist alike), as the belief that existence precedes essence. To help illustrate his point he presents the example of a paper knife, an object that possess a set of qualities that enable it to carry out its purpose. He states that it would not have been created without a particular purpose, therefore its essence precedes its existence. (Sartre) Sartre rejects this idea when it comes to mankind and declares that humans in themselves have no nature and define themselves after coming into existence. This stems from his atheistic worldview, in which the rejection of a higher power leads him to accept the fact that humans are the “Creator”, the first to exist, and it is our job to give meaning to the rest of the world.
Jean Paul Sartre personally believed in the philosophical idea of existentialism, which is demonstrated in his play No Exit. His ideas of existentialism were profoundly outlined in the play. Based on the idea that mental torture is more agonizing than physical, No Exit leaves the reader with mixed emotions towards the importance of consequences for one’s acts.
In existentialism one’s mind and body are ultimately free, they have nothing controlling their actions; that freedom is in the way one communicates, one’s actions, one’s choices, one’s
Existentialism is a philosophical theory that emphasises the existence of an individual person as a responsible being that determines their own development through acts of free will and that every person has the ability to make every one of their choices using free will and wisdom from life experiences. Also that human being are independent, conscious and cognitive, separate from labels, other people's beliefs, roles, stereotypes, and definition.Existentialist philosophical thinking begins with the human, not the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, and living human. While the predominant value of existentialism is commonly known as freedom, the first virtue is authenticity.
Existentialism was born against Age of Reason in order to reject abstract thinking and absoluteness of reason. Existentialists have claims and evidences to support their idea. They are trying to find absolute truth without absolute thinking because of this they will look for the truth all the eternity. In this essay, I will point out the existentialists’ claims in terms of denying absolute reason.