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Existentialism

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Existentialism is a unilateral philosophical movement that emphasizes the individual, the self, the individual's experience, and the uniqueness therein as the only reality. Existentialists believe in sheer freedom and accept the consequences and ramifications of their actions wholly. Existentialists prefer subjectivity, and view general existence as arcane, that they are isolated entities in an indifferent and often ambiguous universe.

Overview

Albert Camus emphasizes the idea of being present in the moment to make choices in his novel The Stranger, when Meursault exclaims, "We are all privileged.". Existentialism was inspired by the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard and the German philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, and was particularly popular around the mid-20th century with the works of the French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. The main tenets of the movement are set out in Sartre's L'Existentialisme est un humanisme, translated as Existentialism is a Humanism.

Though many, if not most, existentialists were atheists, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel pursued more theological versions of existentialism. The one-time Marxist Nikolai Berdyaev developed a philosophy of Christian existentialism in his native Russia and later France during the decades preceding World War II.

Major concepts in existentialism

"Existence precedes and rules essence"

Among the most famous and influential existentialist propositions is Sartre's dictum, "existence precedes and rules essence", which is generally taken to mean that there is no pre-defined essence to humanity except that which we make for ourselves. Since Sartrean existentialism does not acknowledge the existence of a god or of any other determining principle, human beings are free to do as they choose.

Since there is no predefined human nature or ultimate evaluation beyond that which humans project onto the world, people may only be judged or defined by their actions and choices, and human choices are the ultimate evaluator. This concept spins from Nietzsche's concept of eternal return—the idea that "things lose values because they cease to exist". If all things were to continually exist then they would all burden us with a tremendous level of importance, but because things come to pass, and no longer exist, they lose their value. The concept of Existence preceding essence is important because it describes the only conceivable reality as the judge of good or evil. If things simply "are", without directive, purpose or overall truth, then truth (or essence) is only the projection of that which is a product of existence, or collective experiences. For truth to exist, existence has to exist before it, making it not only the predecessor but the 'ruler' of its own objectivity."


Existentialism before 1970

In the 1950s and 1960s, existentialism experienced a resurgence of interest in popular artforms. In fiction, Jack Kerouac and the Beat poets adopted existentialist themes. Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf, based on an idea in Either/Or, sold well in the West, and "arthouse" films began to quote or allude to existentialist thinkers. At the same time that the students of Paris found in Sartre a hero for the May 1968 demonstrations, others were appropriating the pessimistic themes found in Albert Camus and Kierkegaard. The despair of choice and the despair of the unknowing self featured prominently (often in a pidgin form) in numerous films and novels.

Existentialism since 1970

Although postmodernist thought had become the focus of intellectuals during the 1970s and thereafter (there is still debate as to whether the movement is strong today, and to what, if anything, has replaced it), many postmodernist writing contained strong elements of existentialism, which is not surprising, since postmodernism evolved out of the thinking of Nietzsche and Heidegger, two of the greatest of existential philosophers (though Heidegger would never have labeled himself as an Existentialist).

One should, however, not confuse Post-Modernism with Existentialism. Films with Post-Modern themes such as The Matrix, mimic the idea of a simulacrum, which has to do with reality and appearance and how the latter makes the former indistinguishable, if it can sufficiently mimic it (The Matrix film even going so far to make this point clear as to include a copy of Baudrillard's 'Simulacra and Simulation' in the background of the protagonist's apartment). Existential films, on the other hand, deal more with the themes of:

  1. Retaining authenticity in a mechanical, apathetic world (something Post-Modernism would staunchly reject, as authenticity relates to a "reality" that does not exist).
  2. The consciousness of death (Heidegger's 'being towards death', exemplified in Ingmar Bergman's film "The Seventh Seal").
  3. The feelings of alienation and loneliness that come about from being unique in a world of many, (or to use Nietzsche's phrase "herd-animals")
  4. The concept, which Heidegger explicated in Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) of Alltagliche selbstsein (Everydayness).

However, a great deal of cultural activity in art, film and literature since 1970 contains both Post-Modern and Existential elements (which, ironically, would support the Post-Modern thesis of "borderlessness between concepts"). Books and films such as Fight Club (Palahniuk), Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep (Dick), The Neverending Story (Ende), and Toilet: The Novel (Szymczyk) all distort the line between reality and appearance, but at the same time, espouse strong existential themes. In the film industry, Post-Modern techniques of editing (to show the displacement, discontinuity and perspectiveness of time that is typical of Post-Modernism) can go hand-in-hand with a purely Existential story, thus serving as a synthesis between the two in terms of technique and function. Moreover, this has served to brand a new term "Neo-Existentialism", that combines both the epistemological elements of Post-Modern thought with the reflective ontological beliefs of Existentialism. As for the future state of Existentialism, it is sure that so long as there are people that live, there will be people that die, and so long as there is that, there will be Existentialism for those who think, ponder and become nauseated over that unfortunate, if not liberating, fact.

Criticisms of existentialism

  1. The opponents of existentialism assert that it fosters the particularization of human beings, stripping them of a universal sense of identity, which is entirely consistent with the claims of existentialists that the only universal allowed for human beings is their fundamental freedom.
  2. Another view is simply that existentialists are insane, which, many existentialists would reply, is correct, but, they would retort, only if you considered a lack of desire to live the traditional office life as reducible to insanity.
  3. And, the most famous criticism of existentialism is by Theodor Adorno, who in the fashion of Schopenhauer's critique of Hegel, regarded Existentialism as inane, mostly in regards to Heidegger's usage of language. However, there are thinkers such as Camus who write rather simplistically and without artifice, and whose terms such as "Nothingness" are linguistically justified by a simple glance to the past, or to the future.
  4. Roger Scruton claimed, in his book "From Descartes to Wittgenstein", that both Heidegger's concept of "inauthenticity" and Sartre's concept of "bad faith" were contradictory; they both deny any universal moral creed, yet talk about these concepts as if everyone was bound to abide by them. He writes, in chapter 18, "In what sense Sartre is able to 'recommend' the authenticity which consists in the purely self-made morality is unclear. He does recommend it, but, by his own argument, his recommendation can have no objective force." Sartre was familiar with this sort of argument, and claimed that bad and good faith do not represent moral ideas. They are rather ways of being.

Major thinkers and authors associated with the movement

Philosophers

Psychologists

Theologians

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