Existentialism

Existentialism and the Human Person’s Search for Meaning
The question is not what am I to believe, but what am I to do? - Soren Kierkegaard

Existentialist Movement
Confronting the human condition and the anxiety-provoking givens of death, freedom, and meaningless.

Objective science and rationalistic philosophy cannot come to grips with the real problems of human existence.

General answers, grand metaphysical systems, and supposedly objective and rational theories cannot address the existential (living, concrete) concern of individuals

The individual man cannot be placed as a “cog in a machine” or a part of a system.

Man has infinite passion (Philosophy as search for the meaning of life)

Two Difficulties In Searching For Meaning:
Existentialism is not so much a philosophical system as a movement, an attitude, a frame of mind. (A way of thinking)

The question of what is the meaning of man’s existence is more important than the answer. (Questions generate more questions)

Distinctive Features of Existentialism
Existentialist thinkers attempt to philosophize from the standpoint of an actor rather than from that of a spectator (Uses phenomenological description)

Existentialist philosophies are basically philosophies of man, stressing the subjectivity of man (Man as the original center)
To be subjective is not necessarily to be subjectivistic; rather, it could be the only way to be object, to talk meaningfully of a world.

Existentialist philosophies stress on man’s existence, on man as situated.
(Elaboration on situated): Human existence has context, for we do not exist in a vacuum.
Our existence is more of a leap of fate

Difference of Object to Subject
Object - Something outside of us that we can manipulate & control
Subject - Refers to ourselves; active agent
(Ex: The objectification of women)
(Ex: Subjective when you describe how the earthquake affect the people. Objective when you say ‘oh, they’ll recover)

Theistic Group (God)
Martin Heidegger
Man is dasein (being/pagmemeron), there-being, thrown into the world to realize himself, doomed to potentialities, the extreme of which is death.
Like Sandy: Is an alien to Bikini Bottom but she’s able to live a happy life there

Soren Kierkegaard
Existence is a religious category: the situation of the single, finite, unique individual who has to make a decisions before the One Infinite God in fear and trembling like the situation of Abraham.
Like Squid-ward: surrendered but found purpose in life

Karl Jaspers (YASPERS)
To exist is to transcend oneself through limit situations and eventually to find God. (Jasper admits of a vertical transcendence of man).
Like Spongebob: Has the tendency to improve oneself

Gabriel Marcel
Esse est co-esse: to exist is to coexist, to participate in the fullness of Being (God) through love, fidelity, and faith.
Like Patrick: Happy w/ Spongebob. Is a stupid idiot w/o Spongebob

Atheistic Group
Jean-Paul Sarte
To exist is to be condemned to freedom

Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Man is codemned to meaning
Like Mrs. Puff: Her world is the driving school & Spongebob, still able to find meaning

Albert Camus
To exist is, like Sisyphus pushing and rolling the stone, to live the absurdity of life.
Like Mr. Krab: Obsession and irrational love for money. Has abundance of money but doesn’t spend it.
Can also be Plankton where he attempts to steal the formula but always fails yet he continues doing it.

4th Characteristic: Existentialist thinkers emphasize the freedom of man.

Kierkegaard: freedom is that which enables man to pass from the aesthetic state to the ethical, and ultimately, to make the leap of faith, the highest act of man’s liberty.

Heidegger: equates freedom with self-transcendence in-time, the being-ahead-of-itself of dasein while having-been and making-present entities in his world.

Satre: “Nothing determines human freedom from creating its own essence except freedom itself: man cannot help but be free.”

“One becomes free only if he transcends himself and goes out to others in love, participating in something greater than himself.”

5th Characteristic:
Inauthentic existence is living under the impersonal “on” (they) of Heidegger, the crowd mentality of KIerkegaard, bad faith of Sartre.
Inauthentic existence - living a life dictated by others. Follows the crowd mentality.
Bad faith - putting faith not in yourself but others

The inauthentic man is the “I’etranger” of Camus, indifferent, tranquilized, unable to make personal decision of his own. He is the functionalized man of Marcel living in the mass society, the man living the life of monologue of Buber.

Authentic existence is personal & the autnethic man is one who freely commits himself to the realization of a project, an idea, a truth, a value.

“He is one who does not hide himself in the anonymity of the crowd but signs himself to what he manifests.

The question of value from the existentialist cannot be divorced from the more original question of: What does it mean to be? What is the meaning of life?
• Value then is intimately related to life (and to death as the corollary of life), and if human life for the existentialists is to be lived freely. authentically, responsibly, personally, then value is that for which a person lives and dies for.
• Value is that to which the authentic man commits himself.
• Marcel: for existence to be truly
human it must have a center outside itself.

Is value for existentialists subjective or objective?
SUBJECTIVE
• Value is subjective because value always presupposes a subject who values: value is always value-for-me.
OBJECTIVE
• Value is objective because there is truly something I can live and die for. Value is intimately connected with truth, for I cannot live and die for what is false or for what I think is untrue.

BUT WHERE DO VALUES COME FROM? WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF VALUE?
Atheistic Existentialist
• Man is the ultimate source of values; he is responsible for what he commits himself to. Values spring from man's freedom to realize himself and no outside source can be attributed to them. Values are not absolute.
Values are not absolute. Man alone is responsible for his own being; he cannot depend on any absolute.
Theistic existentialist
• The relativity of values as precisely pointing to an Absolute Value who grounds them.
• The subjective source of values is human freedom, yes, but human freedom is limited and becomes fulfilled only when it participates in Someone greater than itself.
• The objective source of value is none other than God, the Absolute Thou who can give final and complete fulfillment to my life.

Existentialism is
ultimately a search
within.
Man the subject is the giver or discoverer of meaning.
But the search within is a search that "erupts," extends to the outside, to the other than the self. How far this will extend depends on how deep man can reach into the recesses of his
subjectivity.


Dag Hammarskjold once
wrote in his diary, "The longest journey is the journey inwards."
• The search is a lifetime task, and time is of the essence of this meaning.

Marlian Proty quoting the poet Claudel says
Le temps est le sens de la vie (sens:
comme on dit le sens d'un course d'eau,
le sens d'une phrase, le sens d'une stoffe,
le sens de l'odorat).
Time is the meaning of life (meaning:
as one says of the direction of a course of
water, the meaning of a sentence,
the texture of a material, the sense of smell)
Just as man cannot evade time, so he cannot escape from this search for meaning, for upon this hinges the integrity and wholeness of his
humanity.