Existentialism

Existentialism is a philosophical movement that views human existence as having a set of underlying themes and characteristics, such as anxiety, dread, freedom, awareness of death, and consciousness of existing, that are primary and that cannot be reduced to or explained by a natural-scientific approach or any approach that attempts to detach itself from or rise above these underlying themes. It conceives of Being itself as something that can only be understood through and in relation to these basic characteristics of human existence. For existentialism, human beings can be understood only from the inside, in terms of their lived and experienced reality and dilemmas, not from the outside, in terms of a biological, psychological, or other scientific theory of human nature. It emphasizes action, freedom, and decision as fundamental to human existence and is fundamentally opposed to the rationalist tradition and to positivism. That is, it argues against definitions of human beings either as primarily rational, knowing beings who relate to reality primarily as an object of knowledge or whose action can or ought to be regulated by rational principles, or as beings who can be defined in terms of their behavior as it looks to or is studied by others. More generally it rejects all of the Western rationalist definitions of Being in terms of a rational principle or essence or as the most general feature that all existing things share in common. Existentialism tends to view human beings as subjects in an indifferent, often ambiguous, and "absurd" universe in which meaning is not provided by either the natural order or God but rather can be created, however provisionally and unstably, by human beings' actions and interpretations.

Existentialism before 1970

Arguably the first existentialist was Blaise Pascal. In 1670, he published the Pensees, which he described many fundamental themes of existentialism. Pascal argued that without a god, life would be meaningless and miserable. People would only be able to create obstacles and overcome them in an attempt to escape boredom. These token-victories would ultimately become meaningless, since we would eventually die. This was good enough reason not to choose to become an atheist according to Pascal. Sartre takes this idea of avoiding the inevitable death as bad faith. Camus embraces the idea that without a god ultimately everything is meaningless, and tries to find meaning within it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The thought of the major existentialist philosophers of the 20th century, Heidegger and Sartre, grew out of the phenomenology of Husserl, which attempted to critique positivism and psychologism by grounding all perception, experience, and knowledge in structures of human consciousness. Husserl stressed that all Being is always being for a consciousness. Heidegger transformed this into the core existentialist notion that Being is always being, not for a pure consciousness, but rather for a concrete existence, that is that consciousness is a property of a (human) existence (Dasein) that has "being-in-the-world", and exists in a concete historical context. Sartre developed his version of existentialist philosophy under the influence of Husserl and Heidegger.

Related Topics:
Phenomenology - Positivism - Psychologism - Consciousness

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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 Kierkegaard's Either/Or (1843), sold well in the West, and "arthouse" films began quoting and alluding to existentialist thought and thinkers. Simultaneously, in Sartre, Paris university students found a hero for the May 1968 demonstrations, and others were appropriating the thematic pessimism found in Albert Camus and Soren Kierkegaard. The despair of choice and the despair of the unknowing self featured prominently (often in pidgin form) in cinema and novels.

Related Topics:
1950s - 1960s - Jack Kerouac - Beat poets - Herman Hesse - Steppenwolf - Paris - May 1968 - Albert Camus - Soren Kierkegaard

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~