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Philosophy 324 Existentialism
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Detailed notes on existentialism from the lectures, slides, and various readings
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EXISTENTIALISMTHE EXISTENTIALIST STYLE OF
PHILOSOPHISING
CHAPTER 1
WHAT IS EXISTENTIALISM?
- Sartre: “the word is now so loosely applied to so many things that it no longer means anything at
all.”
• Partly, however, the difficulty is that a kind of elusiveness is built into existentialism itself.
- In the existentialist view, there are always loose ends, but this does not mean that existentialists
are unsystematic
- However, there is no common body of doctrine to which all existentialists subscribe, therefore
existentialism is often seen as a style of philosophising as opposed to a philosophy
- Basic characteristics:
• 1. This style of philosophising begins from man rather than from nature.
• 2. We have said that this kind of philosophy begins from man, but from man as an existent
uurather than man as a thinking subject.
Writers on existentialism often point to the division between Christian and atheistic existentialists
as evidence of the diversity that is possible in this style of philosophizing. While it is in fact true that
the ranks of the existentialists do include convinced Christians and equally convinced atheists, this
way of dividing them is.not very helpful. It is oversimplified, for there are some existentialist
philosophers (or philosophers of existentialist tendency) who just do not fit the scheme.
When we come to the avowedly atheistic existentialists, such as Sartre and Camus, we might
seem to be reaching existentialism in its purest form, for in rejecting any religious claim, these men
seem to be asserting the complete autonomy and responsibility of the individual. Yet even here we
find paradoxes. What is to be said, for instance, of Sartre's relation to Marxism?
A final interesting question may be asked. Would the existentialist say that it is a matter of
individual preference whether one achieves authentic selfhood in the choice of Christianity or of
Marxism or of atheism or even of Nazism?
THEMES
- Husserl influenced Existentialism strongly, but not all existentialists are phenomenologists
• Such as Heidegger, Sartre
• Some existentialists who are not phenomenologists: Kierkegaard, Camus
- The existentialists have developed phenomenology to suit their own purposes, and in fact
Husserl was critical of the use to which Heidegger was putting his ideas.
- One rather sharp difference between Husserl and the existentialist phenomenologists arises
from the fact that whereas Husserl lays the stress on essence and thinks of phenomenology as
an eidetic science, the existentialist lays the stress on existence
- Existentialism is not a single school of thought is not a single school of thought, with its own,
worked out “system”
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,- Rather: Unique style of philosophising with its own themes; one of main streams of 20th century
thinking
• Just about everything that happened in the 20th century refers to existentialism in one way or
another
- These themes are often different from those that have traditionally occupied the philosopher.
Whereas, for instance, the problems of logic and epistemology loomed large in the older schools
of thought, the existentialist is inclined to pass over these rather lightly,.
- Note the striking differences between exponents
- Ontology: the theory of being
Recurring themes: finitude, guilt, alienation, despair, death
For the existentialist, man is never just part of the cosmos but always stands to it in a relationship
of tension with possibilities for tragic conflict.
COMMON APPROACH
- To a certain extent, existentialism should be understood by the main historical period in which
the existentialists lived and worked
• Round about the late 30s right through to the 70s
• There is no way one can divorce existentialism from the traumatic events of the 20th century
- The thinker that dominated the 19th century was Hegel: the man who believed that every thesis
provokes an antithesis
- Philosophical problems are approached from the perspective of (wo)man in his/her subjectivity -
that which distinguishes us from a mundane or natural being.
- Subject: not - as in idealism - the universal, rational subject of theoretical knowledge, but rather
(wo)man in totality as a concrete, timely individual, as well as a centre of feeling and agent of
action
- Existentialism confesses common primordial/foundational experience: inner unrest and
insecurity
- Subject experiences him-herself as alienated in world of things, the latter is indifferent to our
striving after self-actualisation and the attainment of unique selfhood
- The world is not our home - yes we live in this world and find ourselves existing concretely, but it
is not ours
- The significant thing about the existentialist experience is an inner experience
- Subject is not knowable in terms of the general laws that govern the behaviour of things in the
world (i.e subject is not scientifically explicable); it rather is the point of reference from which all
explanations emanate
- Subject as individual is therefore left to his/her own devices to become reconciled to the world,
and only has recourse to his/her risky decisions and meaning-bestowing designs of possibilities
for existence
- We must make sense of the world/ourselves
Two themes dominate the thoughts that illustrate man’s light and dark sides:
- In existentialism, there is always a light and a dark side
- The light being the christian / right wing (especially the founder: Kierkegaard)
- The rest belong to the darker side / left wing which is the more morose side. Try to think of the
historical context. In the 40s, there was not much scope for hope and optimism
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,1. Freedom and decision (light)
• Man is not isolated, but open to the future and involved in the past - the future as transcending
the present and obtaining new, self-designed possibilities
• We have the opportunity to make of our lives what we want to make of them
• We’re subject to facticity, yet we are always able to break out and make new decisions
2. Alienation, guilt, anxiety, death, finiteness (dark)
• Result of our factuality and situation
• The existentialists take human feeling and emotion seriously
EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY
- Phenomenology is concerned with descriptions of phenomena; brings to light the meaning
structure of things that appear in our experience
- Human subjectivity, in sense of intentionality, plays a pivotal role in this process
- NB existentialists differ from Husserl in their understanding of human subjectivity
- Husserl is only interested in the knowing consciousness/rational thought processes
- Existentialism understands subjectivity as a way of being of people as concrete individuals,
encompasses in the world of real things
- Existentialism is interested in the total spectrum of ways in which we are related to the world:
thinking, feeling, acting, etc
- Existentialism therefore drops ‘intentionality’ for ‘existence’
EXISTENTIALISM DISTINGUISHED FROM SOME RELATED
TYPES OF PHILOSOPHY
1. Existentialism vs empiricism
• Commonalities: They distrust all attempts to construct philosophy a priori, and they are less
interested in the attempt to build comprehensive systems than in seeking such limited
knowledge as can be securely based on accessible data.
• Differences: The existentialist stresses knowledge by participation, the empiricist knowledge
by observation
2. Existentialism vs humanism
• Commonalities: Existentialism is. a humanism in the sense that it is very much concerned with
human and personal values, and with the realisation of an authentic human existence
• Differences: Human life is set in the wider context of being. Man does not create being, but
rather receives his existence from being, and becomes responsible for being and to being
3. Existentialism vs idealism
• Commonalities: both existentialism and idealism are philosophies of the subject rather than of
the object
• Differences: Whereas the idealist begins from man as thinking subject, the existentialist begins
from man's total being-in-the-world
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, 4. Existentialism vs pragmatism
• Commonalities: Both are in protest against abstract intellectualism, both stress the relation of
belief to action, both acknowledge the risk of faith as an attitude about which we are’
compelled to decide by the demands of concrete existence before we can arrive at theoretical
grounds for our decision, and both look for the confirmation or falsification of faith in terms of
its fulfillment or diminution of our humanity.
• Differences: The pragmatist's criteria for truth are biological and utilitarian, and there is little
sense of that inwardness that is a mark of existentialism.
5. Existentialism vs nihilism
• Presumably very few people have ever actually claimed to be nihilists. Presumably, too,
nihilism is always relative to some affirmative position that is being explicitly rejected. Perhaps
the very idea of a thoroughgoing nihilism is self-contradictory.
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