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(French) Existentialism. “Existence precedes and commands essence.” Jean-Paul Sartre. Existentialism is an interdisciplinary movement that finds expression in three genres:. Philosophy Literature Psychotherapy. Some History….
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Existentialism is an interdisciplinary movement that finds expression in three genres: • Philosophy • Literature • Psychotherapy
Some History… • Roots in Enlightenment: “at a time when the faith of people turned in varying degrees from God to reason and humanity itself.” • It was not recognized as a movement until the twentieth century, but grew popular in post-WWII years due in large part to society’s response to the irrationality of a life. • The fame and popularity of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus led to popularity in the US in the late forties and fifties. • This popularity led to the backward process of sanctification.
Philosophical Lineage: Edmund Husserl Frederick Nietzche Soren Kierkegaard Martin Heidegger Jean-Paul Sartre
Literary Influence: • Fyodor Dostoevsky • Ralph Ellison • Albert Camus • Franz Kafka • Ernest Hemingway • Simone de Beauvoir
William Shakespeare? “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.”
Common Themes in Existentialist Writing: • Freedom • Choice • Authenticity • Alienation • Rebellion What does it mean to be a human being?
Jean-Paul Sartre “…if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and that this being is man, or, as Heidegger says, human reality. What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene and only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself…
Sartre (cont.) …But if existence really does precede essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus, existentialism’s first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him. And when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.”
Camus “The existentialist…thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him; there can no longer be a priori of God, since there in no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it written that Good exists, that we must be honest that we must not lie; because the fact is that we are on a plane where there are only men. Dostoyevsky said, ‘If God does not exist, everything would be possible. That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to.”
Soren Kierkegaard “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”“For an individual animal, plant or man existence (to be or not to be) is of quite decisive importance; an individual man has not after all a conceptual existence.”“Most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, frightfully objective sometimes—but the take is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.”“There is nothing worse than thinking of your own life as twaddle.”“The man who can really stand alone in the world, only taking counsel from his conscience—that man is a hero.”“Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.”“I stick my finger into existence— It smells of nothing. Where am I? What is this thing called the world? Who is it who has lured me into the thing, and now leaves me here? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?”
Jean-Paul Sartre “There is no reality except in action.”“Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life.”“Am I anything more than the dread that others have of me?”“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”“I feel so queer. Don’t you ever get taken that way? When I can’t see myself I begin to wonder if I really and truly exist. I pat myself just to make sure, but it doesn’t help much.”“Existence precedes and commands Essence.”“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.”“One always dies too soon – or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are – your life and nothing else.”
Albert Camus “At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”“It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.”“The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”“It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and , gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stats, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still.”“Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.”“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”“In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land.”
Franz Kafka “We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not eaten of the Tree of Life.”“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”“My fear.. is my substance, and probably the best part of me.”“Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.”“A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.”
Misc. “If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible.”-Fyodor Dostoevsky“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."-Friedrich Nietzsche"We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities others ascribe to us – in order to deceive ourselves.”-Friedrich Nietzsche“The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.”-Martin Buber“We regarded any situation as raw material for our joint efforts and not as a factor conditioning them: we imagined ourselves to be wholly independent agents. … We had no external limitations, no overriding authority, no imposed pattern of existence, We created our own links with the world, and freedom was the very essence of our existence.”-Simone de Beauvoir“Man is the future of man.”- Francis Ponge“Conquer yourself rather than the world.”-Rene' Descartes“Thoughts are the shadows of our sensations- always darker, emptier, simpler than these.”-Friedrich Nietzsche"Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one."-Martin Heidegger
