Background Material
Existentialism is a school of philosophy that puts emphasis on the individual.
Cultural climate started with Kierkegaard;
who said that religion is the Individual’s struggle for TRUTH.
Nietzsche stressed the Individual to a degree that god was no longer necessary.
Philosophers tend to view humans in one of two ways:
1. As an object, subject to natural and social laws,
and as an objective observer, who is primarily rational.
2. As something uniquely individual,
as an autonomous agent transcending her/his environment
and as a subjective creator committed to the private realization of the truth.
Philosophers tend to emphasize certain features of human beings.
The Existentialists view humans in the second way. They tend to focus on non-rational components: will, passions, drives. The Existentialist believes that reason is a limited tool in understanding the human condition. Reason cannot cope with the particular, contingent, and transcendent. As a consequence, reason cannot deal with the individual as a unique person and cannot deal with her/his freedom or inner commitments. Thus, science and it’s method is inadequate when applied to people. Most of traditional philosophy is very shallow because it does not deal with feelings.
Existential view of man:
As a subjective creator committed to the private realization of truth.
A. Deals with irrational aspects of man:
Will, passions, creativity, feelings, and emotions.
B. KIERKEGAARD – Individuals struggle for the truth. Cultural climate.
C. NIETZSCHE – Will to power. At war with culture.
D. SARTRE – God is Dead.
E. Hampden-Turner - Radical Man
Soren Kierkegaard
(1813–1855)
Kierkegaard was an Orthodox Danish theologian who identified with the Danish State Church – Lutheran. He thought of himself as a devout Christian. He concluded that the institutions drain the essence from the original through the system because the system comes up with ready-made answers in the form of creeds, dogmas, formulas. The Lutheran Church had robbed Christianity of its vital essence if people are stupid enough to eat up the dogmas.
Salvation for Kierkegaard is between an individual and her/his God, and salvation is a matter of individual struggle. This struggle is to interpret the scriptures and apply them to one’s own existence. We are in the hands of an angry, irrational god who does terrible things from the perspective of human reason. Think of the army of the Israelites butchering their neighbors. This means that god is capable of demanding human sacrifice. What would we do if we are asked? Do it? This makes reason incompatible with faith. For Kierkegaard his own personal conclusion: He had to go through a process – read the Bible – discover that God is absurd, but he will do what God says.
Kierkegaard was at war with easy Christianity. People must take religion seriously and he personally urged people to renounce the Danish State Church and he wrote against the traditional doctrines. The barrier to true Christianity was the institution. For the Church to tell us what Christianity is, is stealing our freedom to struggle for ourselves and that degrades all of humanity. No one is to say what a human being is except the individual for her/himself. We should not give our identity to dogmas and institutions. We all must answer the big questions of life for ourselves. Kierkegaard tried to create a cultural climate for the growth of existentialism.
Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844–1900)
Nietzsche’s life was full of sharp contrast. He was the son of Lutheran ministers. He was surrounded by females and began the "God is Dead" movement. He had no formal system of philosophy and grasped the collapse of values and morality. He prophesied power politics and world wars. He was an atheist and contemplated the death of God. What effect would it have on people? What would Darwinist theories do to people? What will happen when God is no longer the source of human values? These were his questions.
For Nietzsche, Christian values were not life affirming values. They were other worldly. People are in the arena of choice. Nietzsche was an iconoclast – one who smashes idols. We cannot deny choice. Camus said life is worth living because there is nothing else. This means that we must confront death. Nietzsche’s Will to Power was to get to what is the innermost essence of the real. All of life becomes a special form of the will to power. People feel joy when at full creativity. Nietzsche says people feel joy when they experience a growth of their power. Will to power is at the very core of essence, and power does not mean survival. Animals strive to abundant life, but power means: growth, spontaneity, forceful, dynamic, creativity.
Life in the process of becoming. Here we see how much Freud was influenced by Nietzsche. Nietzsche developed a psychology that deals with power. People do not understand drives that push toward completion. Drives so far as possible push to normal satisfaction. But when they cannot, we suppress them. If the constraints on our drives are too severe and we must suppress them due to social system. Then the drives can break away and transform and poison the whole personality. For Nietzsche melancholy and depression are the products of the repression of natural drives. The first way to relieve depression is to reduce the vital energy of these drives to its lowest point. Give up on life, alcohol or drugs.
The will to power is the fuel that drives the energy of the human engine. But when the will is distorted it will never go away. Life turns on itself and becomes anti-life. People can release energy by becoming ascetic, but ascetic ideals require energy and many people release energy by doing the opposite. Ascetic Ideals -–foreswear the pleasures of the earth, thus, religion is the will to power in disguise. Christianity sides with the defective. What religion preaches is: no love, no hate, no stimulus of any sort. This is called reaction formation – the will to power in disguise, but is doing the opposite. Religion then makes people sicker. Ascetics are still inwardly miserable. Solutions? Nietzsche calls for the "immoral man". Thus, people should express all of their drives.
Nietzsche
Important Ideas
Will to Power:
basic drive; can be sublimated/transmuted
to power over oneself and power for creation
Truth:
no objective truth;
only interpretations dominated by will to power
Death of God:
post-modern mind;
result is horror and exultation (madman section)
Attack on Morality:
need re-evaluation of all values; morality as anti-nature;
sickness of guilt; rejection of weak and pitiful;
rejection of free will; revenge mentality
Against Christianity:
not critical of Jesus but Christianity (as invention of Paul);
guilt mentality and sacrifice needed; hell promoted;
morals are contradiction of life; megalomania, etc.
The Free Spirit:
freedom from guilt, sin, god, anti-nature ideas
Superman:
creative spirits; patience; responsibility;
tolerant and not revengeful; healthy psyche
Joyful Wisdom:
anti-nihilism; laughter and dance; amor fati;
Dionysian view; appreciate little things of life;
new hope as one says yes to life; transformation!
Eternal Recurrence:
test of strength for superman; affirmation of life
Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905-1980)
Seven Major Tenets:
1. Existence precedes essence:
Man must exist before he has an essence.
2. Freedom and Responsibility:
a. Choice is the only absolute
b. Freedom is absurd
c. We alone are responsible for our actions;
therefore, there is no god
3. There is no god: Man is god
4. Anguish:
a. Realization of responsibility
b. Decisions are painful or should be painful
c. I am, therefore I cry!
5. Escape from anguish: – Religion – blame someone else;
There is no escape!
6. Authentic person:
Must feel everything without defenses,
in order to choose properly, pain, joy, anguish, etc.
7. Role model:
We choose for all
Charles Hampden-Turner
Two divergent or contrasting images of man
In contemporary times our view of man has been molded by scientists.
In the Middle Ages one went to a priest for answers, now we go to a scientist.
Religious authority now is replaced by scientific authority.
Toolbox metaphor
What is in the scientific toolbox to try to use to measure humanity
to guide our vision of what it is to be human?
The methodologies of science: hypothesis, collect data, try to confirm.
Science is a poor tool to view man.
Conservative Man vs. Radical Man/Existential Man
Creatures who are:
1. Caused to behave vs. Imagine and reason autonomously
2. Respond predictably and obediently vs. Rebel Creatively
3. Products of natural force vs. Define themselves as radiating centers of meaning
4. Conserve energy and achieve equilibrium vs. Create energy, value, excitement and disequilibrium
5. Obey law and entropy and run down like a clock vs. Diverge, converge and emerge as a live force
Bibliography
Kierkegaard
Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death
Translated, with an Introduction and notes, By Walter Lowrie, 1968
Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, 1992
Nietzsche
The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals
Translated by Francis Golffing
Beyond Good and Evil:
Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future
Translated, with commentary By Walter Kaufmann, 1966
On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo
Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, 1967
The Portable Nietzsche
Selected and translated, with an Introduction, Preface, and Notes
By Walter Kaufmann, 1968
The Will to Power
Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, 1968
Edited by Walter Kaufmann
Nietzsche's Teaching:
An Interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
by Laurence Lampert, 1986
Nietzsche and Modern Times:
A Study of Bacon, Descartes, and Nietzsche
by Laurence Lampert, 1993
Reading Nietzsche
Edited by Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, 1988
Sartre
The Transcendence of the EGO
An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness, 1957
Existential Psychoanalysis, 1962
(From Being and Nothingness)
Being and Nothingness:
An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, 2003
Nausea, 2007
No Exit and Three Other Plays, 1949/1989
Charles Hampden-Turner
Radical Man, 1971
General
Culture Against Man
by Jules Henry, 1963
Being and Education:
An Essay in Existential Phenomenology
by Donald Vandenberg, 1971
The Existentialist Tradition
Selected Writings
Edited by Nino Langiulli, 1971
Existentialism: From Dostoevsky to Sartre
Revised and Expanded
Edited, with an Introduction, Prefaces, and New Translations
by Walter Kaufman, 1956, 1975
(This has an excellent Introduction/Chapter 1)
Phenomenology
Ideas:
General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology
Translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson
by Edmund Husserl, 1931
The Foundations of Phenomenology:
Edmond Husserl and the Quest for a Rigorous Science of Philosophy
by Marvin Farber, 1943
Edmund Husserl
Cartesian Meditation:
An Introduction to Phenomenology
Translated by
Dorion Cairns, 1970
The Structure of Behavior
by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Translated by Alden L. Fisher
and with A forward by John Wild, 1942
Phenomenology of Perception
by M. Merleau-Ponty
Translated from the French by
Colin Smith, 1962
The Primacy of Perception
and other essays on Phenomenological Psychology
the Philosophy of Art, History, and Politics
by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Edited, with an Introduction
by James M. Edie, 1964
Signs
by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Translated, with an Introduction
by Richard C. McCleary, 1964
Consciousness
and the
Acquisition of Language
by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Translated by Hugh J. Silverman, 1973
| Last Updated: 10/19/22 |