hist 202 essay 2 existentialism

Essay # 2

The History and Development of Existentialist Philosophy

Glenn Healey Athabasca Student # 3146387

History 202

2

Tutor: David Evans

Wednesday, October 18, 2014

In this essay we will be outlining western civilizations

struggle to define itself, and why that struggle became so

important to western man in the last few centuries before our own

time. We will define the reasons for this struggle, and layout

what paramount problems that man must deal with in this new and

frightening existence. Also in this essay we will list some of

the most important contributors to this new system of applied

philosophy. We will conclude with the thought that given these

new circumstances of accidental fate; thrust upon us by science

and reason, we are in fact alone in our personal fight to define

just who and what we are.

The Existential movement began with philosophers trying to

reconcile man’s place in the universe without the oversight of an

all knowing and all powerful God. The compounding effects of the

ages of enlightenment, reason, and science had created a vacuum

in which the values and beliefs that man had used to explain his

existence in God’s universe were now wiped away by the telescope,

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and microscope. Although this process of defining our existence

had been going on since the Greek philosophers. They also had to

deal with the irreconcilable concepts of truth and reason.

Socrates himself had said that: “The unexamined life was not

worth living.” Likewise Plato’s theory of forms also tries to

define man’s existence in the world. Existentialism then seems to

have a long pedigree despite appearing to be quite contemporary.

However it does harken back to when philosophy was seen as a more

applied practice. To the Greeks, as well as the Europeans who

became what we think of as existentialist philosophers, this was

to be a way of life, not just an abstract concept of how to think

of ourselves and define our place in the universe. “The Internet

Encyclopedia of Philosophy” describes the movement and its philosophers

as: “Those philosophers considered existentialist are mostly from

the continent of Europe, and date from the 19th and 20th

centuries. . . Outside philosophy the existentialist movement is

probably the most well know philosophical movement . . . Within

philosophy, though, it is safe to say that this loose movement

considered as a whole has not had great impact, although

individuals or ideas counted within it.”1 Also it appears that

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these philosophers themselves for the most part did not even

think of themselves as existentialists. Most of the philosophers

conventionally grouped under the heading of existentialist never

used, or actively disavowed the term ‘existentialist’. Even

Sartre himself once said: “Existentialism? I don’t know what that

is”.2

Existentialism at its core is ontology, a study of self.

Trying to isolate and describe what it really means to know

oneself, and to define one’s place in the universe. It is

interesting to note that ontology is a branch of metaphysics.

This too harkens back to Descartes and Hume who dealt with the

crisis of existence, and the problem of being able to prove even

to yourself that you are exist at all. Descartes classic

statement “I think therefore I am” was his own unique solution to

the crisis of doubt in our own existence. Metaphysics itself is a

good starting place to begin with when thinking about the

development of existentialism in the western world. The decline

of religion is a key factor when looking at why man needed a

philosophical placeholder to define ourselves as we transitioned

from these formative church bound ages to the post Christian era.

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William Barrett in his seminal existential study the “Irrational

Man” states: “The central fact of modern history in the west—by

which we mean the long period from the end of the Middle Ages to

the present—is unquestionably the decline of religion.”3 To

understand this sense of loss we have to imagine those times when

belief in the church’s teachings was particularly pervasive. Long

before the rise of nation states and bourgeois materialism, the

church was the most significant unifying factor in western

civilization. The church and its teachings defined not only the

universe itself, but our very purpose in it. The first question

in the “Westminster Shorter Catechism” is “What is man’s primary

purpose?” The answer is “Man’s primary purpose is to glorify God

and enjoy him for ever.”4 There is not much ambiguity in that

statement. “The Westminster Shorter Catechism” was written in 1648, but

the beliefs contained within it had resounded in Western

Christendom from at least as far back as the first millennium

C.E. William Barrett continues: “The decline of religion in

modern times means simply that religion is no longer the

uncontested center and ruler of man’s life, and that the Church

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is no longer the final unquestioned home and asylum of his

being.”5

This core sense of self that was stripped away from the

psyche of western humanity has a significance beyond a purely

intellectual level. Barrett sums it up as: “The waning of

religion in our daily existence is not simply a loss of belief,

but removes the underpinnings of our very sense of existence.

Nietzsche believed that this was the most important step in our

evolution of self. The loss of the Church was the loss of a whole

system of symbols, images, dogmas, and rites which had the

psychological validity of immediate experience, and within which

hitherto the whole psychic life of western man had been safely

contained.”6

Modern existentialism in its more final form begins with

some key ideas. The first idea is: that we are now all alone in

the universe. Cast adrift by our own reason, we have now

abandoned big ”T” truth, and big “G” God, and therefore have

given ourselves an identity crisis of self-existence. This

anxiety is now what we are supposed to cling to as proof of our

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actually being alive. “The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy” goes on to

say that: “Related to this anxiety is the concept of

authenticity, which is let us say the existentialist spin on the

Greek notion of ‘the good life’ . . . the authentic being would

be able to recognize and affirm the nature of existence . . . the

notion of authenticity is sometimes seen as connected to

idevidualism.”7

The next most important idea the existentialists consider is

freedom. This freedom comes from the fact that we have abandoned

God as a support for all our moral decisions, and can now take

full responsibility for our own actions. This freedom again

creates in us an anxiety of our own making. “The Internet Encyclopedia

of Philosophy” continues: “Freedom can usually be linked to the

concept of anguish, because my freedom is in part defined by the

isolation of my decisions from any determination by a deity, or

by previous existent values or knowledge . . . freedom entails

the something like responsibility, for myself and for my actions.

Given that my situation is one of being on its own—recognized in

anxiety—then both my freedom and my responsibility are

absoulute.”8

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The next common theme important to existentialist is

situatedness. “Although my freedom is absolute, it always takes

place in a particular context . . . human existence cannot be

abstracted from its world because being-in-the-world is part of

the ontological structure of that existence.”9 Therefore just

like a contemporary quote from the last century: “Wherever you

go, there you are.”10 Very much connected with situatedness is

existence itself. “The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy” sums it up by

saying: “My existence consists of forever bringing myself into

being . . . Although my acts are free, I am not free to act; thus

existence is characterised by ‘exigency’. For many

existentialists, authentic existence involves a certain tension

be recognized and lived through, but not resolved: This tension

exists between our rational and animal natures.”11

The most important and famous idea associated with

existentialism is that of absurdity. Albert Camus reveals the

idea of absurdity as the source for our anguish: “We long for

meaning conveyed by a universe that cares, but discover only

empty sky.”12 Our very existence now that we do not have a deity

to define it, becomes an accident of nature, a mere absurdity.

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Camus explains how we overcome this absurdity with his

interpretation of the Greek myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus is the

mortal condemned by the Gods to push a stone up a mountain only

to see it roll back down repeatedly for all eternity. “And yet

Camus claims to consider Sisyphus happy at the moment he returns

to retrieve the rock once more at the base of the hill. Why

happy? Because Sisyphus has risen above his fate, not by dull

resignation but by deliberate choice. He thereby shows himself

superior to this inanimate rock. Camus most famous quote in the

face of absurdity is: “There is no fate that cannot be overcome

by scorn.” In Nietzsche’s words he has turned the, it was, into

the it is.”13

Another aspect of existentialism is political. Nietzsche

especially is the author of this concept which is that of

personally overcoming the “Herd Mentality.” A true existentialist

would have to be a person who created their own path through the

jungle of life, and not simply a follower of the herd. If you

lived by simply following others it would be akin to living in-

authentically. These are some of the main ideas of

existentialism, but hardly a definitive list. We will now look at

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the philosophers who had the most impact on the development of

existentialist philosophy.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) will be the first

existentialist we will discuss, even though his philosophical

thought was built somewhat upon others who had come before him,

he is really considered to be the father of existentialism. He

was situated between two worlds, one of faith in Jesus Christ,

and the other logical reason. William Barrett introduces us to

this duality in Kierkegaard: “He did not take up the problem of

Christianity because history, civilization, and western man were

what was at issue . . . The Problem for Kierkegaard was

throughout a personal one; He had chosen to be a Christian, and

he had to constantly to renew that choice, with all the energy

and passion of his being. All that he thought, and wrote shows

this personal cast.”14 Kierkegaard was admittedly not a

philosopher and seems to come off more as a Christian apologist.

Justifying the Christian faith, and defining what it meant to be

a Christian seems to have been his main objective. He also wrote

under pseudonyms which it has been speculated he did this because

of his fear of the Danish church. The problem of existence

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through the push and pull of faith versus reason came to be

described by Kierkegaard as the spiritual formation of “The

Single Individual”. Kierkegaard developed this problem in the

context of his radical approach to the Christian faith. Bertram

Russell in his book the “Wisdom of the West” describes the issue that

Kierkegaard tries to resolve: The Enlightenment had tended to

look upon passions with misgivings, Kierkegaard wants to make

them philosophically respectable again. By cutting off the will

from reason, existentialism is trying to attract our attention to

the need for man to act and choose not as a result of philosophic

reflection, but from some spontaneous function of the will. This

at once enables him to make room for faith in a very simple way.

For it is now free to act of the will to accept religious

beliefs.”15 This has the ring of Saint Thomas Aquinas who in his

major contribution to western Christian thought the: “Summa

Theologica” which states that man was given the ability to reason

so that he may understand and accept a faith in the living God,

through Jesus Christ our saviour.16 To Kierkegaard because of

this self-examination now the “single individual” is free to use

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his own will to power, he can now choose Christ as his personal

saviour.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Was an iconoclast, and the

father of western philosophical deconstruction. He came to almost

the exact same conclusions as Kierkegaard, but with a totally

different result. Whereas Kierkegaard had said that man was freed

by his existence to choose faith, Nietzsche now said that man was

now free to reject faith and strike out on his own. “Nietzsche

was influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer who thought that the real

world underlying everyday reality was composed of will.”17

Nietzsche Less of a philosopher and more of a social critic

attacking bourgeois culture, Christianity, empirical reason, and

altruistic morality. His principle works were ten books in which

he lays out his formula for living a life without man made

boundaries to make one stumble on the path to creating themselves

as an all-powerful single individual. This new “Ubermench” or

superman can now detach from the herd and create his or her own

destiny. Nietzsche’s impact on existentialism was minimal at the

time, and yet had a great deal of influence in the twentieth

century. William Barrett sums up Nietzsche’s impact for our time:

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“Nietzsche is more truly the philosopher of our age than we are

willing to admit. To the degree that modern life has secularized

those highest values, anchored in the eternal, have already lost

their value. So long as people are blissfully unaware of this,

they of course do not sink into any despondency and nihilism.”18

Barrett goes on to say that Nietzsche does not bring us any real

solutions to the problems he raises, but he has at least pointed

out the central and crucial problems of our period like no one

else has been able to.19 Nietzsche is also one of the most

exploited philosophers of our times. His will to power of the

individual over the herd was usurped by the Nazi’s who

interpreted it as the strong overcoming the weak. This tarnished

Nietzsche’s reputation until Walter Kaufman in the 1960’s came

with new translations and edited editions, and reinterpreted him

as a philosopher exploring individual freedom.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). He was a notorious

unapologetic Nazi right until his death, and one of the most

opaque philosophical writers of any time period, and yet it has

been said that without Heidegger and his work, recent

developments in European philosophy simply do not make sense.20

14

Barrett quotes a passage of this German philosopher in the

opening of his chapter on Heidegger: “We cannot hear the cry of

Nietzsche, Heidegger tells us until we ourselves begin to think.

And least we fancy this an easy and obvious thing to do, he adds:

‘Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified

for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.”21

The principle concern of most existentialist philosophers

was to define man as a being, and to Heidegger that question

could not be answered by science. “The Internet Encyclopedia” states

that: “His magnum opus “Being and Time” is an investigation into the

meaning of being as that manifests itself through the human being.

The sciences have repeatedly asked ‘What is a man?’ ‘What is a

car?’ ‘What is an emotion?’ they have never the less failed—and

because of the nature of science, had to fail—to ask the question

which grounds all those other questions. This question is: what

is the meaning of that being which is not an entity, (like other

things, for example, rocks, chairs, and cars) and yet through it

entities have meaning at all?”22 Heidegger by investigating the

question of the meaning of existence had discovered that it only

arises because it is made possible by the human being which poses

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the question. Heidegger from his seminal book “Being and Time” is

the philosopher who begins tying all the loose ends together

making existentialism work as a system, thereby paving the way

later for Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus who bring existentialism to

its culmination.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). Philosophers from Socrates to

Husserl, and Kant to Nietzsche had created a meandering thread of

existential thought, with Heidegger managing to pull it all

together into some kind of coherent system; Sartre could now

start to define and refine modern existentialism. In the public

consciousness Sartre appears as the central figure of

existentialism, all of the themes introduced in this essay up

till now begin to come together in this single individual. “The

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy” lays out his most prolific period:

“His writings that are most clearly existentialist in character

date from Sartre’s early and middle period, primarily the 1930s

and 1940s. From 1950s onwards, Sartre moved his existentialism

towards a philosophy the purpose of which was to understand the

possibility of a genuinely revolutionary politics.”23 Sartre’s

main philosophical works were: “The imagination”, “The Transcendence of

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the Ego”, and “Being and Nothingness”. Described in the “Handy Philosophy

Answer Book” Sartre was: The Icon of twentieth century

existentialism. Popular versions of his ideas gave existentialism

its dark glamour of atheistic, nihilistic, cigarette-smoking,

absinth-drinking, café-frequenting, French intellectuals, arguing

about ideas, and practicing free love.”24 In “Being and Nothingness”

Sartre forges together the basic tenants of existentialism, that

to be a human is to be free, and that having made that

realization; an awesome burden of responsibility is now placed on

man’s shoulders. You cannot hide behind any type of deity or

other metaphysical reason for your success or failure. You as

well cannot blame others for what you do, feel, or say. If you

did this then would require you to live inauthentically, in bad

faith. To Sartre what we say, and our intended actions and deeds

are strictly our own. No one can control our will or attitude, we

are naked for all the world to see.25 Sartre’s later works are not

only revolutionary but clearly Marxist in nature. He was often

critical of Soviet and Maoist doctrines, and held back no

criticism of these communist regimes.

17

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1968). Was a constant companion of

Sartre, and it has been said that she was a major influence on

his works. More importantly in her own right she is credited with

starting the second wave feminist movement. In her most

influential book “The Second Sex” she defines the role of women

historically as being confined to a permanent object status

beside men. They are the second sex since social norms are always

defined in male terms. This being so, a woman’s struggle to

develop self-defining projects is constrained by a permanent

institutional “Look” that already defines her as “woman,” where

as a man need not operate under constraints of gender: he feels

himself to be simply “human” pure subjectivity.26 In “The Second Sex”

the book unpacks a similar philosophical outlook to Sartre, the

major difference being the end result. Thomas R. Flynn explains

in his book “Existentialism a Very Short Introduction”: The philosophical

premise of the book is the existentialist thesis that human

reality exists ‘in-situation’ and that this situation is

fundamentally ambiguous and unstable. But as we have seen that

she anticipated Sartre in elaborating the social dimension of our

situation. The book develops the concept of situation by

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underscoring the role played by gender and its social

construction.” Flynn goes on to quote her most famous phrase “One

is not born a woman, one becomes one.”27 What she is in effect

saying is that sex is not gender it is a fact of biology, and

that gender itself is instead is a social construct.

Albert Camus (1913-1960). Is the most difficult of the

existentialists to describe. He was principally a journalist and

author, but is primarily known for his non-literary works. He was

as well as Beauvoir connected with his relationship with Jean

Paul Sartre to the existential movement. He himself did not self-

identify as a philosopher. He clearly stated this in this famous

quote: “I am not a philosopher, because I don’t believe in reason

enough to believe in a system. What interests me is knowing how

we must behave, and more precisely, how to behave when one does

not believe in God or reason.”28 From a philosophical view Camus

is more known for his concept of the absurd. However Camus

version of the absurd is not Nihilism. In Camus estimation the

individual’s acceptance of the absurd is a result of our being an

accident of nature, and should not result in our descending into

hopelessness. However his later works dealt with the question of

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suicide and whether life is worth living, which to him was the

ultimate question facing philosophy.

In conclusion we can see that existential thought has had a

long gestation period, beginning with the Greeks and coming to

fruition in the mid twentieth century. The long break down of

religious influence on the western psyche started different

philosophers in different contexts to begin trying to define

humanities existence. They all seemed to come up against the same

problems while attempting to explain how to act in this brave new

and frightening world. In this essay we have listed the most

important ideas facing humanities struggle to define itself. We

have also listed and described some of the most influential

existentialist, and their contributions to this very personal of

philosophies. The fact that the individual is the center of this

philosophy is pervasive in this essay, it shows that this

philosophical system demands so much input from the individual;

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and that all actions and conclusions will be unique to the person

practicing this philosophical outlook in their daily lives. That

perhaps is why existentialism seems so suited to the hurly burly

of our times. As Joseph Conrad pointed out in his book “The Nigger

of the Narcissus”: “We are now just the grown up children of a

discontented earth.”29

Notes

21

1. “Existentialism,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last

modified October 25, 2014, (1/12). accessed October 21, 2014,

http://www.iep.utm.edu/existent.

2. Ibid., (1/12).

3. William Barrett, Irrational Man. (New York, NY: Anchor Books,

1990), 24.

4. Douglas Kelly, and Philip Rollinson, The Westminster Shorter

Catechism. (Phillipsburg New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed

Publishing Co., 1986), 5.


1990), 24.

6. Ibid., (24).




8. Ibid., (2/12).

9. Ibid., (2/12).

http://www.iep.utm.edu/existent


22

10. Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness

Meditation in Everyday Life. (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2012), 139.




12. Ibid., (3/12).

13. Thomas R. Flynn, Existentialism A Very Short Introduction. (New York.

NY: Oxford University Press 2006), 48.


1990), 151.

15. Bertrand Russell, Wisdom of the West. (New York, NY: Doubleday

& Co. 1966), 332.

16. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas.

(London, UK: Burns Oats & Washbourne Ltd. 1922), 148.

17. Naomi Zach, The Handy Philosopher Answer Book. (Canton, MI:

Visible Ink Press 2010), 263.


1990), 204.


23

19. Ibid., (204).





1990), 206.




23. Ibid., (6/12).

24. Naomi Zach, The Handy Philosopher Answer Book. (Canton, MI:

Visible Ink Press 2010), 266.

25. Anthony Falikowski, Experiencing Philosophy. (Upper Saddle

River, NJ: Person Prentice Hall 2004), 75.

26. “Existentialism” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last modified

September 14, 2014, (18/24). accessed October 24, 2014,

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/



24

27. Thomas R. Flynn, Existentialism A Very Short Introduction. (New

York, NY: Oxford University Press 2006), 99.




29. Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the Narcissus. (New York, NY:

Penguin Classics 1988), 89.


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Bibliography

Barrett, William. Irrational Man. New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1990.

Conrad, Joseph. The Nigger of the Narcissus. New York, NY: Penguin

Classics, 1988.

Falikowski, Anthony. Experiencing Philosophy. Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Person Prentice Hall, 2004.

Flynn R, Thomas. Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction. New York, NY:

Oxford University Press, 2006.

“Existentialism,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last modified

October 25, 2014, accessed October 22, 2014,


Jon, Kabat-Zinn. Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in

Everyday Life. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2012.


26

Kelly, Douglas., Rollinson, Phillip. The Westminster Shorter Catechism.

Phillipsburg NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.,

1986.

Russell, Bertram. Wisdom of the West. New York, NY: Doubleday & Co.,

1966.

“Existentialism” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last modified

September 14, 2014, accessed October 24, 2014,

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/.

Zach, Naomi. The Handy Philosopher Answer Book. Canton, MI: Visible Ink

Press, 2010.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/

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