Existentialism
Existentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence.[1][2] Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. Common concepts in existentialist thought include existential crisis, dread, and anxiety in the face of an absurd world and free will, as well as authenticity, courage, and virtue.[3]
"Existential" redirects here. For the logical sense of the term, see Existential quantification. For other uses, see Existence (disambiguation).
Existentialism is associated with several 19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who shared an emphasis on the human subject, despite often profound differences in thought.[4][2][5] Among the earliest figures associated with existentialism are philosophers Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, all of whom critiqued rationalism and concerned themselves with the problem of meaning. In the 20th century, prominent existentialist thinkers included Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, and Paul Tillich.
Many existentialists considered traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in style and content, to be too abstract and removed from concrete human experience.[6][7] A primary virtue in existentialist thought is authenticity.[8] Existentialism would influence many disciplines outside of philosophy, including theology, drama, art, literature, and psychology.[9]
Existentialist philosophy encompasses a range of perspectives, but it shares certain underlying concepts. Among these, a central tenet of existentialism is that personal freedom, individual responsibility, and deliberate choice are essential to the pursuit of self-discovery and the determination of life's meaning.[10]
Etymology[edit]
The term existentialism (French: L'existentialisme) was coined by the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel in the mid-1940s.[11][12][13] When Marcel first applied the term to Jean-Paul Sartre, at a colloquium in 1945, Sartre rejected it.[14] Sartre subsequently changed his mind and, on October 29, 1945, publicly adopted the existentialist label in a lecture to the Club Maintenant in Paris, published as L'existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism Is a Humanism), a short book that helped popularize existentialist thought.[15] Marcel later came to reject the label himself in favour of Neo-Socratic, in honor of Kierkegaard's essay "On the Concept of Irony".
Some scholars argue that the term should be used to refer only to the cultural movement in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s associated with the works of the philosophers Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus.[4] Others extend the term to Kierkegaard, and yet others extend it as far back as Socrates.[16] However, it is often identified with the philosophical views of Sartre.[4]
The labels existentialism and existentialist are often seen as historical conveniences in as much as they were first applied to many philosophers long after they had died. While existentialism is generally considered to have originated with Kierkegaard, the first prominent existentialist philosopher to adopt the term as a self-description was Sartre. Sartre posits the idea that "what all existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence", as the philosopher Frederick Copleston explains.[17] According to philosopher Steven Crowell, defining existentialism has been relatively difficult, and he argues that it is better understood as a general approach used to reject certain systematic philosophies rather than as a systematic philosophy itself.[4] In a lecture delivered in 1945, Sartre described existentialism as "the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism".[18] For others, existentialism need not involve the rejection of God, but rather "examines mortal man's search for meaning in a meaningless universe", considering less "What is the good life?" (to feel, be, or do, good), instead asking "What is life good for?".[19]
Although many outside Scandinavia consider the term existentialism to have originated from Kierkegaard, it is more likely that Kierkegaard adopted this term (or at least the term "existential" as a description of his philosophy) from the Norwegian poet and literary critic Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven.[20] This assertion comes from two sources:
History[edit]
Precursors[edit]
Some have argued that existentialism has long been an element of European religious thought, even before the term came into use. William Barrett identified Blaise Pascal and Søren Kierkegaard as two specific examples.[60] Jean Wahl also identified William Shakespeare's Prince Hamlet ("To be, or not to be"), Jules Lequier, Thomas Carlyle, and William James as existentialists. According to Wahl, "the origins of most great philosophies, like those of Plato, Descartes, and Kant, are to be found in existential reflections."[61] Precursors to existentialism can also be identified in the works of Iranian Muslim philosopher Mulla Sadra (c. 1571–1635), who would posit that "existence precedes essence" becoming the principle expositor of the School of Isfahan, which is described as "alive and active".
Criticisms[edit]
General criticisms[edit]
Walter Kaufmann criticized "the profoundly unsound methods and the dangerous contempt for reason that have been so prominent in existentialism."[124] Logical positivist philosophers, such as Rudolf Carnap and A. J. Ayer, assert that existentialists are often confused about the verb "to be" in their analyses of "being".[125] Specifically, they argue that the verb "is" is transitive and pre-fixed to a predicate (e.g., an apple is red) (without a predicate, the word "is" is meaningless), and that existentialists frequently misuse the term in this manner. Wilson has stated in his book The Angry Years that existentialism has created many of its own difficulties: "We can see how this question of freedom of the will has been vitiated by post-romantic philosophy, with its inbuilt tendency to laziness and boredom, we can also see how it came about that existentialism found itself in a hole of its own digging, and how the philosophical developments since then have amounted to walking in circles round that hole."[126]
Sartre's philosophy[edit]
Many critics argue Sartre's philosophy is contradictory. For example, see Magda Stroe's arguments. Specifically, they argue that Sartre makes metaphysical arguments despite his claiming that his philosophical views ignore metaphysics. Herbert Marcuse criticized Being and Nothingness for projecting anxiety and meaninglessness onto the nature of existence itself: "Insofar as Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine, it remains an idealistic doctrine: it hypostatizes specific historical conditions of human existence into ontological and metaphysical characteristics. Existentialism thus becomes part of the very ideology which it attacks, and its radicalism is illusory."[127]
In Letter on Humanism, Heidegger criticized Sartre's existentialism: