The Existentialist Challenge:
Who are we? Why are we here? How do we make meaning in our lives?
Existentialism is the 20th century extension of the Enlightenment Movement. Where the
Enlightenment challenged and doubted God and morality, existentialism denies their
existence. If God and morality do not exist then man is alone and free, except that this
freedom imposes its own constraints. If man is free then it is wrong to deprive him of that
freedom, and this extends to influencing others in their lives and the choice they make.
In denying human nature, the philosophy claims that each of us creates our own essence
through free action – humans are whatever they make themselves, we create our own nature
through free, responsible choices and actions. Any kind of predestination laid out by God or
nature is rejected, and thus the individual has no given basis on which to form beliefs. The
absence of a predesigned moral order reflects the absurdity of life and entails the individual’s
complete freedom. Humans must decide for themselves what their actions will be, and then
take full responsibility for their choices. Only be assuming this freedom can one live
authentically.
Existentialism gained momentum as a result of World War II, whose devastation and
destruction gave a sense of immediacy to questions about the purpose of living.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) saw humans as “condemned to be free.” We are free because
we can rely neither on a God (who he believes does NOT exist) nor on society to justify our
actions or to tell us what we essentially are. We are condemned because without a fixed
purpose or a guideline we must suffer the agony of our own decision making and the anguish
of its consequences. Humans are free but we must take full responsibility not only for our
actions but also for our beliefs, feelings and attitudes.
To illustrate, many people believe that we have little control over our emotions. If we feel
depressed, we feel depressed, and there is little we can do about it. Sartre argued that if we are
depressed, we have often chosen to be. Emotions, he said, are not moods that come over us
but are often ways in which we freely choose to perceive that world and to participate in it. It
is the consciousness of this freedom and its accompanying responsibilities that causes our
anguish. The most anguishing thought of all is that we are responsible for ourselves.
Sometimes we escape this anguish by pretending we are not free. For example, we pretend
that our genes or our environment is the cause of what we are, or that we are spectators
rather than participants, passive rather than active. When we so pretend, said Sartre, we act in
“bad faith.” Self-deception or bad faith is the attempt to avoid anguish by pretending to
ourselves that we are not free. We have many ways to do this. We try to convince ourselves
that outside influences have shaped our nature or that forces beyond our control or
unconscious mental states have shaped us.
Clearly, existentialism provides a profound challenge to traditional views of human nature. If
existentialism is correct, then there is no such thing as a universal human nature shared by all
people. Humans are not made for anything. We simply exist, and each of us must decide for
ourselves what purpose our existence will serve. There is no way to say ahead of time that
one purpose is right for everyone. We are, therefore, ultimately responsible for our own
nature and purposes. This radical responsibility – our inability to blame anyone else for what
we are – is the basis for our feelings of despair, fear, guilt, and isolation. It is also the basis for
our uncertainties and anxieties about death. There we confront the meaningless that is at the
core of existence and thus discover a truth that enables us to live fully conscious of what
being human means.
6 Basic Themes of Existentialism
1. Existence precedes essence.
 Man is a conscious subject, rather than a thing to be predicted or manipulated; he exists as a
conscious being, and not in accordance with any definition, essence, generalization or system.
 Existentialism evolves as an inquiry into 'man's being'. This being has no fixed definition
except that its “essence” cannot be found apart, but “lies in its existence.”
 Human nature is defined in the process of being expressed.
2. Anxiety (or the sense of anguish): the dread of the nothingness of human existence
 It is the belief that anguish is the underlying, all-pervasive, universal condition of human
existence.
 Existentialists agree with certain streams of thought in Judaism and Christianity which view
human existence as fallen, and human life as living in suffering and sin, guilt and anxiety.
3. Absurdity: "I am my own existence, but this existence is absurd".
 To exist as a human being is inexplicable and wholly absurd. Each of us is simply here, thrown
into this time and place - for no reason, without necessary connection to anything.
4. Nothingness (or the void): We exist in relation to nothing.
5. Death: the unaware person tries to live as if death is not actual, he tries to escape its reality.
 Some existentialists believe that death is the most authentic, significant moment,
one's personal potentiality, which one alone must suffer.
 If one takes death into their life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, one will free
themselves from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will one
be free to become themselves.
 Death is as absurd as birth - it is no ultimate, authentic moment of one's life, it is
nothing but the wiping out of one's existence as conscious being. Death is only
another witness to the absurdity of human existence.
 The possibility of death isolates individuals because it continuously weighs upon
existence - to understand this possibility means to decide for it, to acknowledge "the
possibility of the impossibility of any existence at all" and to live for death.
6. Alienation (or estrangement): the alienation of individuals who pursue their own desires
in estrangement from the actual institutional workings of society.