PHILOSOPHY 201 (STOLZE)
Notes on Thomas Wartenberg, Existentialism
Martin Luther King, Jr. on Existentialism
“During the past decade I also gained a new appreciation for the philosophy of
existentialism. My first contact with this philosophy came through my reading of [Søren]
Kierkegaard and [Friedrich] Nietzsche. Later I turned to a study of [Karl] Jaspers, [Martin]
Heidegger and [Jean-Paul] Sartre. All of these thinkers stimulated my thinking; while
finding things to question in each, I nevertheless learned a great deal from study of them.
When I finally turned to a serious study of the works of Paul Tillich I became convinced
that existentialism, in spite of the fact that it had become all too fashionable, had grasped
certain basic truths about man and his condition that could not be permanently
overlooked.
Its understanding of the “finite freedom” of man is one of existentialism’s most
lasting contributions, and its perception of the anxiety and conflict produced in man’s
personal and social life as a result of the perilous and ambiguous structure of existence is
especially meaningful for our time. The common point in all existentialism, whether it is
atheistic or theistic, is that man’s existential situation is a state of estrangement from his
essential nature. In their revolt against [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel’s essentialism, all
existentialists contend that the world is fragmented. History is a series of unreconciled
conflicts and man’s existence is filled with anxiety and threatened with meaninglessness.
While the ultimate Christian answer is not found in any of these existential assertions,
there is much here that the theologian can use to describe the true state of man’s
existence.”
(“Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” (1960): http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/pilgrimage_to_nonviolence)
Chapter One: Human Existence
•
•
•
•
Freedom and Determinism
Being Human
Consciousness
Being What One is Not
A Quote from Dostoevsky
“Even if man were nothing but a piano key, even if this were
proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even
then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely
do something perverse out of sheer ingratitude, simply to
have his own way ... then, after all, perhaps only by his
curse will he attain his object, that is, really convince himself
that he is a man and not a piano key! If you say that all this,
too, can be calculated and tabulated ... then man would
purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and have his
own way.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground)
Freedom and Determinism
Two Senses of Freedom:
•
•
Social and Political
Metaphysical
Being Human
Heidegger on Dasein = “Being-There”
Dasein “takes its own existence (being) to be an issue for it”:
•
•
•
Humans are aware
Humans are free
Humans are concerned about how they exist
Consciousness
Sartre on In-Itself vs. For-Itself
Positional vs. Non-Positional Consciousness
Consciouness is a Nothing
Ex: Car Mechanic, Waiting for Pierre in a Café, Tom’s Ferrari
Being What One is Not
•
•
•
•
For Sartre a human being “is what it is not and is not what it
is”
Facticity and Transcendence
Concrete Situations
Ex: Paul Gauguin
Chapter Two
•
•
•
Dostoevsky on Happiness vs. Freedom
The Problem of Why People Fear Freedom—abandonment,
responsibility and anxiety (pp. 37-38)
Patterns of Bad Faith—the fluctuation between facticity and
transcendence (p. 43)