North Hills Christian School
The Evaluation of Existentialism and Christianity
Jayden Constantino
Mr. Nason
Are You Sure?
6 May 2022
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Introduction
Existentialism, a movement in philosophy that started in the mid-19th century, has been a
philosophy that has been followed to this day. Popular existentialist philosophers include
Heidegger, Sartre, Kierkegaard, and more. These philosophers have created ideologies that have
been followed for years, and have interpreted existentialism for us. Existentialism directly states
that life is utterly meaningless. However, the fact is that we, as humans, should create a purpose
inside this meaningless life. Whether it is traveling the world or leading a country, existential
philosophy focuses more on the individual, than the surroundings of the individual. In this paper,
it will be proven that existential philosophy is inconsistent with its experience of knowing and
that Christianity, which has a way to get to 100% certainty, is the only real alternative.
Worldview
This paragraph will assess an existentialist worldview and determine its ultimate reality,
external reality, and humanitarian beliefs of an existentialist. Existentialism is a form of
naturalism and states that humans are born into the world without a purpose from nature or God.
This means that humans have to then personally create and find peace and purpose inside their
own life through one’s actions. This means that we have only chosen to do things, not that it was
purposely decided when we were born.
Most existentialists assume that it was impossible for a transcendent justification for
human existence. Sartre, an existentialist philosopher, believed that human existence is simply
by chance or accident. This situation then forces the existentialist to differentiate what humans
are into two categories. This, in contrast to humans either being a mind or a body, human
existence is just another form of nature, living as an organism, meaning we are not much
different from animals. On the other hand, since we can be self-aware, we hold morals and show
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our desires through actions. To the existentialist, this means that we have gone beyond our being
and that we are not just things, but we are things that care about the being we are. Sartre calls
these two aspects of humans “facticity”, the mere living organism we are, and “transcendence”
the ability to surpass our facticity through our desires. Whoever I am, I can change, and whoever
I’m not, I can strive to be. Therefore, the ultimate reality for an existentialist thinker is that
everything is in physical form and that we are the ones in control. We are the creator who
creates. The external reality is rather easy to explain. Everything around us that is relevant in our
human lives is inside a closed world with just physical objects, and we are physical beings
finding a purpose in our lives. However, the way humans were made is argued throughout by
existentialists. Since existentialism is more of a philosophy rather than a religion, human
existence is debated. Some are atheistic in their belief and believe in evolution. Others are
agnostic and question the existence of divine authority. Nietzsche believed that “God was dead.”
He doesn’t believe there was an actual god, but rather, the idea of God was not true. Sartre
believed that there was no God, and that humanity happened by “chance”. So, answers vary on
which existentialist you ask on what the answer to human existence is.
Grounds and Practices of Knowledge
The foundation of knowledge for existentialists is that everything is material and we are
just living beings, who make a purpose for ourselves. The way existentialists ground the reason
of the self is through discovering your mind and creating an identity. Knowledge of the self is
what you discover inside yourself, which makes your identity. Identity is founded on personal
knowledge of ourselves. As Sandra Lee Bartky said in Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker
“Existential knowledge of the self is not fragmentary; it involves more than the recovery of facts
about one's past or the determination of the real nature of one's motives in some specific
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situation. To grasp the significance of my existence as a whole, and the meaning of the
experiences I have had, I must discover who I am and what I truly value. But to uncover the truth
about myself in this sense, I must choose a perspective from which to regard myself; I must take
a stand regarding who I am and what I want, and what I take to be true about my history and
situation will depend in large measure upon the nature of this stand. The stand I take regarding
my identity and my values which makes it possible for me to regard myself in a new light is
analogous to artistic creation which discloses being” (271). So, the way reason is grounded is
through the knowledge of individuality. Grounding knowledge leads to the practice of our
knowledge and reason, which is then implemented into the world through material and
immaterial knowledge. Knowledge of other beings is merely a system of our understanding we
gain from looking at bits and pieces of it. We just add up the bits and pieces together to realize
who or what we are looking at. “We gain knowledge of entities only by projecting a pre-existing
"fore-structure" of understanding within which those entities then become constituted as
meaningful. This fore-structure is more existential than conceptual, more a matter of embodied
practice than of mental content” (The Tenets of Cognitive Existentialism)
Our knowledge of the world is how we practice our reasoning, and it is founded on our
consciousness. Our consciousness is merely a transcendent part of our being, that the body
cannot explain. According to Michael Polyani, a British researcher who many existentialist
philosophers take ideas, our consciousness is broken down into two different systems: the focal
and the subsidiary. Being focally aware means that we know what is going on around us, and the
subsidiary part is the little details making the focal consciousness. These two parts of
consciousness make up the three types of knowledge we are exposed to. Personal/self
knowledge, tacit/immaterial knowledge, and explicit/material knowledge. Tacit knowledge is
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knowledge that cannot be expressed easily, such as logic, personal wisdom, or intuition, while
explicit knowledge is knowledge that is stored in instructions or formulas. We gain knowledge
through focal and subsidiary consciousness. This allows us to reason. Reason is practiced
through the knowledge of the world and ourselves which is gained through consciousness. We
reason that we are just human beings with minds and that we must make a purpose in life, even
though it would not matter in the “bigger picture.”
A big question in regards to existentialist philosophy is why are they sharing the personal
knowledge of the self if the main focal point of existentialism is the mind of the self? Well, to
answer this question, we first must dive into the relationship between the being and the beings
around them. According to Sartre, there is a problem with being conscious of others. He believes
that a relation of being is only a relationship of beings, not an epistemological one. We can only
view other beings as objects, and we cannot see into their consciousness. This means that we are
simply relating to objects around us since we cannot know the existence of the other being's
consciousness. Sartre refers to the people around us as “the Other”. In Being and Nothingness,
Sartre states that “I am responsible for my being-for-others, but I am not the foundation of it”
(364). In this quote, Sartre is expressing the fact that we cannot change the way people look at
us, but we can change ourselves. Now, the main theme of existentialist philosophy is the creation
of purpose in life. Simply sharing knowledge with other beings through books or papers can be a
good way to create purpose inside the meaningless world, according to the existentialist.
Knowledge is only gained through experience, and reading a book is experiencing knowledge.
Interpretation and Evaluation of Existentialism
Existentialism, as a whole, thinks that objects are merely physical objects and that it does
not matter unless feeding into the purpose of our own lives. Jean Paul-Sartre believes that objects
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such as these, are called a “being-in-itself”. “Being-in-itself is concrete, cannot change, and is
unaware of itself” (Being and Nothingness Summary & Analysis). A being-for-itself is one with
conscience and is conscious of itself. We as humans are categorized as a being-for-itself as we
can be conscious of ourselves. However, we look at objects as physical material, which is a
being-in-itself. As was stated in the last paragraph, consciousness is how we ground knowledge.
Consciousness is what we think about ourselves, which makes our own identity. However,
focusing more on the physical reality of objects, we can see that consciousness still plays an
important role in realizing what is around us. For instance, let us take a clock. It was probably
created inside a factory, using materials coming naturally from the world. We can use our five
senses to realize the clock is there. We touch the clock, we see the clock, and we can hear the
clock ticking. These senses are feeding into our knowledge about the clock. We assume the
function of the clock is to simply tell time and do nothing else. Finally, we use our logic and
knowledge to realize that we are different from the clock. We have consciousness while the
inanimate clock does not have one. A clock cannot physically change its purpose on its own. Its
only purpose is to tell the time, making it a being-for-itself since it has no consciousness.
However, when we take into perspective what that clock is, we realize it is a work of man. We
realize that someone was behind who found a purpose in factory work. We learn about things
through experience. This makes it impossible for us to get to 100% knowledge of the world, as
we cannot experience everything. We can only experience events happening to us. Existentialism
is not enough for us, as we need Christianity to experience 100% knowledge.
Another problem with existentialism is that the theme of purpose inside our lives is
repetitive and that we can never find a real purpose inside our lives. After we achieve our
purpose, we are left in a state of nothingness. With no reassurance of what happens after death,
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we are left to find a purpose that will ultimately not matter, in this state of nothingness we call
“the world”. This philosophy is flawed since purpose cannot be found within ourselves. The real
purpose is not obtainable inside this materialistic world. The search for a true purpose will only
lead to another search until it keeps going on in our life. Let us say that someone’s purpose in life
is to find happiness. Many people would think that true happiness is bringing yourself to a
setting that will suit your desires. However, life is a search for that thing. All we do as humans
are strive to a point where we can relax.“Happiness can be achieved by cultivating presentmoment awareness and self-transcendence.” (How to be Happy: Is There a Secret Key to Finding
True Happiness?) However, this quote shows that we cannot keep happiness. As said, happiness
is only in the present. We cannot know that we will be happy in the future. Happiness is not
simply just a state that we can receive and keep forever. We must keep that level of happiness to
reach true happiness. However, as we go on and on, we realize that repeating an action will soon
burn us out, and we will soon not find joy inside that action. There are many more instances of
purposes inside this world that are not consistent with existentialist philosophy. Let us say that
someone wants to travel the world. Even though you are finding purpose whilst traveling the
world, what happens after you travel the world? Do you just sit there, finding another purpose?
Or do you just await death? The problem with finding another purpose is that you will be trying
to make a purpose infinitely times. Sure, you may find a purpose in such things, such as
providing for your family, but after your family dies, you will need another purpose inside your
life. To find a true purpose inside our life, the purpose must first be able to keep up with our life.,
which is impossible. This is the problem with existentialism. As Nietzche said in The Gay
Science ‘” What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest
loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live
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once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and
every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will
have to return to you, and in the same succession and sequence ”’ (341). The theory of eternal
recurrence, which comes from Friedrich Nietzche, states that life just repeats itself. This is true in
existentialist philosophy, as finding a purpose will always be repeated until the termination of
life. This would also make Nietzche and many existentialist philosophers contradict each other.
In existentialism, certainty is fulfilling your purpose. However, since we cannot truly fulfill our
purpose, existentialism is flawed in its logic. Finding a purpose inside our lives may seem
impossible, especially when you dig deep into existentialism, but the only way to find a purpose
is the one we find through the guidance of God.
Christianity
In Christianity, we learn that there is a God. However, this divinity is split into 3, known
as the trinity. Inside the trinity, we have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The way to get to 100% knowledge is through the trinity. Through the universal experience of
knowledge, which is self-knowledge, external knowledge, and the law governing. Unlike
existentialism, Christianity can get to 100% knowledge. The inner works of the trinity start with
the Father. He sees, knows, and loves the Son, in which the Son sees, knows, and loves the
Father back. We can find this in the Bible, which says “All things have been committed to me by
my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son
and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27). The divine mind of God is
also revealed to us by the three logical laws of the world. God is identical to Himself, which is
the law of identity. God cannot be God and something else. He is only God, which means He is
good, and not bad at the same time, which is the law of noncontradiction. Since God is only
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Himself, He is God. He is not something that is not God, This means that God is true, and He
never lies, which is the law of excluded middle. The human mind gets certain through God’s
mind. Being created in the image of God means that He has allowed us to reason like Him. We
are 100% certain that we are made in the image of God when we come to Him. 100% certainty is
obtained by accepting God, and 100% is stored through Him. The Father also wants us to see,
know, and love the Son, which explains why we were created. This is our ultimate reality in
Christianity. We also learn that the Father has made us in His image, which is revealed through
scripture. Genesis 1:27 says “So God created mankind in his image, in the image of God he
created them; male and female he created them.” Creating us in His image has helped us see,
know, and love the Son. However, it does not end there. The external world is created through
the Father, who has made it to reflect His glory. Psalm 19:1 stated this exactly. “The heavens
declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Aesthetics is a set of
principles concerned with physical beauty. Aesthetics are directly related to the resurrection of
Jesus Christ. ”If the resurrection occurred, then there is hope that the world and its inhabitants
will be renewed and transformed to conform with God’s ordained intention. If this is the case,
then surely the resurrection will impact aesthetics”(Resurrection and the Reorientation of
Philosophy). The laws governing the experience of knowing also tie into everything. John 1:1-5
states that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was
made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light
shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Logos, an idea part of Greek
philosophy, is what John uses in this verse instead of “word”. Logos is the divine reason, which
means that we reconcile all things and think to ourselves. However, Christianity says that God
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reveals Himself through the Son who reconciles all things and thinking. This ideology was
recognized by the Greeks. So, in turn, the individual is created in God’s image for us to receive
certainty. But for certainty to happen, we must turn to Him. Everything in the world is made to
reflect God’s glory, and laws governing state that we must think like God to know God. 100%
certainty is obtained through God, which is that we are made in God’s image. This is the one
thing we can be certain about because God has specifically chosen to reveal everything to us
through His Son. All we, as humans, have to do is simply believe the word of God and follow it
as it is true. The laws of logic, math, and science have been revealed to us through the
revelations of God.
Conclusion
With all the information just said, it is a fact that existentialism does not pass the
evaluation of a worldview. No other worldview passes evaluation other than Christianity. But to
focus on existentialism, the experience of knowledge is gained through personal experience. We
cannot get to 100% certainty, unlike Christianity, in existentialism. This is because, in
existentialism, 100% certainty is fulfilling your only purposes in life, which is impossible for
many reasons. Christianity is 100% certain because it has a trinity. The trinity, which includes
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which grounds our experience of knowing as a whole.
To restate, Existentialism fails as a whole, and Christianity, is the supreme worldview, as it can
gain 100% certainty.
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Jayden,
Excellent work! You showed you researched and understand existentialism amd you show you
understand how Christianity (specifically the Trinity) is the only way to ground the human
experience of knowing. Again, excellent work!
Category
Possible
Earned
Grammar
30%
29%
Logic
30%
30%
You called John, Paul. The only flaw I found.
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Understanding
40%
40%
Total
100%
99%