A complex philosophy
emphasizing the
absurdity of reality
and the human
responsibility to make
choices and accept
consequences!
ANDREW WYETH
Christina’s World (1948)
Philosophia ~ Love of Wisdom
• Metaphysics/Ontology: study of reality
(existence, time, causation), nature of being,
becoming, existence, or reality (what makes a
human human)
• Epistemology: study of knowledge
• Logic: study of the principles of reasoning
• Ethics: study of what is the right way to live and
right way to act (morals)
• Aesthetics: study of beauty
Introduction to Existentialism
• My 12th grade philosophy teacher, Ray Linn, introduced it to
me (and Ms. Weiss) like this:
• I remember watching the movie, the “Thorn Birds” on tv once
and after seeing the priest die, I asked myself the question, “If
we’re all going to die, then what is my purpose in life? Why do
I exist?” One time or another we have all questions our
existence. I think my purpose in life is to reproduce.
Historical Foundations
• Mid-19th century many thinkers tried to answer the
unanswerable questions of “What is the purpose of life?”
• Begin questioning human existence as a result of social
conditions of the time, namely the industrial revolution.
• Industrialization (people living by the clock), modernization
(working to be able to meet their growing desire for material
goods and technology) and secularization (turn away from
religion) cause miserable conditions
• Miserable conditions of the Industrial Revolution of the
1800’slead to people doubting their lives
• Note people are still Christian, but religion is no longer at the
forefront of daily life and societal functioning.
Friedrich Nietzsche
• German philosopher, poet, composer cultural critic
• Franco-Prussian War (German unification), brutish
German Nationalism, anti-semitism
• Father dies at age 5, brother dies as an infant
• Radical questioning of truth, crisis in values institutions
(“G-d is dead” The Gay Science 1882)
• Deemed insane by many during his life, taken seriously
decades later
• Influences rise of existentialism in 1940’s
Neitzsche in a Nutshell
• Provides secularized answer to human existence
• Claims humans need to take responsibility for their lives and
their actions.
• He declares that humans should create life on the level of an
artist
• He advocates confidence to overcome what is lacking in
oneself
• He claims one needs to conquer what they lack and can be
done utilizing four qualities:
•
•
•
•
1. cheerfulness – go out with a sense of motivation
2. Patience – don’t focus on yourself all of the time
3. unpretentiousness – strong people are not gaudy
4. contempt for true vanities
Nietzsche Continued.
• Everything is based on chance (genetic makeup, wealth,
appearance)
• There is no one particular self, there are many possibilities
• Believes most people are weak and do not take responsibility
for their decisions in life
• There must be a process of “becoming.” This occurs through
process of creating which comes from a life of selfexamination.
• One must questions suffering, but ultimately accept it as part
of the human condition.
• Man exists as a will to power.
Almost a century
later, during the
Second World War,
when Europe found
itself in a crisis
faced with death and
destruction, that the
existential
movement started by
Nietzsche began to
flourish. It was
popularized in
France in the 1940s.
GEORGIO DE CHIRICO
Love Song
Big Ideas of Existentialism
Despite encompassing a
huge range of philosophical,
religious, and political
ideologies, the underlying
concepts of existentialism
are simple…
MARK ROTHKO
Untitled (1968)
Cogito ergo sum.
Existence Precedes Essence
• Emphasizes the existence of the human being, the lack
of meaning and purpose in life, and the solitude of
human existence.
• Who we are is not genetically predetermined.
• The human being has no no essential self.
• Man is a conscious subject, rather than a thing to be
predicted or manipulated
• Exists as a conscious being and not in accordance with
any definition, generalization or system.
• “I am nothing else but my own conscious existence.”
Absurdism
• The belief that nothing can explain or rationalize
human existence.
• There is no answer to “Why am I?”
• Each of us is here, thrown into time and place, but
why now?
• Humans exist in a meaningless, irrational universe and
any search for order will bring them into direct
conflict with this universe.
• World is chaotic with no inherent plan or blueprint
Anxiety
MAN RAY
Les Larmes (Tears)
Anxiety & Anguish
• Generalized uneasiness, fear or dread
• Anxiety is the result of human understanding
and recognition of absurdity.
• The absence of any plan or socially defined
self, and the existence of total freedom of
choice, leads to anxiety.
• Universal condition of human existence
• “My total freedom is also my total
responsibility to define the meaning of my
situation in the world.”
Alienation
EDGAR DEGAS
“L’absinthe” (1876)
Alienation
• Alienated from:
• The self
• Nature (result of science)
• Product of labor (result of factory model which has turned human
into mechanical component)
• Human institutions (government, politics, religion, corporations
etc.) – we do not feel like we are a apart of them and do not
understand how they work
• From history ( no sense of our roots creating a meaningful past)
present and future
• “the Other” (all family, social and work relations)
• Alienation dominates love
Then How is Meaning Created and the Self
Defined?
• THE OTHER…da da dum
• Those different from us
• Oppress through language (desire to be at the top, use language to put
down others and gain status)
• Functions in 2 ways:
• Awareness that in an absurd world we are always being judged, thus
we are the other. As we want to avoid feel like this we…
• Further alienate “others” as a way to define the self, by feeling
“superior” to the other. “If you are bad then I am good, thus not
bad” mentality
• Nazi’s:Jews (etc.), Slave/Master, Savage/all other teachers
• Read The Painted Bird analysis
Human Subjectivity
“I will be what I choose to be.”
It is impossible to transcend
human subjectivity.
My emotions are yet another
choice I make. I am responsible
for them.
Edward Hopper
“New York Movie” (1939)
Nothingness
EDVARD MUNCH
Night in Saint Cloud (1890)
Nothingness
• “Nothingness is our inherent lack of self. We are in
constant pursuit of a self. Nothingness is the creative wellspring from which all human possibilities can be realized.”
–Jean-Paul Sartre
• Nothingness results when no essence defines me and I
reject all structures that seek.
• I am my own existence, but when I have stripped away all
structures of knowledge, moral values and human
relationship, I stand in anguish in an existence of
nothingness.
Death
• Death is always present
• “Hangs over me like a sword”
• The unaware person tries to live as if death is not actual, he
tries to escape reality.
• Argument 1 (Heidegger):
• Death is the most authentic, Significant human experience
• If one acknowledges and accepts death they are free to escape
anxiety and become themselves.
• Argument 2(Sartre):
• Death is as absurd as birth
• It is the ultimate nothingness wiping on my conscious being
• Death is another example of the absurdity of existence
Choice and Commitment
• Humans have freedom to choose.
• Each individual makes choices that create
his or her own nature.
• Because we choose, we must accept risk
and responsibility for wherever our
commitments take us.
•
“A human being is absolutely free and absolutely responsible. Anguish is the
result.” –Jean-Paul Sartre
All existentialists are concerned with the study of being or ontology.
TO REVIEW:
An existentialist believes that a person’s life is nothing but the sum of
the life he has shaped for himself.
 At every moment it is always his own free will choosing how to act.
He is responsible for his actions, which limit future actions.
Thus, he must create a morality in the absence of any known
predetermined absolute values.
 God does not figure into the equation, because even if God does exist,
He does not reveal to men the meaning of their lives.
Life is absurd, but we engage it!
Some Famous
Existentialists
• Søren Kierkegaard
(1813-1855)
• Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900)
• Jean-Paul Sartre (19051980)
• Albert Camus (19131960)
• Fraz Kafka (1883-1924)
“A woman is not born…she
is created.”
de Beauvoir’s most famous text is
The Second Sex (1949), which some
claim is the basis for current
gender studies.
Franz Kafka
• Born into a middle-class, Germanspeaking Jewish family in Prague, then
part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
• Both parents were absent from the
home with Julie Kafka working as
many as 12 hours each day helping to
manage the family business.
Consequently, Kafka's childhood was
somewhat lonely and the children were
largely reared by a series of
governesses and servants. Complicated
and troubled relationship with his father
that had a major impact on his writing
• Conflicted over his Jewishness and felt
it had little to do with him
• Drafted to WWI but got a deferment by
his work
The Metamorphosis
• Published 1915 (significance of
date?)
• Work deals with themes of
alienation, physical and
psychological brutality, parent–
child conflict, characters on a
terrifying quest, mystical
transformations (absurdity) and
the function of the other
• As Gregor Samsa awoke one
morning from uneasy dreams, he
found himself transformed in his
bed into a gigantic insect-like
creature.
Albert Camus
• French author, journalist and philosopher
• Born in French Algeria (French colony in Northern
Africa)
• Father died in Battle of Marne in WWI
• In 1934 marries a morphine addict, divorce due to
infidelity
• Marries again, but argues that “the institution of
marriage is unnatural”
• Joins French resistance against the Nazi’s during WWII
• Won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957
The Stranger (1942)
Albert Camus dissociated himself
from the existentialists but
acknowledged man’s lonely condition
in the universe. His “man of the
absurd” (or absurd hero) rejects
despair and commits himself to the
anguish and responsibility of living as
best he can.
Basically, man creates himself through the choices he makes.
There are no guides for these choices, but he has to make them
anyway, which renders life absurd.
“You will never be happy if
you continue to search for
what happiness consists of.
You will never live if you are
looking for the meaning of
life.”
“It was previously a question of finding out
whether or not life had to have a meaning to be
lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it
will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.”