Søren Kierkegaard (18131855)
• Considered the
founder of
existentialism
• Our life is meaningless
o Fills us with despair,
anxiety, hopelessness,
and depression
o THERE IS NO ESCAPE
• Rejected the idea that
science can provide
meaning for our life
Pre-Existentialist Ideas
• Life is meaningless
• truth is subjective
• Existence relates only to the individual;
it is not universal
“I stick my finger into existence—it
smells of nothing. What is this thing
called the world? Who is it who has
lured me into this thing, and now
leaves me here? Who am I? How did I
come into the world? Why was I not
consulted?”
-Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard’s
Existentialism
• Kierkegaard is a Christian
existentialist
o Embracing the absurdity and alienation of life
brings us closer to God
o God fills “the void”
• “False Christianity”
o Trying to base faith on facts and science
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
The “anti-philosopher”
“God is Dead” (Gott ist
Tot)
• What does this mean?
• Our belief in God is dead
o The scientific revolution hastened his death
o We no longer have a foundation for truth and
morality
o We have to create that foundation ourselves
o But the death of God is good; religion made the
individual weak, dependent, and cowardly
“Slave Morality”
• What does this mean?
• Following pre-established values is a
herd mentality
o Christianity leads to a slave morality
o Only a few can rise above it to reach the master morality
• Emphasis on the individual
• Split from Marx, who emphasized class
Plato and Christianity
• Nietzsche rejects both
o Plato’s Ideal world places no emphasis on
material existence
o Christianity places the afterlife above
material existence
• Nietzsche wants a focus on material,
human-centered existence
• But to do so requires the death of God
• Kant helped kill God by saying that we
can’t know the “thing in itself”
• All debates about “appearance vs. reality
are” pointless
“The Will to Power”
• A Freudian-type drive
• Life is an expression of will
• The Will to Power is an urge to excel, to
control, to dominate
The “superman”
(a.k.a. “overman” or “übermensch”)
• The superman is the individual who:
o Rises above slave morality
o Can form his own morality
o Creates meaning out of a nihilistic environment
Nihilism
• We are on the verge of
meaninglessness
• The power of the
individual will have to
create new meaning
Relativism
• “Truth, like morality, is a relative affair;
there are no facts, only
interpretations.”
o The übermensch creates his own truth