User:PHI325/sandbox

Simon's Advice: Existentialist Wiki Edition


 * 1) To edit this wiki page, either click on the "Edit source" tab in the top right of the web page or next to a specific heading. Multiple people can be editing at the same time.
 * 2) Save often via the blue "Publish changes" button that appears beneath the source editor.
 * 3) Clicking on the blue words to the right of the B and I will give you access to special commands, such as list making and citation.
 * 4) If you can't figure out formatting, click the blue "Help" button before asking me or Google. It's fairly simple to navigate.
 * 5) Place citations within your article wherever you desire. They will place a small, numeric marker where the citation is and appear automatically within the References section at the bottom of the page when published.
 * 6) Be careful about what you edit− we all have access to each others' material, and we're trusting each other to respect our individual work. Try your best not to act in bad faith.

Summary of Existentialism
Existentialism is a cultural movement retrospectively categorized as a modern philosophy. Many of its fundamental concepts are derived from the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger, such as authenticity, the concept of existence, consciousness, and relation to others. Originating in the immediate post-war period (1946-1961), many of the thinkers reacted to the loss of individuality and dehumanization arising from the war, and the abandonment of traditional moral frameworks provided by religion. In this period, predominant figures associated with existentialism included Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus. A key notion that lies at the center of most existentialist philosophy is the idea that "existence precedes essence." As Sartre explicitly declared, "Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself afterword."

Absurdism
Absurdism

Absurdism, also referred to as “the Absurd” has origins dating back to the 19th century philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. The absurd shares both existential and nihilistic concepts. The main premise of Absurdism is the inherent conflict between humans seeking meaning in life but and not being able to find meaning. While it isn’t logically impossible for life to have meaning, it’s impossible for humans to comprehend life’s meaning.

Albert Camus has contributed greatly to absurdist philosophy. Through his works, he depicts the absurd as a conflict and describes how the absurd leaves the individual with a choice. The individual is left to choose between suicide, a leap of faith or recognition. Suicide is an acknowledgement that life is not worth living and is ultimately an exit from the absurd. A leap of faith is an idea Camus comments on that was derived by Kierkegaard. A leap of faith is where one believes that there is more than the rational life. This leap of faith may suspend ethics and have no expectations. This leap of faith recognizes the absurd and is an act of ignoring it. Because the leap of faith escapes rationality and defers to abstraction over personal experience, the leap of faith is not absurd. Camus considers the leap of faith philosophical suicide. The last decision, which Camus recognizes as the only defensible option, is embracing the absurd. Recognizing that the universe is subjective gives us freedom and the opportunity to give meaning to life. Our freedom comes from our natural ability to create our own meanings and purposes. Camus concludes that even though it’s absurd to seek any inherent meaning, we should continue the search regardless. This itself develops meaning from the search alone.

Absurdism is a philosophical and literary movement of the early-to-mid twentieth century which focuses mainly on the fundamental human inability to locate value or meaning in one’s own life. The movement is derived from the same methodology applied by Nihilism and Existentialism. Although Absurdism is often confused for the two other movements, one of its most influential figures, Albert Camus publically disavowed the existentialist philosophies of Sartre and Heidegger. Absurdism was mainly a literary movement or style, whose ideas were revealed contextually through narratives. The movement attempted to point out the ultimate meaninglessness of existence which is to be viewed positively, according to Camus. Franz Kafka was one of the earliest to adopt absurdism in his work. A German-speaking, Austrian Jew, attempted to capture the alienation and confusion of human existence. In one of his greatest works, Metamorphosis (1915), the main character awakes one day to find himself transformed into an insect. Kafka’s allegory illustrates the absurdity of being thrown into an ultimately meaningless existence. His later work, The Trial highlights a similar character of helplessness in the wake of absurdity, a condition which Kafka sees as common to all. Unfortunately, Kafka died young (1924) and was not able to continue his work. Later adaptations of absurdist philosophy by Camus and Eugene Ionesco sought to continue the literary tradition started by Kafka. The Absurd became a prevailing concept in popular literature by the middle of the twentieth century – influencing many American writers today. Absurdist literature and philosophy, in the context of existentialism, proposes that there is only one viable reaction to end the turbulence of human existence. According to Camus, in the face of the absurd one must “get along with the present and seek at least a provisional solution.” This opposes the view of either Suicide as an alternative or appeal to the religious or spiritual. Camus believed that an individual must embrace absurdity, in order to deal with it, and attempt to assign meaning elsewhere in life, even though it is not always possible. Existentialism and Nihilism as philosophical movements use the same method of inquiry as many Absurdist writers, however they differ in the sense of their central focus. The Existentialist movement focuses more on the nature of human existence in the world. Whereas, absurdism as a movement is meant to demonstrate the inability to posit meaning in certain cases of existence. Eugene Ionesco helped popularize absurdism, bringing it to theater audiences across Europe. His Theater of the Absurd was a hub of absurdist literature by the mid-1950s putting on shows for wide ranging audiences. Ionesco’s absurdism focuses on the shortcomings or unreliability of language. His most notable work which depicts this is The Bald Soprano (1950). Originally written in French, the play’s text is highly cryptic and non-sequential as if to highlight the impotence of human language. Ionesco’s, misunderstood, yet brilliant work from the outset stands as a form of parody or satire of existence itself as it was written with stage instructions to restart the paly once it concludes. His later work The Chairs holds the same absurdist sentiment about language. The work was also meant to show the inevitability of death. Also a parody, The Chairs is a play about a 94 and 95 year old who tell each other stories with an empty audience. Ionesco’s certainly displays a distaste for the tangible world in all of his works. Human solitude and insignificance characterize his philosophy. Albert Camus is often seen as a central figure in the literary movement of Absurdism. A French-Algerian writer and activist before and after World War II, Camus is credited with bringing Absurdism as a philosophy into the public sphere. His works were influenced tremendously by his experiences during the war, as he was a journalist, at the time, supporting the French Resistance. Each of his works bring out unique concepts in themselves. An early work of his, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) is a novel about a man who was condemned for eternity to roll a stone up a hill, only for it to roll back down time after time. In this allegory, Camus presented a philosophical inquiry about how to escape when all one sees is absurdity throughout his/her life. Camus holds that one must embrace the absurd things in life, but continue to search for meaning elsewhere. The Stranger (1942) is meant to show “the nakedness of man faced with the absurd.” In this novel, a man was accidently brought into murder, for which he is convicted. He eventually finds peace in this however. Camus is showing the concept that one can become free from his own imprisonment (a concept echoed by existentialists as well). Camus’s 1947 novel The Plague reveals that he believes that to the absurd, humans tend to react with both madness and compassion. A plague comes to a small North African town and people begin by going mad in the face of absurdity. However, it is revealed in Camus’s writing that absurdity cannot come without compassion. His final work, which seems to be a synthesis of all of his philosophy, The Fall (1956) was written a year before Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The masterpiece novel is s story about a wealthy lawyer confessing his life to a stranger. The Fall is Camus’s commentary on the instinctive human fear of judgement and human willingness to judge. The overarching theme of Camus’s literature is the absurdity of human life and hypocritical nature. Despite its close proximity to Existentialism, Camus denied vehemently that he was an Existentialist. The two philosophies apply the same methodology, however have few other commonalities according to Camus. As a literary development, Absurdism has made its way around the world since Camus’s death in 1960, finding remnants of his philosophy in many American novels today. Ultimately, the Absurdist movement attempts to confront the meaninglessness of the world by embracing those qualities, rather than fumbling around trying to grasp the absurd. The philosophy’s fundamental purpose is to show the meaningless and not to give it meaning. The meaningless is inevitable, but Absurdism does not deny that humans can assign meaning to their lives. Camus believed it was up to an individual to determine his meaning for life and to embrace the meaninglessness around himself. Ontological Absurdism In Philosophy, the absurd details the conflict between the tendency/need for meaning or seeking value from the universe and our inability to reconcile or attain meaning in the universe we occupy. The solutions of dealing with the absurd reveal the differences in the existential writers. The confrontation with suicide was deemed as escaping existence and ultimately seemed even more absurd. In death, one does not find the cure to the absurdity of his existence. Kierkegaard found resolution of the absurd in faith and religiosity. In one of his journals, he details the way in which the absurd is transformed by faith, stating that “…the passion of faith is the only thing that masters the absurd…”. We see this in confrontation with an existence in which every avenue is doomed to a negative consequence. Kierkegaard used the example of Abraham to illustrate how Abraham was caught in the virtue of the absurd. Kierkegaard states that it is resolved by Abraham’s faith in the divinity and ultimately escapes/masters the absurd through the arrival of the angel to stop his sacrifice. The characterized ‘leap of faith’. Similar to other stories in the Bible, Job being given everything he lost, faith takes on a miraculous form, acts in means which are offensive to reason. For Camus, the most common referral to his notion on the absurd is the Myth of Sisyphus. We see that with Camus, the absurd is more tangible; in that the human condition is at odds with the cold, silent universe. In the face of this cosmic indifference, Camus states that we are left with three choices. Our condition in face of an indifferent world is analogous to that of Sisyphus’ plight, doomed to roll the boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down upon completion. With this truth in mind, we are confronted with three options; suicide, ‘a leap of faith’ and recognition. Suicide for Camus served as only a fuel to the absurd. It showed that the life that one occupied was overwhelming and that thus accept what Camus called “…an invitation to death…”. The absurd could also bring about a leap of faith. This idea was brought about by Kierkegaard through his writings under the alias Johannes de Silentio alluded to a life beyond that of the rational; a life-denying idea of sorts. Camus would be in agreeance with this claim; a leap of faith would be humanity confronting the Absurd and just choosing to deny it. Denial of what is quite valuable to human existence. For Camus, the only option in our confrontation with the Absurd would be recognition. In the face of an indifferent universe, devoid of absolutes, Camus claimed that true freedom was found in the individual. “… to live without appeal…”, a passionate revolt against our existence. Camus did not believe that our freedom would be found in more abstraction, as Kierkegaard or Pascal did. Upon the revelation of the absurd, we should revolt and refuse suicide. In Camus’ ideas, we see the onset of an existential nihilistic philosophy. Through the Absurd, we learn that the pursuit for an inherent meaning or purpose is futile. As we become aware of our existence, we are no longer disillusioned by purpose in the universe. Religion provides us with nothing more than solace and comfort for our fear of death. Honesty demands that we “…face the absurdity of our existence and accept our eventual demise…” as through this, a rational being can move forward, creating meaning through reason. Sartre states that the resolution of the existential is meaning creating by dwelling in community; we first “… of all exist…”, then we encounter ourselves and define ourselves in relation to the world. Another form of nihilism emerges in confrontation with this indifferent universe; cosmic nihilism. Cosmic nihilism details the absence of a divine God who presides over us, further emphasizing our insignificance in the totality of the universe. Humanity is at the mercy of the infinite cosmos. As Schopenhauer states, “…all striving is rooted in deficiency and in need, and thus in pain…”. The cosmos holds no intelligible structure thus meaning as Russell states “…the natural world is oblivious to our distinctions of good and evil…”. Russell’s view is not as extreme as Schopenhauer as he believed that a picture of the workings of the universe could be established with mathematics and physics but ultimately these workings would be meaningless in the eyes of human virtue. On the heels of this idea stems cosmicism. It follows on from the idea of a meaningless world but ultimately confirms the non-existence of a divine presence. Our existence is still insignificance in comparison to the age of the cosmos, but we become aware of our lack of control over it. We still remain at the mercy of the universe. This is vividly represented in the work of H.P Lovecraft. Lovecraft details a world of which humans have nearly disappeared and all traces of civilization dwindles away. Humanity in Lovecraft’s work are confronted by monsters who terrorize them but the interesting thing to note is that the monsters are largely indifferent to the plight of the humans it terrorizes. The deities that he constructs operate/inhabit a world beyond human understanding and even though their acts are seemingly heinous, they are not malevolent as we would assume.

Alienation
Alienation is a major theme within Existential philosophy, but each philosopher interprets the term on their own to varying degrees. Generally, alienation, in the philosophical sense, refers to the divide that happens in the relation between an individual and that to which they are relating. This divide could be between an individual and their own self, an individual and their community, and various other divides.

Søren Kierkegaard, while only added to the list of existentialists after the movement in the mid to late 20th Century, discussed the idea of alienation in an existential sense. He wrote against and disagreed with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ideas of alienation. Kierkegaard believes that being unified with the collective whole is a form of alienation; this is contrary to Hegel’s belief. This is basically saying that immersing one’s unique self into the societal demands of the world, the individual’s uniqueness is suppressed and this does not allow for the individual to become their authentic self. Martin Heidegger also echoes this point in his works, that engaging in the world alienates one from the possibility of being their authentic self.

Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the most prominent figures in existentialism, discussed alienation in his works as well. Sartre’s view of alienation differs from that of Kierkegaard. In Sartre’s book Being and Nothingness, he discusses alienation in the form of what he calls “bad faith.” This occurs when an individual refuses to accept the responsibility that comes with the freedom of existence. By denying the responsibility of freedom, the individual denies who they are or who they could possibly become. Sartre also sees alienation in light of not being able to inhabit a dimension of one’s own being, that ‘lost’ dimension is that of the third person perspective of my being. According to Sartre, only the Others we exist with in this world can give us that third person perspective that as an individual we cannot experience for our own being.

In the works of Albert Camus, alienation is always a theme. In his novel The Fall, Camus writes of a French man in Amsterdam and he is alienated in a world that is unfamiliar to him. This makes him alienated from his environment, from the world he inhabits, and from the Others and this alienation forces the character to try and relate to anyone he sees a connection with. In Camus’ novel The Stranger, the main character is indifferent and this alienates him from society, it makes him a ‘stranger.’ Camus’ works focus on alienation between an individual and their environment or the world they inhabit.

What many of these existential philosophers seem to have in common is that alienation can be overcome and an individual can live an authentic life. Kierkegaard states that alienation can be overcome and authenticity achieved by following a faith-based path. Sartre states that when encountering the anxiety of this responsibility of freedom, that an individual should accept the responsibility of freedom and this in turn will create the individual’s self and achieve authenticity.

Ambiguity
The concept of ambiguity in philosophy, and specifically existentialism is one that is intrinsic in the ideas that are brought forth by prominent existentialist philosophers. In its raw definition, ambiguity means, “the quality of being open to more than on interpretation; inexactness” however that application is skewed in defining it in relation to is use in existentialism. The term is a strong focus in Simone de Beauvoir’s 1947 book The Ethics of Ambiguity. de Beauvoir found herself inspired for the piece after having read Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness in which towards the end of the book he promises to work toward defining the ethics of existentialism. As a preface to de Beauvoir’s work, Sartre in his book lays out specific ideas that shape the way de Beauvoir delivers the idea of ambiguity. Firstly, Sartre makes the distinction of two states of beings within existence. The first type is the ‘being-in-itself’ which envelops all unconscious beings like rocks. The key trait of the ‘being-in-itself’ is the idea that is comes with a predetermined essence, for example trees are bound to their actions of growing, reproducing, and dying. The second type is the being-for-itself which describes all conscious beings. Sartre asserts that the ‘being-for-itself’, is not brought into existence with a predetermined essence or nature. It is for this reason that Sartre applies the idea of nothingness, the conscious man must create his own being. He creates this being through actions from nothingness for himself. He defends this stance in saying that a defining ability of the conscious being is be able to tell that it is in fact not without consciousness. This definition by what it is not, proves to Sartre that the being-for-itself is in fact a nothingness that must bring being unto itself.

It is from this point that de Beauvoir’s work begins, and she immediately speaks on her positions on the ideas of Sartre. Immediately, de Beauvoir agrees with Sartre that both the ideas of ‘being-in-itself’ and the ‘being-for-itself’ exist within humans. With this in mind, she goes on the develop upon Sartre’s idea in that she finds there is an ambiguity in the past of an individual and the future that is to be created by the free ‘being-for-itself’. The context of this ambiguity sits in the position of the past, present, and future in one’s life. The past, and the choices made in that time, determine the present. At the time of those choices being made, an individual can not know the full outcome of each choice, yet they must be made, creating ambiguity. In relation to the present and future the same ambiguity exists, yet just at a different standpoint. In the present, you must make choices on the future that you cannot know the full effect of until the future arrives as the present, at which time you will be making choices on the future. So, in summary of those ideas a ‘being-for itself’ is constantly feeling the ambiguous effects of past choices in the present while simultaneously making choices riddled in ambiguity for the future. Because of the fact the effects of our present choices cannot be known in its entirety, the ethical weight of each decision we make is felt directly upon making the choice, by us, the choice-makers. Another area of ambiguity that de Beauvoir speaks on is ambiguity regarding our dual nature, which de Beauvoir sees as composed of both the physical body in which we reside and our conscious thought. For de Beauvoir, consciousness relies heavily on the physical aspects of our being, but is not the same as our physical capabilities, or our mind is when we make of it and is not limited to the same constraints as our body. Our body and its limits are simply another inescapable prison of our existence and the ability to transcend the limits put upon us by our body through the abilities of our mind and thought is what gives us both freedom and moral obligation. de Beauvoir sees the trend within the Western philosophical tradition to prioritize one side of an apparent dualism, such as mind over body, or self over other, or the individual over the collective, as problematic. De Beauvoir says that the ability to perceive duality is just as ingrained in our being as consciousness is. However, part of the ambiguity of human existence is that we possess a combination of these strongly opposing characteristics, including a reciprocity between oneself and others. When our ambiguities are brought under scrutiny, it becomes apparent that although human perception seeks positions in which we are seen under two opposing characteristics, no prioritization of any one over the other need be established. However, the ambiguity is seen here in the question of which side of the opposing duality takes precedence over the other. Going on, at the simplest notion of ambiguity for de Beauvoir, we see her idea of the thought that humans are bound to be free. Sartre first established this contractual freedom idea in Being and Nothingness, where he breaks down the dilemmas of freedom such as, how to approach it, how to act given you are free do to what you want, and the consequences of trying ton convince yourself that you are not free, all in line with the general notion of anguish that accompanies freedom. de Beauvoir expands on Sartre’s idea in that she believes freedom is the source of moral obligation and that realizing one’s own freedom does not negate the ability of others to do the same, but in fact quite the opposite, the freedom of others is necessary in order for our own freedom to remain intact. Somewhat opposing Sartre, de Beauvoir found that though we are always ontologically free we are not always morally free. Given the nature of morals and choices, this restriction on general freedom creates and allows ambiguity to take an effect.

de Beauvoir’s stance and work on ambiguity certainly did not go unnoticed and that is completely evidenced by Albert Camus’s 1956 fiction book, The Fall. In the book, there are two characters, the reader, and the titular Jean-Baptiste Clamence. The book goes on to have Jean-Baptiste recap his life, speaking on his change from a self-serving man of ‘good’ to an honest man of judgment and sorrow. Jean-Baptiste was a man who performed good deed routinely in order to make himself feel good. Helping the blind cross the street for example, made him feel above everyone else. He attributes these actions to his intrinsic nature, he enjoys both physically and morally to be above others. One night he allowed a woman to drown as he did not want to risk himself saving her and that brought his personal façade to shambles as he knew a truly selfless man would have attempted to save her. Upon this realization he feared that other would realize he was a fraud and being self-search to find and answer to his dilemma. His solution was to judge himself and open himself to judgement first, so then he could judge you. The effects of ambiguity are so intrinsic in this novel that it is easy to overlook. The most obvious one is in the fact that Jean-Baptiste did not account for the present and future anguish of past actions or the ambiguity of the full effect of the choice he made in the past. He did not know that he was going to experience an epiphany upon realizing that his good deeds were done in vain when he chose to not help the woman in peril. The second most obvious is in the ambiguity in the duality of body and mind and when one take precedence over the other. Upon noticing the woman fall the mind knew the morally correct action was to attempt to assist to woman in danger and potentially save her life. However, Jean-Baptiste felt fear, a physical false negation of freedom, and because of that feeling he did not act. Jean-Baptiste did not know that in that specific case the action of his body would precede that action of his mind and despite him having seemingly no control over the situation, it changed everything for him personally. From these ties to ambiguity in his story it is evident that Camus had the work of de Beauvoir in mind when writing The Fall.

Authenticity
The concept of authenticity was one that grew alongside the rise of the philosophical emphasis on individuality. Early societies often viewed humans as sorts of placeholders in societal systems, in which the emphasis was on the society as a whole rather than on the humans within the societies as individuals. There was a certain nobility and respect associated with staying true to one’s own position within society, achieved by essentially not trying to break free of the constraints associated with that position. Fulfilling the expectations of that position and not trying to be anything you weren’t (as defined by said position) kept you in good standing. However, an almost complete turnaround took place when societies began placing emphasis on the individual rather than on the societies as wholes. Societies were still large concepts among thinkers, but they were less so thought of as giant, working wholes made up of smaller components in which everything ran smoothly (so long as the components all stuck to their roles), and more so thought of as a large collective of individual humans, where the importance was with the individuals, and where the society as a whole was thought of as almost artificial – a system perpetuated by social contracts that everyone silently agreed upon in order to live peacefully among each other. Along with this shift in how people viewed societies and individuals came a shift in what was considered respectable, sincere, honest, etc. As aforementioned, respectability was originally achieved by sticking to one’s duties and not breaking the boundaries of his/her position. He/she who did this was considered sincere and authentic, and thus gained respect. However, with the shift came a different concept of sincerity/authenticity. Now, to be authentic was to be true to oneself for his/her own benefit. Before, they would only be true to themselves insofar as it helped them have successful relations to others (perpetuating the overruling societal structure), whereas now it was all about being true to oneself as a choice in itself. Thus, being authentic took on a whole new meaning, which was built upon by many thinkers of the time and of following years, such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir.

Heidegger

The term ‘authentic,’ in its’ new meaning, on a simple level meant to be true to oneself. It is for something to be what it originally is in itself, excluding external factors. Martin Heidegger, a famous German philosopher, uses the concept of authenticity in his writings and thinking. When Heidegger discusses what it means to be authentically oneself, he uses his idea of Dasein, or ‘being there,’ which encapsulates the type of being that we as humans possess. As he describes, we are not just in the world among all the others in the world, as a rock might be simply in the world among all the other rocks in the world. Rather, humans have a type of relational being in which the relation is between who any individual person is at any given moment in their life (any one of those moments are the present at the time of experiencing the specific moment – the present is that which is concrete and known while it is being experienced) and who they could potentially and will be in the future, based on the choices and actions they make (the future is a completely unknown array of possibilities of who someone might become or choose to become). Because of this relational being we possess as humans, any individual is always concerned with the question of who they are, meaning their identity is always, as Heidegger says, at issue. And it is because our identity is always at issue or in question that we even take a solid stance on who we are at any given point in our lives. It is the reason we choose to participate in tasks/activities/choices throughout our lives that we feel most closely aligns with who we are, or at least with who we want to be (in the sense that who we want to be is who we are as a representation but has not been achieved in a literal sense through our actions quite yet). We engage in daily activities that may not seem like they are contributing to our overall idea of who we want to be by the end (at the cumulation) of our lives, but according to Heidegger, these are exactly the things that contribute to who we are by the end of our lives. As a result of being human and existing in society, most of our doings are concerned with situational tasks not of our own making. We are thrown into the world as it is, which takes up most of our daily lives, but it is exactly these everyday situations and the choices we make within them that accumulate to make us a person of a specific sort, and to perform actions and make choices that most closely align with who we are, or that will take us closer to who we want to be in the future, or that will best represent us at the end of our lives as a whole, is to be authentic.

Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

Another philosopher who uses the idea of authenticity in his works is the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre takes the approach of looking at our everyday lives to address the authenticity and existence questions. He believes humans, like objects that only have being-in-itself, have a certain set of characteristics they cannot change, known as facticity. This is what they are in themselves and is comprised of the body we possess, our past, and the situations we find ourselves in that constrain us in what we can do (the choices we can make). What Sartre thinks is different about humans though is that through our ability to reflect and step back from ourselves, we can distance ourselves from the in-itself aspect of our being (the facticity). What sets us apart is that we are able to question our own being by asking ourselves who we want to be. The distance we have the ability to create, as a result of our conscious mind (which allows us to reason and reflect) gives us a for-itself aspect to our being, in addition to the in-itself. These combined is what Sartre calls human transcendence, which allows for a huge range of defining oneself through his/her actions in the future. Sartre also believes everything is up to interpretation in the world, meaning constraints on who we can be are only constraints because we interpret them as such. Thus, Sartre believes in an almost complete freedom in which self-definition is a huge range of possibilities. He much less so than Heidegger believes in people having certain, concrete factors of who they are, to which they must align their actions in order to be authentic. Sartre believes in the freedom to define ourselves however we may please. Sartre’s ideas on authenticity are actually clearer when considering inauthenticity, or what he calls bad faith, in which people fool themselves, the most common example being when people tell themselves that they are concretely something, when they in actuality have the ability to make themselves not that thing through their actions, since they have the transcendent freedom he previously describes. According to Sartre, people can be authentic if they acknowledge that they cannot be like only in-itself things with set attributes. They are authentic if they acknowledge the ambiguity of what it means to be who they are. Simone de Beauvoir, another French philosopher builds on Sartre’s ideas. She says that to engage in such ultimate freedom as Sartre describes, all humans must have access to such freedom. An unrestricted array of self-defining possibilities must be available to all people if we are to engage fully in said freedom. She also discusses the idea of engagement. She says we are forced to engage, whether we know it or not, because of prior-to-our-being social constructs and situations. These situations call on us to commit to be a certain type of person or to have commitments of some sort, as a result of being fully engaged in the pre-constructed world. Once these situational factors are removed however, these commitments of course have no motivation or reason, and thus the truly authentic person is left with the realization that he/she must fully accept that he/she is in fact an original source of values and for-itself-ness, even when being/engaging in the pre-constructed world. Once this acceptance is achieved and the person is acting situationally as he/she best sees fit but doing so based on his/her true self as understood from a self-distancing/isolating standpoint, the person is being truly authentic.

Being In
A term coined by Martin Heidegger, “being in” was created to make sense of things and the world. Often referred to in the literature as “being in the world”, being is determined on how one object relates to another. Heidegger was interested not only in being as a human but rather being as ‘Dasein’ which essentially frames his idea that a human cannot exist in the world unless it is in the world with other(s). In his book Being in Time Heidegger writes:

''“What is meant by "Being-in"? Our proximal reaction is to round out this expression to "Being-in 'in the world' ", and we are inclined to understand this Being-in as 'Being in something' ["Sein in ... "]. This latter term designates the kind of Being which an entity has when it is 'in' another one, as the water is 'in' the glass, or the garment is 'in' the cupboard. By this 'in' we mean the relationship of Being which two entities extended 'in' space have to each other with regard to their location in that space. Both water and glass, garment and cupboard, are 'in' space and 'at' a location, and both in the same way. This relationship of Being can be expanded: for instance, the bench is in the lecture-room, the lecture-room is in the university, the university is in the city, and so on, until we can say that the bench is 'in world-space'. All entities whose Being 'in' one another can thus be described have the same kind of Being -that of Being-present-at-hand-as Things occurring 'within' the world. Being-present-at-hand 'in' something which is likewise present-at-hand, and Being-present-at-hand-along-with [Mitvorhandensein] in the sense of a definite location-relationship with something else which has the same kind of Being, are ontological characteristics which we call "categorial” (pg. 79, Being and Time)[1]''

This idea of “categorial” being to be clear is not the being that is Dasein: “Dasein is an entity which, in its very being, comports itself understandingly towards that Being … an entity which in each case I myself am”. The idea behind being-in is rather an existential state of Dasein and is essential “Being-in-the-world” which replaces, for Heidegger, things such as consciousness, items and world. Being-in-the-world there is always something Heidegger’s distinguishes as a “mood” which plagues us simply as a result of being-in the world yet it is this “mood” which allows us to experience to the world when we both turn towards it and against it is our own facticity, simply our moods are always changing but will never go away as we will replace our current mood with a counter mood. It is important to note that moods are not emotions, we are not "being-in" emotions rather moods are a privileged way of how we come to know our existence - example: "I am in a bad mood". There is no case of our existence unless we are in a mood.

''“Dasein's facticity is such that its Being-in-the-world has always dispersed [ zerstreutJ itself or even split itself up into definite ways of Being in. The multiplicity of these is indicated by the following examples: having to do with something, producing something, attending to something and looking after it, making use of something, giving something up and letting it go, undertaking, accomplishing, evincing, interrogating, considering, discussing, determining .... All these ways of Being-in have concern as their kind of Being.” (pg.83, Being and Time)[1]''

Our own sense of being-in established temporality when have “concern” for our being-in as a result of our own facticity and it is this temporality that allows humans to engage with being-in whether it be to form relationships, adopt beliefs, assimilate with the “they” (others) and it is this engagement that Heidegger considers an ‘inauthentic’ existence/being-in. The “thrownness” we are subjected to when we are born is what leads us to consider the temporality and facticity... it is the moods we adopt whilst going through life that is the “being-in” as thrownness can relate to the past, present and future.

In comparison to the Heideggerian view, Jean-Paul Sartre who was heavily influenced by Heidegger, believed that “being-in” was something bigger. Sartre introduced three different concepts of being: being-in-itself, being-for-itself and being-for-others which is in relation to consciousness it is ultimately the only way a being can ground itself. Consciousness presents itself in the world through human beings. Being-in-itself can be considered the being of fixed objects that are just there – they just are in existence – with no consciousness, whereas being for itself is the existence of human who are conscious which is central to their being. Being-in- itself can be related back to that of Heidegger and the idea surrounding facticity that it is definitive – simply there.

Being-for-itself allows humans to find their own sense of being, which could be associated with the idea of thrownness as man defines his own existence through his choices when being for itself. Man is not stuck with his past (facticity) and although the past is something that cannot be changed, just is, he is able to act on the will of his decisions and choices. Regardless of their distinction the two concepts synonymous constitute the human being as it is both a physical object (because we do occupy space) and conscious (Sartre, 1992)[2]

[1] Heidegger, Martin, et al. Being and Time. HarperPerennial/Modern Thought, 2008.

[2] Sartre, Jean-Paul, and Hazel Estella. Barnes. Being and Nothingness: an Essay in Phenomenological Ontology. Washington Square Press, 1992.

Consciousness
Existentialism is a branch of philosophy that question the origin of human existence. In an effort to demonstrate existentialism, philosophers such as Heidegger and Jean-Paul Satre both choose to start by explaining human actuality in their ideology. In Heidegger's book Being and TimeBeing_and_Time, he pointed out that human being cannot be explained by natural science, biology, even psychology. This idea is in a direct conflict with Descartes' dualism, in which it is believed that a human being is constituted by both mind and body. Tracing back to ancient Greece, Socrates mentioned in his dialogue that mind and body are very distinctive existences. The body can be existing in different forms, however, it will cease to exist without the mind. Furthermore, it is to Socrates' belief that our bodies are the reason for different desires. Experiencing unnecessary feelings such as anger and jealousy can cast negative influences when pursuing pure knowledge. In order to obtain knowledge in its purest form, one has to detach his mind from the body. DualismWhen Socrates was arrested and waiting in prison for execution, he viewed death as a step up in achieving higher knowledge instead of the end. "I think, therefore I am". Influenced largely by Socrates' philosophy, Descartes believes that mind is the ultimate indication of human existence. "Think" in the premises means the ability to reason. If one is not consciously thinking, one cannot be recognized as existing. This statement is also the most distinguished indicator of the difference between human being and animals. Animals are not conscious in the same way as the human being. According to Descartes, they lack the ability to reason. Therefore, in Cartesianism, human existence is largely defined by the mind and consciousness.

However, Heidegger criticized the root of Descartes' philosophy in his book Being and Time (Sein und Zeit). In Heidegger's opinion, philosophers over the centuries have been ignoring the fundamental question of "what is being". Without searching the definition of being, philosophers such as Descartes are seemed to build his theory based on assumptions. In Heidegger's opinion, Dasein (which is the being in Germany) is constructed by three parts. First of all, Dasein's being-in-the-world. In this concept, Heidegger introduced the sense of unfamiliarity. For instance, when we walk into a room, we can make judgments based on objects that we are familiar with. A bed, a closet, and a shoe rack can help us identify the room as a bedroom. When the room setting changes, we are most likely to feel a sense of unfamiliarity. Therefore, the feeling of absurdity and alienation can be triggered. Second, Heidegger pointed out that Dasein is present at hand. To be more precise, objects that we use on a daily bases won't attract our attention until its dysfunctional. For instance, we will never subjectively notice our phone until the phone is broken. The same situation applies to Dasein. We will continue to ignore the existence of Dasein until we are stricken by an existential crisis. Third, Dasein is always with others. Living in the world, Dasein is continuously influenced by the others. If one never experience the taste of sadness, he will never know what happiness feels like. The comparison strengthens the existence of Dasein. Heidegger also introduced the concept of bad faith under this point. Because of the social and peer pressure, people sometimes do things against their original wills. To conclude Heidegger's understanding on Dasein, we have to completely detach ourselves from the word "consciousness". Dasein is in the world, present at hand, and with the others. It exists before we, our body, appear. And it will continue to be existing after we, our body, parish. "Existence before essence" is the most important part of Heidegger's philosophy. Comparing his work to Descartes dualism, Heidegger is more leaning towards the defining Dasein, thus rejecting the foundation of dualism.

Jean-Paul Satre is another debatable philosopher under the topic of existentialism. Many criticize Satre and Heidegger's philosophy for being not applicable since both of their works were constructed during the post-war period. Some argue that absurdity, alienation, and depression only appear under the social circumstances. However, Satre's interpretation of existentialism and consciousness is quite practical. To be more precise, Satre's philosophy is largely associated with Marxism. In his discussion of freedom, Satre points out that "we are our choices". The human being is equipped with the ability to make choices under any circumstance. However, the only premises for this ability is for the human being to be in a good state. Which means when making choices, one is conscious, rational, and exercising in good faith. This point can again be drawn back to Heidegger's definition of Dasein. Aside from that, in Socrates' explanation of happiness, he mentioned human being can only gain ultimate happiness by practicing their virtues. By practicing virtues, the human being is able to live an honest life without any bad faith. Therefore, Satre's interpretation of consciousness is not only avoiding bad faith but also pursuing freedom by making choices. Simone de Beauvoir is another philosopher that cast a huge influence on existentialism and consciousness. In her book The Second Sex, [] De Bouviour criticized the relations between female and the society. According to Simone, it is difficult for females to unify as a group. African Americans for instance, can gather together and pressure the society to make policy changes because they share the same cultural background. However, because of the different ethnicities and social backgrounds of females, it is challenging for them to find the balance point. Consistent with Heidegger and Satre's ideology, De Bouviour believes the only way for females to obtain power is by making choices without committing bad faith. Consciousness in dualism is rejected by Heidegger. Instead, by presenting the definition of Dasein, Heidegger provided us a clear understanding of existence before essence. Satre and Simone De Bouviour brought the existentialism on a political level. Pursuing freedom under one's most conscious state can provide choices under any circumstances. Satre and De Bouvier's ideology is also connected with Socrates' definition of "the ultimate happiness".

The existence precedes the essence
To say that ‘the existence precedes the essence’ is to make one of the most significant statements of the existentialist philosophy. And regardless of its apparent simplicity, this statement contains one of the main concepts of the existentialist claim: being, authenticity, ambiguity, absurdism, freedom, responsibility etc. Understanding what means that ‘the existence precedes the essence’ is to access to a direct summary of what is existentialism.

As a metaphor of its original philosophy, ‘the existence precedes the essence is built as a mirror, putting in opposition the two concepts of ‘existence’ and ‘essence’. Here we talk about the human ones, and by essence, we mean human nature, human condition etc.; and by existence we mean, well, this is what existentialism is all about (and so is this page). To follow the path drawn by this metaphor we will use Sartre’s example from his exposé Existentialism is a Humanism (1946): if we consider the elaboration of an object, like a paper-knife, the artisan knows the concept of a paper-knife, he knows its characteristics and he knows how to build it. Furthermore, the artisan knows why this object will be useful, what is its purpose, what is its function. Then, in the case of a paper-knife, we can say that its essence, that is to say, the addition of its who, why and how building it, comes first: its essence precedes its existence.

Now if we have the same point of view regarding a human being, we adopt concepts such as the ‘state of nature’ defended by Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651), where, in essence, humans are primarily evil, and then they can free themselves thanks to a ‘social contract’ as re-theorized latter by Rousseau (Contrat Social, 1762). The religious genesis and the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent and merciful God are making the same assumption about humans being, and Sartre declares about it: ‘When we think of God as the creator, we are thinking of him, most of the time, as a supernal artisan. (…) when God creates he knows precisely what he is creating. Thus, the conception of man in the mind of God is comparable to that of the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan: God makes man according to a procedure and a conception, exactly as the artisan manufactures a paper-knife, following a definition and a formula. Thus each individual man is the realization of a certain conception which dwells in the divine understanding.’

During the XVIII century, the notion of God is withdrawn by the atheism of philosophers like Diderot, Voltaire, and Kant, but the notion of human nature, of the essence, is still present. This is when Dostoevsky wrote ‘If God did not exist, everything would be allowed’ that existentialism began to reflect about determinism, values, and legitimization. If God does not exist, then humans have no excuses, and they are alone. They can not find their essence in God’s will in order to exist. We have to invert the process and endorse our existence, in order to create our own essence. ‘Man is condemned to be free’, there is no god to save him from himself. In this case, ‘if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it and that this being is the man, or, as Heidegger would say, the human reality.’ Finally, to define ‘the existence precedes the essence’, Sartre would say ‘We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterward. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.’

We find in this definition the influence of Heidegger and its concept of dasein or ‘being there’, existing, as ‘an entity which is in each case mine’ (Being and Time, 1927). You are the only one aware of your very own essence, and this is something that you can not share with the others. And your dasein is not something determined, finished, and absolute, because it is always sought and stimulated by the world. We recognize here the concept of ‘throwness’ expressed by Heidegger as the specific characteristic of existence: we exist because we are thrown into the world. Being into existence is something violent, immediate and mandatory and humans can not withdraw themselves from being into the world. We exist and we encounter ourself, the world and the others. The existence is prior to any meaning.

The existence is prior to any meaning, and that is why humans have to discover their own way of making sense of what is around them, and more specifically of their existence. This is the discovery of the ‘subjectivity’ which Simone de Beauvoir talks about in her work The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947). When we are a child, we are thrown into a predetermined world that existed before us and that was defined without us. Then, usually, the children consider their parents and other adults around them as ultimate owners of the truth and as fully aware of the meaning of humans essence and humans existence. They dictate the essence to the child, and they just have to exist. The children do not own their existence, but this is not a problem, they consider that when they will be adults, the ambiguity will disappear. This is only when this time comes while growing up, that the child becomes aware that this comforting certainty is nothing else than a mirage. When they understand that the world and people around them are not immutable and eternal, they begin to ask ‘what if I do that?’ - and this is the discovery of subjectivity. Sartre defines it as existing, encountering yourself and the world, and being what you make of yourself. However, according to Simone de Beauvoir, when they refuse to listen to the clue ‘the existence precedes the essence’, the child can turn into a ‘serious man’, when he refuses to live without guarantees: ‘There is seriousness as soon as liberty renounces itself in favor of ends which are supposed to be absolute.’ This is to avoid this behavior that the author is trying to build a new structure of ethics around the statement ‘the existence precedes the essence’.

To conclude on this statement ‘existence precedes essence’, it seems primary to talk about the consequences of it. What repercussions would this idea have on human beings? Sartre declares that as the existence precedes the essence, every man is in possession of his existence and is responsible for his acts. Man is responsible for its own subjectivity but he is also responsible for one of all the others. What you would do for yourself is what you think that everyone should do. Sartre uses the example of the matrimonial union, an act that we can consider as really personal, but committing to it is to claim that the monogamy is what humanity should do. Furthermore, as there is no determinism, only human’s acts constitute a reality: 'for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art: the genius of Proust is the set of Proust’s work, the genius of Racine, is the series of his tragedies, except this, there is nothing; why attribute to Racine the possibility to write a new tragedy, since precisely he did not write it? A man engages in his life, draws his face, and outside this figure there is nothing. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organization, the set of relations that constitute these undertakings.’ Then we can see that existentialism is a really optimistic philosophy, opposed to the quietism, and which assures to humans that their destiny is in themselves, that the only hope resides in their action, and the only way for them to live, is to act. And one last advice that could be given: ‘you are free, choose, that is to say, invent.’

Inauthenticity
Heidegger :

To begin to define Inauthenticity, we first have to look back at the origin (philosophically) of it’s opposite: consistency. The concept of being authentic to oneself, one’s Dasein[1] as Heidegger coined it, was popularized during the post World War II era where the harsh conditions due to the process of recovery caused an increase in self reflection. We translate our word “authenticity” from the world Eigentlichkeit[1] meaning (loosely), truly. The stem of the word ”eigen” meaning ‘own (read, one’s own self) raises the implication that to be authentic means to own up to who you really are. This definition of authenticity closely ties to Heidegger’s term “Dasein”, which means being there, or simply put, of existing. This definition is closely related because one’s Dasein is truly authentic. Your Dasein is not something that you tell yourself, rather it is something that is developed through your relation to all that surrounds you. Now that we have a basic definition of authenticity in the context of philosophy, we can delve into what it means to be authentic. If to be authentic is to acknowledge the world’s truths around you for what they actually are, then being inauthentic means to purposefully deceive others (or even yourself) in order to gain, or even to avoid something. Heidegger never fully defined what it means to be inauthentic in his works, other than in reference to his term Dasein, where he mentions that an Inauthentic Dasein where you alienate yourself from the truth and modify your every day existence through inauthentic means. He is, however the inspiratory work from which Sartre obtained his inspiration for his work “Being and Nothingness”, where he delves into what it truly means to be inauthentic, and even coins the term “Bad Faith”.

'''Sartre: '''

In Sartre’s work Being and Nothingness[2], Sartre analyzes the existence of human beings by focusing on their set in stone aspects, or in his words, their “facticity”. This begins to define Sartre’s concept of authenticity. Facticity defines what people are “in themselves” (en soi in French). It is when you begin to deny this facticity, that you begin to perpetrate inauthenticity. A huge factor in Sartre’s work is the concept of freedom. It was Sartre’s belief that humans are free to make any decision, meaning their view on things are completely up to their individual discretion. As an example of this denial of facticity, imagine you are eating an apple. If you were to tell yourself that what you are eating is actually a grape, that would be inauthenticity. Sartre’s definition allows you to make this judgement on your own, as that is his definition of freedom. Sartre then dedicates an entire section of his work in “Being and Nothingness” to the concept of Bad Faith.

Bad Faith:

A common misconception when defining Bad Faith (mauvaise foi) as the act of lying to oneself. That, however is not completely true. In “Being and Nothingness”, Jean Paul Sartre claims :

''“We shall willingly grant that bad faith is a lie to oneself, on condition that we distinguish the lie to oneself from lying in general. Lying is a negative attitude, we will agree to that. But this negation does not bear on consciousness itself; it aims only at the transcendent. The essence of the lie implies in fact that the liar actually is in complete possession, of the truth which he is hiding. A man does not lie about what he is ignorant of; he does not lie when he spreads an error of which he himself is the dupe; he does not lie when he is mistaken. “'' (page 48 Being and Nothingness)[2]

In this passage Sartre clearly makes the distinction between an act of Bad Faith and a lie. “A man does not lie about what he is ignorant of …”. This sentence means that in the act of lying, perpetrator is completely aware of the truth in his mind, creating a duality between the perpetrator and his victim (the one that receives the lie). Further down on the next page, Sartre states:

''“Only what changes everything is the fact that in bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth. Thus the duality of the deceiver and the deceived does not exist here. Bad faith on the contrary implies in essence the unity of a single consciousness. This does not mean that it can not be conditioned …”'' (page 49 Being and Nothingness)[2]

Sartre clearly separates the two actions by stating that in the act of committing bad faith, the lie (which bad faith technically falls under) occurs in sort of a pre-conscious state, before you acknowledge to yourself that you are lying. This creates the unity of a single consciousness. To put it simply, a Bad Faith lie is committed more (purposefully) subconsciously, while a “normal” lie is done consciously. In order to better explain what he means, Sartre provides an example about a waiter in a café.

" Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice,his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope-walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually reestablishes by a light movement of the arm and hand.” (page 59, Being and Nothingness)[2]''

In this description of the waiter, the idea of bad faith is clearly defined. All of his rigid seemingly preprogrammed movements are all of what we would expect from a waiter. In all actuality, the man living his normal life outside of this job does not move or talk in this manner. This is because he is committing bad faith. The waiter is not expressly thinking to himself: “If I were to move at this velocity with this specific type of rigidity, it will help my appearance as a waiter”, rather, he is behaving in this way because of the environment he is in. Societally, a waiter has been given a certain caricature, and in this waiter’s mind, he is subconsciously imitating that caricature in order to fit the image of the waiter.

[1] Heidegger, M., Macquarrie, J., & Robinson, E. S. (1962). Being and time. New York: Harper.

[2] ¬ Sartre, J., & Barnes, H. E. (1957). Being and nothingness. London: Methuen.

Varga, Somogy and Guignon, Charles, "Authenticity", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

Phenomenology
Phenomenology is a philosophical notion concerning the intuitive understanding of the physical world, with an emphasis on the role of consciousness in perceiving the everyday objects. The concept arguably began with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the 19th-century, and Edmund Husserl in the 19th- and 20th-century. Hegel proposed considering knowledge solely from the perspective of the consciousness, in which the individual must engage in the intuitive interpretation of their surroundings and think about the relation between subjective consciousness and external object. The appearance of these objects, or phenomena, within one’s consciousness demonstrate what exactly the human being knows.

Edmund Husserl innovated the phenomenological foundation set forth by Hegel, proclaiming that in order to understand the theory of knowledge human beings must return to the things themselves. The physical object is the immediate data of the human consciousness, and by being experienced sensorially the object is made to be self-evident.

Husserl proposed two means of understanding objects phenomenologically: eidetic reduction and phenomenological reduction. Eidetic reduction requires the individual to observe and consider a perceived object (e.g., a chair, an apple, etc.), and imagine a series of various modifications to said object, exploring which changes are able to made before the object ceases to remain how it is perceived by the individual. Seeing these stages of change while mentally modifying the object allow for the individual to recall the original perception of the object, despite the mental image undergoing distortion. The individual can therefore grasp what defines that particular object for themselves, and experience the relation between objectivity and subjectivity.

Phenomenological reduction concerns the notion of transcendence and the relationship between the individual and others. In this form of reduction, the individual must “bracket” their being (also referred to as epoché, meaning the suspension of all non-evident matters), and reduce the cultural world to their own immediate experience. By doing so, the individual assures an apodictic perception of their own experience, making no assumptions or presuppositions about the nature or essence of the objects around them. In referring solely to the first-person perception of an object, the individual need not concern themselves with how an object may be represented in the outside world, for such representations would be untruthful to the self. Since no other person can experience what another perceives phenomenologically, and the individual knows that the object before them indeed exists, Husserl declares that an objective reality must exist in which the object transcends any and all subjective perceptions of it. Therefore any claim to empirical knowledge is predicated on a subjective, sensorial experience of the objects concerned in said knowledge.

In the mid-20th-century Martin Heidegger reworked Husserl’s phenomenology to be more existential in nature, emphasizing the relationship between subject and object in the perception of phenomena. Heidegger criticized Husserl’s philosophy for its lack of attention to the subject perceiving the objective phenomena, for he felt that dealing with a duality between subject and object resulted in an unresolvable schism between the two. In order to remedy what Heidegger felt to be a fatal flaw with Husserl’s phenomenology, he came up with idea of Dasein to mediate the two. Dasein is the essential state of subjective existence, a state which is contingent upon the objectivity of the world by means of a proximal relationship toward the phenomena within it. Heidegger’s equipment is very similar to the basic principle of phenomenology in that it deals with how the subject perceives objective phenomena, or equipment present-at-hand; the equipment is defined by its readiness-to-hand, or the values that predicate its specific utility. The existentialist phenomenology proposed by Heidegger therefore deals with the issue of subject and object duality by insisting the two are dependent on one another.

Utility and Consequentialism
Heidegger's text on utility: Heidegger believed there were three modes of being; substance being one of them and the other two could be thought of as utility and existence. Utility has to do with "being for something," it is the mode of being a tool or equipment. The famous example of this is a hammer. As a substance, a hammer is a piece of wood with another piece of metal on one end. The characteristics it possesses do not make it a hammer, this only becomes a hammer when it is recognized to be a hammer by someone who knows what is used for. The third mode of being Heidegger talks about as 'existence' and he reserves this mode of being only for self-reflective beings that are able to 'take a stand on their being.' Humans can take a stand and can choose, to be a particular kind of human being. Our different roles are all modes of being. The modes of being of existence is the ability to take on different modes of being.

Sartre: Our actions decide the actions of others, which also relates to despair and the awareness that we cannot control the actions of others. No one else is responsible for who we are. We are alone, with no excuses and no justification for our actions. Even though we often feel that we are choosing for all people, it is important to be aware that others are free and independent. We can never be sure of our actions. Additionally, you can live in bad faith by not taking responsibility for actions and for pretending as if your actions are the result of genetics, environment or human nature.

Humanism
It is not uncommon for individuals that lack an existentialist background or general understanding of philosophy to, at first encounter, assume existentialism to be a rather negative philosophy. The tropes of meaninglessness, ambiguity, and condemnation shine all-too-easily through the common veil of curiosity with their imperative explanations lost in the creases. In attempting to correct this conceptual misunderstanding, there are, by and large, two routes one can choose from: to define existentialism in terms of what it is not or to define existentialism in terms of what it is. What it is not, is a nihilism. What it is, is a humanism.

The notion that the existentialist narrative is one of pessimism has existed since nearly the conception of the philosophical-cultural movement. In parallel with this fact, its earliest tenants have moved to defend such allegations. One of these philosophical founders, Jean-Paul Sartre, gave a renowned speech by the name of “Existentialism is a Humanism” (1946) that opened with the following:

“My purpose here is to offer a defense of existentialism against several reproaches that have been laid against it….it has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair….It is to these various reproaches that I shall endeavor to reply today; that is why I have entitled this brief exposition Existentialism is a Humanism.”

Humanism is generally defined as a system of thought that places primary importance on humanity rather than the divine or supernatural. As such, a true humanistic philosophy is one that founds its narrative around the experiences of people—both individual and collective—and their capacity for independent agency and self-realization. Such notions can be easily identified throughout many key existentialist works, though none more glaringly than those of Sartre. Within his primary 1946 work, Being and Nothingness, Sartre goes over the fundamental ideas of abandonment, anguish, despair, and bad faith.

Abandonment

At its most basic, the concept of abandonment declares that there is no god or divinity resting above the mantle of human existence. No fate will find you success in life, no destiny will find your so-called soul mate, no god will answer your prayers— the only thing that you have is you and every other you that exists in the world with you. The only thing that can give meaning to your existence is humanity, because that’s all there is. This idea is arguably the most humanistic idea that exists in all of philosophy, as it makes the claim that humanity is the definitive heart of existence. Without you, there is nothing.

Anguish

Part of the realization that there is no god, and henceforth no inherent morality to follow, is that individuals have the capacity to do truly whatever they want. However, the fact that one can do anything does not mean that they will; this is a tension that brings great weight upon the shoulders of humanity. As Sartre so deftly put it, “We are condemned to be free” cite. Somehow, the individual must reconcile with themselves the fact that they have no control over any part of their existence other than themselves.

In all truth, you, the reader, could very well walk away from this screen and set your neighbor’s residence on fire. So why don’t you? Why don’t you sit in a lazy haze all day, living off the work of others? Dine at a restaurant without paying? Run away from home? It cannot be for an honest belief that you aren’t able to, as stories such as these plaster news networks all too often. At its core, it is because we agree to use our limitless freedom to limit our freedom. No matter how badly we wish to run amok, we recognize that if we do, we risk the aggravation, and proceeding subjugation, of the terrifyingly limitless freedoms of those around us. This is the burden of anguish. We are condemned to exist in a paradoxical world where the individual can do anything and control nothing.

Despair

Yet another facet of the individual’s freedom is the fact that what they do will inevitably affect others. In fact, the concept of despair suggests that every choice the individual makes is conversely a choice they are making for all of humanity. Take, for instance, the idea of monogamy: why is it the aggressive norm that it is today? Across most cultures of the world, the creed of two partners dedicated to only each other can be found. Polyamory, the opposite of monogamy, is often looked at with disgust in retrospect, but for what reason? What is so barbaric about polyamory, polyfidelity, polygamy, or any other kind of relationship that it has become so universally decided to be wrong? Where we find despair is in the understanding that as you choose to be monogamous, you are adding to the collective notion that monogamy is what humans should do. That's not to say that there is anything wrong with choosing, as abandonment makes it such that there is no inherent moral law with which to judge action; what is being pointed to is the undeniably humanistic truth that individual actions control and perpetuate the actions of others. One is not simply choosing for themselves— in fact, it may very well be the case that the despair of others has already chosen for them.

In this way, human existence is a very interdependent one. No matter how lonesome one may feel, it is unfathomable that they could ever truly be alone. Even the very methods one utilizes for coping with loneliness has been instilled within them through interaction and connectivity with others. The child depends on their connection to the adult, the adult depends on the support their community of connections, the community on the infinite number of other intertwined communities, and so-on and so-forth. Whatever we do to ourselves we do to those around us, and “those around us” eventually comprises us all.

Bad Faith

Trickiest of all is the notion of bad faith. At its most simple, acting in bad faith is akin to lying to oneself. In the case of a normal lie, there is the one who lies and the one to whom the lie is told; with bad faith, the liar and the lied-to are one and the same. This is a notion truly focused on the nature of the individual—it is a dissonance that can only be felt by the self, enacted on the self, relinquished by the self. At the same time, however, this idea too exists as a humanistic paradox: bad faith is both felt by everyone (their own) and no one (that of others).

“It is best to choose and to examine one determined attitude which is essential to human reality and which is such that consciousness, instead of directing its negation outward, turns it toward itself. This attitude, it seems to me, is bad faith.”

Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus. Simone de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity. Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness. All are existentialist texts that posit forth discussions about the human capacity. These works and the concepts above are few of many that exist as proof that existentialism is, indeed, a humanism.

Nihilism
Origin The word Nihilism comes from the Latin nihil, which means nothing, or that which does not exist. The term was first used to negatively describe rationalism, and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) advocated for the restoration of faith and revelation in the face of nihilism. In Russia, nihilism became associated with the rejection of authority, whether that be the state, church or family. This lead the term to be associated with revolutionary ideas of the late 19th and early 20th century. Nihilism would go on to become a popular movement, expanding into existential nihilism, moral nihilism, and political nihilism

Existential Nihilism

Existential nihilism states that life has not intrinsic value or meaning. In the eyes of an existential nihilist, individual humans and even our species as a whole is unimportant in the grand scheme of the universe.

''Moral Nihilism '' Moral nihilism states that morality is not inherent to reality. Under this belief, one action can not be preferable of any other action. Some moral nihilists argue that the is no morality whatsoever and we create morality as a social construction. Moral nihilists believe that all moral claims cannot have any truth behind them.

''Political Nihilism '' Political nihilism is much like Skepticism, calling into question of non-proven beliefs. Many political nihilists question the necessity of institutions like the government, law and family. For this reason political nihilism has been associated with anarchism.

Friedrich Nietzsche

''Introduction '' Friedrich Nietzsche is a major influence on 20th century philosophy. His philosophical teachings where nihilistic and would go on to influence the thinking of Martin Heidegger, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud along with existential thinkers Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.

''Biography '' Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in a small village in Prussia. His father was a preacher, who died when he was 4 years old. Nietzsche and his younger sister were raised by their mother. After attending the Schulpforta School, Nietzsche attended the University of Bonn before transfering to the University of Leipzig. There he studies philosophy, literature and linguistics. One of his largest influences during this time was Arthur Schopenhauer. By 1869, Nietzsche was teaching philosophy at the University of Basel. During these years he published his first books, The Birth of Tragedy (1872) and Human, All Too Human (1878). In 1879 he left his position at the university for health reasons. The 1880s for Nietzsche was lived mostly in seclusion, creating the persona of a hermit to those who would later study his works. Often he would move from country to country and stayed at his mother's house. Despite him distancing himself from the outside world, this time period saw Nietzsche develop as a thinker and a writer. Between 1883 to 1885, he published his most significant work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He also wrote Beyond Good and Evil (1886), The Genealogy of Morals (1887) and Twilight of the Idols (1889). In these text, Nietzsche central points of his philosophy. By the end of the decade, Nietzsche was in a state of mental illness. Declared insane, he spent time in an asylum and later was cared for his mother until his eventual death on August 25, 1900.

Major Teachings

“God is dead”

Nietzsche wrote this phrase in many of his writings. To understand it, one must understand that Nietzsche’s time saw a growth in non-believers. This was attributed to the emergence of Skepticism, and scientific theories like evolution, which put into doubt the word of the church. “God is dead” does not mean that Nietzsche believed in a God and that he had died, instead, it referred to changing attitudes towards Christianity and religion.

Master Morality and Slave Morality

Nietzsche argued that there only existed two types of morality. The first is master morality. This is held by those in royal and noble classes. People under the mindset of master morality look at actions through consequences. The second is slave morality. Slave morality developed as a reaction to master morality by men that were weak. Those who fall under this mind set view action through intentions. Nietzsche was known to greatly dislike both forms of morality, as they were primitive and subject to exploitation. He also stated that Christianity was an attempt by those with slave morality to shit the moral spectrum in favor of themselves. This is epitomized by the phase “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5, King James Bible).

The Übermensch

In many of Nietzsche's writings he describes ideal humans. According to him, these men and women have ascended past what it means to be human. Übermensch is often translated to English as “Super-man”. What makes an Übermensch is a person who defines his own moral standing and beliefs. These individuals are highly creative, courageous and extremely rare in modern society. Nietzsche described an Übermensch’s relationship to a normal man as how we see the difference between men and apes.

Major Works

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885)

Written in four parts between 1883 and 1885, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, this book chronicles the speeches of a fictional man named Zarathustra. A theme expressed in the book is eternal recurrence. This is an idea that all the events in one’s life will happen again and again. It is the Übermensch who accepts and loves his path in life. Furthermore this text provides strong criticism of Christianity, particularly what they view as good and evil. He criticizes the religions effect it has on limiting life in hopes for a unproven afterlife.

Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

This text is a continuation of the criticism first introduced in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Most importantly, Nietzsche uses this text to accuse past philosophers of blindly accepting morality. He says the foundation of many metaphysical systems is based on that a good man is polar to a bad man rather than them being one in the same. Furthermore, he goes to say that we should leave behind the traditional morality of society in favor of crafting our own morality.

Fyodor Dostoevsky and Nihilism

Overview

Although not a self-proclaimed Nihilist, Dostoevsky’s writing features many Nihilistic themes. In his youth, Dostoevsky leaned left on the political spectrum. During this time in Russia there was a large divide between the youth and the older generation. Later in his life he would lean more right due to a sentence in Serbia and a long military sentence. Along with that Russian Nihilism was influencing large political movements and revolutions. His most influential novel Crime and Punishment (1866) has many nihilistic themes throughout the novel.

Crime and Punishment (1866)

The plot of Crime and Punishment follows the story of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. His poverty has lead him to murder an elderly woman and robber her possessions. This leaves Raskolnikov mentally shaken. He slowly descends further into paranoia. After meeting a detective, he is urged to confess by his girlfriend. Overall the story of Crime and Punishment represents nihilism through the main character, Raskolnikov. We are presented by a radical view of this philosophy. Raskolnikov kills and murders a pawn-broker, which by itself is a nihilistic attitude, as he has no value of the other life. He also murders a pregnant woman without hesitation in fear he would be caught. Raskolnikov views himself as above the moral codes and laws of the society he is in. Throughout the story we see him placing himself above authority and laws, and creating his own amoral set of laws. Dostoevsky seems to be condemning nihilism, which makes sense in the context of his life.

Nihilism vs. Existentialism

Nietzsche described nihilism “as a condition of tension, as a disproportion between what we want to value (or need) and how the world appears to operate” and diagnosed it as a phenomenon of Western culture. Nihilism is oftentimes associated with the tragedy of life, suffering and evil, the observation of finitude, the arbitrary, and the unjust nature of the world. People who claim to be nihilists live in the mentality view the world in all its ugly symptoms and reject any idea of salvation or hope. To put it it simply, it’s the idea that all life lacks any inherent importance and is essentially meaningless; a direct opposition to Sartre’s idea that life’s meaning is subjective to the individual. Existentialism can be viewed as the antidote to nihilism. Similar to the French existentialists, Nietzsche developed a philosophy to combat nihilism, an issue that is still relevant in modern Western culture.

A common misconception about nihilism is that it is follows the exact philosophical format as existentialism. While they share some similarities, mainly stemming from influences, this section will also highlight some notable differences between nihilism and existentialism with a focus on Nietzsche’s philosophy.

The statement “God is dead” is perhaps one of Nietzsche's most notable remarks. Like many other existential philosophers, Nietzsche was not one to harp on the glory of Christianity or any other religion for that matter. He religiously wrote against the teachings of Christianity and viewed it as a systematic method of denial. In The Antichrist, Nietzsche wrote, “In the entire New Testament, there is only one person worth respecting: Pilate, the Roman governor.” Nietzsche believed that Christianity generally teaches people to feel ashamed of envious emotions, when in fact envy is something that is extremely useful. Martin Heidegger, one of the fathers of Existentialism, writes against this mentality and claims that an catastrophic issue is living our day to day life for “Das Mann”, rather than for ourselves. Living for Das Mann means that we care more than we should about the opinions of others to the point where our life becomes inauthentic. Rather than hiding our envy for fear of judgement, we should own up to it and use it as a guide to figure out some goals in our life. Nietzsche recognizes that in some cases these goals are unattainable and result in failure; he just wants people to recognize their desires and put in the effort to try and obtain them. Nietzsche declared, “There have been two great narcotics in European civilisation: Christianity and alcohol.”

Yet the phrase “God is dead” is easily his most misunderstood one. Many people view it as a celebratory or triumph statement, when in fact it was written to be critiqued as the cause of nihilism. While Nietzsche resented dogmatic Christianity and critiqued their faulty belief system, he also believed that their teachings were beneficial when helping people cope with the problems of life, or the basic form of nihilism. Without religion there is no clear guidance, morality, or disciplinary capacity, even if it’s manifested by outside teachings (though Nietzsche would prefer that you formulate your own sense of morality rather than following someone else’s). This includes intrinsic value, Nietzsche recognized that it was human nature for people to cling to an idea of guidance; therefore the void left by religion should be filled with culture (philosophy, art, literature, music). Some have speculated that the dangerous reactions following the death of God was apparent in Germany when religion was replaced with national socialism. Heidegger writes, “If God as the suprasensory ground and goal of all reality is dead, if the suprasensory world of ideas has suffered the loss of its obligatory and above it its vitalizing and upbuilding power, then nothing more remains to which man can cling and by which he can orient himself.”

Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist, is outspoken about his opinion on nihilism. While he understands the appeal of nihilism and why people who have hit rock bottom would turn to it, he believes that it is an excuse used to “forestall effort.” Jordan Peterson makes an important distinction between nihilism and depression. While nihilistic mentality may appear as a catastrophic condition among those suffering from depression, he aims his message towards people who are “cynical, arrogant, rational, [and] hyper-intelligent...that throws the world away as if it’s of little use before it’s been properly engaged with.” Peterson believes that if people are unsatisfied with how the rest of the world treats their needs, then they’re either doing something wrong or they’ve badly conceptualized what they need. This is oftentimes a main theme in existentialism- the idea that you are the driving factor in your own life and it’s up to you to make things better instead of blaming the rest of the world for your own shortcomings. Peterson alludes nihilism to events in the Old Testament involving the Jews. Everytime the Jews get punished by God, it’s always their fault and they always own up to their mistakes. A common nihilist response to this suffering would be to claim that God is evil or corrupt. By opening yourself up to the possibility of being wrong about the cause of your suffering, you are potentially opening up a road that leads away from nihilism.

This a very similar to Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of “bad faith.” Bad faith is when the individual consciousness chooses to believe in something or acts in a type of way that is convenient for short-term benefits at the cost of long term unhappiness. For example, X is an accountant who despises his job and is in the midst of a failing marriage. X tells himself that all of the suffering in his life is part of God’s infinite plan and that after death, everything will become clear. In actuality, X lives his day-to-day live in excruciating depression and is lying to himself to avoid directly facing his issues. According to Nietzsche, those successful in self-overcoming and rise above their perceived tragedy of life are known as the Übermensch or “superman”. This existential mentality of freedom is difficult to accept for some because it puts the weight of human catastrophe on the human being. The upside, however, is that you have full control to improve your own life.

Perspectivism
Perspectivism, coined by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, refers to how the truth of each being is influenced and altered directly by the perspective of how each being views the world. This differing perspective does not refer to how each being is thrown into the world with differing experiences but rather that these experiences are distorted by each person’s line of vision. Biologically our eyes create a singular perspectival image of the world around us, thus in doing so the truth of the world is further distorted by what our eyes include or exclude in this image. The following quote further explains how the lens of our eyes create a singular perspectival image that eliminates, excludes, or distorts much of the true world that surrounds us.

“Our eyes are located at a particular point in space, from which some things are visible and others are not, e.g. the top of the table, but not its underneath. A scene looks different from different perspectives – from high up, we can see further and things look smaller, from below things ‘loom’ over us and we cannot see very far” (Routledge).

Our truths, thus can not be seen as factual but rather built on the falsehood of the information our eyes transmit to us. Nietzsche further argues that our truths are interpretations of how our eyes view the world, and the values of each being are based on these interpreted truths. As we understand Nietzsche’s stance on perspectivism in how this distorted view of the world influences each individual’s personal values, beliefs and experiences, we can use this ideology to further support Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential proposition, “Existence precedes essence.”

Perspectivism, further supports Sartre’s position, “Existence precedes essence,” in opposition to the original metaphysical proposition, “Essence precedes existence,” in that due to each individual’s perspective, each being has the ability to take this perceived notion of the world and create personal values to determine the meaning of life for each individual. Sartre’s position that “Existence precedes essence” refers to the being’s decision to create an individual truth based on the being’s own interpretation of their experiences in the world. This is not to say that we are not thrown into this world with an inherent essence, regarding the cultural, racial, social, gender, etc; identities that we may not control in coming into this world, but it is how we perceive these identities when thrown into the world that shape the meaning of our individual being. It is this interpretation of experience that allow us to determine our own identities and values of our being. It is the reason that two beings of the same inherent identity can have completely differing and opposing views whilst similarly for two people of different backgrounds can have similar values. For instance, two people sharing the same cultural heritage can have two completely opposing political views based on their own personal experiences that are influenced by this idea of perspectivism. And despite this overarching truth, being the political stance that one may be for and the other against, it is based on the individual’s experience in that this stance may be in their favor or against, regardless of their cultural heritage.

As each being in this world has the ability to create their own truth, this freedom does not make these truths more or less true, but rather must be understood that in order to arrive at these truths, the presence of perspective is always dependent upon. Thus, as each being has their own personal encounter with the world, no singular truth can exist, but rather a multiplicity of truths that either can be shared or denied by others. This idea that no singular truth can exist, that each personal truth is influenced by the perspectival image that our eyes capture, denies the projection of unified societal and cultural norms; like religion, politics unto individuals. This idea of a singular truth projected onto an individual brings to light another ideology of Jean Sartre: bad faith. Sartre’s “Bad faith” refers to a truth a being lives by that is not decided or arrived by on their own, but rather placed upon them, potentially by societal norms and standards, especially like religion or politics. The following quote further expands on Sartre’s ideology of “bad faith:”

“To be sure, the one who practices bad faith is hiding a displeasing truth or presenting as truth a pleasing untruth. Bad faith then has in appearance the structure of falsehood. Only what changes everything is the fact that in bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth” (Sartre)

As a society, the aspiration to a singular truth is exemplified through institutions like religion and politics, a unified set of values and regulations intended to govern a single body of people. A being is in bad faith with one’s self when these projected set of values and rules do not align with a person’s own truth and interpreted meaning of life. A person that does not drink because religion creates a moral that says drinking is not morally good, strips the person the possibility to their freedom to drink. This denied possibility is not the choice of a being, but rather a moral projected unto them. This is bad faith because the being is living behind a falsified truth that is not their own, a truth that was never decided by the being but rather applied unto them. Nietzsche’s perspectivism further supports Sartre’s proposition of bad faith as it states that the visual perspective of each being is specific to every individual, thus an overarching truth can never exist. Bad faith exists because we can never eliminate the distinct and individualized perspective of each being, thus when a unified truth is applied that ignores individualized perspective, our truths become something as projected rather than created by the being themself. Because of this, to understand that each individual has their own perspective in viewing the world, allowing for the ability to create their own truth is to also understand that the being can be conscientious as to not fall victim to bad faith.

Despite each individual having their own interpretation of the world, the world still stands as a singular form. Understanding this, many art movements rigorously explored how we can understand the world in its most truest self to avoid the distortions that our eyes make. Artists, like cubist painters, understood this idea of perspectivism, that our eyes transmit an image to be interpreted as a singular perspectival view, of which in turn distorts, eliminates, adds, skews the other that we see. Because of this cubist painters explored how to view the world in a multiplicity of perspectives to better understand the world in its truest form. For instance, Picasso’s seemingly abstractions of the other is merely a layered multiplicity of views so the other can be understood from all angles and perspectives rather than previous Impressionist painters that saw the world from one point-of-view that eliminated or left out some aspects of the world that their eyes were unable to capture. This consciousness of perspectivism heightened a being’s awareness of the being’s truth, this truth of self in relation to the world, and the truth of the word itself.

1. "Nietzsche's Perspectivism." Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/alevelphilosophy/data/A2/Nietzsche/NietzschePerspectivism.pdf

2. Jean-Paul Sartre. Being and Nothingness. Washington Square Press: New York, 1943.

Art & Culture
Background Throughout history, the arts have responded to popular cultural ideas and events. With an emphasis on twentieth century art, existentialism and its respective ideas have arguably found their way into various art forms and movements. The artist, like the existentialist, examines the situation of human existence in a holistic, sometimes controversial manner.

Intersection of Existentialism and Art Existential Themes and Art The overlap between existentialism and art is two-fold: the philosophical movement at times has directly influenced the arts, and in other cases, indirect parallels can be drawn between elements of art and those of existential thought. Notably, nihilism and phenomenology are popular sub-categories of existentialism seen in famous works of art. Common existential feelings are often expressed in art and are employed to describe the character of the stereotypical artist; despair, anxiety, loneliness, feeling misunderstood, seeking the meaning of existence, etc. Art, whether self-aware or not, is a device used for communicating existential ideas and attempting to understand existence through creative interpretation.

Relevant Art Movements Perhaps the first art movement that could be paired with existentialist thought is the Dada movement of the early twentieth century. Dada, like existentialism, was very avant-garde for its time not only in the messages it aimed to convey but also in the tone in which they were conveyed. The Dada movement was birthed in reaction to the horrors of World War 1. It came to be known as ‘anti-art’ as it stood against traditionally beautiful, handmade works of art. Artists were provoked to promote absurdity, irrationality, chaos, randomness, meaninglessness, and other existential themes of the like. Nihilism in particular was the predominate existential platform on which many Dada pieces were crafted. For instance, pictured to the right is the piece ‘Fountain’ by Marcel Duchamp (1917). Despite the elegant name, the fountain is quite clearly just a urinal. The concepts of nothingness and meaninglessness that were so popular in regards to nihilism are visual portrayed here. Without context, interpretation, or the prestige of a museum installation, this piece is nothing but a toilet. This piece acts in the same way that life, without context or interpretation, is entirely meaningless. And, its gross nature illustrates the disgust many felt regarding life during the time of war. Part of the goal of Dadaism, like existentialism, is to raise controversy in order to spark conversation about the important, yet backwards things and perceptions in life.

The irrationality and the incomprehensibility of things is as much discussed in existentialism discourse as it is portrayed in surrealist works of art. Where Dadaism aims to shine a gloomy and sinisterly satirical outlook on the nothingness of life, Surrealism creates fantastical impossibilities from the nothingness that otherwise could be interpreted as restraining. Like Dada, Surrealism was a response to the warring time period of the twentieth century, particularly during World War 2. Most famously, notable surrealist Salvador Dali contemplated and portrayed many existential themes, particularly those of Jean-Paul Sartre, in some of his most famous and culturally celebrated masterpieces.

Artistic Mediums and Existential Influence Fine Art and Sculpture Numerous artists have taken it upon themselves to interpret existential ideas and produce thought provoking masterpieces encompassing existential themes. Some, even, corresponded with or at least were recognized by famous existential thinkers. Andre Giacometti, most famous for his sculpture ‘Man Pointing’ (1947) pictured left, was good friends with Sartre who described this particular work as ‘always halfway between nothingness and being.’ The sculpture is pointing, but it is not known what the sculpture is pointing at as it appears to point at nothing. Giacometti’s portrayal of often standalone, abstract interpretations of the human shape speak to existentialist themes of loneliness and meaninglessness. Salvador Dali, though not having a personal relationship with Sartre, was visual executes some of his most important philosophical ideas in his works ‘Accommodations of Desire’ pictured right (1929) and ‘The Persistence of Memory’ (1931). Both works demonstrate Sartre’s famous existential idea that ‘existence precedes essence,’ in that Dali employed symbols from his dreams to represent deeper concepts and personal struggles he was facing at the time. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a famous existentialist who specialized in phenomenology, had a particular fascination with the work of Paul Cezanne. Though Cezanne worked mostly prior to the twentieth century, ideas related to phenomenology can be found in many of his works. Merleau-Ponty felt that Cezanne effectively captured the true perspective, the one perceived, rather than the contrived or geometric one often shown in art. This clearly resonated with Merleau-Ponty as phenomenology addresses issues related to human perception.

Television & Film Existential themes have been successfully executed in some very popular cultural television masterpieces. Critically acclaimed, each episode of “The Twilight Zone” (1959) saga creates a surreal existential situation for helpless humans to encounter and power through, only to find ‘no exit’ at the end of the program. Whether or not this is a direct nod at the hell created by Sartre in his book “No Exit” cannot be determined, but critics and viewers alike cannot help but agree upon the uncanny absurdness and anxiety-inducing scenarios executed in the series. Famous cinematic interpretations of existential thought are seen more modernly in “Groundhog Day” (1993) and “Shawshank Redemption” (1994), where main characters find existential hope in their rather dismal prisons that have become everyday life. Both films contemplate what it means to be free, and what things in life are important enough to give it meaning in even the darkest situations. Theatre Existential theatre encompasses famous existential books that have been turned into plays, as well as new plays that have been created with existential themes. Notably, “No Exit” by Sartre explores ideas of personal freedom, responsibility, and confinement. “The Trial” by Kafka also examines freedom, but from the angle of the absurdity of the world and its political system. Existentialism in Modern Art - Modern Art Terms and Concepts. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.theartstory.org/definition-existentialism.htm Fantastic Art and its Movements. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://elearning.psu.edu/demos/art010/dada-movement Moore, C. (2014, July 06). Contemporary Art: Kitsch, Nihilism and Koons. Retrieved from https://retrogradecanvas.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/contemporary-art-kitsch-nihilism-and-koons/ Samuels, C. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue558/celan3.html

Black
Black existentialism is a school of thought that "critiques domination and affirms the empowerment of Black people in the world". It is the philosophical discourse that critiques domination and affirms the empowerment of Black people in the world. However, although black existentialism shares similar concerns and themes such as existence, consciousness, trepidation, meaninglessness, hopelessness, fear, despair, servility, and abasement with European existentialism, there are important distinctions between them. For example, although European existentialism is predicated on the uniqueness of the individual as well as on a universalist conception of humans and their obligation to self, Black existential philosophy is predicated on the liberation of all Black people in the world from oppression.

Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionary. He was born on July 20th 1925 in Fort-de-France and died on December 6th 1961. In his teenage years dropped out of the Lycée Victor Schœleher (where he was the student of the great poet Aimé Césaire). He then took up the arms at 18 years old to go liberate nazi occupied France. While fighting alongside the West Indian volunteers, Fanon is injured in the Vosges. Soon after this incident he discovers the discriminatory and racist aspect of the hexagonal (mainland) France. Right after the end of the first world war (1945), he came back to Martinique in order to pass his baccalaureate before going back to Lyon in 1946, in order to pursue his studies in the field of psychology. Frantz Fanon manages to publish in 1952, his fundamental essay Peau Noires, Masques Blancs. A year later in 1953 he has appointed the position of head doctor at the psychiatric hospital of Blida in Algeria. During his stay in Algeria, he became a very important supporter of the FLN (Front de Liberation Nationale), which is the Algerian socialist political party that fought for the independence of Algeria from the French. Then in 1956, he gives up his career as a psychiatrist and hands his resignation to the Governor of Algeria, Robert Lacoste, which in return kicked him out of the country. At this moment in time, Frantz Fanon finds refuge in Tunis, where he played in active part in the FLN. His subsequent book, The Wretched of the Earth, would give a voice to the Third World liberation struggles of that time. Fanon wrote on the psychopathology of colonization, and the human, social, and cultural consequences of decolonization

The Wretched of the Earth

The Wretched of the Earth (French: Les Damnés de la Terre) is a 1961 book by Frantz Fanon, in which the author provides a psychiatric and psychologic analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization upon the individual and the nation, and discusses the broader social, cultural, and political implications inherent to establishing a social movement for the decolonization of a person and of a people. Published in 1961, at a time when colonial violence was unleashed within the Algerian war, the book “The Wretched of the Earth”, prefaced by Jean-Paul Sartre, experienced an exceptional destiny. it still serves today as an inspiration and reference to generations of anti-colonialist militants. Fanon’s analysis of the trauma of the colonized in the framework of the colonial system and his utopian project of a revolutionary third world carrying a "new man" remain a great classic of the Third World and is the ultimate political testament of Fanon.

Christian
Christian Existentialism is an offshoot/forerunner of modern Existentialism. It is a strange school of thought that blends religion and philosophy into a unique outlook. The foundation for most Christian Existentialist thought can be found mainly in the works of Soren Kierkegaard. Most modern Chrsitan Existentialists build upon Kierkegaard in some way, so examining his philosophy will show the basic ideas that have shaped the discussion since his time. In works such as Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard explains the main ideas within his philosophical understanding of Christianity. Indeed, Kierkegaard in these works tries to redefine traditional Christian dogma and update it into a more philosophically sound form.

God

A Major point that Kierkegaard raises is how he understands God. He describes God as having an intimate, personal relationship with every individual. By “relationship” Kierkegaard means an inextricable and intangible link that every person has to the “Divine”. For Kierkegaard, God is love, emotion, imagination.

Contradiction

Another Major point of Kierkegaard is that the world is inherently contradictory. He mentions examples of how forces in nature seem to naturally oppose one another, hot and cold, push and pull, man and woman, rationality and irrationality. He then goes one to argue that individual humans are each a contradictory mix of both the finite and infinite. Finite in that we are physically bound to the now with decaying human bodies and infinite in that each person has an imagination/consciousness and that, to Kierkegaard, imagination and consciousness are what allow humans to understand God/Truth.

Sin

The way that Kierkegaard redefines sin is tied to his understanding of God/Truth. For Kierkegaard, each human is inherently connected to God, therefore each person can access and know the Truth on their own. But even though everyone can access the truth does not mean that they realize that they can. Or if they realize they can, they end up misinterpreting the Truth. Kierkegaard argues that each human is in error about the Truth from the moment of their birth and that this error in each individual’s understanding is their “original sin”. Also, living with this original error is what Kierkegaard believes causes Anxiety/Angst and that only by correcting the error can angst be relieved.

Commandments

Kierkegaard’s thoughts on morality also redefined traditional Christian doctrines. Moral Codes like the Ten Commandments, to Kierkegaard, are not meant to be external rules imposed upon the individual from the outside, but an internal guide that comes from within. For Kierkegaard, Morality is not imposed by threat of punishment with Hell, morality must be decided upon by each individual, and those who sin hurt themselves most in the end by separating themselves from the Divine.

Leap of Faith

Probably the most important aspect of Kierkegaard’s philosophy is his idea of the Leap of Faith. Kierkegaard acknowledges that there is no rational way to prove the existence of God, therefore to have faith in God requires a person to abandon rationality. The moment that a person abandons their rationality and connects with God is what Kierkegaard describes as the “Leap of Faith”. Each person must make their own Leap of Faith in order to embrace and reconcile the finite and infinite sides of themselves.

Analysis

Kierkegaard’s Philosophy is fascinating to me. It has early traces of phenomenology, and almost seems to be striking towards the concept of Dasein but understood in a much more religious manner. I think that Kierkegaard’s approach to the questions he’s considering is quite clever. He does have a point in that philosophers (especially at his time) can be more concerned with rationally and logically thinking about a subject and, in so doing, miss the insights that the irrational and emotional side of the subject might bear. Kierkegaard, while not a traditional existentialist, certainly explored existentialist ideas and themes within his work. His work, and the work of later Christian existentialists offer an interesting contrast to Camus and Sartre’s strictly secular writings and show ways in which existentialist ideas can be reconciled with some form of religious belief.

Works cited.

•	Kierkegaard, Søren, Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong, and Søren Kierkegaard. Philosophical Fragments, Johannes Climacus. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1985. Print.

•	Kierkegaard, Søren, Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong, and Søren Kierkegaard. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1992. Print.

Feminist
Feminism is the the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. Existentialism is a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will. Therefore, Feminist existentialism is the emphasis of freedom, interpersonal relationships, and place in the world in relation to traditional thoughts of authenticity and angst. The origins of existentialism began with white, educated men and therefore certain philosophies can perpetuate societal norms that were present at the time even though the goal of philosophy is to enlighten one’s thought about the concept of existence. This article will discuss two major philosophers in the field: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. These are two existentialists from post- World War two France that worked very closely with one another in in writing their works. While Sartre was writing Being and Nothingness, Simone De Beauvoir was writing The Ethics of Ambiguity and they frequently read and discusses each other’s piece. Through the philosophical publishings of Sartre and Beauvoir, one is able to watch the birth of existential feminism as a response to the misogyny in the field in addition to modern day critiques of Beauvoir's brand of second wave feminism and the modern intersectionality that eventually came from it.

In his famous book, Being and Nothingness, Sartre Writes “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does” and while he uses very gendered language here, he does mention women in certain example when discussing the issue of Bad Faith (Sartre 46). Bad Faith, He defines as “a lie to oneself, but, not an intentional lie to oneself” (https://beingnothingness.wordpress.com/). Sartre gives many examples to help the reader understand bad faith, two of them involving women: the woman in the cafe and the frigid woman. In both cases, the woman is supposedly allowing herself to become a passive object but in a way that completely ignores the presence of misogyny and oppression that contextualize the situations. Both women are only chastised for their “Bad Faith” because they refuse to placate to the man’s desires. Sartre sees their conflict between doing what they desire and succumbing to their oppressors and sees them both as a choice while completely ignoring the objectification of the woman in this situation and the power of the man. Feminist philosopher and author of Hipparchia’s Choice, Michèle Le Dœuff, reflects on the concept of bad faith and how it does not hold up in an oppressive world “Bad faith is the antithesis of [authenticity], for it consists of...claiming to be hindered by external circumstances” while clearly ignoring the limitations of gener roles (Le Dœuff 60). She also notes that “Women in Being and Nothingness are not mentioned in discussions for different jobs.. But only when the topic is sexuality” (Le Dœuff 61). The Objectification of women is very present in Being and Nothingness and it continues to exist in the presence of relationships: “Sarte does not seem to acknowledge even the theoretical possibility of directly experiencing the other as a subject” (Murphy 79). In contrast, Simone De Beauvoir notes that the relationship between people is not as simple. De beauvoir asserts in The Second Sex that there are huge power dynamics that exist between men and women such as that men have historically thought of women as alien objects to be dominated, used and possessed. Ina similar way, De Beauvoir write her earlier book The Ethics of Ambiguity, focusing on the freedom, oppression, and responsibility. She does this by first going over the aspects of childhood and comparing it to the adulthood we all currently share. De Beauvoir first believes that children are neither moral or immoral and thereby acting in bad faith. She relates the condition of women to that of slaves and children “like the child, women can exercise their freedom, but only within this universe that has been set up before them, without them” (De Beauvoir 37). This is a huge contrast from Sarte who gives every man a relationship with the world and insists they are able to make choices to change. De Beauvoir also explains in the The Ethics of Ambiguity about the relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor, stating that the possessor stays in control by keeping them ignorant from their freedom or by saying that their situation is what it is because they are naturally inferior. She paved the way for the discussion of women’s role in society to be discussed and for the oppression to be acknowledged. The Second Sex further emphasized the role of women in society and critically analyzes a woman's subordinate place in society and how the years of conditioning made it possible for women to be continuously kept as second class citizens. The Second Sex was much less abstract than Ethics of Ambiguity and takes instances of social, and scientific evidence “evidence” that showed women as a weaker sex and attacked it. Today, it is widely accepted as a piece of historical feminist liturature.

Simone De Beauvoir was separated from the feminist movement until the 1970’s on her own accord because she chose to separate herself from the the second wave feminists. She later apologized and called it a mistake for fighting not siding with women that were fighting in her favor. However, many feminist theorists question her activism and feminist theoretical thought today. FOr many reasons. One of the main reasons being that she only saw equality in regards to behaving in a similar way to men. She only sought equality by seeking out things that men had and only values the possession of more masculine things such as jobs in field such as math or science. She did not place enough value on the mothers of the post war period and she saw no merit in a woman choosing to become a home maker rather and have many children rather than to work in companies. She felt that the only way women can be equal to women is by having an equal job. Another reason she was said to be “unfeminist” is because the ides of Simone De Beauvoir pertained mostly to the white, middle class women. This left out important racial dynamics and economic struggles that poorer women must face that is on the forefront of the current feminist movement. Overall she as seen as one of the educated women that participated in the feminist movement and De Beauvoir was the founder of Feminist Existentialism.

Liberational
The Philosophy of Liberation was a collective name given to a philosophical movement and method of conducting philosophy, which has been termed to have emerged in Argentina in the late 1960s, and spread throughout Latin America in the 1970s. However, this movement quickly attracted international attention, where it served as an important chapter in European history and philosophy. This philosophical movement could be seen as a counter-philosophical discourse of the critique of Eurocentrism in the aftermaths of World War II and the genocide of the Jews, Cold War and the military dictatorships in Latin American and Africa and South East Asian wars, where up until this point European standards were dominating the world. As a reaction to colonialism, imperialism, globalization, racism and sexism, the philosophy of liberation focuses on the human experience of exploitation, destitution and alienation, where liberation, autonomy and authenticity are its end-goal. As some may categorize this philosophical thought under the umbrella term of phenomenology, it certainly seeks to make philosophy more responsible for the socio-political experiences of the colonized and racialized subjects by emphasizing the techniques of reflectiveness and self-awareness to actively criticize, commit, and engage in formation of liberation.

To illustrate some of the fundamental themes within the philosophy of liberation, three prominent philosophers and thinkers of the 20th century will be used to demonstrate how they have contributed to this philosophical movement. Although, each of them hold their own respective reasoning and treatment of the topic of liberation, it can be noticed that at the core of their thinking, there are recurrent beliefs that make their works canonical to the philosophical movement of Liberation. The three thinkers are Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon and Hannah Arendt.

Albert Camus

Camus’s existential thought of human existence in this world as a confrontation of the Absurd that humans eagerly look for meaning and worth of life, but are reciprocated with the blatant silence of the world, emphasizes the notion of defiance and opposition like the life of Sisyphus, where it is not about despair, but the spirit of defiance in the face of the Absurd. For Camus, the consequence of living a seemingly meaningless life is that human experience is constituted by embracing the Absurd and to embrace it involves actively opposing and confronting it. Such notion of Camus’s philosophical thought is to deny the existence of an Absolute, where there is no transcendental one absolute truth for human existence. Since there is no apparent Absolute, and the Absurd is what defines human condition, then the proper reaction to human life is revolt. Revolt is the act of opposition and defiance in the face of the Absurd. It is in this spirit that liberation takes the form of active opposition against any perceived injustice, oppression, unfairness and the harm of human dignity. If a slave stands up against his master as an act of revolt, he is not doing it for himself, but for a greater common good in solidarity with others. The term revolt should be understood in its broader definition, where to revolt means to have companion that reaches far beyond individualism or egoism, and this gesture contributes to a common destiny of those who are bound by it. Thus, Camus’s existentialist view of human condition and existence creates a platform for those victimized of a common destiny to come together and consciously oppose and revolt against the absurd, suffering and evils of human existence.

Frantz Fanon

If liberation was a way to embrace the Absurd to actively resist the evil for Camus, then Frantz Fanon introduces a new understanding of humanity as the method of liberation for the colonialized subjects of Africa. Liberation within Fanon’s context is the struggle of the colonized subjects to reclaim human dignity. In order achieve so, Fanon calls our attention to the analysis of the existential challenges of racialized colonial subjects in a world defined and dictated by and for white subjects. The challenges lie within the racialized colonized subjects, where for them to be able to live in the colonial world with the white subjects, they have to give up their Dasein. More specifically, the experience of Dasein is not theirs and their Dasein belongs to those, who in virtue do not share the same world as them. The white colonizers have to secure their power and status of complete division through the racial discourse of defining the colonized as the “Others”. By doing so, they achieve what Fanon terms the Manichean structure, which is the foundation of the colonial world. Race is used as the means to establish the social structure through which totality is achieved. These social relations create a Being-in-the-world for the colonized subjects, define who they are and are the only possible form of existence for them. Thus, for decolonization to take place, Fanon sees violence as a crucial theme for the break of this structure. Violence represented in its very physical sense as the breaking of such structure involves a very remaking of the racialized subjects, where for the first time they are given the opportunity to grasp and create Being-in-the-world, where Dasein belongs to themselves.

Hannah Arendt

Perhaps the most loyal to the existential school of philosophical thought out of all three thinkers, Hannah Arendt’s examination of political life stems from her focus on the existential character of human life. As a counter-reaction to the increasingly scientific and technological developments of political and philosophical discourse, Arendt resorts to analyzing fundamental structures of human experience in politics. Her reading of the systematic extermination of European Jewry puts emphasis on the human experiences of Jews in concentration camps, through which she attempts to comprehend the political and social conditions that made way to the event. For Arendt, totalitarianism is a new and radical form of total domination of a complete twist of human nature. Through such processes, the human being is deprived to a subhuman who is incapable of resistance, as human existence, where it ought to be pluralistic and unpredictable, is reduced to mere “bundles of reflexes”. Here, the evil of such social and political structures comes from the creation of an utterly deterministic and determinable world enabled by the twist of human nature, where the success of Nazi genocide was facilitated by thousands of “bundles of reflexes”. Arendt’s notion of liberation is for it to be found in action with others to restore and protect the public realm of plurality, which defines human experience and condition.

Political Discourse
Existentialism as it occurs in political discourse can be seen in the writings and speeches of Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus. These three famed philosophers and writers worked together in post war France, producing wildly influential pieces that critically examined the political climate of that time. Although each of figures produced large oeuvres of work, this section analyzes the most essential pieces as they appear in a political context.

Jean-Paul Sartre: Les Temps Modernes and Critique of Dialectical Reason

Jean-Paul Sartre is arguably the most politically outspoken existentialist philosopher. Known for his commitment to leftist causes, Sartre co-founded Les Temps Modernes, a journal that sprouted from the group Socialisme et Liberté. This ended up including writers and philosophers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Pouillon, and Jaques-Laurent Bost. The journal itself had a focus on phenomenology and literature, publishing many of Sartre’s essays on these matters. However, the main purpose of this publication was to serve as a warning against the horrors of war.

Two of Sartre’s most important political pieces are his Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. These works are an anthology of history, group struggle, and dialectical reason, also covering Sartre’s philosophy of existential freedom. Although this does not directly outline Sartre’s political views, it does briefly summarize a few of his theories in political philosophy. For example, Sartre uses moral terms to describe various social groups, and makes arguments against systematic oppression. Here, Sartre claims that the ability to choose does not necessarily mark one as free. He uses the example of a labor contract to construct this view of political freedom. In the specific instance, he illustrates the case of an impoverished person who chooses a degrading, low wage job for the sake of meeting their basic needs, showing the reader that class systems have the potential to turn us into “slaves”. This sentiment outlines one of Sartre’s most influential political philosophies on freedom and oppression, making these books critical leftist European texts.

Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir’s arguably most influential political work is her 1949 book The Second Sex. Although de Beauvoir did not officially claim herself to be a feminist until 1972, this piece served as a staple in second wave feminist literature. It was essentially an outline to critically analyze femininity in both a social and a phenomenological context, which had not been done before.

The Second Sex famously introduces the idea that “One is not born but becomes a woman.” This claim has been attributed to the “discovery” of the importance of the sex-gender distinction, and it has helped to provide the necessary vocabulary to critique the social constructs that made women subordinate to men at this time. De Beauvoir does an excellent job of outlining how this sense of inferiority is instilled not only in a domestic and social sense, but also in the sciences, literary traditions, politics, and religion.

Another revolutionary attribute to this work was that it argued for women’s equality while celebrating and facing the reality of their sexual differences with men. Simone de Beauvoir used her background in existentialist philosophical theory to explain that each woman is entitled to her own experience in the world, which is mostly dependent on her “everyday attitude.” This is when she unpacks the most critical part in her work. De Beauvoir questions and explores what it means to be a woman in ways that had not been done before. She challenges assumptions and stereotypes typically made about women in regard to their being the “weaker sex,” and influenced many of her readers to do the same.

Albert Camus: Combat, The Human Crisis, and Reflections on the Guillotine

Albert Camus political involvement ranged from his work as both an editor and a writer. Shortly after returning to France in 1942, Camus became a writer and the editor in chief of French Resistance newspaper Combat. His essays and articles focused on morality in politics, social justice and freedom.

These themes can also be seen in Camus’s New York City address entitled The Human Crisis. The speech, delivered in 1946, examines the human condition from the humanist perspective of Camus’s generation. These post war, French revolutionaries grew up in a time of turmoil, and witnessed the shift of violence being met with indifference rather than horror. The speech served as a way to address these issues, as well as Camus’s plea to reinstate open communication, positive values, and honesty as a means of keeping tragedies like the holocaust from happening again.

Another moving political piece from Albert Camus is his Reflections on the Guillotine. This essay, which strays away from Camus’s traditionally fictional, allegorical style of storytelling, provides the author’s argument against capital punishment, which he argues is the most premediated of murders. The essay proposes a compromise, reasoning that France should at least find a more humane way of proceeding with the death penalty rather than using the guillotine. Unfortunately, this change in policy was not instituted during his lifetime, but this essay was a contributing factor to France finally abolishing death penalty by guillotine in 1977.

Psychological
In existential psychological thought, human existence is best understood through in-depth examinations of experiences. Existential analysis is not meant to address how one should assess and treat patients, instead, it involves “a philosophical exploration of an individual's experiences,” as well as stressing the freedom and responsibility of the individual in order to improve senses of meaning and wellbeing in their lives. In existential psychology, it is important to understand that a "whole" person is more than the sum of his or her parts. For the existential therapist, this entails attempting to understand people by examining their interpersonal relationships, understanding that people have many levels of self-awareness, understanding that people have free will (and are participants in their own lives), and understanding people's lives can have purpose, values, and meaning (not to be confused with life’s intrinsic meaning). In short, the task of good therapy (existential therapy) is to understand the patient fully as that patient truly exists.

Drawing from existential philosophy, existential psychology is based upon the fundamental belief that all people experience “intrapsychic conflict,” including anguish and despair, due to specific situations that are universally applicable to human existence. These unavoidable aspects of life are known as “givens.” Irvin Yalom, an American existential psychiatrist, described these givens as freedom/responsibility, death, isolation, and meaninglessness. Much of this draws from our fundamental “aloneness” in the world, but existential therapy acknowledges that humans still “long to be connected to others. People want to have meaning in one another's lives, but ultimately they must come to realize that they cannot depend on others for validation." This causes them to realize their aloneness in the world, and with that realization comes anxiety due to the overwhelming responsibility for one’s own well being. Nevertheless, one can have the courage to be despite the “givens” of life. By building, living, loving, and creating, one is able to live life as one's own adventure. One can find meaning. One can accept one's own mortality and overcome the fear of life’s “givens."

It is important to note that existential therapy and existential phenomenology differ in small but significant ways. “Existential therapists are concerned with the whole of their clients as they can experience with them, whereas existential phenomenology studies the whole being—that which can be experienced as well as that which cannot." The Swiss existential psychiatrist, Ludwig Binswanger, described aspects of the being that could be examined with unique terminology. “These included the Umwelt, or "world around," meaning the biological drive natural to humans; Mitselt, or "with world," the social and interpersonal human relationships; and the Eigenwelt, or "own world," the subjective, phenomenological world of the self." While it takes inspiration from the founders of existentialist philosophy, including Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, the true pioneer of modern existential psychology was the renowned Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl. His experience in Nazi Germany and several concentration camps during World War II influenced him to see the value in searching for meaning in all situations. Even before the war, Frankl had worked closely with countless suicidal men and women, people who had lost a sense of meaning in their lives. Eventually, Frankl developed the belief that individuals are primarily driven by a "striving to find meaning in one's life." This is what Kierkegaard called Will to Meaning, as opposed to Alfred Adler’s Nietzschean concept of human Will to Power and Sigmund Freud’s Will to Pleasure. In Frankl’s words, finding meaning in life is important for a number of reasons, including the fact that “people without a meaning in their life are exposed to aggression, depression and addiction." This search for meaning allows people to “overcome painful experiences.” Although in line with existential thought, Frankl never claimed that their was any intrinsic meaning to life, he still acknowledged that individuals can take charge in ascribing their own meaning to existence.

Victor Frankl was specifically responsible for the branch of existential therapy known as Logotherapy, which was considered the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy." The other Viennese Schools of Psychotherapy were Sigmund Freud’s Pleasure Principle and Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology. A key principle of Logotherapy, drawing from Frankl’s experiences, is the human search for meaning. There is no apparent single meaning to life, but one can find meaning in any experience. Hence, the basic “tenets” of Logotherapy are as follows:


 * Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones.
 * Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.
 * We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience, or at least in the stance we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering.

In Frankl’s words “We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering." What is important here is the human responsibility to find meaning. With freedom comes a significant amount of responsibility. Frankl once joked that the United States of America should have a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast to complement the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast.

Logotherapy is not necessarily opposed to religion, as some existential philosophy is, but it is certainly not a proponent either. Still, in Logotherapy, the human spirit is recognized as something fundamental to being uniquely human. However, this is not supposed to be recognized in a spiritual or religious sense, rather it is another way of expressing human Will to Meaning. The primary techniques of Logotherapy involve helping clients to identify and remove anything stopping them from pursuing meaning in their own lives, to determine what is personally meaningful, and then to help clients effectively pursue related goals.

In Europe, another popular form of existential analysis was Ludwig Binswanger's Daseinsanalysis. This form of existential psychology actually preceded Logotherapy but did not gain as much traction. Daseinsanalysis is built upon the ideas of Martin Heidegger, as well as the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud. This form of analysis is also focussed on finding meaning in life, but it is centered around finding autonomy and meaning in “being in the world.” Daseinsanalysis is also unique because it is necessarily opposed to dualism: implying that there is no difference between the human mind and what is entailed by physical matter. In this form of existential psychology, individuals are seen as alone with oneself and “grasping concepts of personhood, mortality and the dilemma or paradox of living in relationship with other humans." Binswanger believed that “all mental issues stemmed from the dilemma of living with other humans and being ultimately alone." However, after World War II, a new form of Daseinsanalysis developed that focussed on the practical application of Heidegger's phenomenology to neuroses and psychotherapy. This psychiatric form of Daseinsanalysis was developed by Swiss psychoanalytical psychiatrist Medard Boss who actually worked very closely with Heidegger. The two even published a work together that directly critiqued the ideas of Freud and Binswanger. In his approach, Boss used Daseinsanalysis as a form of therapy, focussing on what is obvious and immediately experienced by his patients.

Zen
The philosophy of the Western world, existentialism, and the philosophy of the Eastern world, Buddhism, are very similar despite such a huge gap of time between their history. Buddhism was created back in 5th Century B.C.E, while existentialism was created somewhere between the 18th and 19th century. Both share many identical or similar beliefs despite this huge time gap. Both in a sense is a way of life, a way to live your life.

Heidegger’s philosophy of existentialism talks about the idea of being or Dasien and living in the moment. Dasien in his context means being there which in essence means presence. Buddhism also has an emphasis on being there in the moment. In particular living your current life in accordance to certain principles. While the idea of reincarnation is one of the main beliefs of Buddhism, the principle behind the teaching is to live your current life to the fullest and the way to do that is to live by these principles. The principles beliefs of Buddhism are the Four Noble Truth and Eightfold Path. In Sartre’s writing he talks about existence before essence. Essence is considered the final product and existence is the individual. Sartre view essence as the category in which each person falls into that others use to define them, like stereotypes. Existence being the independent individual who acts and display themselves according to their own principle and not being tied down by those around them nor by societal beliefs. Because of this Sartre believe that the individual can change and shape themselves in accordance to who they want to be as an individual and how to approach it. That is the existence part and once the individual has found who they want to be, they reach the essence part of defining who they are as individuals.

In Buddhism the belief is that the only thing that exist is those that are happening in the moment. That there is only one event with multiple aspect to it which are occurring all at the same time, which means there is only the present. The past is gone and no longer exist, the future is uncertain and also doesn’t exist yet. In the western world the idea is to learn from the past and apply to the future. However, in Buddhism there is no point in thinking or chasing after the future if all you’re going to do is get there and having to chase after another future. According to Buddhism life exist only in the present and nowhere else. Zen, more than anything else, is about reclaiming and expanding the present moment.

Death is a subject that is also touched upon by existential philosophy and Buddhism. Both of which have its similarities. For example, both consider it an inevitable event in life and that all who exist must one day experience it. In Heidegger’s writing “Being and Time” he talks about being aware of one’s death not in the sense that you’re worried or concern about it, but rather understanding what it means for you as a being or existence. He considered death as the end of possibilities for the individual, the end and total disintegration of their world. His view of death is that of an event that is constantly occurring throughout the world. The event of death will one day occur to us, but right now it has nothing to do with us. For as long as Dasein is there death is essentially not there. However, once Dasein is gone then death takes its place. The fear of death comes from the fear of extinction as a human being. Being toward death is what Heidegger say to describe the authentic beings who has broken the mode of fallenness or hopelessness. “Authenticity can be achieved, says Heidegger, through a particular state-of-mind: dread (Angst). Dread is a mood which enables Dasein first to turn away from itself and then to be thrown back to confront itself. In order to achieve this, one has to transcend one’s everyday inauthentic mode of Being”. Heidegger state rather than seeing death as a natural event that will occur to everyone of us, we should see it as a part of our being.

Karl Jasper on the other hand view death differently from Heidegger. “Karl does not impose an ontological structure upon human beings. Secondly, his break with the traditional view of death is not so radical. Jaspers offers a possibility for Existenz to merge into Transcendence, ultimate reality. This does not necessarily suggest personal immortality, nor does it imply total annihilation. Although Jaspers’ views on death are not considered to be religious, certain existential concepts such as Existenz, Transcendence and Being remind us of religious concepts but under different terminology.” Jasper states that to understand death we must first understand that life itself is in a constant state of being in a situation. There are four major boundaries of situation. These are situation that threatens our sense of security and the foundation of our existence. “Death is perceived as either the ceasing of existence as an objective fact or as a specific boundary situation. Put simply, the fact of death is very different from death as a boundary situation. Facing one’s own death is a specific boundary situation and it is personal because Existenz convinces itself that Dasein – the basis of its empirical existence, ie the bodily existence – is temporal and transient and has to come to an end. Despite the end of one’s empirical being, Existenz itself is not subject to death. As Existenz we are concerned with the significance of death and how we relate to it. We know that we have to face up to nothingness as there is no return for Dasein and we have to come to terms with this.” To Jasper life is a continuous process in learning to die.

In Buddhism death is viewed as a natural part of life. It’s inevitable and everyone who exist will one day experience it. However, they also believe in the belief of reincarnation and Karma which determines what you’ll reincarnate into. The goal is to end the cycle of rebirth and reach nirvana. The only way to reach nirvana the cessation of craving, ignorance, and suffering. This can be achieved through the Four Noble Truth and Eightfold Path. Buddhism believe everyone has a spirit which in Jasper’s explanation is the Existenz which transcend time. The spirit will enter a new body upon death and the cycle of Being and existence continues. The Buddhism also views death as a process of life that one cannot escape from. While existentialist believe death to be the end of Being and the end of one’s existence Buddhism see death as the end of one’s existence in this world and the beginning of another. The Buddhism approach to death is to live a good life and do no evil. To purge oneself of anything negative in preparation for one’s death. In other words, to prepare oneself for the next world that they’ll exist in. Since what you reincarnate into in the next world depends on your karma. “According to Buddhism, our lives and all that occurs in our lives is a result of Karma. Every action creates a new karma, this karma or action is created with our body, our speech or our mind and this action leaves a subtle imprint on our mind which has the potential to ripen as future happiness or future suffering, depending on whether the action was positive or negative.” Karma encompasses everything we do, good and bad. We acquire good karma for doing good and thinking positively and bad karma for bad deeds and negative thoughts. Those with more good than bad will end up in a better place in the next world and those with more bad than good will end up in a worse place in the next world.

Overview
The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory is a philosophical school of thought dominated by German thinkers, characterized by unique views on the economy and human nature. These philosophers were partly connected via the Goethe University in Frankfurt. These academics were unhappy with either a capitalist or a communist society and sought a better society and system to put it in place. While these men were only associated by name, they did share ideas and have similar beliefs. They believed that critiquing existing philosophies was a positive way to further their points of view. One of such philosophies that was critiqued was existentialism.

Jargon of Authenticity: On German Ideology (1969)
Adorno’s book, The Jargon of Authenticity, is a direct response to Heidegger’s Being and Time. Adorno expresses many concerns about his analytic of Dasein, as well as his use of language to convey his ideas. Adorno believed that the “Jargon” that existentialists use is unnecessary and inauthentic. For example, when Heidegger used the word Dasein to talk about his being-there, that is simply a term. Dasein meaning anything other than being-there is inauthentic.

Dialektik der Aufklärung (1944)
Horkheimer wrote this text in collaboration with Theodor Adorno. They believed that the ultimate result of history was the breakdown of reason. They believed that enlightenment was not a positive step for humankind. They say, “Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity. Enlightenment’s programs was the disenchantment of the world. It wanted to dispel myths, to overthrow fantasy with knowledge” Horkheimer and Adorno believed society would regress with the rise of Socialism.

d. Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas was a graduate student that was studying Heidegger and publicly called him out for an explanation on his explanation of “inner truth and greatness” of socialism

in 1953. Heidegger did not respond, making Habermas feel that he couldn’t effectively critique socialism. His critique of Heidegger’s writing is very widely known. He developed a theory of communicative reason that guided the direction of the Frankfurt School in later years. He believes that rationality is an end product of dialogue.

Hail, Caesar
Frankfurt School thinkers are parodied in the movie Hail, Caesar. In the film, communist screenwriters led by Herbert Marcuse kidnap Baird Whitlock, a movie star, in the 1950’s. Marcuse says “Man is unitary—a simple economic agent. Man’s institutions are split, expressing contradictions that must be worked through. And they are worked through in a causative, predictable way: history is science. This is the essence of the dialectic…. Our understanding of the true workings of history gives us access to the levers of power. Your studio, for instance, is a pure instrument of capitalism. As such it expresses the contradictions of capitalism, and can be enlisted to finance its own destruction.”  Marcuse is alluding to the screenwriters putting subtle communist themes into to their screenplays to influence the American public. This is partially based on true events, in the 1950’s, the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC, accused several Hollywood theatre professionals of putting Communist propaganda in their movies. These workers were blacklisted from working or performing in any productions. At the end of the movie, they meet up with a communist defector movie star who boards a Russian Submarine. The writers stay behind to continue the cause from within.