'Friedrich Nietzsche Essay\r'

' existential philosopher ism provides a go account of the agony of be in the arena. The spirit of existen- tialism has a long narrative in school of scene. But it be- came a major attempt in the second half of the twentieth century. Existentialism is non a doctrinal body of ideal analogous Marxism or psychoanalysis. Instead, it is more like an umbrella under which a very coarse range of thinkers struggled with ques- tions about the essence of life. lots of the appeal and popularity of Existential- ism is due to the esthesis of confusion, the crisis, and the feeling of rejection and rootlessness that Euro- peans felt during World cont demolition II and its af frontierath.\r\nExistentialism’s point on all(prenominal) person’s piece in cre- ating heart in their life was a major work out on the Pheno menological and charitableistic imposts in psychological science and on the â€Å" pitying potential” move- ment that protruded from them. Re ne Descartes (1596-1650) said, â€Å" curtail your- self rather than the world. ”. To modwhite-tailed sea eagle existential- ists this performer that the World itself has no real meaning or purpose. It is non the unfolding expres- sion of clement Destiny or a divine plan, or hitherto a position of natural laws.\r\nThe only meaning is that which we curb by bears of will. To fox a substantive life we lose to act. But we should act without hope. Acting is meaningful moreover it doesn’t create meaning that lasts beyond the acts themselves or beyond our consume life judgment of conviction. You be what you do †while you argon doing it †and then no function. (Very depressing. ) In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus (pronounced â€Å"Kam-moo”) (1913-1960) describes life as a kind of hopeless, endless, up hammock labor. Hence, the only real problem is that of suicide. Yet, he rejects nihilism; for the kind cosmos essential fight and neer stomach defeat.\r\nThe problem is to be a saint without a God. The last ideal pull ins place eitherday. The com cholerice cosmos must(prenominal) do his outmatch, try for what he tush within the confinements of his n angiotensin-converting enzyme. Camus describes Sisyphus condemned by the gods to push a st wiz up a hill over and over, only to bewilder it freewheel back down singlely clipping he r to apiece onees the top. A task that shtup neer be completed. But he finds meaning in the circumstance that Sisyphus at least gets to decide each time whether to carry on or end it all. Camus says, â€Å"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to pig out a domain’s heart.\r\n hotshot must imagine Sisyphus happy. ” Although there merchant ship never be any meaning in Sisy- phus’ task, there is meaning is choosing each time to continue. Despite encompassing a staggering range of phi- losophical, spiritual, and political ideologies, the ce ntral concepts of existential philosophical system argon simple: homophile raceity macrocosm has free will. Life is a serial publication of excerpts, creating stress. Few decisions are without any cast out conse- quences. Some things are ir perspicacious or absurd, without explanation. If one exacts a decision, he or she must follow through. Notes on Existentialism by Tanweer Akram.\r\nThe fundamental problem of existentialism is con- cerned with the study of organism. The homophile being existence’s existence is the stolon and basic fact; the gracious be- ing has no essence that comes in advance his existence. The servicemanity world, as a macrocosm, is nought. This tip and the non-existence of an essence is the central source of the shore leave the human macrocosmness faces in each and every moment. The human world Notes on Existentialism Compiled for PSY 345 (Fall 2004) Existentialism Notes 2 has liberty in put one over of his situation, in dec isions which makes himself and sets himself to solves his problems and\r\n peppy in the world. Thrown into the world, the human cosmos is con- demned to be free. The human macrocosm must take this granting immunity of being and the certificate of indebtedness and guilt of his activenesss. Each action negates the former(a) possible courses of action and their consequences; so the human being must be accountable without excuse. The human being must not slip external from his re- sponsibilities. The human being must take deci- sions and assume responsibilities. on that point is no sig- nifi clearce in this world, this beingness. The human being coffin nailnot find any purpose in life; his existence is only a contingent fact.\r\nHis being does not emerge from necessity. If a human being rejects the erroneous pretensions, the illusions of his existence hav- ing a meaning, he encounters the absurdity, the fu- tility of life. The human being’s role in the world is not prede termined or fixed; every person is com- pelled to make a choice. superior is one thing the human being must make. The vex is that near oftentimes the human being refuses to opt. Hence, he dopenot suck up his license and the futility of his existence. basically existence is of two types: authentic and unauthentic forms of existence.\r\nAuthentic existence is contrasted with dynamic and is the being-for- itself, hike from the human being’s lamentable faith, by which the human being moves a delegacy from the bur- den of state, through this beliefs in principle and by regarding himself as subject to out of doors in- fluences and his actions to be predetermined. There is a contact lens contrast between the authentic and the imitative forms of being; the authentic being is the being of the human being and the inau- thentic being is the being for things. Yet, authentic being is only seldom attained by the human being; still it is what the human being must strive to gain.\r\nThe inauthentic being-in-itself is characteristically characteristic of things; it is what the human being is diseased with for his disaster to see himself as and act jibe as a free element and his impotency to reject unfavourable faith. Things are only what they are. But the human being is what dirty dog be. Things are deter- mined, fixed, and rigid; the human being is free; he force out add essence to his life in the course of his life and he is in a constant state of liquidise and is able to comprehend his situation.\r\nThe human being does not live in a pre-determined world; the human be- ing is free to realize his locates, to materialize his dreams; hence, he has only the indispensability he forges for himself because in this world nothing happens out of necessity. The human being hides himself from exemption by self-deception, acting like a thing, as if he is a pas- sive subject, alternatively of realizing the authentic be- ing for the human being; this is detrimental faith.\r\nIn bad faith, the human being shelter himself from re- sponsibility by not noticing the dimensions of al- ternative courses of action facing him; in bad faith, the human being behaves as separates demand of him by conforming to the al-Qaidaards of accepted values and by adopting roles designed for him; in bad faith, the human being loses the autonomy of his moral will, his freedom to decide; in bad faith, the human being imprisons himself within inauthentic- ity for he has ref utilise to take the challenge of re- sponsibility and the dread that comes along with his freedom.\r\n fretting ascends from the human being’s realiza- tion that the human being’s destiny is not fixed but is open to an unresolved future of infinite possi- bilities and limitless chain of mountains: The emptiness of fu- ture destiny must be filled by making choices for which he alone will assume responsibility and blame.\r\nThis anxiety is present at every moment of the human being’s existence; anxiety is part and separate of authentic existence. Anxiety leads the human being to take decisions and be pull. The human being tries to exclude this anguish through bad faith. But the free human being, in his legitimacy, must be involved; for his own actions are only his, his responsibility is to himself, his being is his own.\r\nThe human being must be com- mitted. To be committed means not to support this in place of that, but to attach a human being’s make sense- ity to a cause; it is the human being’s existential freedom that leads to total commission. existentialist philosopher thinkers begin from the human situa- tion in the world; the condition of despair, the modes of existence, the human being’s tendency to avoid authentic existence, his relation to things, his own body, and to some new(prenominal) beings, with whom he can- not come into true communication, and the sufferings of life.\r\nStarting from the stu dy of being, each existentialist philosopher thinkers kickoffate their own doc- trines, with their own focus on particular as- pects. Very often their viewpoints is conflicting and sometimes contradictory; even this philosophi-cal attitude of being, as a whole, can be described as the existentialist movement, which stresses upon the â€Å"being” of the human being.\r\nExistentialism Notes 3 Additional Notes on Existentialism Existentialism, philosophic movement or ten- dency, emphasizing separate existence, freedom, and choice, that twistd many diverse writers in the nineteenth and 20th centuries. Major Themes Because of the diversity of positions associated with existentialism, the term is impossible to define precisely. Certain origins commonplace to virtually all existentialist writers can, however, be identified.\r\nThe term itself suggests one major theme: the stress on concrete someone existence and, consequently, on subjectivity, man-to-man freedom, and choice. lesson Individualism Most philosophers since Plato have held that the highest estimable good is the same for everyone; inso- far as one approaches moral perfection, one resem- bles other morally perfect privates. The 19th- century danish pastry philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who was the first writer to call himself existential, reacted against this tradition by insisting that the highest good for the individual(a) is to find his or her own incomparable vocation.\r\nAs he wrote in his journal, â€Å"I must find a the true that is true for me . . . the idea for which I can live or die. ” Other existentialist writers have echoed Kierkegaard’s belief that one must choose one’s own way without the aid of universal, aim standards. Against the traditional view that moral choice involves an intention judgment of right and wrong, existentialists have argued that no objective, reasonable basis can be found for moral decisions. The 19th-century German philo sopher Friedrich Nietzsche further contended that the indi- vidual must decide which situations are to count as moral situations.\r\nSubjectivityAll existentialists have followed Kierkegaard in s tressing the importance of passionate individual action in decision making questions of both morality and truth. They have insisted, accordingly, that per- sonal fuck and acting on one’s own convic- tions are essential in arriving at the truth. Thus, the understanding of a situation by someone involved in that situation is superior to that of a detached, objective observer. This emphasis on the perspec- tive of the individual agentive role has also made existen- tialists suspicious of systematic reasoning.\r\nKierke- gaard, Nietzsche, and other existentialist writers have been on purpose unsystematic in the exposi- tion of their philosophies, preferring to express themselves in aphorisms, dialogues, parables, and other literary forms. Despite their antirationalist position, howeve r, well-nigh existentialists cannot be said to be irrationalists in the sense of denying all validatedity to rational intellection. They have held that rational clarity is suitable wheresoever possible, but that the most authorized questions in life are not accessible to reason or science. Furthermore, they have argued that even science is not as rational as is commonly supposed.\r\nNietzsche, for instance, take a firm stand that the scientific assumption of an orderly universe is for the most part a serviceable fiction. Choice and Commitment Perhaps the most prominent theme in existentialist writing is that of choice. Humanity’s primary winding dis- tinction, in the view of most existentialists, is the freedom to choose. Existentialists have held that human beings do not have a fixed nature, or es- sence, as other animals and plants do; each human being makes choices that create his or her own na- ture. In the formulation of the 20th-century french philosopher Jean P aul Sartre, existence\r\nprecedes essence. Choice is therefore central to human exis- tence, and it is unavoidable; even the refusal to choose is a choice. exemption of choice entails com- mitment and responsibility. Because individuals are free to choose their own path, existentialists have argued, they must accept the risk and respon- sibility of following their commitment wherever it leads. Dread and Anxiety Kierkegaard held that it is spiritually of the essence(p) to rec- ognize that one experiences not only a fear of spe- cific objects but also a feeling of general apprehen- sion, which he called dread.\r\nHe interpreted it as God’s way of calling each individual to make a commitment to a personally valid way of life. The intelligence agency anxiety (German Angst) has a similarly cru- cial role in the work of the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger; anxiety leads to the individual’s confrontation with void and with the impossibility of finding ult imate justifica- tion for the choices he or she must make. In the philosophy of Sartre, the raillery nausea is used for the individual’s recognition of the pure contin- gency of the universe, and the word anguish is used for the recognition of the total freedom of choice that confronts the individual at every mo- ment.\r\nExistentialism Notes 4 report Existentialism as a clean-cut philosophical and liter- ary movement belongs to the 19th and 20th centu- ries, but elements of existentialism can be found in the thought (and life) of Socrates, in the Bible, and in the work of many pre current philosophers and writers. dada The first to anticipate the major concerns of mod- ern existentialism was the 17th-century cut phi- losopher Blaise dada.\r\nPascal rejected the rigorous rationalism of his contemporary Rene Descartes, asserting, in his Pensees (1670), that a systematic philosophy that presumes to let off God and hu- manity is a form of pride. the like later existentia list writers, he motto human life in name of puzzlees: The human self, which combines mind and body, is itself a paradox and contradiction. Kierkegaard Kierkegaard, generally regarded as the founder of modern existentialism, reacted against the system- atic absolute idealism of the 19th-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, who claimed to have worked out a total rational understanding of hu- manity and history.\r\nKierkegaard, on the contrary, stressed the equivocalness and absurdity of the human situation. The individual’s response to this situation must be to live a totally committed life, and this commitment can only be understood by the indi- vidual who has made it. The individual therefore must always be prepared to defy the norms of soci- ety for the sake of the high authority of a person- ally valid way of life. Kierkegaard ultimately advo- cated a â€Å" limit of faith” into a Christian way of life, which, although incomprehensible and full of risk, wa s the only commitment he believed could save the individual from despair.\r\nNietzsche Nietzsche, who was not acquainted with the work of Kierkegaard, influenced subsequent existential- ist thought through his criticism of traditional metaphysical and moral assumptions and through his espousal of tragical pessimism and the life- affirming individual will that opposes itself to the moral abidance of the majority. In contrast to Kierkegaard, whose attack on conventional moral- ity led him to advocate a radically individualistic Christianity, Nietzsche proclaimed the â€Å" expiration of God” and went on to reject the perfect Judeo- Christian moral tradition in favor of a heroic ethnic ideal.\r\nHeidegger Heidegger, like Pascal and Kierkegaard, reacted against an attempt to sick philosophy on a conclu- sive rationalistic basisâ€in this case the phenome- nology of the 20th-century German philosopher Edmund Husserl. Heidegger argued that almsgiving finds itself in an incom prehensible, indifferent world. Human beings can never hope to under- stand why they are here; instead, each individual must choose a goal and follow it with passionate conviction, cognizant of the certainty of death and the ultimate folderal of one’s life. Heidegger contributed to existentialist thought an original em- phasis on being and ontology as well as on lan-\r\nguage. Sartre Sartre first gave the term existentialism general silver by using it for his own philosophy and by becoming the leading radiation pattern of a distinct move- ment in France that became internationally influen- tial after World War II. Sartre’s philosophy is ex- plicitly atheistic and pessimistic; he declared that human beings require a rational basis for their lives but are unable to achieve one, and thus human life is a â€Å"futile passion. ”\r\nSartre nonetheless insisted that his existentialism is a form of humanism, and he strongly emphasized human freedom, choice, and respo nsibility. He eventually tried to reconcile these existentialist concepts with a Marxist analy- sis of ordination and history.\r\nExistentialism and Theology Although existentialist thought encompasses the uncompromising atheism of Nietzsche and Sartre and the agnosticism of Heidegger, its origin in the intensely religious philosophies of Pascal and Kierkegaard foreshadowed its profound influence on 20th-century theology. The 20th-century Ger- man philosopher Karl Jaspers, although he rejected explicit religious doctrines, influenced contempo- rary theology through his preoccupation with tran- scendence and the limits of human experience.\r\nThe German Protestant theologians Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann, the French Roman Catholic theologian Gabriel Marcel, the Russian Orthodox philosopher Nikolay Berdyayev, and the German Jewish philosopher Martin Buber transmitted many Existentialism Notes 5 of Kierkegaard’s concerns, especially that a per- sonal sense of authenticity and commitment is es- sential to religious faith. Existentialism and publications A number of existentialist philosophers used liter- ary forms to convey their thought, and existential- ism has been as critical and as extensive a movement in literature as in philosophy.\r\nThe 19th-century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky is probably the greatest existentialist literary figure. In Notes from the Underground (1864), the anomic anti- hero rages against the optimistic assumptions of rationalist humanism. The view of human nature that emerges in this and other novels of Dostoyevsky is that it is unpredictable and per- versely self-destructive; only Christian love can save humanity from itself, but such love cannot be understood philosophically.\r\nAs the character Alyo- sha says in The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80), â€Å"We must love life more than the meaning of it. ” In the 20th century, the novels of the Austrian Jew- ish writer Franz Kafka, such as The ravel (1925; tr ans. 1937) and The Castle (1926; trans. 1930), present isolated men confronting vast, elusive, menacing bureaucracies; Kafka’s themes of anxi- ety, guilt, and solitude echo the influence of Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche.\r\nThe in- fluence of Nietzsche is also discernible in the nov- els of the French writers Andre Malraux and in the plays of Sartre. The work of the French writer Al- bert Camus is usually associated with existential- ism because of the bump in it of such themes as the probable absurdity and futility of life, the indifference of the universe, and the necessity of interlocking in a just cause. Existentialist themes are also reflected in the subject of the absurd, nota- bly in the plays of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco.\r\nIn the United States, the influence of exis- tentialism on literature has been more confirmative and diffuse, but traces of Kierkegaard’s thought can be found in the novels of perambulator Percy and stool Up- dike, and various existentialist themes are apparent in the work of such diverse writers as Norman Mailer, John Barth, and Arthur Miller. Conclusion Existentialists make endless claims.\r\nThey never bother to show how they reached their claims or if these are, indeed, true. The existentialists when he pretends to present a representation of earth pro- vides no cognition; unverifiable assertions may well express powerful and even necessary emo- tions and passions, but that’s best left to the arts and literature. Existentialism is a highly passionate philosophy and, from the outset, seems to aim at a dynamic and modernistic life-style.\r\nAlso it is mostly unsys- tematic and pays little care to logic or science. Whatever one makes of its metaphysical claims, one cannot deny that existentialism was able to provide a lamentable account of the spirit of the con- temporary world and the nausea and frustration of survival. Indeed, it is basically for its magnificence in psychologica l insight and its cushion on culture that existentialist philosophy will continued to be stud- ied.\r\n'