Existentialism

• The emphasis that phenomenology, particularly in the hands of Heidegger, has given to
consciousness and being takes a more concrete form in the philosophy of existentialism.
Along with phenomenology, existentialism can be viewed partially as a reaction to the idea
that an objective knowledge of the human can be attained by applying the scientific method
to sociology and psychology. Like phenomenology, existentialism is unsympathetic to
science as a cognitive enterprise, suspicious of scientism, and wary of applying the scientific
method to the solution of our human problems. What interests existentialists is the
subjectivity of the human individual and the individual’s responsibility for who he or she is.
But whereas phenomenologists might suggest that we become truly a self in the classical
contemplation of the human condition, existentialists and self-definition in the passionate
commitment to action. Also common to much existentialist thinking is the idea that the
human condition gives rise to “angst,” or anxiety. Some existentialists link anxiety to an
awareness of our nitude and impending death, others to the meaninglessness or emptiness of
life, and others to the extent to which we alone are responsible for what we have made of
ourselves. These characteristics must be remembered to understand existentialism’s
metaphysical leanings.

Kierkegaard
• In sketching the thought of Husserl, the section began by quoting from his diary. We
glimpsed the energizing force behind his philosophy for certainty. It is useful to compare this
with an entry from the journals of the founder of modern existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard:
• Several themes are worth noting in this entry.
• (1) First, Kierkegaard, like Husserl, is desperately seeking clarity. But unlike Husserl, who
sought the clarity of an objective abstract knowledge, Kierkegaard wants clarity about action,
about what he is to do. This emphasis on action and doing recurs in all existentialist thinking.
It constitutes a lens through which existentialists view all philosophical questions, including
meta- physical questions about what is real.
• (2) Second, notice the emphasis Kierkegaard gives to the subjective, to what is “true for me”
and has “significance for me and for my life.” This is a recurring theme in existential
philosophy and literature. Reality must be understood from the subjective perspective of the
self who chooses and acts. Third, no- tice Kierkegaard’s intense focus on decision and
commitment, on what “I can live and die” for and what I “take up into my life.” For the
existentialists, as for Kierkegaard, our reality is an outcome of our choices and commitments.
Through our decisions we create the reality of the self.
• (3) Finally, observe Kierkegaard’s religiosity, an aspect of his thought that is not shared by
all existentialists. Kierkegaard was deeply religious, and the central issue of his life and
thought was what it means to be a Christian.
• Like Heidegger, Kierkegaard claimed that we experience “anxiety” because of our human
nitude. Kierkegaard’s words, in fact, read almost like they could have been written by
Heidegger
• However, unlike Heidegger, for Kierkegaard anxiety is most closely connected with our
freedom to choose: with the free “leap of faith” into nothingness that we must make when we
make significant choices in the absence of clear knowledge that we are choosing correctly. In
such moments, we are both attracted and repelled by a future that is unknown, and we feel
anxiety at our freedom to make a “leap of faith” into the “nothingness” of an unknown
 future. For example, when we look over the edge of a cliff, we feel anxiety, we feel repelled
by the thought of falling over, and at the same time we almost have an urge to jump into the
“nothingness.” Our anxiety arises from our realization that we are free to do it. For
Kierkegaard, this was particularly true of the “leap of faith” in which we are free to choose to
trust in God yet have no intellectual proof that God exists. We must often, perhaps always,
make our important life choices without full intellectual knowledge of what our choices will
bring, and so feel both repelled and attracted by the leap into a nonexistent and un- known
future. We experience anxiety at our freedom to “leap” into the nothingness.
• Kierkegaard argued that for us humans, to exist is to make such free, anxiety- lled choices.
What we choose in those crucial moments is not as important as how we choose. When
making a significant choice—such as choosing whether to marry or not, or choosing whether
to do what is morally right or morally wrong, or choosing whether to become a serious
Christian or not—we must choose passionately, with energy and while conscious of the
significant consequences our choices will have
• In choosing, as Kierkegaard indicates, “the personality is consolidated.” That is, through our
choices we come to be the person we are. That is, we come to exist; we become real. For
Kierkegaard, to exist, and to become who I am, are identical. To choose and thereby to exist
is to become a self. Kierkegaard does not say there are no right and wrong choices. But he
believed that if people choose earnestly and passionately, they will know when they have
made a wrong choice and will be able to get back on the right track.
• Even this brief sketch of Kierkegaard’s thought shows that for him the freely choosing self is
the fundamental reality—not the self as thinker, but as passionate doer and actor, as free
decision maker. “It is impossible to exist without passion,” he wrote, “unless we understand
the word ‘exist’ in the loose sense of a so-called ‘existence.’” Kierkegaard’s metaphysical
concerns focus on the reality of the human being we create through our own choices;
consequently, he is preoccupied with the predicament and anxiety of our freedom to choose.
What is really real? Reality is the becoming of a self whose anxiety- lled free choices bring
her into existence and make her who she is. Kierkegaard wants people to take their decisions
seriously, to choose passionately, and in those choices become real.
• This Kierkegaardian idea—that we make ourselves through our choices and thereby come to
truly exist, that is, to be real—becomes a fundamental notion for all future existentialist
thinkers. It is an idea that also lies at the core of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, an
existentialist who, unlike Kierkegaard, did not believe in God.

Sartre
• Although Kierkegaard first propounded existentialism, its chief proponent has been Jean-
Paul Sartre (1905–1980). Kierkegaard believed in God, though he felt that authentic belief
required a “leap of faith.” However, Sartre felt that belief in God was no longer possible. For
Sartre, this idea that God does not exist was a deeply disturbing thought and a source of
much anguish. In his essay “Existentialism and Human Emotions,” he wrote
• What kind of creatures are we who have no xed nature? What are we to do who nd ourselves
living in a world without a compass? How is it that we are able to make ourselves? These are
some of Sartre’s central concerns that cannot be answered by Kierkegaard’s “leap” of faith.
Indeed, for Sartre the leap of faith is a cowardly act because through it one enters into a
world of unfreedom, a world where choices are made for us, and so a world of illusion and
false hope.
• In contrast, Sartre’s prescription for some of these dilemmas is related to his view of reality.
Like phenomenologists, Sartre believes that reality is revealed in our conscious experience.
Sartre argues that a phenomenological study of our conscious experience reveals two kinds
of being in our conscious experiences, and so reveals that there are two kinds of reality. (1),
there is our consciousness itself; (2), there are the objects of which we are conscious. He
terms the being of the first kind of reality (consciousness) being that is for-itself, and the
being of the latter kind of reality (the objects of consciousness) being that is in-itself.
• To grasp this distinction, consider a table that stands across the room from you. Clearly, there
are innumerable ways in which you can be conscious of the table— you can think about it,
remember it, and imagine it. The table, of course, cannot perform any of these operations of
our conscious mind. It has no consciousness. For Sartre, the table that we can think about,
remember, and imagine, is an in-itself. On the other hand, you, the one who is doing the
thinking, remembering, and imagining, are a for-itself. The in-itself consists of the hard,
impersonal, unconscious world that presents itself all around us as non-conscious objects.
The for-itself consists of any thinking, hoping, loving, hating, seeing, imagining, conscious
beings, including ourselves.
• As a consciousness, being-for-itself is nothing until, through its conscious activities, it makes
itself be something; on the other hand, an in-itself cannot choose and so cannot make itself
into anything other than what it already is. This distinction be- tween an in-itself that is not
conscious and a for-itself that is conscious and so able to choose and thereby create itself is
the basis of Sartre’s argument that humans, each of whom is a for-itself, are only insofar as
they act. That is, unlike the hard impersonal world of objects around us, each of us is a free
consciousness that can change and
• form itself by its own free choices. We can choose what we will do, and our actions then
define who and what we are. Our action may be trivial or momentous. We may sit on a chair,
or we may risk our lives for a cause. This is of no matter to Sartre. What counts is that we
choose and act—in other words, that we freely adopt a “project.” When we do, we are truly
human beings because we are in the mode of a for-itself. Fail- ing to act, we are in the mode
of an in-itself. Sartre expresses this point in Being and Nothingness, a definitive statement of
his philosophy:
• Sartre suggests a rather unconventional view of human behaviour here. Because of the
influence of social science, such as psychological behaviourism, many people assume that we
are what we are because of our environment, so we are not responsible for what we have
become. They might say that a man cheats and robs because he’s a thief, and he’s a thief
because of the conditions under which he grew up. Sartre rejects this notion. He would argue
that a man is a free consciousness, so what he isis the sum total of the free choices he makes.
If he is a thief, it is because he has chosen to act as a thief, and he is himself completely
responsible for those choices. As a free consciousness, he could choose to act as an honest
man. He could choose, in effect, a new project rather than the one he has adopted.
Furthermore, he may do this at any point in time. In other words, nothing about a thief’s past
makes his future inevitable. In fact, there’s no telling how many different projects he could
undertake in denying who he will be.
• For Sartre we first exist—we are born. But what we are, our essence, is not yet determined.
Rather, what we are—our reality—depends on whether and how we will choose to act. And
then the sum total of our conscious actions—our history—will de ne what we become. Our
reality—who we really are— is what we each create through our free conscious choices, and
 we ourselves are fully responsible for the reality that we become. Sartre succinctly expresses
this seminal core of his metaphysics in his statement “Existence precedes essence.”
• Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), female existentialist philosopher and a companion of
Sartre, agreed that humans are not determined and must accept ultimate responsibility for
what they are. She focused on the implications for women in particular. Women, de Beauvoir
argued, are subject to social influences that attempt to rob them of an awareness of their own
freedom, and they must over- come these constraints through courageous self-assertion. In
The Second Sex, de Beauvoir argues that in our male-dominated society, men de ne women
wholly in terms of men’s own nature: A woman is simply “the other,” the non-male one who
relates to the male. Moreover, women accept this role and thereby forgo their freedom to de
ne and make themselves: They become mere things for men. Women must reject the male
myths that de ne what they are; they must instead collectively create woman as a free and
independent being. This will require, she suggests, overcoming the social and economic
institutions through which men keep women effectively enslaved. Social and economic
liberation is the key to freedom and self-determination for women.
Even this brief exposition should suggest that existentialism could encompass an extremely
diverse group of philosophers. Among the best-known existentialists are Kierkegaard, the Jewish
scholar Martin Buber (1878–1965), the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965), the
atheists Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and Sartre, the novelist Albert Camus (1913–1960),
and many other thinkers, writers, and artists. Although their views often differ radically, they
share a concern for conscious experience, for the importance of personal freedom and
responsibility, and for the idea that in our choices we become who we are and thereby come to
exist. In our treatment of phenomenology and existentialism, of course, we have been able to
touch only on a few topics of metaphysical importance. Even here we have had to be sketchy.
These important thinkers have had many ideas of merit that the serious student of philosophy
will want to explore farther.