Existentialism

Existentialism is a philosophical
movement that emphasizes individual
existence, freedom, and choice, that
influenced many diverse writers of the
19th and 20th centuries. Put simply it is
concerned with finding self and the
meaning of life through free will,
choice, and personal responsibility.
Mankind has free will
Life is a series of choices, creating stress
Few decisions are without any negative
consequences.
Some things are irrational or absurd,
without explanation.
If one makes a decision, he or she must
follow through.

Major Themes
 Plato held that the highest ethical good is the
same for everyone; insofar as one approaches
moral perfection, one resembles other morally
perfect individuals.
 Kierkegaard, the first writer to call himself
existential, insisted that the highest good for the
individual is to find his or her unique vocation. He
wrote: “I must find a truth that is true for me . .
. the idea for which I can live or die.”
 Nietzsche further contended that the individual
must decide which situations count as moral
situations.

Moral Individualism
 The individual must be passionate in his or her search for
morality and truth.
 Personal experience and acting on one’s own convictions are
essential at arriving at the truth.
 Thus, the perceptions of one involved in a situation is superior to
the perception of a detached observer.
 As a result most existential writers have been deliberately
unsystematic in the exposition of their philosophies and prefer to
express themselves in aphorisms, dialogue, parables, and other
literary forms.
 This is not to say that they don’t value rational thought. Rational
clarity is desirable whenever possible, but they assert that the
most important questions in life are not accessible to reason or to
science.
 Most argue that even science is not as rational as had been
previously supposed
 Nietzsche asserted that scientific assumption of an orderly
universe is for the most part useful fiction.

Subjectivity
 Humanity’s primary distinction is the freedom to
choose.
 Therefore each human being make the choices
that create his or her own human nature.
 Sartre said that “existence precede essence” and
believed that choice is central to human
existence going so far as to say that even the
refusal to choose is a choice.
 Freedom of choice entails commitment and
responsibility and because humans can choose
they must accept the risk and responsibility to
follow their commitment wherever it leads.

Choice and Commitment

 Kierkegaard held that it is spiritually crucial to
recognize that one experiences not only a fear of
specific objects but also a feeling of apprehension,
which he called dread.
 Kierkegaard interpreted it as God’s way of calling
each individual to make a commitment to a
personally valid way of life.
 Heidegger used the word anxiety to describe an
individual’s confrontation with nothingness and with
the impossibility of finding the ultimate justification
for the choices everyone has to make.
 Sartre used the word nausea to describe an
individual’s recognition of the contingency of the
universe and he used the word anguish to describe
the recognition of total freedom of choice that
confronts each individual.

Dread and Anxiety

Summary of Personal Growth
through Existentialism
 Fyodor Dostoyevsky is probably the greatest
existentialist literary figure. In Notes from the
Underground Dostoyevsky’s alienated antihero
rages against the optimistic assumptions or
rationalist humanism. The view of human
presented by Dostoyevsky in his other novels is
that human beings are generally unpredictable
and self-destructive. He believed that only
Christian love can save humanity from itself, but
such love cannot be understood philosophically.
Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov says, “We
must love life more than the meaning of it.”

Existentialism and Literature

 Franz Kafka an Austrian Jewish writer presented
isolated man confronting vast, elusive, menacing
bureaucracies. Kafka’s themes often include
anxiety, guilt, and solitude.
 Albert Camus, a French writer is often associated
with existentialism because of the prominence of
themes of absurdity and futility of life, the
indifference of the universe, and the necessity of
engagement in a just cause.
 Existential themes are also reflected in the
theatre of the absurd, notably in the plays of
Samuel Beckett.

Existentialism and Literature