THE CONCEPT BETWEEN

THEISTIC EXISTENTIALISM AND

ATHEISTIC EXISTENTIALISM
 Existentialism

A philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It is

viewed that humans define their own meaning in life, trying to make rational
decisions despite existing in an irrational universe and the feeling that there
is no purpose or explanation at the core of existence.
Existentialism divided into two basic camps:
Theistic Existentialism – affirming a belief in the existence of God
Atheistic Existentialism – as the name indicates, denying the same.
Contributors to Atheistic Existentialism

 Friedrich Nietzsche

Considered one of the founding fathers of existentialism, a critic of

Christian theology. It is for this reason that Nietzsche's philosophy
associate with nihilism or anarchism.
 Albert Camus
Writes of dualisms—between happiness and sadness—as well as life
and death, such dualism becomes impossible because humans greatly
value their existence while at the same time being aware of their
mortality.
Contributors to Atheistic Existentialism
 Jean-Paul Sartre

French philosopher who was concerned with human authenticity and

individuality. he once said "existence precedes essence". What he meant
was "that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only
afterwards, defines himself. it is because at first he is nothing. Only
afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will
be.
 What is Theistic Existentialism?

Theistic existentialism/ Christian existentialism is a Theo-philosophical movement

which takes an existentialist approach to Christian theology.
In Kierkegaard's understanding of Christianity. that the universe is basically
inconsistent, and that its greatest puzzle is the supreme union of God and humans
in the person of Jesus Christ. He also proposed three rules to understand the
conditional issue from diverse life choices: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the
religious.
 Contributors to Theistic Existentialism

 Soren Kierkegaard – Danish philosopher / Father of existentialism

His themes is the importance of subjectivity w/c has to do with the way people
relate themselves to truth. Subjectivity is truth and truth is subjectivity.
 Martin Heidegger – German / 20th century philosopher

Heidegger considers that only the man as being, can have a intelligence of being.
 Max Ferdinand Scheler – is the founder of Philosophical antropology
 TRIVIA: Max Ferdinand Scheler

Max Ferdinand Scheler (German; 22 August 1874 – 19 May 1928) to a Lutheran

father and an Orthodox Jewish mother.
As an adolescent, he turned to Catholicism although he became increasingly non-
committal around 1921. After 1921 he disassociated himself in public from
Catholicism and the Judeo-Christian God, committing himself to philosophical
anthropology. . He developed further the philosophical method of the founder of
phenomenology.
 TRIVIA: Max Ferdinand Scheler

Scheler’s philosophy encompassed ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, religion, the

sociology of knowledge, and modern philosophical anthropology, which he founded. As a
phenomenologist, he sought to investigate the constitution of the structures of
consciousness, including the structures of mental acts—such as feeling, thinking, and
willing—and of their inherent objects or correlates—such as (in this case) values,
concepts, and projects.
 TRIVIA: Max Ferdinand Scheler

Max Scheler’s thought is usually divided into two periods of development.

The first period, covered by Vol. 1 to 7 of his Collected Works, covering the years
b/w his dissertation (1897) and the writing of “On the Eternal in Man (1920-1922).”
During this time, Scheler applied his understanding of phenomenology to value-ethics,
feelings, religion, politics, and related topics.
The second period, from 1920 through 1928, Scheler rejected the notion of a
creator-God, and suggested instead a process of a universal, cosmic becoming in
absolute time, through increasingly inter-penetrating interaction between an uncreated
vital energy, or “Impulsion,” and “Spirit,” which formed impulse into existence.
 TRIVIA: Max Ferdinand Scheler

" After his death in 1928, Martin Heidegger admitted, with Ortega y Gasset, that all
philosophers of the century were indebted to Scheler and praised him as "the strongest
philosophical force in modern Germany, modern Europe and in modern Philosophy.“
Even Karol Wojtyla, Later know Pope John Paul II defended his Doctoral thesis on
“An Evaluation of the Possibility of constructing a Christian Ethics” on the basis of the
systems of Scheler.
 Max Scheler’s work interests;

 Value theory – is concerned with theoretical questions about value and goodness of all
varieties, questions that cross about ethics
 Ethics – a branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles
 Phenomenology – is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness
 Philosophical anthropology – logical study of what makes as human
 History of ideas – a field of research in history that deal with expression, preservation and
change of ideas over time
 Sociology of knowledge – that social life has influence on human knowledge, thought and
culture
 Philosophy of religion – discuss questions re; the nature of religion as whole
End of the Report

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