Existentialism - its origins and importance
Existentialism cannot rightly be called a philosophy. Its proponents are far too different, and have too many disagreements, to be correctly lumped together into one, compact school of thought. They range from the rigidly atheistic Nietzsche to the sternly Christian Kierkegaard. Rather, existentialism is a movement of the 19th and 20th centuries in metaphysical thought that encompassed a core set of principles. It stressed moral individualism, and challenged the predominant view on a wide range of human inventions, from politics to religion.
Oddly enough, existentialism, a movement that would give rise to Nietzsche and Sartre, originated in the works of the very Christian writers Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky. Pascal, best known as a 17th century mathematician, was one of the first intellectuals within the Catholic Church to challenge the prevailing semi-Pelagian view and to embrace Jansenism, a somewhat Protestant outlook that stressed the individual’s role in salvation. He derided the Church and recognized the folly in Descartes’ attempts to rationally explain God. Nevertheless, he accepted the idea of God on faith via a method that came to be known as Pascal’s Wager. Essentially it suggested that there are two truths, either God exists or does not, and both are ultimately unknowable, given that, the fruits of the former outweigh the detriments of the latter. It is a seemingly rational justification for a flawed concept, faith, but the Wager is also an excellent example of the individualistic perspective that would form existentialism.
Kierkegaard would make a similar leap of faith. He outlined three spheres of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical, and later, the religious. The aesthetic sphere is ‘a refined hedonism’ and interested only in ‘pleasure’ (Encarta), whereas the ethical one is concerned with commitment to duty. The religious sphere entails submitting completely to the will of God by faith. Kierkegaard places the religious sphere above the other two in Fear and Trembling, where he looks into the parable of God’s demand that Abraham sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abraham obeys God’s command, despite the repercussions, because he has faith.
Dostoyevsky was not Christian, but he was possessed of a strong conviction in the Greek Orthodox faith. Moreso that Kierkegaard and Pascal, he was the first existentialist to influence literature. Existential undertones are evident in Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Devils, but just as prevalent is the message of the importance of God in daily life and in society. Devils is a satirical attack on the liberals of the mid-nineteenth century that deigned to propose a government devoid of heavenly influence. In Crime and Punishment, the protagonist commits a murder that he believes will ultimately benefit all of society, but is driven mad by his conscience and, after confessing, comes to realize that his sin was not only an affront to Man, but to God as well. Again, Dostoyevsky stresses not only the individual’s need to come to a moral reconciliation, but the significance of God in matters of the soul.
Perhaps the most interesting existentialist, and certainly the most controversial, is Friedrich Nietzsche. Although influenced by Dostoyevsky and Kierkegaard, Nietzsche made a radical departure from their interpretation of existentialism. He rightly viewed Christianity as the archenemy of reason, and his analysis of the origins of faith is flawless. ‘Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap…this created all gods and afterworlds’ is an example of his contention that Man’s desire created God in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He is credited with the creation of the ‘superman,’ a being that rejects the traditional values of the masses. This superman, which Nietzsche points out has yet to be born, would have the individual right to rise above mankind, and would rationally focus on his existence instead of his hopes for a new life after death. Nietzsche’s most famous saying, that ‘God is dead,’ is a concise emblem for his rejection of established values. ‘God’ is those qualities that have mired Man in a thousand years of servitude to an illusion.
Martin Heidegger, the 20th century’s most eminent philosopher, was greatly influenced by the works of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. As had Nietzsche, Heidegger rejected traditional values, and in his 1927 work Being and Time, he espouses an individualistic perspective on the nature of existence. His perplexing concoction of being, humanity, and time is nonetheless an important first step in 20th century existentialism. He is often associated with Nazism and his support of Hitler’s troops, supposedly in the hopes that the German leader would eliminate the threat of ‘technical nihilism,’ () an issue that concerned him. Coupled with Nietzsche’s justification for the actions of ‘supermen,’ a reasoning that buttressed Hitler’s aims, an ominous shadow is cast on the socio-political effects of existentialism.
The nihilism that concerned Heidegger would take root in his chief successor, Jean-Paul Sartre. In forming the classical existential viewpoint, the concept of ‘nothing’ and thus nihilism intrigued Sartre. ‘When we abandon illusions, life is revealed as nothing; and for the existentialists, nothing is source of not only absolute freedom but existential anguish.’ (Pratt) Again, Sartre stressed the importance of the individual in works such as Being and Nothingness, Critique of Dialectical Reasoning, and the novel Nausea. In Nausea, the speaker talks of life as possessing an ‘intrinsic, incoherent aspect’ and regularly records in his diary that there is ‘nothing new.’ (Sartre 5) And as there is room in the existential camp for atheists like Nietzsche and fundamentalists like Dostoyevsky, there is also room for the fascism of Heidegger and Sartre’s Marxism. In his later life Sartre began to focus on the economic slavery Marx exposed, and saw capitalistic systems as perpetuating a subjugation of the individual. Obviously, Sartre is not noted for his rationalism, because the Marxism he encouraged demanded a surrendering of the self to class rebellion, and restricted the individual’s economic liberty. Indeed, Albert Camus, a friend and contemporary of Sartre until he embraced communism, and a renowned absurdist, correctly notes in his The Myth of Sisyphus ‘everything, joy or happiness, is liberty’ and that ‘a world remains of which man is the sole master.’ (Camus 117) The true existentialist recognizes the importance of liberty in all aspects of life.
Ultimately, existentialism is an unsatisfying school of thought. How can its adherents reconcile Sartre’s Marxism with Heidegger’s Nazism, or Pascal’s Catholicism with Nietzsche’s atheism? It contains the brilliance of Nietzsche and the folly of Sartre. If existentialism is widely marked by any one thing, if there can be said to be a common bond among all of its proponents, it is a rejection of conventional ideas and methodology. ‘The repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs…that is the heart of existentialism.’ (Kaufmann 12)
Email: waynehead@prodigy.net
