The Legacy of Existentialism

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Introduction

• The Legacy of Existentialism

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A Message from Existentialism

• No Excuses !!!
• Your absolute individual freedom
• Your ultimate responsibility
• Your responsible for what you do
• Your responsible for who you are
• Your responsible for the way you face and deal
  with the world
• Your responsible, ultimately, for the way the
  world is for you.

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What is Existentialism?

• Existentialism is (a movement?) a "sensibility,"
  an attitude, not a set of doctrines.
• Existentialism is, first of all, a philosophy of
  life, a philosophy about who we are.

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Discussion Existential attitude

• What is so-called existential attitude? (Solomon,
  sect. 3)
• Have you even experienced such an attitude in you
  personal life? (Solomon, sect. 5)
• Is such an attitude universal? (Solomon, sect. 4
• What kind of socio-historical condition
  responsible for those intensive attitude? (EBW,
  sect. 2 Solomon, sect. 1)
• What is the metaphysical root of the attitude?
  (EBW, sect. 3)
• Why we cannot define existentialism (Solomon,
  sect. 11)?

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Existential Attitude

• 1. Existential syndrome / anxiety
• Start with a strong sense of self consciousness
  negation built into self-consciousness. Life is
  constantly experienced emptiness that strives to
  fill itself up.
• Feel herself separated from the world and from
  others (the feel of loneliness).
• Lead to self-exaggeration.
• Lead to more exaggerated tension with the world
  and others.
• The constant confusion of given meanings and our
  own wondering who we are (a gay? an atheist? even
  a theist?).
• Universalize such personal feeling to be a
  universal syndrome for all conscious beings.

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• 2. Human condition (the socio-historical
  condition) the Human Predicament in the Modern
  Age
• A philosophical realization of a
  self-consciousness living in a broken world, an
  ambiguous world, a dislocated world, and a
  world in which we are abandoned.
• The existential attitude begins with a
  disoriented individual facing a confused world
  that he cannot accept. (Solomon)

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• Pre-modern worldview
• The world is an enchanted garden, a home for
  humans, a place where everything is filled with
  meaning and significance.
• A primitive association between humans and the
  universe.
• People find their identity in terms of their
  roles and functions in a society and social
  group.
• The world is filled with absolutes (moral
  values, truths, knowledge, and hope) which we can
  depend upon.
• The modern worldview
• Modern sciences undermines this home world and
  leads to a disenchantment of the world.
• The world ceased to be a possible object of
  attunement after the rise of modern science.
• The concept of the self as an individual set over
  against and distinct from society evolves.
• God is dead.

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• 3. Human nature (the metaphysical root) the
  predicament of human existence
• Duality of the Self
• the self-in-itself vs. the self-for-itself
• Kierkegaard between the finite self and the
  infinite self.
• Heidegger two temporal structures of Dasein
• Throwness (sect. 29) being thrown into the world
  forms our facticity and historicity.
• Futurity / possibility (sect. 31-32) Dasein is
  future-directed being, the potentiality-for-Being.
  
• Sartre between the self as being-in-itself
  (facticity) and the self as being-for-itself
  (transcendence)

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Some Central Themes of Existentialism

• Human existence
• "Existence precedes essence
• The significance of the individual authenticity
• The central role of the passions
• The importance of human freedom
• Anti-tradition and rebellion