Reactions to Hegel: The Road to Existentialism

1
Reactions to Hegel The Road to Existentialism

• Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) advocated a leap
  of faith to God to escape the doubt and
  uncertainty of human existence
• Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) saw reality in
  terms of a purposeless will to life
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) saw reality in
  terms of the will to power
• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) saw human actions as
  arising from unconscious drives

2
Major Existentialist Themes

• Life is meaningless and irrational
• The individual is alone and deserted
• Humans live senseless, empty, trivial lives
  filled with anxiety, dread, self-doubt,
  loneliness, and despair
• Traditional philosophy is sterile and remote from
  the real concern, the individual in confrontation
  with the world

3
Two Famous Existentialists

• Albert Camus (1913-1960)
• the fundamental question is why not suicide?
• the world fails to meet basic human needs
• life is like Sisyphus rolling his rock up the
  hill
• Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
• there is no God man is abandoned and alone
• for man, existence precedes essence
• as being-for-itself we are free authentic people
  take responsibility for their choices and actions

4
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Phenomenology

• Phenomenology studies the given (the phenomena)
• Husserl wanted to achieve Descartes quest for
  rational certainty based solely on a study of the
  phenomena given to consciousness
• He tried to investigate the stream of conscious
  experience without making any presuppositions
  about an external, objective, physical world
  (bracketing)

5
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) The Early
Existentialist Phase

• We are thrown into the world and break our heads
  trying to find sense (Sinn) in it
• As beings-in-the-world we are open only to what
  is within the horizons of our world
• We are thus susceptible to everydayness, a
  primitive being that saps our true potential
• As beings-unto-death, we can be authentic by
  embracing our futures and throwing ourselves open
  to Being

6
Heideggers Later Phenomenology Phase

• Since Being makes thought possible, we must think
  in quiet, nonimpositional ways (gelassenheit) in
  order to catch a glimpse of Being
• Gelassenheit occurs most often in the best
  poetry, poetry that uncovers the as-yet unseen,
  unthought, and unspoken
• Humans should dwell simply in Being