Existentialism

There is no point to anything, there is no right or wrong, there is no moral compass. It is all about choice. Choice is crucial to the existentialist point of view, you use your own internal morality to make choices. The brave decision to choose to do something even though it is ultimately pointless.

Nietzsche – “God is dead” this marks the end of certainty. We are faced with a crisis and we need something else to sustain us. Nietzsche thinks this crisis is fantastic because it means complete freedom. It gives us the freedom to find value for ourselves as there is no hierarchy to tell us what is right and wrong. “Our ships can at last put out to sea in the face of every danger”. Human nature is not universal; people’s natures are different so we all have different moralities. The Ubermensch over comes what has so far defined us. The Ubermensch will define himself and ignore the rules.  

Heidegger - Claimed he wasn’t an existentialist. His book, “Being and Time”, is all about human existence. Heidegger is interested in what it means to exist and consequently, the problems of human life. What is it to exist? What even is this “exist”? Heidegger mainly attacks Descartes and his Cartesian-Dualism (mind and body). Heidegger thinks this is nonsense, how do these two things interact? If my mind is one thing, and my body is another, how do I control my body and interact with the world? In place of consciousness and subjectivity, Heidegger simply talks about Dasein. Dasein=being in the world. It is not a spatial relationship, Dasein is our interaction in the world, it denotes a certain amount of engagement. For Dasein to exist it must exist in the world, there is no Dasein without the world. All we are is our interaction with the world, and we are defined by our choices. If you make and face your decisions then you are living an authentic life. If you follow social constructs then you are living and unauthentic life, you are a slave. You should not be defined by your facticity (your past e.g. your upbringing). We are thrown into the world, it’s nothing but blind luck. There is no reason to it. Transcendence is your reaction to your facticity, you can re-create yourself, it is your potential.

Sartre- Existence precedes essence, we create our own purpose. Simone De Beauvoir “one is not born a woman, but one becomes one”. There is no guiding spirit, no teleological driving force, stuff just happens, good and bad, without reason. Life is in its own way absurd and ridiculous. Heidegger’s existentialism is right wing, and Sartre's is much more left wing. The life of a person is not determined in advance. The only thing I cannot escape is the need to choose. This is frightening and people will try to avoid this freedom which is “bad faith”. We are not defined, we define ourselves.

Existentialism is the reaction to the realisation that there is no reason to anything.