Existentialism is one of the most talked about -- and least understood -- theories today. Broadly, existentialism is the philosophy of existence or experience. More specifically, existentialism is the philosophical cult of nihilism. In other words, existentialism represents the theory that is that each man exists as an individual in a purposeless universe, and that he must oppose this hostile environment through the exercise of his free will.
Camus stresses the idea of being present in the moment to make choices in his novel The Stranger, when Meursault screams, "we are all privileged." The Stranger was inspired by the works of Soren Kierkegaard and the German philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, and was particularly widely read around the mid-20th century alongside the works of the French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and fellow writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. The main tenets of the movement are set out in Sartre's L'Existentialisme est un humanisme, and are translated as Existentialism is a Humanism.
Though many, if not most, of those we consider existentialists were atheists, Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel chased much more theological versions of existentialism. The erstwhile Marxist Nikolai Berdyaev began a philosophy of Christian existentialism in his native country Russia and later in France during the decades immediately preceding World War II.
Largest and most critical and most studied among the most famous...
Since Sartre's brand of existentialism does not acknowledge the existence of a higher power or god or of any other determining principle, human beings are completely liberated to do as they choose.
As there exists no predefined human nature or ultimate evaluation beyond that which humans project onto the world, people may only be judged or defined by their actions and choices, and human choices are, for them, the ultimate evaluator. This concept resonates from Nietzsche's concept of eternal return -- the concept that "things lose value because they cease to exist."
Indeed, if all things were to constantly exist, then they would all saddle us with a tremendous level of importance, but because things come to pass, and no longer exist, they lose their value. The idea of existence preceding essence is important because it describes the only conceivable reality as the judge of good or evil. If things simply "are," without directive, purpose or general truth, then truth (or essence) is only the projection of that which is a product of existence, or set of collective experiences. For truth to exist, existence has to exist before it, rendering it not only the predecessor but the 'ruler' of its own objectivity."
Maxine Greene has been a leader in educational…
