Kierkegaard, Gabriel Marcel and Jean

¶ … Kierkegaard, Gabriel Marcel and Jean Paul Sartre

Existentialism is a philosophical current which analyzes human existence, focusing on themes such as freedom, self-awareness, the consciousness of the surrounding world, the act of becoming and the power that the individual has upon constructing himself. One of the most important theses that existentialism defends states that existence precedes essence. Another manner of saying the same thing would be to asses that existentialism is humanism through the power that the human being has upon constructing his own way of being

Some of the most relevant philosophers contributing to the development of existentialism are represented by Jean Paul Sartre, Gabriel Marcel and Soren Kierkegaard. In their works they analyzed the relation between the individual and the world, insisting upon the idea that the world does not possesses value and meaning in itself. This value is created and found by man

At the same time, man does more than becoming an essence which existed before him and was decided a priori. Existentialists believe in absolute freedom and the power that the individual has upon his own self, despite his facticity (objective coordinates that one can not decide upon, such as the parents or the birthplace). Searching for meaning in the world the individual is found to discover that it is meaningless. Dealing with the absurd, he is bound to experience feelings such as angst and despair, the main coordinates of the existentialist crisis

It can be stated that existentialism is to be opposed to other doctrines, such as the platonic one, according to which essence precedes existence. It has been argued that god is an omniscient and omnipotent entity. The immediate consequence of this fact should be that man exists because and through the will of God.

In other words, he is a materialization of one of the numerous conceptions which exist in God. That is, the human essence should exist before the human himself exists. Life would be an incarnation of this essence and our actions nothing more but a becoming and a manifestation of the essence. The atheist existentialists such as Sartre and Kierkegaard believe that the true nature of man consists in him deciding for himself, being responsible for his actions and assuming those responsibilities with complete awareness

Assuming that God does not exist, under the consequences in which human beings do, leads us to the conclusion that the individual comes into existence before his essence does. The implications are to be found in man's actions. First he will explore the world, himself ad then he will question himself and his nature, that is, trying to define himself. And this definition will be possible only after he will have constructed himself, with full awareness regarding his choices and their consequences.

When he is born, man is not an incarnation of any kind of nature. He is nothing, or in other words, he is the potential becoming of everything. He will be what he decides to be and only after having become something it will be possible to define that something. The primary action that man performs is that of being. This is how the existentialist doctrine wishes to demonstrate its thesis according to which existence precedes essence.

The first principle of existentialism is subjectivity, in the sense that existence is subject to every man's desire. There are things which man can not control in his life, but he can assume his past and change himself if what he is does not correspond to his scale of values. Man is the only creator of himself and therefore, his own possessor. Which also makes him the only one who is responsible for his life. Subjectivity is to be understood from this perspective

However, the concept under discussion is a bit wider. It also refers to the fact that human nature is a limit for the human. People can not go beyond their own nature and capacity to build the world and ultimately themselves. When creating himself, man will obey certain criteria. Naturally, he will want for these criteria to be universal. That is, while man has the power to decide, he will decide not only for himself as an individual, but for all the individuals

Since man is endowed with reason and able to distinguish the good from the bad, it is safe to assume that the choices he makes shall reflect his values. It would be absurd to think that a less valuable option could be chosen instead of a more valuable one, under the circumstances in which man is driven towards the achievement of happiness.

The implications are of fundamental importance. If god does not exist, nor do the conceptions of good and evil. They too are the responsibility of man. Since there is no determinism, then the only conclusion we can reach is that man is free and that freedom is that which defines him and his nature. The main interest of the existentialist philosophy is not to prove that god does not exist, but to analyze the crisis that man undergoes when becoming aware that his only possession is himself and that the only meaning he can find is inside and through himself