EXISTENTIALISM
and EDUCATION

PART A
ontology, epistemology,
ethics and being
Ren Guray
PART B August 13, 2009
teaching and learning, EDFD 201
curriculum, critique Dr. Mike Muega
Gelai Florendo
College of Education

Existentialism
Existentialism, broadly defined, is a set of
philosophical systems concerned with free
will, choice, and personal responsibility.
It is also an act of philosophizing; a
sensibility.

General Concepts
• Mankind has free will.
• Life is a series of choices, creating stress.
• Few decisions are without any negative
consequences.
• Some things are irrational or absurd, without
explanation.
• If one makes a decision, he or she must
follow through.
- The Existentialist Primer

The Existentialist Themes
1. Subjectivity
2. Choice
3. Authenticity
4. Passion
5. Angst
6. Alienation

THE EXISTENTIALISTS
Søren Kierkegaard Karl Jaspers
Friedrich Nietzsche Martin Heidegger
Albert Camus Jean-Paul Sartre
Simone de Beauvoir Gabriel Marcel

Søren Kierkegaard
(1813-1855)
“Faith is the highest
passion in a human
being. Many in every
generation may not
come that far, but none
comes further.”

Søren Kierkegaard
Danish religious philosopher. A
precursor of modern existentialism,
he insisted on the need for individual
decision and leaps of faith in the
search for religious truth.

Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900)
“I know my fate.
One day there will be
associated with my
name the recollection
of something frightful
…I am not a man, I
am dynamite.”

Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher who refused to
belong to any school of thought,
renounced the adequacy of any body
of beliefs.
He opposed philosophic systems,
and was dissatisfied with traditional
philosophy as superficial, academic,
and remote from life.

Karl Jaspers
(1883-1969)
“Experience is not
adequate per se, for it
becomes significant only
by virtue of him who
possesses it.”

Karl Jaspers
German psychiatrist, philosopher, and
theologian. He encouraged active
“philosophizing”.
He merged the basic ideas of Kierkegaard
and Nietzsche. This grew into modern
existentialism or, as he prefers to say,
Existenzphilosophie.

Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905-1980)
“We mean that man
first of all exists,
encounters himself,
surges up in the world-
and defines himself
afterwards.”

Jean-Paul Sartre
French philosopher, playwright, novelist
and the leading exponent existentialism.
His writings examine man as a
responsible but lonely being, burdened with
a terrifying freedom to choose, and set adrift
in a meaningless universe.
He coined the term “existentialism”.

Existentialist
Ontology
What is Real?

Existence precedes
essence.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

Man has the final responsibility
to decide for himself who and
what he is, and by extension,
what his reality is.
- Morris, p. 76

There is no significance to
things or events other than the
meaning we as humans give to
them.
- Kneller, p. 49

Existentialist
Epistemology
What is True?

The thing is to find
a truth that is true
for me…
- Søren Kierkegaard

Assumes that the individual is
responsible for his own knowledge… It
originates in, and is composed of, what
exists in the individual’s consciousness
and feelings as a result of his
experiences and the projects he adopts
in the course of his life.
- Kneller, p. 59

Experiences result to
Projects
Consciousness
chooses Feelings
compose
KNOWLEDGE

Existentialist epistemology emerges
from the recognition that human
experience and knowledge are
subjective, personal, rational and
irrational.
- Gutek, p. 119

Existentialist
Ethics
What is Good?

Man is condemned
to be free.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

The highest morality is a recognition
of freedom; the lowest morality is the
subjection of individual consciousness
to standards or principles which have
been preordained.
- Karl Jaspers as quoted by Kneller, p. 65

I am therefore ultimately responsible
for my own choices. The individual is
the author of his own good. He can
make himself accountable to no other
moral force or factor.
- Morris, p. 277

What is good? -- All that
heightens the feeling of power,
the will to power, power itself in
man.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The Existentialist
Man
Who is the authentic man?

I am that which must
overcome itself again
and again.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Human Development
Pre-existential Period
- prior to puberty, elementary period
- not yet conscious of personal identity
Existential Moment
- awareness of presence in the world
- insight into his own consciousness and
responsibilities
- Van Cleve Morris in Gutek, p.118

Existential Moment
Realizations
- life is a series of choices
- our choices will define us
- we are only accountable to ourselves
- we are responsible for the choices we make
- we choose for all
- that death is the inevitable conclusion for
existing (called angst or anxiety)

Being
A self-aware and self-choosing individual.
realization that he freedom to decide
exist, and he is who and what he
conscious of this is; the ultimate
fact; the “is-ness” power of choice

References
Gutek, Gerald. Philosophical and Ideological Perspective on Education,
Second Edition. USA: Allyn and Bacon, 1997.
Kneller, George F. Existentialism and Education. New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1967.
Morris, Van Cleve. Philosophy and the American School: An Introduction to
the Philosophy of Education. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.
Morris, Van Cleve. “Personal Choice.” Teaching and Learning. Ed. Donald
Vandenberg. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1969
Palmer, Joy A. (Ed.) Fifty Major Thinkers on Education (From Confucius to
Dewey). London: Routledge, 2001.
Stokes, Philip. Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers. New York: Enchanted
Lions, 2002.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism is Humanism. Online. http://scribd.com. 1
Aug. 2009.
Soccio, Douglas J. The Archetypes of Wisdom, Sixth Edition. California:
Thomson Wadsworth, 2007.
Thibadeau, Gene. Existentialism and Open Education: Divorce American
Style. Paper presented at the National Conference American of the
Educational Studies Association,. San Francisco, October 31, 1975.

Next:
Existentialism and its
Implications on Education
- Teaching and Learning
- Curriculum Development
- Critique