Atheistic Existentialism

EXISTENTIALISM
 Existentialism is a philosophical approach
based on the assumption that individuals
are free and responsible for their own
choices and actions.
 Hence, we are not victims of circumstance
because we are what we have chosen to
be.
http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/18173/The-History-of-
Existentialism

EXISTENTIALISM
 The roots of existentialism started with the so
called "Father of Existentialism", Søren
Kierkegaard, who lived in the 19th Century.
 Existentialism's peak came in the 1940's with
great thinkers such as Sartre, de Beauvoir,
Camus and Merleau-Ponty all coming out with
not only traditional philosophical essays, but
also plays, novels, and short stories that all
reflected the existential school of thought.
Existentialism

JOHANN KASPAR SCHMIDT
 better known as Max Stirner, was a German
philosopher
 His main work is The Ego and Its Own, also
known as The Ego and His Own (Der Einzige
und sein Eigentum)
 He attended the University of Berlin, where he
studied philology, philosophy, and theology.
 He attended the lectures of Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel, who was to become a source
of inspiration for his thinking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner

 Stirner participated in discussions with a group
of young philosophers called "Die Freien" ("The
Free"), and whom historians have subsequently
categorized as the Young Hegelians.
 Some of the best known names in 19th century
literature and philosophy were involved with this
discussion group, including Bruno Bauer, Karl
Marx, and Friedrich Engels.
JOHANN KASPAR SCHMIDT

•Making the most out of life. Attaining
self-actualization.

 “Ownness” or “Self
Ownership”
- through this, the ego
sustains and empowers
personal liberty and
subjective powers

THEORY IN SOCIAL RELATIONS
 Altruism is a guised form of egoism.
Actions done for the benefit of others is in truth, actions
for self gratification.

THEORY IN SOCIAL RELATIONS
 All forms of social interactions operate
under the function of “utility”.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
 Influential German philosopher
 Often referred to as one of the first
existentialist philosophers along with Søren
Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Nietzsche's
revitalizing philosophy has inspired leading
figures in all walks of life.
Existentialism#vars!panel=134168!

 In his brilliant but relatively brief career, he
published numerous major works of philosophy,
including Twilight of the Idols and Thus Spoke
Zarathustra.
 In these works of the 1880s, Nietzsche developed
the central points of his philosophy. One of these
was his famous statement that "God is dead," a
rejection of Christianity as a meaningful force in
contemporary life.
http://www.biography.com/people/friedrich-nietzsche-9423452#literary-and-
philosophical-work-of-the-1880s
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

 The last decade of his life was spent in a state of
mental incapacitation.
 He died on August 25, 1900.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

God is dead and we are his murderers.
We are the ones creating the notion of God.

NIETZSCHE…
 Affirms a complete rejection of metaphysical and
religious truths as grounds for reality
 Contends that the spiritual dimension is illusory.
 The existence of God, afterlife and immortality are
nothing but imaginary causes.

How can the individual achieve
its highest level of affirmation in
a world void of a Divine
providence?

WILL TO POWER
 “The drive to dominate the
environment…This Will to Power is more
than simply the will to survive. It is, rather,
an inner drive to express a vigorous
affirmation of all a person’s power.”

 It allows individuals to reach their highest
potentials through the overcoming of barriers
and constraints.
 “What is happiness?
- The feeling that power increases – that a
resistance is overcome.”

MASTER MORALITY / ARISTOCRATIC
MORALITY
 Holds that good is
identified as that which
is powerful and noble
 Practitioners of this are
the noblemen – those
who determine their
morals according to their
own personal standards.

 Practiced by the lowest class in the society, the
slaves.
 “essentially the morality of utility”
 reveres weakness as a virtue while nobility and
strength as vices
SLAVE MORALITY

 Slave morality gradually became the basis of
Christianity.
 Christianity advocates virtues that promote forms of
powerlessness and self sacrifice.
SLAVE MORALITY

CRITICISM ON THE TEACHINGS OF
CHRISTIANITY
1. “Pity is hazardous to human existence.”
Pity has a depressive effect which makes one powerless.

CHRISTIANITY
1. Condemns the maxim, “Love thy enemies.”
Loving one’s enemy is not the natural instinct of
human beings.

CHRISTIANITY
The natural instinct of man is to hate his enemy.

 The virtues of Christianity as guides to survival
will only result in martyrdom and stagnation of
one’s potentials for self actualization.
 “Where the will to power is lacking there is
decline.”
 Encourages the complete liberation from the
dogmas of Christian religion.
CHRISTIANITY

CHRISTIANITY
 Revaluation of all morals
- a shift from the slave morality of the
Christian religion to the morality of the noble
aristocrats, master morality

ÜBERMENSCH
 translates to the “Overman” or the “Superman”
Nietzsche is Superman!

 The higher type of human
self reached through
freeing one’s self from
slave morality and having
the values of master
morality.
 Enables individuals to
revitalize faith in their
creative powers and this
earthly existence.
ÜBERMENSCH

 An individual who acts accordingly to the
dictates of the will to power.
ÜBERMENSCH

He lives a dangerous life!
ÜBERMENSCH

 This should not be viewed as one who is
ruthless or unguided, but an individual who
lives life according to an aesthetic
phenomenon – fusion between “Dionysian”
and “Apollonian” elements.
ÜBERMENSCH
Dionysus Apollo

DIONYSIAN ELEMENT
 Derived from the Greek
god Dionysus, the god
of fertility and wine*
 Represents the unruly
passion or ‘the instinct’
*http://www.greekmythology.com/Other_Gods/Dionysus/dionysus.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian
The Dionysian is based on chaos and
appeals to the emotions and instincts.

APOLLONIAN ELEMENT
 Derived from Apollo, the Greek god of of music, truth
and prophecy, healing, the sun and light, plague,
poetry, and more.*
 Symbolizes the ability for order and restraint, or
intelligence and rationality
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo

 The idea of the Übermensch is one who
acts according to passionate drives but at
the same time, establishes self regulation
over the instincts.
ÜBERMENSCH

 Most vital element in the Superman
 “love of one’s fate” – acceptance of this worldly life
as it is

 Martin Heidegger was born September 26th, 1889
in Messkirch, Schwarzwald, Germany.
 Heidegger’s study of classical Protestant texts
by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others led to a
spiritual crisis, the result of which was his rejection
of the religion of his youth, Roman Catholicism.
 As a lecturer at the University of Freiburg starting
in 1919, Heidegger became heir apparent to
leadership of the movement that Edmund Husserl
had founded, phenomenology.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/259513/Martin-Heidegger

 In 1933, he became a member of the Nazi Party,
and helped to institute Nazi educational and
cultural programs at Freiburg and vigorously
promoted the domestic and foreign policies of the
Nazi regime.
http://www.egs.edu/library/martin-heidegger/biography/

 Heidegger's original treatment of such themes
as human finitude, death, nothingness, and
authenticity led many to associate him with
existentialism.
 His work had a crucial influence on the French
existentialist Jean Paul Sartre.
 Heidegger died in Freiburg on May 26th, 1976.

BEING AND TIME
 Preoccupied with the metaphysical question
“What is Being?”

WHAT IS BEING?
 I order to respond to
the metaphysical
question of Being,
one must inquire
through a particular
aspect of Being, the
existing individual
self or Dasein (There
being).

DASEIN
 Portrayed as one who adopts an authentic mode
of being.
 Entails the procurement of self realization.
 Parallel to the Stirnerian Egoist and the
Nietzschean Superman

 A “being in the world”
 Self realization can only be obtained
through communion with other selves.
 When Dasein loses authenticity through an
adherence to the conditions of the human
sphere it becomes an inauthentic form of
existence, the das Man.
DASEIN

 Referred to as ‘the project towards the future’;
‘Dasein is a Being towards death.’
 Upon the awareness of death, Dasein
experiences anxiety (Angst), thus, adopts the
das Man mode of existence
 In order to reclaim the authenticity of Dasein,
one must accept that death is an inescapable
fact of human living.
DASEIN

ALBERT CAMUS
 Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria on
7th November 1913.
 In 1923, Camus was accepted into
the lycée and eventually was admitted to
the University of Algiers.
 To earn money, he took odd jobs: as a private
tutor, car parts clerk, and assistant at
the Meteorological Institute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus

 His views contributed to the rise of the
philosophy known as absurdism.
 Camus did not consider himself to be
an existentialist despite usually being classified
as one, even during his own lifetime.
ALBERT CAMUS

 Camus died on January 4, 1960 at the age of
46, in a car accident.
ALBERT CAMUS

ABSURDITY
 Camus’ philosophy centers on the belief that
life in general is fundamentally meaningless.
There’s nothing
special in life.

ABSURDITY
 Founded on his denial of God as the basic
foundation of human existence
 The individual self as the sole legitimate
authority of standards and valuations.

 Human condition/life as a “mechanical routine”
ABSURDITY

Life is meaningless because we just keep
on doing things on a daily routine on the
dictates of others.

SUICIDE
The realization of the meaninglessness of life may lead
one to commit suicide.

“IS LIFE WORTH LIVING AT ALL?”
“LIFE IS MEANINGLESS, BUT IT’S NOT POINTLESS.”

 Individual authenticity can be
sustained by embracing the futility
of human existence and to acquire
self progress by attaching value in
one’s struggle with the absurd.

JEAN PAUL SARTRE
 Sartre was born on June 21, 1905 in Paris
 In 1920s, Sartre developed interest in philosophy
while reading essay of Henri Bergson, Time and
Free Will
 He earned a doctorate in philosophy in Paris at
the École Normale Supérieure, absorbing ideas
from Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl and
Heidegger, among others.
http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/jean-paul-sartre-234.php
http://www.biography.com/people/jean-paul-sartre-9472219#early-life

 After World War II, he emerged as a politically
engaged activist.
 He published Being and Nothingness, The
Flies and No Exit, the existentialist works that would
make him a household name.
 He was an outspoken opponent of French rule in
Algeria.
 He embraced Marxism and visited Cuba, meeting with
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
 He opposed the Vietnam War and participated in a
tribunal intended to expose U.S. war crimes in 1967.
http://www.biography.com/people/jean-paul-sartre-9472219#world-war-ii-and-politics
JEAN PAUL SARTRE

JEAN PAUL SARTRE
Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre and Fidel Castro

JEAN PAUL SARTRE
Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre and Che Guevara

 In October 1964, Sartre was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature. He declined the prize,
becoming the first Nobel Laureate to do so.
 Sartre's physical condition deteriorated in the
1970s, and he became almost completely blind
in 1973. He died in Paris on April 15, 1980
http://www.biography.com/people/jean-paul-sartre-9472219#later-life-and-death
JEAN PAUL SARTRE

SARTRE
 His major work is…
 Here, he mentions that
there are two regions of
being: being in itself (en
soi) and being for itself
(pour soi)

 Being in itself (en soi)
- an un-free entity
- devoid of consciousness and is subject to the
causal laws of nature
- determinate objects of the universe
 Being for itself (pour soi)
- possesses consciousness and freedom
- existence of human being

“EXISTENCE PRECEDES
ESSENCE”
 Human beings are free
and self-determining.
 “Man exists, turns up,
appears on the scene,
and, only afterwards,
defines himself.”
 Human beings are
defined through their
own choices.

FACTICITY
 Facticity
- “facts of our existence” – birth, education,
culture, social status, etc.
These facticities are
inescapable.

FACTICITY
 Facticity
- But individuals can conquer their facticity by
choosing the meaning they have for them.

“MAN IS CONDEMNED TO BE FREE.”
We are not just
responsible for
ourselves but we
can also be
accountable for the
welfare of others.

BAD FAITH
 an individual’s state of inauthenticity
Bad Faith results from the escape of an individual from the
consequences of his decisions through excuses.

“HELL IS THE OTHER”
 Other is anyone who undermines both one’s
freedom and individuality.
 The existence of the individual is reduced
from a conscious free subject to an object
for another self.

“HELL IS THE OTHER”
When a man is caught peeping by another person, he
fells shame and thereby reduced to an object fro another
self.

CONCLUSION
 Atheistic existentialists, despite their criticisms
on the dogmas of organized religions and
human traditions, are not in favor of advocating
forms of extreme acts of lawlessness and
behaviors that are against the mode of human
conduct.
 They stress self regulation and ownership over
one’s life.
 They also claim that an authentic lifestyle
entails individual responsibility, that humans
must become highly reflective of the possible
outcomes of their desired course of action.

 They show us the value of being unique
individualized persons with creativity and
diverse modes of self actualization.
 Finally, they argue that we can achieve the
highest form of self affirmation by overcoming
the social tensions in our society. Through this,
we may gradually secure self empowerment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
 Books:
 Websites:
http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/18173/The-History-of-Existentialism
Existentialism#vars!panel=134168!
http://www.biography.com/people/friedrich-nietzsche- 9423452#literary-
and-philosophical-work-of-the-1880s
http://www.greekmythology.com/Other_Gods/Dionysus/dionysus.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/259513/Martin-Heidegger

http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/jean-paul-sartre- 234.php
http://www.biography.com/people/jean-paul-sartre-9472219#early-
life
http://www.biography.com/people/jean-paul-sartre- 9472219#world-
war-ii-and-politics
http://www.biography.com/people/jean-paul-sartre- 9472219#later-
life-and-death
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian
http://www.picgifs.com/reaction-gifs/
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Atheistic Existentialism

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Atheistic Existentialism

Similar to Atheistic Existentialism (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Atheistic Existentialism