Lecture on Existentialism

1. ANDREW WYETH
Christina’s World (1948)
Acomplex philosophy
emphasizing the
absurdity of reality
and the human
responsibility to make
choices and accept
consequences!

2. GEORGIO DE CHIRICO
Love Song
It was during the
Second World War,
when Europe found
itself in a crisis
faced with death and
destruction, that the
existential
movement began to
flourish, popularized
in France in the
1940s…

3. MARK ROTHKO
Untitled (1968)
Big Ideas of Existentialism
Despite encompassing a
huge range of philosophical,
religious, and political
ideologies, the underlying
concepts of existentialism
are simple…

4. Existence Precedes Essence
Cogito ergo sum.
Existentialism is the title of the set of philosophical ideals
that emphasize the existence of the human being, the lack
of meaning and purpose in life, and the solitude of human
existence… “Existence precedes essence” implies that
the human being has no essence (no essential self).
See: “Existentialism and Human Emotions” by Sartre,
example of the paper-cutter (p2)

5. ESSENCE
 Essence– general components that exist
before a thing does—created to serve the
purpose of “the creator”.
 EXAMPLE– A carpenter wants to build a
bed. He knows the essence (wood
frames, legs, etc.) of a bed before the
concrete bed exists. It must exist in his
mind first.

7. Objects/ human subjects
 In the world of objects, the essence comes first.
In the world of human subjects, it is different.
 MAN IS THE ONLY BEING THAT HAS
INTELLIGENCE TO CONCIEVE OF AN ESSENCE.
 He exists (physically) before any consciousness
of himself.
 HE CAN ONLY FORM THE ESSENCE OF HIMSELF
AFTER HE EXISTS

8. A) Existence precedes essence (hence the name
“existentialism”): there are no or pre-existing conditions that
guide or determine man’s behavior or essence.
B) Leads to the “absurd condition”  man seeks meaning in a
meaningless world (universe unconscious of our existence).
C) Man is condemned to be free. Leads to modern despair
from man’s overwhelming sense of responsibility and
recognition of his fundamental aloneness in an indifferent
universe.
D) The artist/existentialist achieves meaningful happiness by
facing the pain and still affirming life.

10. Let’s give it a try! Journal Time!

11. Choice and Commitment
• Humans have freedom to choose
• Each individual makes choices that
create his or her own nature
• Because we choose, we must accept risk
and responsibility for wherever our
commitments take us
• “Ahuman being is absolutely free and absolutely responsible.Anguish is
the result.” –Jean-Paul Sartre
• Example: Sartre’s Spanish Civil War story (Friesian.com link)

12. Some Famous
Existentialists
• Søren Kierkegaard
(1813-1855)
• Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900)
• Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-
1980)
• Albert Camus (1913-
1960)
“Awoman is not born…she
is created.”
de Beauvoir’s most famous text is
The Second Sex (1949), which some
claim is the basis for current
gender studies…

13. All existentialists are concerned with the study of being or
ontology.
TO REVIEW: An existentialist believes that a person’s life
is nothing but the sum of the life he has shaped for himself.
At every moment it is always his own free will choosing
how to act. He is responsible for his actions, which limit
future actions. Thus, he must create a morality in the
absence of any known predetermined absolute values.
God does not figure into the equation, because even if God
does exist, He does not reveal to men the meaning of their
lives. Honesty with oneself is the most important value.
Every decision must be weighed in light of all the
consequences of that action…
Life is absurd, but we engage it!

14. Edward Hopper “New York Movie” (1939)

15. Human Subjectivity
It is impossible to transcend
human subjectivity.
“I will be what I choose to be…”
“There are no true connections
between people…”
My emotions are yet another
choice I make. I am responsible
for them.
Edward Hopper “New York Movie” (1939)

16. GEORGIAO’KEEFFE
Sky Above White Clouds I (1962)
Human existence cannot be captured by
reason or objectivity –– it must include
passion, emotion and the subjective…
Each of us is responsible for
everything and to every
human being.
–Simone de Beauvoir

17. Subjectivity vs. Objectivity
 In reason, subjectivity refers to the property
of perceptions, arguments, and language as
being based in a subject's point of view, and
hence influenced in accordance with a particular
bias.
 As I Lay Dying presents a world that is
completely subjective (if you rule out Faulkner
ordering the chapters and choosing the
speakers)

18. Objectivity
 Subjectivity’s opposite property is
objectivity, which refers to such as based
in a separate, distant, and unbiased point
of view, such that concepts discussed are
treated as objects.

19.  In philosophy, subjectivity refers to the specific
discerning interpretations of any aspect of
experiences. They are unique to the person
experiencing them, the qualia that are only
available to that person's consciousness.
 Though the causes of experience are thought
to be objective and available to everyone,
(such as the wavelength of a specific beam of
light), experiences themselves are only
available to the person experiencing them (the
quality of the color itself).

20.  In philosophy, an objective fact means a truth that
remains true everywhere, independently of human
thought or feelings. For instance, it is true always and
everywhere that '2 and 2 make 4'.
 A subjective fact is a truth that is only true in certain
times, places or people. For instance, 'That painting is
good' may be true for someone who likes it, but it is
not necessarily true that it is a good painting pure and
simple, and remains so always no matter what people
think of it.
 If the painting could claim this, someone who thought
the painting was bad would be completely wrong, in
the same way someone who says the sun goes
around the earth is wrong. So the reliability of
mathematics is an objective truth, whereas the beauty
of paintings is probably a subjective one

21. MAN RAY
Les Larmes (Tears)
Dread and Anxiety

22. Dread and Anxiety
• Dread is a feeling of general
apprehension. Kierkegaard interpreted it
as God’s way of calling each individual to
make a commitment to a personally valid
way of life.
• Anxiety stems from our understanding
and recognition of the total freedom of
choice that confronts us every moment,
and the individual’s confrontation with
nothingness.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE3OYSVpycY

23. Responsibility
• But accepting such total responsibility entails a profound
alteration of my attitude towards life. Sharing in the
awesome business of determining the future development
of humanity generally through the particular decisions I
make for myself produces an overwhelming sense
of anguish. Moreover, since there is no external authority
to which I can turn in an effort to escape my duty in this
regard, I am bound to feel abandonment as well. Finally,
since I repeatedly experience evidence that my own
powers are inadequate to the task, I am driven to despair.
There can be no relief, no help, no hope. Human life
demands total commitment to a path whose significance
will always remain open to doubt

24. No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre

25. Second
Empire
 Second Empire is an
architectural style that
was popular during the
Victorian era, reaching
its zenith between 1865
and 1880, and so named
for the “French”
elements in vogue
during the era of the
Second French Empire.

26. Bad Faith
When individuals negate their true nature in an
attempt to become a self they are not.
The classic example is Sartre's waiter who is
always just slightly too friendly, too helpful, too
willing to play the part of a waiter rather than
being the less friendly, helpful and waiter-like self
he would be if he were not assuming the identity
of "waiter."
In assuming the role of "waiter," Sartre's character has
negated himself by denying his authentic ego with all its
characteristics not becoming of a waiter.

27. Bad Faith …
 In social situations we
play a part that is not
ourselves.
 If we passively
become that part, we
are thereby avoiding
the important
decisions and choices
by which personality
should be formed

28. Bad Faith
When the picture a man has of
himself is provided by those who
see him, in the distorted image of
himself that they give back to
him, he has rejected what the
philosopher has called reality. He
has, moreover, rejected the
possibility of projecting himself
into his future and existing in the
fullest sense.

29. The mere appearance of another
person causes one to look at
him/herself as an object, and see
his/her world as it appears to the
other.
This is not done from a specific
location outside oneself, it is non-
positional. This is a recognition of
the subjectivity in others.

30. • Sartre describes being alone in a park, at this time,
all relations in the park (e.g. the bench is between
two trees) are available, accessible and occurring-for
him.
• When another person arrives in the park, there is
now a relation between that person and the bench,
and this is not entirely available to him. The relation
is presented as an object (e.g. man glances at
watch), but is really not an object, it cannot be
known. It flees from him. The other person is a
"drainhole" in the world, they disintegrate the
relations of which Sartre was earlier the absolute
centre.

31.  Another of Sartre’s examples involves a young woman
on a first date. She ignores the obvious sexual
implications of her date's compliments to her physical
appearance, but accepts them instead as words directed
at her as a human consciousness. As he takes her hand,
she lets it rest indifferently in his, refusing either to
return the gesture or to rebuke it. Thus she delays the
moment when she must choose to either acknowledge
and reject his advances, or submit to them. She
conveniently considers her hand only a thing in the
world, and his compliments as unrelated to her body,
playing on her dual human reality as a physical being,
and as a consciousness separate and free from this
physicality.

32. Bad Faith
It is also a key aspect of living in bad faith
to allow others to define or help define our
choices or ourselves.
 Am I a good person? A hard worker?
Some subjective aspects of self: How good
looking are you? How smart are you? Are
you funny?

33.  MORALITY AND ETHICS
 One of the most important implications of bad
faith is the abolition of traditional ethics and
morality.
 Because being a moral person requires one to
deny authentic impulses and change one's
actions based on the will of a person other than
oneself, being a moral person is one of the
most severe forms of bad faith.

34. Remember this
weirdness?
Louis H. Leiter saw in the tale a cogent argument
for existentialism:
"A Country Doctor" comments on man, who,
buffeted by the scheme of things, is unable to
transcend the part assigned him by the absurdity
of that existence. Because he does not lack
conscious knowledge of his condition, but refuses
to act in the face of his portentous freedom, the
doctor, an archetype of the anti-existential hero,
deserves his fate. Lacking the human stuff
necessary to create and structure situations, he
permits himself to be manipulated by the groom,
the family, and the horses; but he becomes, by
submitting, a tool within the situations they create.
Never, consciously, does he attempt through an
overt act, until too late, to establish his own
essence, to rise above any manipulative value he
possesses for others. As doctor he is a thing, an
object, a tool; as man he is nothing.

35. Nietzsche and Nihilism
“Every belief, every considering
something-true is necessarily
false because there is simply no
true world. Nihilism is…not
only the belief that everything
deserves to perish; but one
actually puts one’s shoulder to
the plow; one destroys. For
some time now our whole
European culture has been
moving as toward a catastrophe,
with a tortured tension that is
growing from decade to decade:
restlessly, violently, headlong,
like a river that wants to reach
the end…” (Will to Power)
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth

36. Absurdism
• The belief nothing can explain or
rationalize human existence.
• There is no answer to “Why am I?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u2ZsoYWwJA
• Humans exist in a meaningless, irrational
universe and any search for order will
bring them into direct conflict with this
universe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYZsApGC0BE
• Key Text—The Stranger, specifically, the trial.

37. “You will never be happy if
you continue to search for
what happiness consists of.
You will never live if you are
looking for the meaning of
life.”
“It was previously a question of finding out
whether or not life had to have a meaning to be
lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that
it will be lived all the better if it has no
meaning.”

38. EDVARD MUNCH
Night in Saint Cloud (1890)
Nothingness and Death

39. • Death hangs over all of us. Our
awareness of it can bring freedom or
anguish.
• I am my own existence. Nothing structures
my world.
• “Nothingness is our inherent lack of self. We are in
constant pursuit of a self. Nothingness is the creative
well-spring from which all human possibilities can be
realized.” –Jean-Paul Sartre
• See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkAPW5Iq6hM
Nothingness and Death

40. EDGAR DEGAS
“L’absinthe” (1876)
Alienation or
Estrangement
• From all other
humans
• From human
institutions
• From the past
• From the future
• We only exist right now,
right here…

41. L’Étranger (The Stranger or The
Outsider)
• Written by Albert Camus in 1942

42. Albert Camus dissociated himself
from the existentialists but
acknowledged man’s lonely condition
in the universe. His “man of the
absurd” (or absurd hero) rejects
despair and commits himself to the
anguish and responsibility of living as
best he can.
Basically, man creates himself through the choices he makes.
There are no guides for these choices, but he has to make them
anyway, which renders life absurd…

43. The ABSURD WORLD
 Conspicuous in its lack of logic,
consistency, coherence, intelligibility, and
realism, the literature of the absurd
depicts the anguish, forlornness, and
despair inherent in the human condition.
 Counter to the rationalist assumptions of
traditional humanism, absurdism denies
the existence of universal truth or value.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U1-OmAICpU

45. Camus’ absurd world
• The world of values is never predictable nor
controllable.
• A gap exists between man’s intellectual
constructs (meaning) and the universe
(reality).
• He cannot justify new values by appeal to
convention. “Americans have always
valued free speech.”

46. Relation to Sartre
• Conditions (social constructs) hem him in,
isolating him from the world in a way that
cats and stones are not isolated.
• Human– being for itself
• Cat, stone– being of itself

47. Meursault (page 65-67)
• Does not analyze himself-- No thoughts or
concerns for past or future
– Future cannot be predicted or planned for—this
life is as good as any
– The world is Absurd and planning for it is
pointless (“Want to make God laugh? Make a
plan”)

48. Regret, guilt, remorse
• Does not analyze himself- They are based
on values outside of your own
– They are for others (can you feel regret without
thinking of others?)
– These feelings distract from the moment

49. Afterlife, God, spirituality
(67-69, 101-104, 118-121)
• He does not bother to imagine an afterlife or
God—focus on this life
• Spirituality is supposed to add something to
this world (the chaplain asks if when he
stares at a stone he sees the sorrows of
others or the face of God. Meursault sees a
stone.)

50. Relation to Sartre (p123)
• Conditions (social constructs) hem him in,
isolating him from the world in a way that
cats and stones are not isolated.
• Alienation

51. Existential Riddles(from The New Yorker. Yes,
The New Yorker.
• A farmer has to transport a fox, a chicken,
and a sack of corn across a river. She can
carry only one item at a time. If left
together, the fox will eat the chicken, and
the chicken will eat the corn. How does the
farmer do it?

52. • The farmer begins by carrying the chicken across
the river. But, as she does so, she notices her
reflection in the water. She can barely recognize
the person staring back at her, holding a chicken.
“What’s happened to me?” she asks herself. She
hasn’t picked up a paintbrush in more than a year.
Now she’s carrying farm animals and sacks of
grain across rivers. Is this why she spent two years
at RISD?

53. • A man sees a boat that is full of people. And
yet there isn’t a single person on the boat.
How is this possible?

54. • Everyone on the boat is married, so there isn’t one single person on the
boat.
• The man wonders if it’s legal for a transportation system to
discriminate against unmarried people. It doesn’t seem legal, but
maybe maritime laws are different? Perhaps if things had ended
differently with Heather, the man would be on the boat, too. He laughs
sadly to himself. He was always single, even when he was with
Heather. Love is an illusion. There are no purely unselfish actions.
Heather and Dale deserve each other.