Reaction Paper about Existentialism

I’m currently reading Jean Paul Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism and I’ve really been
enjoying it thus far. As I’ve had a great interest in philosophy for the longest time, I wanted to
reflect on this work and try to get across what I believe the idea of “existentialism” represents.

As we go through life, our personal worldviews are shaped from within and without. In a sort of
symbiotic relationship, the individual and the whole of society mold each others perceptions and
beliefs about the world at large.

Often times, signals get crossed because every individual derives for him or herself a different
point-of-view, which in turn clouds the perception of society as a whole. A question we ought to
ask ourselves is “How do we know what’s best for society when we only have a basic
understanding of ourselves as individuals?” This is a question that the idea of existentialism
seeks to find out.

Existentialism is the idea that “existence precedes essence” and that we as humans are
responsible for charting the path we take in this life, rather than outside forces like fate or
destiny. It is often thought of as being a sort of tragic, defeatist mindset, when it actually argues
the opposite case. Instead of arguing that we as humans have nothing to hope for without the
help of divine intervention and miracles, it rather encourages us to make the best of what we
have in this life and to continue building on the foundation that we have thus established.

Sartre writes an interesting point in his lecture:

“What we mean to say is that a man is nothing but a series of enterprises, and that he is the sum,
organization, and aggregate of the relations that constitute such enterprises.”

Correct me if I’m wrong of course, but what I get from this is that we as humans define ourselves
by what we are able to accomplish and by refining the achievements of the past, thereby adding
to the sum of all of our individual parts. We have thousands of years to show for both the failures
and accomplishments of mankind, with many more years to follow, and it’s on that level that we
make a name for the human race as a whole.

In a way, it’s arguing that we are more liberated by not being tied to the expectations of the
supernatural, but by our own standards instead; we are responsible for what we do alone. But
perhaps many of us desire that link to some higher power in order to lift a mental weight off our
shoulders and diffuse responsibility to another force because of the guilt we feel about the
mistakes we’ve made. On the other hand, this allows us to give credit where credit is due
whenever we have achieved great things that benefit the rest of the human race, so it can be
considered a bit of a toss-up philosophically speaking.
PaperThroughout this philosophy course many views on human nature were discussed. We
started from ancient Greece and we were introduced to Eastern philosophies of Buddhism and
Hinduism. We proceeded to compare it with religious elements of Christianity and Judaism.
Nowwe have just finished analyzing the very last part of this class – existentialism. Considering
the fact that so many things have been already proposed and said before, it might seem highly
challenging to actually come up with any new ideology. However, existentialists such as Soren
Aabye Kierkegaard or Jean-Paul Satre proved it easy by expressing the problems of
contemporary society describing them universally, so that most of us may be able to relate to
them. In fact, the Existential Theory of Human Nature is the one that appeals to me the most. It is
not only a perfect synthesis of the previously learned theories, which I found most useful, but
also a sort of a bitter-sweet response to all of the previous theories. In my opinion, existentialists
were the most accurate in captioning the problems of a person like me or my young college
peers.

Some may say that their approach was too generalized and rhetorical. Surprisingly, it strictly
uncovered some facts about life, which were not obvious before. Their approach made them
universal, yet left plenty of room for people to “customize” it according to their relative natures.
To gain knowledge is the tool for being happy. This is the theory of one of my favorite ancient
Greek philosophers, Aristotle. Happiness is everyone’s ultimate goal, the only thing goodin
itself. However, only a person with a great wisdom can experience the happiness fully and
consciously. The father of existentialism, Kierkegaard, seemed to carefully follow the idea of
Subscribe to view the full document. Subscribe to Unlock Aristotle – he accomplished
impressive results in his education, earning degrees from many universities. He did massive
researches on the philosophical issues regarding human’s perceptionof reality. He published
numerous best-selling books remaining humble by being anonymous. How interesting it is that
he drew exactly opposite conclusions from Aristotle! Despite all of the research he did and all of
the literature he read, the more he knew, the more he realized how littlesense it all makes. He
still had not found any particular conclusion about life, any specific reasonor secret to people’s
existence. Just like Socrates – he only knew for sure that he knew nothing.

Like Sartre, I had a strong suspicion that many people ran to religion and other givers of values
as a way to avoid the very hard task of taking responsibility to create their own values in a
valueless world. That was the real beginning of my own personal version of existentialism.
However, there is serious logical tension inside existentialism. One arrives at the negation of
(objective) values, yet the impossibility of not choosing values when one acts. One does
CHOOSE and those choices have consequences. The position gives the starting point for the
individual to begin to act existentially, but no one’s choices are the “right” ones, since “right”
used in that sense of “right for all” doesn’t exist. Sartre was a great one for me to be reading. His
choice of values was extraordinarily different from mine. I was drawn to many of the values
within a rather traditional Christian social morality: respect other people, treat people fairly, help
those in need and so on. However, I didn’t think those things were good (for me) because the
church or Bible or Jesus told me. I just thought they made very good sense in creating a world I
would want to live in. Sartre seemed to me very worried about being co-opted by standard social
values, and I understand that very clearly. I understood why he would be very suspicious of
tradition and it’s power over many extradinary.

It indeed is a danger and it does take rather strong courage to create and follow one’s own
values without bowing down to the pressures of the external world. I think that once I discovered
this sort of starting point for my own existentialism, I next got a great deal of help from Martin
Heidegger’s BEING AND TIME and then the methods of Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl
(which I learned via Heidegger before reading Husserl himself). Heidegger warned of the
dangers of being untrue to oneself. However, there is a sort of confusion within the typical
language for this in both French and English. Our word “authentic” (the French is about the
same), clearly has the hidden notion of being better. An “authentic” painting, or document or
food stuff or whatever, is almost always taken to be “better” than a “non-authentic” thing. But if
one is to choose something because it is “authentic” one is sort of caught in a circle. It will be
what some OTHERS have defined as authentic and then one must know whether or not they are
right. I was deeply moved by Heidegger’s analysis of the concept of being-one’s-own-self in
Being and Time. Such a hyphenated notion is neither standard in English nor was his German
word for it standard German. He was trying to express something not normally expressed in
language. Heidegger thought he had to alter normal language to try to find a way to convey his
concept. However, artificial or technical it may be, it does seem to convey an important
philosophical concept. There seems to me a huge difference in meaning between: Authentic and
non-authentic and Being-one’s-own-self and not-being-one’s-own-self The first connotes value,
which shouldn’t be there in an existential analysis, and being-one’s-own-self connotes the notion
of choosing one’s own world – which is the existential concept. It was an easier notion for me in
helping me realize I was always to be choosing not the authentic over the non-authentic (who
determines which is which?) rather than being-one’s-own-self or not-being-one’s-own-self. This
is the self, choosing for the self alone. The notion was just richer and clearer for me and helped
me move forward. It also kept before me the huge responsibility I had to create my own life in an
absurd world – i.e. a world without objective values. However, the next problem was one of
knowledge. How was one to know what was one’s own values? What sorts of considerations
does one make? There is a simply huge literature of value theory or ethics in philosophy, and
much of it is extremely valuable and useful in making these critical decisions of who am I to be,
who am I to make myself into, especially if I don’t think values are objective. But that’s the rub.
The bulk of the history of moral philosophy are arguments to defend the case for absolute or
known moral truths, not on the basis of authority or religion or revealed texts and such, but on
the basis of reason alone. However, while certainly not yet having any profound knowledge of
all those challenging systems, I was fairly convinced I just wasn’t going to find knowable
systems of true values. If that was the case how was I to choose? This was where Edmund
Husserl’s method of phenomenology came in. Husserl wanted to create a method of science, as
he saw it, that would allow us to attend to the objects themselves which we encounter in the
world, and the processes (interactions – with people as well as other beings and objects) to get
some clearer sense of not what should be, but what actually is, given to our experience of an
object or process.

I have been what I would call a “practicing atheistic existentialist” for about 50 years now. My
life, like a huge number of self-proclaimed existentialists, has been dominated by the search for
values, and the attempt to bring my acts and life into close conformity with my values. I think I
am more typical of practicing existentialists than not. This near obsession with trying to bring a
stated and pronounced set of values into conformity with our actions in the world puts us in a
very similar camp of those religious believers who took their religion so seriously that they
would have described themselves as seeking to be saints. After all, what is a saint if not one who
has worked hard to bring his or her life actions into sync with his or her values in a conscious
manner? To the issue: well, Corbett – what are your values? In an important sense, in relation to
existentialism, this is a rather irrelevant question. Again, existentialism is a theory of how to live
one’s own life. One does not have a list of “accepted” or “canonical” values. Rather, the task is
to take one’s life seriously and create one’s values by living them in one’s everyday world,
changing as the conditions of one’s life leads one to change. It’s a process of becoming. I
continue to “become.” I continue to change. I continue to be aware of the gaps between what I
would state as my values and meanings of human existence and how I live. I am my existence,
my process, my becoming. Once I am “finished” living, i.e. dead, then my essence can be
described. I will be what I have done, the sum of all my acts. So I continue on with my process
of becoming, serious about human existence and the hard questions of how should I live in the
world and why this way rather than that. I have no authorities at all. I have people whose lives,
models and writings I have learned from, some I even admire and have chosen to try to make
their model something I want to incorporate into my life. Not because it was theirs, but because
the vision they brought to my attention has made sense to ME. But it has become my value by
my choice and by my actions. This struggle to create myself, my values, and bring my life closer
and closer to a model I can confirm NOW, even though I may change next week – this is the
essence for me, of living existentialism.

Some would argue that existentialism is “encouraging people to remain in a state of quietism and
despair” (Sartre, 17). Others argue that existentialism exposes “all that is sordid, suspicious or
base, while ignoring beauty and the brighter side of human nature” (Sartre, 17). Christians and
other religious groups have also reproached existentialism. A philosopher by the name of Jean-
Paul Sartre defended existentialism during his lecture at “Club Now” in October of 1945. This
lecture was translated into a book entitled Existentialism Is a Humanism. Based upon the
arguments presented by Sartre, I do not believe that existentialism encourages people to be in
negative states or ignores the brighter side of human nature. Many people may criticize
existentialism because humans have difficulty accepting that we determine who we are despite
our limitations. Generally speaking, humans do not like to take the blame for anything that
happens. We always seem to come up with excuses for why we act in certain ways. I think that
existentialism represents a realistic view of life. There is a basic principle to existentialism. This
principle states that even with all of the limitations that humans are presented with, we are forced
to make choices and we are responsible for ourselves as well as everybody else. Sartre explains
that the basic principle of existentialism is that existence precedes essence. Existence precedes
essence only for human beings. “A man is nothing but a series of enterprises, and that he is the
sum, organization and aggregate of the relations that constitute such enterprises” (Sartre, 38).
Essentially, human beings are nothing other than what they make of themselves. For example, I
cannot claim that I am brave because I want to be. I need to choose to be brave and prove that I
am through my actions and choices. Only then I can say that I am a brave person. Existence
precedes essence also means that every human being is solely responsible for their actions
because we choose who we are. Humans are born as “nothing” and then become who they are
through their choices and actions. Sartre noted that there is no basis for making these choices; we
just have to make them.

Humans do not have a set purpose because we spend our lives creating who we want to be. We
create who we are through our choices and actions. Humans are nothing more or less than what
they make themselves to be. People who criticize existentialism may claim that we cannot
choose who we are because there are certain aspects of life that every human is born with and
cannot control. For example, we cannot control the fact that humans are going to eat, sleep,
breathe and die. We also have no control over our culture, class, age or family history. Sartre
classifies these limitations as the human condition. Although this human condition exists for
everybody, we cannot say that it prevents us from making choices. We are forced to make
decisions every day that we are alive. “What never varies is the necessity for him to be in the
world, to work in it, to live out his life among others” (Sartre, 42). Sartre believes that these
limitations do not fully determine who we are. Humans get to choose how to react to these
limitations. Some may claim that they “do not choose” how to react to these limitations; they just
deal with it. However, by not choosing to react to these limitations, the person is still making a
choice.

The human condition exists for everyone who is alive. Humans are incapable of changing
things such as their: heritage, family history, age or height. Despite the fact that we cannot
change all limitations, we can certainly react to them. “What is impossible is not to choose. I can
always choose, but I must realize that if I decide not to choose, that still constitutes a choice”
(Sartre, 44). For example, I was born a female. I had no control over being born as a female. I
can either accept and live my life as a female or get a sex change. Either way, I am making a
choice on how to react to my limitations. The human condition may be a set of limitations that
humans have no control over. Even so, humans are constantly making a choice to react to these
limitations or choosing to not react. Humans are forced to always make choices. By making
choices, each individual becomes responsible for everyone else. “In creating the man each of us
wills ourselves to be, there is not a single one of our actions that does not at the same time create
an image of man as we think he ought to be” (Sartre, 24). By choosing ourselves, we are creating
an image of what human beings should be. Thus, each person becomes responsible for all other
human beings. As a result, every human being has influence over everybody else. In addition,
every single person is a leader. For example, if I skip class because I do not feel like going to
class, I am creating an image. I have an image that other people should not go to class when they
do not feel like it.