EXISTENTIALISM

Inquiry on human existence

What gives your life
meaning?
 What is
ESSENTIALISM?
What is Essentialism?
 Way back in ancient Greece, Plato and
Aristotle took it as given that everything
has an essence.
 Essence is a certain set of core principle
that are necessary, or essential for a thing
to be what it is. It would be a different
thing those properties are missing.
What is Essentialism?
Plato and Aristotle thought that
everything has an essence---
including us. And they believe that
our essences exist before we are
even born. Our essence gives us a
purpose of how we should live our
life.
But by the mid-20th century,
French thinker Jean-Paul
Sartre to question the essence
and ask:
“What if we exist first?” What if
we’re born without any
purpose? And it is up to us to
find our own purpose.
 What is
EXISTENTIALISM?
What is Existentialism?
 Existentialism is a philosophical movement
known for its inquiry on human existence.
Anything can give your life meaning but at the
same time, none of them can.
 Existentialismis opposed to the idea that man
has a fixed nature, one has to go beyond the
claims of biology, physics, and psychology that
man is a substance with fixed properties or
subjects interacting in the world of objects.
Existence
precedes
Essence
Remember, as presented in the
preceding unit, that a human
person is characterized as a
consciousness--- as a being-for-
itself--- who has the task of
appropriating a goal because the
nothingness reveals that the being-
for-itself is a deficiency.
But aside from the concept of
nothingness from which the being-
for-itself is to contend with,
freedom is viewed as something
that arises from self-
understanding, accompanied by
the mood of anxiety.
 Why
Anxiety?
Inthe same context as the notion
of nothingness, the self is
threatened and is revealed as
vulnerable because anxiety pulls
the being-for-itself from the
projects which it has appropriated
itself with.
Anxiety teaches the being-for-itself
that it does not coincide with all
the self-identification it has
immersed itself into. You will
probably ask, “How much anxiety
threaten the being-for-itself?”
Anxiety discloses a
fundamental way to relate to
the world. And this way of
relating is the mode of
nothingness.
 Whenwe think of what we did this day,
we’re wondering why we are here? Or
when we repeat a familiar word over
and over again, then suddenly
appearing so unfamiliar. In other
words, anxiety is that when we
suddenly being unfamiliar with our
habitual way of living. Anxiety can
evoke wonder.
Martin Heidegger,
a German
philosopher and
phenomenologist,
disclosed that the
mood of anxiety
reveals the
nothing.
 Inanxiety, we say, “one feels ill at ease
[es ist einem unheimlich].” What is “it”
that makes “one” feel ill at ease? We
cannot say what it is before which one
feels ill at ease. As a whole it is so for
him. All things and we ourselves sink
into indifference. This, however, not in
the sense of mere disappearance.
 Ratherin this very receding things turn
towards us. The receding of beings as
a whole that closes in on us in anxiety
oppresses us. We can get no hold on
things. In the slipping away of being
only this “no hold on things” comes
over us and remains. Anxiety reveals
the nothing.
 Anxiety
is different from fear. Fear has
a determinate object and these
determinate objects are what
characterizes fear. And we tend to flee
things that we are afraid of. Anxiety
has a very different relation to its
objects because anxiety doesn’t have
a determinate object.
 ForHeidegger, being anxious about
“something” does not make sense. To
say that you are anxious about the
upcoming speech or about what to
course to choose in college. What we
are actually anxious about is nothing.
End of the
Discussion
References
• Crash Course Existentialism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaDvRdLMkHs

https://
www.openculture.com/2016/12/a-crash-course-in-existentialism.html

Heidegger on Anxiety and Dasein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=Lf9yoxqt9yw