ANDREW WYETH

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EXISTENTIALISM
A complex philosophy emphasizing the absurdity of
reality and the human responsibility to make
choices and accept consequences!
ANDREW WYETH Christinas World (1948)
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Philosophia Love of Wisdom

• Metaphysics/Ontology study of reality
  (existence, time, causation), nature of being,
  becoming, existence, or reality (what makes a
  human human)
• Epistemology study of knowledge
• Logic study of the principles of reasoning
• Ethics study of what is the right way to live
  and right way to act (morals)
• Aesthetics study of beauty

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Introduction to Existentialism

• My 12th grade philosophy teacher, Ray Linn,
  introduced it to me (and Ms. Weiss) like this
• I remember watching the movie, the Thorn Birds
  on tv once and after seeing the priest die, I
  asked myself the question, If were all going to
  die, then what is my purpose in life? Why do I
  exist? One time or another we have all
  questions our existence. I think my purpose in
  life is to reproduce.

4
Historical Foundations

• Mid-19th century many thinkers tried to answer
  the unanswerable questions of What is the
  purpose of life?
• Begin questioning human existence as a result of
  social conditions of the time, namely the
  industrial revolution.
• Industrialization (people living by the clock),
  modernization (working to be able to meet their
  growing desire for material goods and technology)
  and secularization (turn away from religion)
  cause miserable conditions
• Miserable conditions of the Industrial
  Revolution of the 1800slead to people doubting
  their lives
• Note people are still Christian, but religion is
  no longer at the forefront of daily life and
  societal functioning.

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Friedrich Nietzsche

• German philosopher, poet, composer cultural
  critic
• Franco-Prussian War (German unification), brutish
  German Nationalism, anti-semitism
• Father dies at age 5, brother dies as an infant
• Radical questioning of truth, crisis in values
  institutions (G-d is dead The Gay Science 1882)
• Deemed insane by many during his life, taken
  seriously decades later
• Influences rise of existentialism in 1940s

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Neitzsche in a Nutshell

• Provides secularized answer to human existence
• Claims humans need to take responsibility for
  their lives and their actions.
• He declares that humans should create life on the
  level of an artist
• He advocates confidence to overcome what is
  lacking in oneself
• He claims one needs to conquer what they lack and
  can be done utilizing four qualities
• 1. cheerfulness go out with a sense of
  motivation
• 2. Patience dont focus on yourself all of the
  time
• 3. unpretentiousness strong people are not
  gaudy
• 4. contempt for true vanities

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Nietzsche Continued.

• Everything is based on chance (genetic makeup,
  wealth, appearance)
• There is no one particular self, there are many
  possibilities
• Believes most people are weak and do not take
  responsibility for their decisions in life
• There must be a process of becoming. This
  occurs through process of creating which comes
  from a life of self-examination.
• One must questions suffering, but ultimately
  accept it as part of the human condition.
• Man exists as a will to power.

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Almost a century later, during the Second World
War, when Europe found itself in a crisis faced
with death and destruction, that the existential
movement started by Nietzsche began to flourish.
It was popularized in France in the 1940s.
GEORGIO DE CHIRICO Love Song
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Big Ideas of Existentialism
Despite encompassing a huge range of
philosophical, religious, and political
ideologies, the underlying concepts of
existentialism are simple
MARK ROTHKO Untitled (1968)
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Cogito ergo sum.
Existence Precedes Essence

• Emphasizes the existence of the human being, the
  lack of meaning and purpose in life, and the
  solitude of human existence.
• Who we are is not genetically predetermined.
• The human being has no no essential self.
• Man is a conscious subject, rather than a thing
  to be predicted or manipulated
• Exists as a conscious being and not in accordance
  with any definition, generalization or system.
• I am nothing else but my own conscious
  existence.

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Absurdism

• The belief that nothing can explain or
  rationalize human existence.
• There is no answer to Why am I?
• Each of us is here, thrown into time and place,
  but why now?
• Humans exist in a meaningless, irrational
  universe and any search for order will bring them
  into direct conflict with this universe.
• World is chaotic with no inherent plan or
  blueprint

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Anxiety
MAN RAY Les Larmes (Tears)
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Anxiety Anguish

• Generalized uneasiness, fear or dread
• Anxiety is the result of human understanding and
  recognition of absurdity.
• The absence of any plan or socially defined self,
  and the existence of total freedom of choice,
  leads to anxiety.
• Universal condition of human existence
• My total freedom is also my total responsibility
  to define the meaning of my situation in the
  world.

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Alienation
EDGAR DEGAS Labsinthe (1876)
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Alienation

• Alienated from
• The self
• Nature (result of science)
• Product of labor (result of factory model which
  has turned human into mechanical component)
• Human institutions (government, politics,
  religion, corporations etc.) we do not feel
  like we are a apart of them and do not understand
  how they work
• From history ( no sense of our roots creating a
  meaningful past) present and future
• the Other (all family, social and work
  relations)
• Alienation dominates love

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Then How is Meaning Created and the Self Defined?

• THE OTHERda da dum
• Those different from us
• Oppress through language (desire to be at the
  top, use language to put down others and gain
  status)
• Functions in 2 ways
• Awareness that in an absurd world we are always
  being judged, thus we are the other. As we want
  to avoid feel like this we
• Further alienate others as a way to define the
  self, by feeling superior to the other. If
  you are bad then I am good, thus not bad
  mentality
• NazisJews (etc.), Slave/Master, Savage/all
  other teachers
• Read The Painted Bird analysis

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Human Subjectivity
I will be what I choose to be. It is impossible
to transcend human subjectivity. My emotions are
yet another choice I make. I am responsible for
them.
Edward Hopper New York Movie (1939)
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Nothingness
EDVARD MUNCH Night in Saint Cloud (1890)
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Nothingness

• 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
• Nothingness results when no essence defines me
  and I reject all structures that seek.
• I am my own existence, but when I have stripped
  away all structures of knowledge, moral values
  and human relationship, I stand in anguish in an
  existence of nothingness.

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Death

• Death is always present
• Hangs over me like a sword
• The unaware person tries to live as if death is
  not actual, he tries to escape reality.
• Argument 1 (Heidegger)
• Death is the most authentic, Significant human
  experience
• If one acknowledges and accepts death they are
  free to escape anxiety and become themselves.
• Argument 2(Sartre)
• Death is as absurd as birth
• It is the ultimate nothingness wiping on my
  conscious being
• Death is another example of the absurdity of
  existence

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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.
• A human being is absolutely free and absolutely
  responsible. Anguish is the result. Jean-Paul
  Sartre

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• All existentialists are concerned with the study
  of being or ontology.
• TO REVIEW
• An existentialist believes that a persons 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.
• Life is absurd, but we engage it!

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Some Famous Existentialists

• Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
• Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
• Albert Camus (1913-1960)
• Fraz Kafka (1883-1924)

A woman is not bornshe is created. de
Beauvoirs most famous text is The Second Sex
(1949), which some claim is the basis for current
gender studies.
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Franz Kafka

• Born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish
  family in Prague, then part of the
  Austro-Hungarian Empire
• Both parents were absent from the home with Julie
  Kafka working as many as 12 hours each day
  helping to manage the family business.
  Consequently, Kafka's childhood was somewhat
  lonely and the children were largely reared by a
  series of governesses and servants. Complicated
  and troubled relationship with his father that
  had a major impact on his writing
• Conflicted over his Jewishness and felt it had
  little to do with him
• Drafted to WWI but got a deferment by his work

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The Metamorphosis

• Published 1915 (significance of date?)
• Work deals with themes of alienation, physical
  and psychological brutality, parentchild
  conflict, characters on a terrifying quest,
  mystical transformations (absurdity) and the
  function of the other
• As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy
  dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed
  into a gigantic insect-like creature.

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Albert Camus

• French author, journalist and philosopher
• Born in French Algeria (French colony in Northern
  Africa)
• Father died in Battle of Marne in WWI
• In 1934 marries a morphine addict, divorce due to
  infidelity
• Marries again, but argues that the institution
  of marriage is unnatural
• Joins French resistance against the Nazis during
  WWII
• Won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957

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The Stranger (1942) Albert Camus dissociated
himself from the existentialists but acknowledged
mans 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.
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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.