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Eksistensialisme
Dari Wikipedia Indonesia, ensiklopedia bebas berbahasa
Indonesia.
e-link: http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eksistensialisme

Eksistensialisme adalah aliran filsafat yg pahamnya
berpusat pada manusia individu yang bertanggung jawab
atas kemauannya yang bebas tanpa memikirkan secara
mendalam mana yang benar dan mana yang tidak benar.
Sebenarnya bukannya tidak mengetahui mana yang benar
dan mana yang tidak benar, tetapi seorang
eksistensialis sadar bahwa kebenaran bersifat relatif,
dan karenanya masing-masing individu bebas menentukan
sesuatu yang menurutnya benar.

Eksistensialisme adalah salah satu aliran besar dalam
filsafat, khususnya tradisi filsafat Barat.
Eksistensialisme mempersoalkan keber-Ada-an manusia,
dan keber-Ada-an itu dihadirkan lewat kebebasan.
Pertanyaan utama yang berhubungan dengan
eksistensialisme adalah melulu soal kebebasan. Apakah
kebebasan itu? bagaimanakah manusia yang bebas itu?
dan sesuai dengan doktrin utamanya yaitu kebebasan,
eksistensialisme menolak mentah-mentah bentuk
determinasi terhadap kebebasan kecuali kebebasan itu
sendiri.

Dalam studi sekolahan filsafat eksistensialisme paling
dikenal hadir lewat Jean-Paul Sartre, yang terkenal
dengan diktumnya "human is condemned to be free",
manusia dikutuk untuk bebas, maka dengan kebebasannya
itulah kemudian manusia bertindak. Pertanyaan yang
paling sering muncul sebagai derivasi kebebasan
eksistensialis adalah, sejauh mana kebebasan tersebut
bebas? atau "dalam istilah orde baru", apakah
eksistensialisme mengenal "kebebasan yang bertanggung
jawab"? Bagi eksistensialis, ketika kebebasan adalah
satu-satunya universalitas manusia, maka batasan dari
kebebasan dari setiap individu adalah kebebasan
individu lain.

Namun, menjadi eksistensialis, bukan melulu harus
menjadi seorang yang lain-daripada-yang-lain, sadar
bahwa keberadaan dunia merupakan sesuatu yang berada
diluar kendali manusia, tetapi bukan membuat sesuatu
yang unik ataupun yang baru yang menjadi esensi dari
eksistensialisme. Membuat sebuah pilihan atas dasar
keinginan sendiri, dan sadar akan tanggung jawabnya
dimasa depan adalah inti dari eksistensialisme.
Sebagai contoh, mau tidak mau kita akan terjun ke
berbagai profesi seperti dokter, desainer, insinyur,
pebisnis dan sebagainya, tetapi yang dipersoalkan oleh
eksistensialisme adalah, apakah kita menjadi dokter
atas keinginan orangtua, atau keinginan sendiri.

Existentialism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
e-link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

Existentialism is a philosophical movement in which
individual human beings are understood as having full
responsibility for creating the meanings of their own
lives. It is a reaction against more traditional
philosophies, such as rationalism and empiricism,
which sought to discover an ultimate order in
metaphysical principles or in the structure of the
observed world. The movement had its origins in the
19th century thought of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and
was prevalent in Continental philosophy in the 20th
century.

Major concepts in existentialism

Existentialism differentiates itself from the modern
Western rationalist tradition of philosophers such as
Descartes in rejecting the idea that the most certain
and primary reality is rational consciousness.
Descartes believed humans could doubt all existence,
but could not will away or doubt the thinking
consciousness, whose reality is therefore more certain
than any other reality. Existentialism decisively
rejects this argument, asserting instead that as
conscious beings, humans would always find themselves
already in a world, a prior context and a history that
is given to consciousness, and that humans cannot
think away that world. It is inherent and indubitably
linked to consciousness. In other words, the ultimate,
certain, indubitable reality is not thinking
consciousness but, according to Heidegger, "being in
the world". This is a radicalization of the notion of
intentionality that comes from Brentano and Husserl,
which asserts that, even in its barest form,
consciousness is always conscious of something.

Existence precedes essence

A central proposition of existentialism is that
existence precedes essence, that is that a human
being's existence precedes and is more fundamental
than any meaning which may be ascribed to human life:
man defines his reality. One is not bound to the
generalities and a priori definitions of what "being
human" connotes. This is an inversion of a more
traditional view, which was widely accepted from the
ancient Greeks to Hegel, that the central project of
philosophy was to answer the question "What is a human
being?" (i.e., "What is the human essence") and to
derive from that answer one's conclusions about how
human beings should behave.

In Repetition, Kierkegaard's literary character Young
Man laments:

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked
about it, why was I not informed of the rules and
regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had
been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings?
How did I get involved in this big enterprise called
actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter
of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where
is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is
there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?
[1]

Heidegger coined the term "thrownness" (also used by
Sartre) to describe this idea that human beings are
"thrown" into existence without having chosen it.
Existentialists consider being thrown into existence
as prior to, and the horizon or context of, any other
thoughts or ideas that humans have or definitions of
themselves that they create.

Sarte, in Essays in Existentialism", pg 36, further
highlights this consciousness of being thrown into
existence in the following fashion. "If man, as the
existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is
because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he
be something, and he himself will have made what he
will be".

Kierkegaard also focused on the deep anxiety of human
existence -- the feeling that there is no purpose,
indeed nothing, at its core. Finding a way to counter
this nothingness, by embracing existence, is the
fundamental theme of existentialism, and the
explanation for the philosophy's name. While someone
who claims to believe in reality might be called a
"realist," or someone who believes in a deity a
"deist," someone who believes fundamentally only in
existence, and seeks to find meaning in his or her
life solely by embracing existence, is an
existentialist.

Reason as a defense against angst

Emphasizing action, freedom, and decision as
fundamental, existentialists oppose themselves to
rationalism and positivism. That is, they argue
against definitions of human beings as primarily
rational. Rather, existentialists look at where people
find meaning. Existentialism asserts that people
actually make decisions based on what has meaning to
them rather than what is rational.

The rejection of reason as the source of meaning is a
common theme of existentialist thought, as is the
focus on the feelings of anxiety and dread that we
feel in the face of our own radical freedom and our
awareness of death. Kierkegaard saw rationality as a
mechanism humans use to counter their existential
anxiety, their fear of being in the world. "If I can
believe that I am rational and everyone else is
rational then I have nothing to fear and no reason to
feel anxious about being free."

Sartre saw rationality as a form of "bad faith," an
attempt by the self to impose structure on a world of
phenomena - "the other" - that is fundamentally
irrational and random. According to Sartre,
rationality and other forms of "bad faith" hinder us
from finding meaning in freedom. To try to suppress
our feelings of anxiety and dread, we confine
ourselves within everyday experience, Sartre asserts,
thereby relinquishing our freedom and acquiescing to
being possessed in one form or another by "the look"
of "the other".

In a similar vein, Camus believed that society and
religion falsely teach humans that "the other" has
order and structure.[2] For Camus, when an individual
"consciousness," longing for order, collides with "the
other's" lack of order, a third element is born: "the
absurd."

The absurd

It then follows that existentialism tends to view
human beings as subjects in an indifferent, objective,
often ambiguous, and "absurd" universe, in which
meaning is not provided by the natural order, but
rather can be created, however provisionally and
unstably, by human beings' actions and
interpretations.

During the literary modernist movement in the 1900's,
authors began describing dystopian societies and
surreal and absurd situations in a parallel universe,
a trend that paralleled the existentialist movement.
In Franz Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis, a man
awakes to the realization that he has turned into an
insect. This story, which is certainly "absurd" and
surreal, is one of many modernist literary works that
influenced and were influenced by existentialist
philosophy.

Although there are certain common tendencies amongst
existentialist thinkers, there are major differences
and disagreements among them, and not all of them even
accept the validity of the term "existentialism." In
German, the phrase Existenzphilosophie (philosophy of
existence) is also used.

Existentialist perspectives on God

There is a split among existentialists between those
who, like Kierkegaard, conceive the fundamental
existentialist question as man's relationship to God,
and those who accept Nietzsche's proclamation of the
"death of God." Nonetheless, theological
existentialism as advocated by philosophers and
theologians like Paul Tillich, Gabriel Marcel, and
Martin Buber shares many of the same tenets and themes
that are central to atheistic existentialism. Belief
in God is a personal choice made on the basis of a
passion, of faith, an observation, or experience. Just
as atheistic existentialists can freely choose not to
believe, theistic existentialists can freely choose to
believe in God and could, despite one's doubt, have
faith that God exists and that God is good.

A third type of existentialism is agnostic
existentialism. Again, it is a matter of choice to be
agnostic. The agnostic existentialist makes no claim
to know, or not know, if there is a "greater picture"
in play; rather, he simply recognizes that the
greatest truth is that which he chooses to act upon.
The agnostic existentialist feels that to know the
"greater picture," whether there is one or not, is
impossible for human minds—or, if it is not
impossible, that at least he has not found it yet.
Like Christian existentialists, the agnostic believes
existence is subjective. However one feels about the
issue, through the agnostic existentialist's
perspective, the act of finding knowledge of the
existence of God often has little value because he
feels it to be impossible, and/or believes it to be
useless.

As mentioned above, opinions of philosophers
associated with existentialism vary, sometimes
greatly, over what "existentialism" is, and even if
there is such a thing as "existentialism". One
version, Sartrean existentialism, is elaborated below.

Sartrean existentialism

Some of the tenets associated with the existentialism
of Jean-Paul Sartre include:

Existence precedes essence
This is a reversal of the Aristotlean premise that
essence precedes existence, where man exists to
fulfill some purpose. Sartrean existentialism argues
that man has no predefined purpose or meaning; rather,
humans define themselves in terms of whom they become
as their individual lives are played out in response
to the challenges posed by existence in the world.

Values are subjective
Sartre accepts the premise that something in the
"Facticity" (i.e., the properties of an object or
person as traditionally conceived and experienced) of
an individual is valuable because the individual
consciousness chooses to value it. Sartre denies that
there are any objective standards on which to base
values. However, this should not be confused with
post-modernism. Sartre clearly believed that systems
of consciousness followed clear and solid rules.

The preceperi is similar to what today is called
insight. It is necessary to get rid of bad faith.

Bad faith
Sartre believed that people lie to themselves and,
underneath these lies, people negate their own being
through patterns.

The Gaze
Sartre believed that beings possess the power to
look at themselves and at another or an object, which
is to use one's mind to look at the person in static.
This concept of "looking" and the power to look, is
referred to as The Gaze. This destroys an object's
subjectivity. The thing becomes an "in itself" or an
object. Sartre stated that this form of consciousness
was used quite often in inter-personal relationships.
People place meaning onto what other people think of
them rather than what they think of themselves. This
process of radically re-aligning this meaning from The
Gaze onto one's own being is what leads to periods of
existential angst.

Being for others
Sartre believed that people who cannot embrace
their freedom seek to be "looked at," that is, to be
made an object of another's subjectivity. This creates
a clash of freedoms whereby person A's being (or sense
of identity) is controlled by what person B's thoughts
about him are.

Responsibility for choices
The individual consciousness is responsible for
all the choices it makes, regardless of the
consequences. Condemned to be free because man's
actions and choices are his and his alone, he is
condemned to be responsible for his free choices.

There are several terms Sartre uses in his works.
Being in-itself is an object that is not free and
cannot change its essence. Being for-itself is free;
it does not need to be what it is and can change into
what it is not. Consciousness is usually considered
being for-itself. Sartre distinguishes between
positional and non-positional consciousness.
Non-positional consciousness is being merely conscious
of one's surroundings. Positional consciousness puts
consciousness into relation of one's surroundings.
This entails an explicit awareness of being conscious
of one's surroundings. Sartre argues identity is
constructed by this explicit awareness of
consciousness.

Historical background

Existential themes have been hinted at throughout.
Examples include Socrates and his life, Gautama
Buddha's teachings, the Bible in the Book of
Ecclesiastes and the Book of Job, Saint Augustine in
his Confessions, Mulla Sadra's writings, and
Descartes' Meditations. Individualist politics, such
as those advanced by John Locke, advocated individual
autonomy and self-determination rather than the state
ruling over the individual. This kind of political
philosophy, although not existential in nature,
provided a welcoming climate for existentialism.

In 1670, Blaise Pascal's unfinished notes were
published under the title of Pensées (i.e.,
"Thoughts"). In the work, he described many
fundamental themes of existentialism. Pascal argued
that without a God, life would be meaningless and
miserable. People would only be able to create
obstacles and overcome them in an attempt to escape
boredom. These token-victories would ultimately become
meaningless, since people would eventually die. This
was good enough reason not to choose to become an
atheist, according to Pascal.

Existentialism, in its currently recognizable 20th
century form, was inspired by Søren Kierkegaard,
Fyodor Dostoevsky and the German philosophers
Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, and Martin
Heidegger. It became popular in the mid-20th century
through the works of the French writer-philosophers
Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, whose
versions of it were set out in a popular form in
Sartre's 1946 Existentialism is a Humanism and
Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity.

Gabriel Marcel pursued theological versions of
existentialism, most notably Christian existentialism.
Other theological existentialists include Paul
Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, Miguel de Unamuno, Thomas
Hora and Martin Buber. Moreover, one-time Marxist
Nikolai Berdyaev, developed a philosophy of Christian
existentialism in his native Russia, and later in
France, in the decades preceding World War II.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer
are also important influences on the development of
existentialism (although not precursors), because the
philosophies of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich
Nietzsche were written in response or opposition to
Hegel and Schopenhauer, respectively.

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

The first philosophers considered fundamental to the
existentialist movement are Søren Kierkegaard and
Friedrich Nietzsche, though neither used the term
"existentialism". Like Pascal, they were interested in
people's concealment of the meaninglessness of life
and the use of diversion to escape from boredom.
However, what Pascal did not write about was that
people can create and change their fundamental values
and beliefs. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche wrote that
human nature and human identity vary depending on what
values and beliefs humans hold.[3][4] Objective truths
(for example mathematical truths) are important, but
detached or observational modes of thought can never
truly comprehend human experience. Great individuals
invent their own values and create the very terms
under which they excel. Kierkegaard's knight of faith
and Nietzsche's Übermensch are examples of those who
define the nature of their own existence. In contrast,
Pascal did not reason that human nature and identity
are constituted by the free decisions and choices of
people.

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche died too soon to be a part
of the 20th century existentialist movement. They were
unique philosophers and their works and influence are
not limited to existentialism. They have been
appropriated and seen as precursors to many other
intellectual movements, including postmodernism,
nihilism, and various strands of psychology. Thus, it
is unknown whether they would have supported the
existentialism of the 20th century or accepted tenets
of Jean-Paul Sartre's version of it. Nevertheless,
their works are precursors to many later developments
in existentialist thought.

Heidegger and the German existentialists

One of the first German existentialists was Karl
Jaspers. Jaspers recognized the importance of
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and attempted to build an
"Existenz" philosophy around the two. Heidegger, who
was influenced by Jaspers and the phenomenologist
Edmund Husserl, wrote his most influential work Being
and Time which postulates Dasein, literally being
there—a being that is constituted by its temporality,
illuminates and interprets the meaning of being in
time. Dasein is sometimes considered the human
subject, but Heidegger denies the Cartesian dualism of
subject-object/mind-body.

Although existentialists view Heidegger to be an
important philosopher in the movement, he vehemently
denied being an existentialist in the Sartrean sense,
and responded to Sartre in A Letter about Humanism,
denying his philosophy was existentialism.

Sartre, Camus and the French existentialists

Jean-Paul Sartre is perhaps the most well-known
existentialist and is one of the few to have accepted
being called an "existentialist". Sartre developed his
version of existentialist philosophy under the
influence of Husserl and Heidegger. Being and
Nothingness is perhaps his most important work about
existentialism. Sartre was also talented in his
ability to espouse his ideas in different mediums,
including philosophical essays, lectures, novels,
plays and the theater. No Exit and Nausea are two of
his celebrated works. In the 1960s, he attempted to
reconcile existentialism and marxism in his work
Critique of Dialectical Reason.

Albert Camus was a friend of Sartre, until their
falling-out, and wrote several works with existential
themes including The Rebel, The Stranger, The Myth of
Sisyphus and Summer in Algiers. He, like many others,
rejected the existentialist label, and considered his
works to be absurd. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus
uses the analogy of the Greek myth to demonstrate the
futility of existence. In the myth, Sisyphus is
condemned to roll a rock up a hill for eternity, but
when he reaches the summit, the rock will roll back to
the bottom again. Camus believes that this existence
is pointless, but he feels Sisyphus ultimately finds
meaning and purpose in his task, simply by continually
applying himself to it.

Critic Martin Esslin in his book Theatre of the Absurd
pointed out how many contemporary playwrights such as
Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Arthur
Adamov wove the existential belief that man is an
absurd creature loose in a universe empty of real
meaning into their plays. Esslin noted that many of
these playwrights demonstrated the philosophies better
than Sartre and Camus did in their own plays. Though
most of the playwrights subsequently labelled
"Absurdist" (based on this book) denied affiliations
with existentialism and were often staunchly
anti-philosphical (for example Ionesco often claimed
he identified more with 'Pataphysics or with
Surrealism than with existentialism) the playwrights
of the Theatre of the Absurd are often linked to
existentialism based on Esslin's observation. [5]
Simone de Beauvoir, who was a longtime companion to
Sartre, wrote about feminist and existential ethics in
her works, including The Second Sex and Ethics of
Ambiguity.

Franz Fanon a French-born critic of colonialism has
been considered an important existentialist.[citation
needed]

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, an often overlooked
existentialist, was a companion of Sartre. His
understanding of Husserl's phenomenology was far
greater than that of his fellow existentialists. His
work, Humanism and Terror, greatly influenced Sartre.

Michel Foucault would also be considered an
existentialist through his use of history to reveal
the constant alterations of created meaning, thus
proving its failure to produce a cohesive form of
reality.

Dostoevsky, Kafka, and the literary existentialists

Many writers who are not usually considered
philosophers have also had a major influence on
existentialism. Among them, Czech author Franz Kafka
and Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky are most
prominent. Franz Kafka created often surreal and
alienated characters who struggle with hopelessness
and absurdity, notably in his most famous novella, The
Metamorphosis, or in his master novel, The Trial. The
Russian Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground
details the story of a man who is unable to fit into
society and unhappy with the identities he creates for
himself. Many of Dostoyevsky's novels, such as Crime
and Punishment, have covered issues pertinent to
existential philosophy while simultaneously refuting
the validity of the claims of existentialism (notably
the "superman" theory advocated by Nietzsche.)
Throughout Crime and Punishment we see the
protagonist, Raskolnikov, and his character develop
away from existential ideas and beliefs in favor of
more traditionally Christian ones, showing that
Dostoevsky was still very much a Christian
thinker.[citation needed]

In the 20th century, existentialism experienced a
resurgence in popular art forms. In fiction, Hermann
Hesse's 1928 novel Steppenwolf, based on an idea in
Kierkegaard's Either/Or (1843), sold well in the West.
Jack Kerouac and the Beat poets adopted existentialist
themes. In addition, "arthouse" films began quoting
and alluding to existentialist thought and thinkers.

Existentialist novelists were generally seen as a
mid-1950s phenomenon that continued until the mid- to
late 1970s. Most of the major writers were either
French or from French African colonies. Small circles
of other Europeans were seen as literary existential
precursors by the existentialists themselves, however,
literary history increasingly has questioned the
accuracy of this idealism for earlier models.

There is overlap between the expatriate American beat
generation writers who found Paris their spiritual
home, and writers of road novels. This also extends to
the delayed action of the French permanent enamorment
with the United States' hard boiled fiction genre,
which, as Truffaut and others in the Cahiers du Cinéma
indicated, influenced novels and plays. To some extent
as well, the surrealist movement of Andre Breton and
others, which questioned the established reality, made
possible the isolation of non-academic novels
protagonised by amoral anti-heroes.

Existentialism since 1970

Although postmodernist thought became the focus of
many intellectuals in the 1970s and thereafter, much
postmodern writing considers themes similar to
existentialism. Since 1970, much cultural activity in
art, cinema, and literature contains postmodern and
existential elements, which, ironically, would support
the postmodern thesis of "borderlessness between
concepts". One should not, however, confuse
postmodernism with existentialism.

Books such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
(1968), (now republished as Blade Runner) by Philip K.
Dick, Toilet the Novel by Michael Szymczyk and Fight
Club by Chuck Palahniuk both distort the line between
reality and appearance while simultaneously espousing
strong existential themes. Ideas from such thinkers as
Foucault, Kafka, Nietzsche, Herbert Marcuse, Gilles
Deleuze and Eduard von Hartmann permeate the works of
writers such as Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Szymczyk and
Charles Bukowski, and one often finds in such works a
delicate balance between distastefulness and beauty.

Neo-Existentialism and Post-Postmodernism

Some argue, however, that this class of writing
belongs to a genre of literature called
Post-Postmodernism, similar to a Russian movement in
the 1990's called "Excrement Literature". Contemporary
American writers, such as Chuck Palahniuk and the
underground writer Szymczyk have been described as
belonging to this movement in literature.[citation
needed] In their works, there are often elements of
distortion from the "traditional" mode of narrative,
which often try to grab and shock the reader and
return him or her to their present. This function that
comes through the form of their writing has been
described as a "Metaphysics of Presence", in which, it
is hoped, the intentionality of consciousness will be
diverted from its inauthentic state of "care"
(Heidegger's expression for the content, which
consciousness fills itself with, often concerned with
the trivialities of everyday life or "everydayness")
towards such existential realizations of death, the
here-and-now, freedom and all of its corresponding
angst. It is in that relation, that such thinkers as
Heidegger would argue, that one finds one's
authenticity.

Thus, the element of literature that permeates such
books as Fight Club and Toilet: The Novel is often
described as existential in nature. On the other hand,
such works also show a Post-modern concern, especially
Fight Club, in which the main character Tyler Durden
appears as a representation of the philosophy of the
Post-Modern classic Anti-Oedipus, and its idealization
of the schizo-subject, who resists the capitalistic
order of the day, devours and spits out the social
codes, and "...breaks through the walls of
reterritorialization into the realm of flows,
intensities, and becoming, thereby threatening the
whole capitalistic system in which personal
disintegration occurs, allowing revolutionary action
to be possible...".[attribution needed]

In Toilet: The Novel, the entire narrative becomes
schizoid in nature, each part separated from its
whole, with even the protagonists trembling with
despair from their own separation, their own lack of
connection to the whole, and which ends in, what
Deleuze calls for in Anti-Oedipus, "a breakthrough
without a total breakdown, in which the schizoid
subject is distinguished from the dysfunctional
schizophrenic and a certain harmony is achieved
between the ugly and the beautiful, and something new
is seen on the horizon." Thus, this Post Postmodernist
literature can often be called a synthesis between the
movements of Existentialism and Post-Modernism, or as
a new genre of literature, film and art, that is of an
existential nature and is an evolved form of
Existentialism. Neo-Existentialism, some would say, is
intrinsically different from the post post-modern via
its existential emphasis.[citation needed]

Existential Cinema

In cinema, postmodern editing techniques, showing the
displacement, discontinuity, and temporal perspective
of post-modernism, can go hand-in-hand with a purely
existential story, thus synthesizing technique and
function to give meaning. Moreover, this has created
the neologism "Neo-Existentialism"—combining
post-modernism's epistemology with the reflective
ontological belief of existentialism. Existential
cinema deals with themes of:

* Retaining authenticity in an apathetic,
mechanical world—something postmodernism would
staunchly reject, as authenticity is related to a
non-existent "reality"
* The consciousness of death, for example
Heidegger's "being towards death", exemplified in
Ingmar Bergman's film The Seventh Seal (1957)
* The feelings of alienation and loneliness
consequent to being unique in a world of indifferent
others, or, in Kierkegaard phrase, "the crowd" or
Nietzsche's "the herd"
* The concept Alltägliche selbstsein
("Everyday-ness," or ennui), which Heidegger
explicated in his book Sein und Zeit (1927) (English
translation: Being and Time)

The acclaimed 1976 film Taxi Driver, starring Robert
DeNiro, is perhaps one of the most widely known
existential films. The film was heavily influenced by
Dosteovsky's Notes from Underground and even quotes
Dosteovsky in the line: "I'm God's lonely man." The
2004 film The Machinist is also influenced by
Dosteovsky's work, especially The Double: A Petersburg
Poem, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. In one
scene in the film, star Christian Bale is seen reading
a copy of The Idiot. Another film released in the same
year, I ♥ Huckabees revolves around two
existential detectives, who aim to help people solve
their personal existential crises.

The introduction sequence of the 1957 film Love in the
Afternoon contains the witty remark "even
existentialists" make love in Paris.

The 1972 film Deliverance, as well as the 1970 book of
the same name, have also been credited as
existentialist, as has Fight Club (1999), eXistenZ
(1999) and The Matrix (1999).

Criticisms of existentialism

Herbert Marcuse criticized existentialism, especially
in Sartre's Being and Nothingness, for projecting
certain features of living in a modern, oppressive
society, such as anxiety and meaninglessness, onto the
nature of existence itself: "In so far as
Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine, it remains
an idealistic doctrine: it hypothesizes specific
historical conditions of human existence into
ontological and metaphysical characteristics.
Existentialism thus becomes part of the very ideology
which it attacks, and its radicalism is illusory" [6].
Sartre responded to Marxist criticisms of
Existentialism in the work Existentialism is a
humanism.

Theodor Adorno, in his Jargon of Authenticity,
criticized Heidegger's philosophy, with special
attention to his use of language, as a mystifying
ideology of advanced industrial society and its power
structure.[citation needed]

Heidegger criticized Sartre's Existentialism, in his
Letter on Humanism:

Existentialism says [that] existence precedes
essence. In this statement he [Sartre] is taking
existentia and essentia according to their
metaphysical meaning, which from Plato’s time on has
said that essentia precedes existentia. Sartre
reverses this statement. But the reversal of a
metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical
statement. With it he stays with metaphysics in
oblivion of the truth of Being.

Roger Scruton claimed, in his book From Descartes to
Wittgenstein, that both Heidegger's concept of
inauthenticity and Sartre's concept of bad faith were
inconsistent; both deny any universal moral creed, yet
speak of these concepts as if everyone is bound to
abide by them. In chapter 18, he writes,"In what sense
Sartre is able to 'recommend' the authenticity which
consists in the purely self-made morality is unclear.
He does recommend it, but, by his own argument, his
recommendation can have no objective force." Familiar
with this sort of argument, Sartre claimed that bad
and good faith do not represent moral ideas, rather,
they are ways of being.

Logical positivists, such as Carnap and Ayer, claim
that existentialists frequently become confused over
the verb "to be" in their analyses of
"being".[citation needed] The verb is prefixed to a
predicate and to use the word without any predicate is
meaningless. Borrowing Kant's argument against the
ontological argument for the existence of God, they
argue that existence is not a property.

Adaptation outside philosophy
======================

Existentialism in psychotherapy

Main article: Existential therapy

Many of the theories of Sigmund Freud, whom Sartre
refuted systematically, were influenced by Nietzsche.
Some have supposed that Thanatos and Eros were closely
related to Dionysian and Apollonian aspects of
Nietzsche philosophy.

One of the major offshoots of Existentialism as a
philosophy is Existential Psychology. Sometimes termed
the Third Force Psychology, this branch of psychology
was initiated by Viktor Frankl (who had studied with
Freud and Jung when young).[citation needed] Then
early in his career he was sent to a Nazi
concentration camp where he survived from 1941 through
1945. In the camps he mentally re-wrote his first book
whose manuscript had been confiscated at the time of
his arrest. He called his theory Logotherapy and the
book was Man's Search for Meaning. Speaking at a
seminar in Anaheim, California in the early 1990's,
Frankl stated that in the camps he would, at times,
pretend to himself that he was actually in the future,
remembering his experiences and noting how he was able
to survive them. His years of suffering took him to
the conclusion that even in the worst imaginable of
circumstances, life can be assigned a worthwhile
meaning. This conclusion was the heart of Frankl's
psychological orientation. Logotherapy asserts that
all human beings have a will to find meaning, and that
serious behavioral problems develop when they cannot
find it. The therapy helps patients handle the
responsibility of choices and the pain of unavoidable
suffering by helping them decide to give life meaning.

An early contributor to Existential Psychology was
Rollo May, who was influenced by Kierkegaard.

One of the most prolific writers on techniques and
theory of Existential Psychology in the USA is Irvin
D. Yalom. The person who has contributed most to the
development of a European version of Existential
Psychotherapy is the British based Emmy van Deurzen.

With complete freedom to decide, and through being
responsible for the outcome of said decisions, comes
anxiety -- or angst -- about the choices made.
Anxiety's importance in existentialism makes it a
popular topic in psychotherapy. Therapists often use
existential philosophy to explain the patient's
anxiety. Psychotherapists using an existential
approach believe that a patient can harness his
anxiety and use it constructively. Instead of
suppressing anxiety, patients are advised to use it as
grounds for change. By embracing anxiety as
inevitable, a person can use it to achieve his or her
full potential in life.

Humanistic psychology also had major impetus from
existential psychology and shares many of the
fundamental tenets.

Terror management theory

Terror management theory is a developing area of study
within the academic study of psychology. It looks at
what researchers claim to be the implicit emotional
reactions of people that occur when they are
confronted with the psychological terror of knowing
they will eventually die.

Notable examples of existentialism in popular culture

* Tom Stoppard's 1966 Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
Are Dead is a humorous, absurdist, tragic and
existentialist play expanding upon the exploits of two
minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet. The play
adopts existentialist themes as the "bewildered and
mesmerised" characters set out to explore a
"featureless universe" in a futile attempt to fathom a
fictitious and nonexistent reality and decipher the
very essence of their own existence.

* King Lear, a play by Shakespeare.

* The novel "L'Étranger" ("The Stranger") by
Albert Camus.

References

Schaeffer, Francis. The God Who is There. 1968.

1. ^ Kierkegaard, Søren. Repetition in
Kierkegaard's Writings, vol. 6, Princeton University
Press, 1983
2. ^ Camus, Albert. "An Absurd Reasoning"
3. ^ Luper, Steven. "Existing". Mayfield
Publishing, 2000, p.4-5
4. ^ Ibid, p. 11
5. ^ Kernan, Alvin B. The Modern American Theater:
A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1967.
6. ^ Marcuse, Herbert. "Sartre's Existentialism".
Printed in Studies in Critical Philosophy. Translated
by Joris De Bres. London: NLB, 1972. p. 161