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Intro to Philosophy Unit 10: Existentialism and Meaning

Existentialists ask how individuals should live when traditional answers about human nature, God and value no longer seem secure. This unit covers Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus, and the wider debate about meaning in life.

Covers: Kierkegaard: faith and the stages of existence, Nietzsche: death of God and revaluation of values, Sartre: freedom, anguish and bad faith, Beauvoir: freedom and the Other, Heidegger: Dasein and authenticity, Camus and the absurd, The meaning of life debate

Study guide

Existentialism focuses on the concrete, choosing individual rather than abstract systems. Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish Christian, argued that truth that matters is truth 'for me,' lived with passion. He described three spheres of existence: the aesthetic, devoted to pleasure and novelty; the ethical, devoted to duty and commitment; and the religious, a personal relation to God. Faith cannot be proven by reason and requires a leap. In Fear and Trembling he presents Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac as a 'teleological suspension of the ethical,' showing faith as something beyond universal moral rules. Friedrich Nietzsche, by contrast, announced that 'God is dead': belief in God had lost its cultural force, threatening nihilism.

Nietzsche's response was to call for a revaluation of values. In On the Genealogy of Morality he contrasts master morality, which begins with noble self-affirmation, with slave morality, which arises from ressentiment and recasts weakness as virtue. He presents the Übermensch, or overman, as one who creates values, and he tests our attitude to life with the thought of eternal recurrence: would you welcome living your exact life again forever? His ideal is amor fati, love of fate. Martin Heidegger, in Being and Time, called the human being Dasein, the being for whom its own being is an issue. Everyday life falls into das Man, the anonymous 'they,' while authenticity comes from facing being-toward-death and owning one's possibilities.

Jean-Paul Sartre, an atheist, argued that for humans 'existence precedes essence': there is no designer, so we first exist and then define ourselves through choices. We are 'condemned to be free,' wholly responsible for what we make of our facticity, the given facts of our situation. Because in choosing we choose an image of humanity, we feel anguish. Fleeing this freedom by pretending we are fixed things, as with his waiter who plays his role too perfectly, is bad faith. Simone de Beauvoir developed existentialist ethics, arguing that willing my own freedom requires willing others' freedom. In The Second Sex she argued that 'one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,' since society defines woman as the Other.

Albert Camus centered his thought on the absurd: the clash between our demand for meaning and the silent, indifferent universe. In The Myth of Sisyphus he asks whether the absurd justifies suicide and rejects it, along with 'philosophical suicide,' the leap to hope he saw in Kierkegaard. He recommends revolt, freedom and passion: one must imagine Sisyphus, endlessly pushing his rock, happy. Analytic philosophers have continued the debate. Thomas Nagel argues that the absurd comes from our ability to step back and see our serious concerns as arbitrary, and suggests irony. Susan Wolf argues that meaningful lives arise when subjective passion meets objectively worthwhile activity.

Key ideas

• Existentialism centers the choosing individual and the problem of meaning without guaranteed answers.
• Kierkegaard described aesthetic, ethical and religious stages and saw faith as a leap beyond reason.
• Nietzsche diagnosed the death of God and called for the creation of new values and the affirmation of life.
• Sartre held that existence precedes essence, that we are condemned to be free and that bad faith flees this freedom.
• Beauvoir tied freedom to others' freedom and analyzed woman as the socially constructed Other.
• Heidegger contrasted inauthentic life in das Man with authentic being-toward-death.
• Camus rejected both suicide and the leap of faith, answering the absurd with revolt.

Formulas and rules

Common mistakes

• Assuming all existentialists are atheists; Kierkegaard was a Christian thinker.
• Reading 'God is dead' as a proof that God does not exist, rather than a cultural diagnosis.
• Confusing bad faith with lying to others; it is self-deception about one's own freedom.
• Saying Camus recommends despair or suicide, when he argues for revolt against the absurd.
• Mixing up attributions: 'Hell is other people' and 'condemned to be free' are Sartre's, not Beauvoir's or Camus's.

Before the test, make sure you can

• Explain Kierkegaard's three stages and the leap of faith.
• Explain Nietzsche's death of God, master and slave morality, eternal recurrence and overman.
• Explain Sartre's 'existence precedes essence,' anguish and bad faith, with examples.
• Describe Beauvoir's view of freedom and her analysis of woman as the Other.
• Explain Heidegger's Dasein, das Man and being-toward-death.
• Explain Camus's absurd and his three responses to it.
• Compare Nagel's and Wolf's views on the meaning of life.

Words to know

Existentialism

A movement focusing on individual existence, freedom, choice and the search for meaning.

Leap of faith

Kierkegaard's idea that faith requires a commitment beyond what reason can prove.

Stages of existence

Kierkegaard's aesthetic, ethical and religious ways of life.

Teleological suspension of the ethical

Kierkegaard's idea that faith may set aside universal ethical duty, as with Abraham.

Death of God

Nietzsche's claim that belief in God has lost its cultural power, threatening nihilism.

Nihilism

The view or condition in which the highest values lose their worth and nothing seems to matter.

Übermensch

Nietzsche's 'overman,' one who creates values and affirms life.

Eternal recurrence

Nietzsche's thought experiment of living one's exact life again forever.

Master and slave morality

Nietzsche's contrast between noble self-affirmation and resentment-based values of humility and pity.

Existence precedes essence

Sartre's claim that humans exist first and define their nature through choices.

Bad faith

Sartre's term for self-deception that denies one's freedom.

Anguish

For Sartre, the feeling of total responsibility that comes with choosing for all humanity.

Facticity

The given facts of one's situation, such as birth, body and history.

The Other

Beauvoir's term for how woman is defined relative to man as the norm.

Dasein

Heidegger's term for human existence, the being for whom its own being is an issue.

Das Man

Heidegger's 'the they,' the anonymous public way of living by what 'one' does.

The absurd

Camus's term for the clash between the human demand for meaning and the silent universe.

Philosophical suicide

Camus's term for escaping the absurd by a leap to hope or faith.

Sample practice questions

30 more questions like these, from level 1 to 5, are in the practice set.