What Is Existentialism?
Maybe it just takes time for all new philosophies to work out their quirks before they are recognized as being something in particular. Whatever the case, there is no doubt that existentialism in its relatively brief history has been attacked from all quarters for what it actually is even if not necessarily for what it claims to be. Metaphor helps to begin the process of setting the record straight early on in this essay by rejecting what existentialism isn’t:
“First, it has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair.”
Existentialism and God
One can be an existentialist and believe in God. Plenty of authors have identified themselves as Christian existentialists. But Sartre—the godfather of the philosophy—certainly has issues with god being a part of existentialist thought:
“When we think of God as the creator, we are thinking of him, most of the time, as a supernal artisan…so that when God creates he knows precisely what he is creating. Thus, the conception of man in the mind of God is comparable to that of the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan: God makes man according to a procedure and a conception, exactly as the artisan manufactures a paper-knife, following a definition and a formula”
Existential Dread
The philosopher Kierkegaard is not technically regarded as an existentialist, but his own works proved heavily influential. Call him, if it must be done, a proto-existentialist; one whose own contemplative considerations of the meaning of existence directly stimulated the fertile grounds for the origination of actual existentialist thought:
“The man who lies in self-excuse, by saying `Everyone will not do it’ must be ill at ease in his conscience, for the act of lying implies the universal value which it denies. By its very disguise his anguish reveals itself. This is the anguish that Kierkegaard called `the anguish of Abraham.’”
I am not Spartacus
The existentialist is not Spartacus; he is not a slave who must rise in revolt against a master. Neither is he, Sartre argues, to be held in bondage to the shadow of the Biblical Abraham.
“If I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who choose to say that it is good and not bad. There is nothing to show that I am Abraham: nevertheless, I also am obliged at every instant to perform actions which are examples.”
The Rare Essence of Humanity
An interesting construction of metaphorical imagery is put to the test to separate humanity from that which is, shall we say, less than human. It is the precision and specificity of the imagery that makes it worth reading:
“Man is, indeed, a project which possesses a subjective life, instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus or a cauliflower.”
