Existentialism is a
philosophical movement which puts more focus on individual existence, freedom
and choice (Pecorino, 2000). It is a view taken up by scholars who wanted to
get rid of the disputes between the materialist and the idealist viewpoints
(Pecorino, 2000). Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was one such writer and
philosopher who influenced this view very much. His theory holds a special
place in Existentialism which gives us a unique perspective on what is real and
what is unreal. We will examine the features, strengths and weaknesses of the
Existentialist view, and appealing and discouraging parts of Sartre’s Theory in
this paper.
The main feature of
Existentialist view is that they see the things from humans’ perspective. They
place an individual at the center and explore how that human thinks, acts and
feels. They place their ideas on what can be certainly known by humans. It
focuses on the fact that first of all a person is an individual and only then
he/she is bounded by other social and psychological aspects (Wikipedia, 2013). The
strength of Existentialism is that it puts an individual as the main character
of determining reality and giving meaning to life, which has been used in Psychoanalysis
and Psychotherapies by inspirational scholars like Viktor Frankl. The weakness
of this view might be that it disregards things beyond human experience which
can be taken as simply avoiding disputable things rather than proving something
to solve them or help in better understanding.
Sartre’s Theory says
that there are two types of real things: being-for-itself and being-in-itself
(Pecorino, 2000). The first one consists of non conscious things and the second
one is conscious and free. In-itself exists without depending on other things.
On the contrary, since consciousness is always of something and therefore is
relative to something else, for-itself cannot be identified completely (Onof,
2010). So, the appealing part about this is that it addresses both certainty
and uncertainty of human experience. It describes the lack of identity faced by
many people. On the other hand, the discouraging part is that his idea behind
“Nothingness” seems just a logical fact of negating the presence of something,
but he applies it to cancelling the deterministic constraints and achieving
“freedom”. It is not convincing that “freedom” is something that can be
achieved by isolation from constraints just by negating the constraints.
So, Existentialism is
all about seeing philosophy from the view of pure human experience. The strong
point about it is its usefulness in Psychological fields and the weakness lies
in simply avoiding the disputes. Moving on, Sartre’s Theory is a unique notion
in Existentialism which covers the certain and uncertain aspect of human
experience. Nonetheless, his notion of “freedom” does not seem that convincing
which is based on the idea of logical negation.
References:
Pecorino, P. (2000),
Metaphysics: Existentialism, Introduction
to Philosophy, Retrieved from http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialSciences/ppecorino/INTRO_TEXT/Chapter%204%20Metaphysics/Existentialism.htm
Onof, C.J. (2010), Sartre’s Theory, Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/sartre-ex/
Wikipedia (2013), Existentialism, Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism
©Dixit Bhatta 2014
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