Existentialism and Ethics West Chester University Nythamar "Nita" de Oliveira

West Chester University – January 31, 2011

Introduction to Philosophy – Dr. Daniel Forbes

Nythamar "Nita" de Oliveira

Existentialism and Ethics

Power Point Presentation

Existentialism in Literature, Theater, Film & Pop Culture:

William Shakespeare: "To be or not to be" (Hamlet, Act III, Scene I);

Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini,

Bob Dylan: "Blowing in the Wind" (Book of Kohelet, Ecclesiastes: "All is vanity!")

Major philosophers associated with existentialism:

Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, Gabriel Marcel, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir

Basic Bibliography:

Kaufmann, Walter. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Edited, with an introduction, prefaces, and new translations. New York: Meridian Books, 1956.

Heidegger, Martin, Sein und Zeit [1927]. English Translation: Being and time. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. New York: Harper, 1962.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. L’Être et le néant: essai d'ontologie phénoménologique [1943].

English Trans.: Being and nothingness: an essay in phenomenological ontology. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes.

New York: Washington Square Press, 1992.

Key concepts, topics, and problems in existentialism:

existence, meaninglessness, concrete experience, absurdity, the individual, freedom, human responsibility, anxiety (Angst, agonizes), boredom, alienation, self, choice, decision, guilt, commitment, engagement, facticity, thrownness, nothingness, death; "existence precedes essence"

J.-P. Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946)

Atheistic existentialism: we humans are completely free; because there is no God to give us an essence (a function or purpose), we must create our own essence; we are completely responsible for our actions and are responsible for everyone else, too.

Because of the death of God and the human predicament, which leaves us totally free to create our values and our world, we must exist in anguish, forlornness (thrownness, abandonment, dereliction) and despair, an existential condition that comes from the realization that God does not exist and we alone must face all the consequences of this.

Yet there is a certain celebration and optimism in knowing that we are creators of our own values: "existence precedes essence." If there were a God, our essence would precede our existence and God would give us a function or purpose when he created us. Since there is no God, our existence must precede our essence: we just find ourselves existing and must then create our own essence. Humans are nothing else but what they make of themselves. Hence, "man is condemned to be free." // "Je suis ma liberté !" [Orestes in Les Mouches]

J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness (L’être et le néant, 1943)

Things = being-in-itself, en soi [ontology = general metaphysics; Gk. ta onta = beings]

Consciousness = being-for-itself, pour soi = nothingness (néant), not a thing, "a wind blowing from nowhere towards the world"

[phenomenology = philosophical science of the essence of consciousness as intentionality, what is meant by the positing of beings]

"Consciousness is a being whose existence posits its essence, and inversely it is consciousness of a being, whose essence implies its existence; that is, in which appearance lays claim to being. Being is everywhere."

beings / facticity / things (rocks) vs. consciousness / negation

Being and Non-Being

That about which I question the being participates in the transcendence of being.

Thus the question is a bridge set up between two non-beings: the non-being of knowing in human consciousness, the possibility of non-being of being in transcendent being.

Whatever being is, it will allow this formulation: “Being is that and outside of that, nothing.” Negations: Not only an act of judgment (comparison)

It is the negative judgment which is conditioned and supported by non-being.

"Nothingness haunts Being."

That means that being has no need of nothingness in order to be conceived and that we can examine the idea of it exhaustively without finding there the least trace of nothingness. Being is prior to nothingness and establishes the ground for it.

Dasein ("human reality") is not in itself, not being the world

If negation is the original structure of transcendence, what must be the original structure of "human reality" in order for it to transcend the world? (negating activity)

Freedom and Nothingness: The being by which Nothingness comes to the world must be its own Nothingness. Not a nihilating act, but an ontological characteristic of the Being required. Man is the being through whom nothingness comes to the world.

Human freedom precedes essence in man and makes it possible.

Every psychic process of nihilation implies a cleavage between the immediate psychic past and the present. This cleavage is precisely nothingness.

Freedom is the human being putting his past out of play by secreting his own nothingness …if freedom is the being of consciousness, consciousness must exist as the consciousness of freedom. It is in anguish that one gets conscious of one’s freedom, in question for itself.

Ethical anguish: my freedom is the unique foundation of values and nothing else – no last foundation for values. Anguish (Angst) is the reflective apprehension of freedom by itself; the comprehension of a possible as my possible.