Existentialism

By Prof. P. NAGARAJA RAO. M.A., D. Litt.
(Gujarat College, Ahmedabad)

The two contemporary systems of philosophy in the West are (1) Logical Positivism, and (2) Existentialism. Existentialism is the most popular system on the continent. It has almost become a rage with the intellectuals of our day. Its popularity is in no small measure due to the literary modes of expression adopted by several existentialists, the most prominent among them being Jean Paul Sartre. His novels and dramas have served to popularise the doctrines of Existentialism. They entertain the feeling that what cannot be expressed, and yet can be sympathetically felt in the vicarious reliving of experience, can be best expressed by the use of imagination, in fiction and by dramas enacted in theatres. This method achieves a directness and a minimum of tedium. Fiction and drama have proved the most perfect vehicles for the exposition of the doctrines of the system.

Existentialism is not all one doctrine, or one system. It is a complex heritage. Some trace the system to Descartes and thus build for it an impressive ancestry. Among the Existentialists there are two sections, (a) the theistic section believing in God and religion, prominent among them being Kierkegaard, Jasper and Marcel; and (b) the atheistic section who do not believe in God. Prominent among them are Heideggar and Sartre.

Existentialism stands for the recovery and the restoration of the dignity of the individual and his personality. It is opposed to all those forces and currents of thought that threaten to pulverise and submerge the individual. It sets itself against all those collectivist political ideologies like Marxism, Absolutism, Idealism and the Unconscious of Freud which is supposed to determine all our conscious behaviour. It is wedded to the resolute, radical affirmation of the personality of man. It resists all forms of delerminism and opposes all those schools of thought that seek to resolve man into a number of functions. In short, it is a glorious kind of Personalist Philosophy of life.

The subject matter of Existentialism is the analysis of human experience, to find out what is truly encountered in experience. They seek to find out the truly real and significant in experience. The things that men encounter in their several experiences are of great importance to the Existentialists. We get a penetrating analysis of crisis, anguish, care, remorse, despair, and dread. In these situations men make their decisions, in the shadow of inevitable death. Existentialists exhort men to make authentic choice in a crisis by the use of their total freedom. The human being is the centre of this philosophy. He is sharply distinguished from the world of things. The things of the world are merely what they are and are not completely self-subsistent. In Sartre’s words, they are en-soi. Man alone is pour-soi. Man alone is for himself. He has the consciousness of some want. It is this want that makes him create Values. Man is not a determined and completed thing. He is making himself by his choices. Every moment of his life, he wills his future by choosing freely. Even the irrevocable past is re-made by our choices and rejections. Thus, the fundamental doctrine of the system is, “We are free, so profoundly free that our being is our freedom.”

Freedom is our inalienable destiny. It is our triumph and tragedy. In our choice we should never treat ourselves or others as en-soi but treat them as pour-soi. Our choice must be authentic. To be authentic, we must choose with the essential element in our being. We should make no choice which we do not think appropriate to all other selves who are, or might be, situated in like positions. We should always renew our responsibility in our choice. It is this responsibility element that distinguishes man from the rest of creation. It makes morality not a matter of caprice or whim, or mechanical or determinist. It makes morality an active creative choice.

The central datum of this school is man and his Freedom. Man has no given character. There is a self-transcending and self-creating nature in man. He is free; what he makes of himself depends on himself and his free choice. Values are not there independent of man. They are his creations. The foundation of all values is liberty. Sartre cried out, “I am my liberty; man is condemned to be free.”

The self of man is not an enclosed consciousness. The world of objects is the field of the self’s realisation. There is no insurmountable dualism. Man’s existence precedes his essence. Man has no essence antecedent to his existence. His essence is what he freely creates himself. Man is not in this world to fulfill prophecies and fit into puzzles.

Essence is the constant concatenation of properties. Existence is the effective presence in the world. In the case of man existence comes first. It means roan is before he is this or that. Existentialism defends the glory of man by affirming his freedom, and liberating him from all forms of determinism.