Existentialism

The outset of existentialism is the same as that of Heidegger’s phenomenology. That human lives in oblivion of its true being and needs for awakening an extreme situation. There the true nature of a human (his existentia) is disclosed. What existentia consists in was treated differently by different philosophers-existentialists.

Thus K. Jaspers the German philosopher treated the existentia as an incompleteness, the principal incompleteness of human creature. The realization of the incompleteness means the history outset. The history is understood not as a simple sequence of events but as a purposeful process. Its purpose consists in seeking of the completeness and because of the principal incompleteness of human this process lasts eternally. The empiric beginning of it takes place approximately in 6─5 centuries B.C. in several zones, when the first Bible prophets preached in Palestine, the first philosophers started their thinking in the Ancient Greece, Buddha in India and Confucius and Lao-tzu in China taught. All these events had the same sense and meant the beginning of the history.

How does a human seek its completeness? It does it through the so-called philosophic faith which is a purely irrational feeling of its own incompleteness, pushing for seeking of a finishing. Being quite irrational by its character the philosophic truth is difficult to be followed. One following it constantly loses one’s way and goes astray to some or other substitutes of its. Jaspers singled out three main substitutes of the philosophic faith: demonism, nihilism and deification of human. Demonism is a belief in some natural or supernatural powers or creatures (gods, spirits, demons, powers of nature) and aspiration to concert with them (or even to put them in one’s service as it occurs in the case of the modern science). Other characteristic example of demonism are magic, occultism etc. The deification of a human means the announcement that a human is the crown, the center of the Universe and its own self-purpose. Both the demonism and deification give no desired result, the realization of one’s own nature. Therefore being disappointed of them one falls into nihilism, the negation of this nature existence as itself and as a result the negation of any human values. But nihilism is too hard for human nature to bear and, therefore, one passes from it to the demonism or deification again. But the single outlet lies in the philosophical faith only through which human may come to its own nature [1, p. 225 – 227].

J. P. Sartre the French philosopher saw existentia in the principal freedom of human creature. It’s the deepest and innermost essence of it; human is always quite free if not in his actions so in his attitude to the external world events. The only restriction of its freedom consists in that a human can’t reject the freedom itself. Accordingly human is always responsible for all that happens.

Another French philosopher and writer A. Camus asserted that the innermost essence of being consists in its absurdness. Has a human being some sense? No, it hasn’t (look also the first lecture). This doesn’t mean, however, that a human should commit suicide or seek a death. No, it doesn’t. It simply means the man who has realized the absurdness of his life becomes free of any conditionality from outside. The realization of absurdness manifests itself as a revolt, the revolt against any outer bondage. So a slave having realized his slavery absurdness says ‘no’ to his master (he always said only ‘yes’ before), it’s his revolt against his slavery absurdness. Another example, a former soldier (his surname was Cervantes), who had passed through everything a soldier could pass and acquired nothing, finally got into a prison for the loss of public money, where he had realized all his life absurdness, wrote a novel, the deathless “Don Quixote” there. This novel was his revolt against the situation of absurdity. Other instances: the Russian tsar-killers, god-fighters, the English dandies etc. All they affirmed their existentia through the revolt [1, p. 228 – 236].

Control questions and exercises

1. How according to E. Husserl is the philosophy possible as an exact science?

2. How is it possible to connect transcendental and psychophysical ego?

3. In which way in the Heidegger's philosophy are life, being, presence and nothing?

4. Why in your opinion Heidegger did not regard himself as an existentialist?

5. What is a connection between phenomenology and existentialism?

6. Why according to Sartre a person is always free? What are the limits of his freedom?

7. What is the basic question of philosophy according to Camus?

8. What is the philosophical faith (by Jaspers)? What are its substitutes?

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 1136