1. Is it more important what you intend to be or think you are or is it what you do. In other words, you think of yourself as honest and yet you cheated on the last quiz (and justified it somehow)? Are you the sum of your actions or your intent? If you have bad thoughts about hurting kittens, are you a bad person?
Before you thought about who you were, were you you?
I think, therefore, I am.
--Rene Descartes
Good intentions pave the road to hell.
--Fortune Cookie

2. EXISTENTIALISM
A complex philosophy emphasizing the absurdity of reality and the human responsibility to make choices and accept consequences!
ANDREW WYETH
Christina’s World (1948)

3. It was during the Second World War, when Europe found itself in a crisis faced with death and destruction, that the existential movement began to flourish, popularized in France in the 1940s…
GEORGIO DE CHIRICO
Love Song

4. Big Ideas of Existentialism
Despite encompassing a huge range of philosophical, religious, and political ideologies, the underlying concepts of existentialism are simple…
MARK ROTHKO
Untitled (1968)

5. Existence Precedes Essence
Existentialism is the title of the set of philosophical ideals that emphasize:
*the existence of the human being
*the lack of meaning and purpose in life
*the solitude of human existence… “Existence precedes essence” implies that the human being has no essence (no essential self).
*an individual exists (physically) before his or her life has value or meaning (substance)
*Each of us have a unique identity
*We all have unique experiences
*A person is the sum total of his actions in life
*You are what you are at any given moment

6. Absurdism
The belief nothing can explain or rationalize human existence.
There is no answer to “Why am I?”
Humans exist in a meaningless, irrational universe and any search for order will bring them into direct conflict with this universe.

7. “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
“It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.”

8. Choice and Commitment Humans have freedom to choose
Each individual makes choices that create his or her own nature
Because we choose, we must accept risk and responsibility for wherever our commitments take us
“A human being is absolutely free and absolutely responsible. Anguish is the result.” –Jean-Paul Sartre

9. Dread and Anxiety
MAN RAY
Les Larmes (Tears)

10. Dread and Anxiety
Dread is a feeling of general apprehension. Kierkegaard interpreted it as God’s way of calling each individual to make a commitment to a personally valid way of life.
Anxiety stems from our understanding and recognition of the total freedom of choice that confronts us every moment, and the individual’s confrontation with nothingness.

11. Nothingness and Death
EDVARD MUNCH
Night in Saint Cloud (1890)

12. Nothingness and Death
Death hangs over all of us. Our awareness of it can bring freedom or anguish.
I am my own existence. Nothing structures my world.
“Nothingness is our inherent lack of self. We are in constant pursuit of a self. Nothingness is the creative well-spring from which all human possibilities can be realized.” –Jean-Paul Sartre

13. All existentialists are concerned with the study of being or ontology.
TO REVIEW: An existentialist believes that a person’s life is nothing but the sum of the life he has shaped for himself. At every moment it is always his own free will choosing how to act. He is responsible for his actions, which limit future actions. Thus, he must create a morality in the absence of any known predetermined absolute values. God does not figure into the equation, because even if God does exist, He does not reveal to men the meaning of their lives. Honesty with oneself is the most important value. Every decision must be weighed in light of all the consequences of that action…
Life is absurd, but we engage it!

14. Edward Hopper “New York Movie” (1939)
Human Subjectivity
“I will be what I choose to be…”
It is impossible to transcend human subjectivity.
“There are no true connections between people…”
My emotions are yet another choice I make. I am responsible for them.
Edward Hopper “New York Movie” (1939)

15. Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.
Human existence cannot be captured by reason or objectivity –– it must include passion, emotion and the subjective…
Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.
–Simone de Beauvoir
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE
Sky Above White Clouds I (1962)

16. Some Famous Existentialists
Søren Kierkegaard ( )
Friedrich Nietzsche ( )
Jean-Paul Sartre ( )
Albert Camus ( )
“A woman is not born…she is created.”
de Beauvoir’s most famous text is The Second Sex (1949), which some claim is the basis for current gender studies…

17. Albert Camus He was born November 7, 1913 in Mondovi, Algeria.
He experienced a poor childhood and suffered from tuberculosis.
He was a member of the French Communist Party.
In 1940 he married Francine Faure and had two children, Catherine and Jean.
He didn’t like the idea of marriage, but he loved his wife. He had several affairs.
He supported the philosophy of Absurdism.
The public often associated him with the idea of existentialism, but he rejected the label.
He was a pacifist; he disagreed with the idea of capital punishment.
In 1949 he formed a Revolutionary Union Movement.
In 1957, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature.
Albert Camus died January 4, 1960 in a car accident.

18. Albert Camus dissociated himself from the existentialists but acknowledged man’s lonely condition in the universe. His “man of the absurd” (or absurd hero) rejects despair and commits himself to the anguish and responsibility of living as best he can (SISYPHUS!).
Basically, man creates himself through the choices he makes. There are no guides for these choices, but he has to make them anyway, which renders life absurd…