1. Franz Kafka ( )
"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us...We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."

2. Kafka’s Life A German Jew in Prague
A frustrated writer whose father forced him into a career as a bank clerk
Published very little in his lifetime J.D. Salinger?
Left orders for all of his manuscripts to be destroyed when he died
His executor, disobeyed his orders and Kafka became famous after his death.
*Story of Wedding Photographer-Recording Engineer. “I erase all recordings”

3. “Kafkaesque”
A situation in which someone is at the mercy of a collective logic that he or she does not understand and perceives to be comically absurd.
Metamorphosis: A traveling salesman is turned into a bug in the first sentence
The Trial: A man named Joseph K. is accused of a crime and forced to mount a defense, but he is never told what his supposed crime is.
In the Penal Colony: A traveler is introduced to a system that is illogical and an officer that has been brainwashed by it to the point of madness.

4. Kafka: Three Movements
Expressionism
Surrealism
Existentialism and Nihilism

5. Expressionism
An artistic movement that held that art should represent the internal reality (usually painful) rather than attempting to recreate or reproduce external reality—which art might not do well.
THE SCREAM Edvard Munch

6. Surrealism
An artistic movement that focused on impossibilities and contradictions that suggested the subconscious reality of the dream world rather than the tangible reality of the physical world.

7. Salvador Dali

8. “Persistence of Memory,” Salvador Dali

9. “Sleep,” Salvador Dali

10. Salvador Dali - The Anthropomorphic Cabinet (1936)

11. Existentialism / Nihilism

12. Existentialism
The most significant philosophical movement of the 20th century, EXISTENTIALISM is the belief that reality, in any meaningful sense, must be created through individual actions and choices.
Existentialism is the opposite of “ESSENTIALISM,” or the belief that reality, meaning, and significance precede individual actions and choices.
“Man is nothing else, but what he makes of himself” Sartre

13. Introductory Question:
What do you know with absolute certainty?
(Perhaps the key question with which to begin any philosophical investigation)

14. “I think, therefore, I am.”
Existentialism starts at the same point as Descartes’ philosophy – with your existence as the original certainty. You might not know anything else, but you at least know you exist (in some way) because you are thinking. As Descartes stated it:
“I think, therefore, I am.”

15. Existentialism is the philosophy that holds your existence as your pre-eminent truth and reality.

16. Truth is Subjective
This means that what is true for one person might not be true for another.

17. Okay, thanks to Descartes, we know we exist.
Then what?
Okay, thanks to Descartes, we know we exist.
To understand what Existentialism says about existence, think of the types of things a person might believe influences or controls their existence….

18. Such as…. An Interactive God Fate Astrology Laws Human nature
Pre-destination
Freud’s sub-conscious mind

19. Then, imagine the universe without any of these!
That’s the Existential view of reality!
Existentialism says there is nothing that explains, guides or gives purpose to our existence.
In short – you EXIST (have “BEING”) in total FREEDOM surrounded by NOTHINGNESS.

20. Existential Thinkers
Frederick
Nietzsche
( )

21. NIETZSCHE
Throughout history, Western thought was centered around philosophy and religion, from whose tenants meaning, morality and purpose for life was given.

22. NIETZSCHE
Nietzsche predicted that gradually, belief in religion and philosophy would diminish, moving civilization towards a day where people would have no “belief” in anything. Nietzsche called this “belief in nothing”
NIHILISM

23. NIETZSCHE
Nietzsche predicted that the emergence of science would in large part drive humanity’s march toward nihilism.
(The Scientific Revolution had already began about one hundred years prior to Nietzsche.)

24. “God is Dead.” NIETZSCHE
Nietzsche proclaimed the dawning of this era of nihilism and atheism with his famous statement:
“God is Dead.”

25. NIETZSCHE Man is Free (without God – really free)
This will further unleash the individual’s
WILL TO POWER
that drives the ascent of civilization.
This would free the strong-willed to lord over the weak-minded.

26. In this environment, there would be
NIETZSCHE
In this environment, there would be
those with a
MASTER MENTALITY
and those with a
SLAVE MENTALITY.

27. NIETZSCHE “God is Dead”
In the nihilism that would dominate the thought of the next century (the 1900s), he prophesized grand scale war, totalitarianism, genocide, and….

28. NIETZSCHE
The rise of the SUPERMAN, the free and emboldened leader who acts “beyond (without regard to the concept of) good and evil.”
The Ordinary Man vs. The Extraordinary Man Theory found in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

29. NIETZSCHE’S VIEW OF MAN
For Nietzsche,
“Man is the rope between the ape and the Superman.”

30. Friedrich Nietszche 1844 - 1900 Saxony Son of Lutheran Pastor
University of Basel
1870 Franco Prussian War
Medical orderly
Retires in ill health
Ill health plagues Nietszche for rest of life
Insane

31. Essentialism: “To be is to do.”
Existentialism: “To do is to be.”
Sinatraism: “Do be do be do.”

32. An attempt to address a life with little meaning.
Existentialism
An attempt to address a life with little meaning.

34. How Existentialism addresses nihilism
If life has no meaning, man must create some meaning for his life.
People must make themselves who they want to be
Man defines his own existence through human action
There is no God
There is no single objective truth or reality
Human beings have no fixed nature

35. Existentialism defined: “Existence (human action) precedes essence (being).” Jean Paul Sartre -French Existential Philosopher

36. Other figures in existentialism

37. Jean Paul Sartre French philosopher 20th century

38. Albert Camus- French novelist

40. Franz Kafka- Czech novelist

41. Metamorphosis

44. Examples in Film

45. “…life is like a box of chocolates…”