Existentialism in Literature - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Existentialism in LiteratureSlide2

Objective of this presentation

To know the meaning of existentialism

To discuss the main themes of existentialism

To review the philosophy of existentialists

To review existentialism in literature

To know what we can learn from existentialistsSlide3

Meaning and definition of existentialism

Existentialism, in the broader sense, is a philosophy that is centered upon the analysis of the existence and of the way human beings find themselves existing in the world.

The notion is that humans exist first and then each individual spends a lifetime changing their essence of nature.

A philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice and personal responsibility.Slide4

Existentialism

Defining existentialism is difficult as these philosophers not only contradict each other, but individuals tend to contradict their own stated beliefs both in writings and in actions.

Those most often associated with existentialism failed to form a cohesive philosophical discipline based on existential theories.

Existentialism too multi form and mutable to be compressed into a line.

Will Durant

Existentialism is not a philosophy but a label for several widely different revolts against traditional philosophy.

Walter Kaufmann,1975

Though existentialism is a term applied loosely to range of philosophies, there are unifying themes in the writings of the existentialists.Slide5

Definitions of existentialism

The doctrine that existence takes precedence over essence and holding that man is totally free and responsible for his acts. This responsibility is the source of dread and anguish that encompass mankind.

Webster’s new World Dictionary,1979

A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one’s acts.

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,1992Slide6

Definitions of existentialism

Philosophy of individual mind confronted by the changing contemporary world.

Will and Ariel Durant

Interpretations of Life,1970

Individual’s existence is unique and his essence is the gradual and ever changing product of his existence in the flux of time. 5000BC,

Heraleitus

explained the changing phenomenon. Nothing is, everything becomes, everything at every moment is ceasing to be what it was, and is becoming what it will be. In this flux all things are in conflict with their opposites, but the conflict produces the fertile union of opposites.Slide7

Underlying concepts of existentialism

Human free will (contrary to determinism)

Each individual human being is fundamentally alone.

Human nature is chosen through life choices

A person is best when struggling against their individual nature, fighting and struggling for life.

Society is unnatural and its traditional religious and secular rules are arbitrary.

Personal responsibility(ability to respond) and (self, not policed) discipline is crucial.

Worldly desire is futile as the world is illusion and progress is delusion.Slide8

What is not existentialism?

Wealth, pleasures or honor make the good life.

Social values and structure control the individual.

Accept what is and that is enough in life.

Science can and will make everything better.

People are basically good but ruined by society or external forces.Slide9

Behavior of existentialists

Seek to avoid intruding on the lives and boundaries of others.

Disown the pattern of universe and try to find their own meaning for themselves. They are not footballs of others’ opinions.

They feel in iron-cage of systems, but try to look at the stars than at the bars.

Creativity in their

behavior

.

Rejection of authority as the only authority which any person has is himself, he is answerable only to himself as well.

Responsible and compassionate.

Self-actualizing

people(as Maslow or Carl Rogers)Slide10

Philosophers and other personalities associated with existentialism

The term existentialism coined by French philosopher

Gabriel Marcel

around 1943 and adopted by Jean Paul Sartre in 1945.

Soren

Kierkegaard

and

Friedrich Nietzsche

were two of the first philosophers considered fundamental to the existentialist movement.

Jasper,

Heideggar

,

Sartre,Walter

Kaufmann,

Merleay

Ponty

.

Phenomenology

: Edmund Husserl, ( Heidegger, Sartre)

Literature

: Camus, Barth, Dostoevsky, Goethe, Simone de Beauvoir, Kafka, Milton, Hermann

Hesse

Theology

: Barth, Buber,

M

arcel,

Niebuhs

, Tillich,

Psychology

: Victor

Frankle

,

Rollow

May, Irwin D

Yalon

.Slide11

Major themes of Existentialism

Focus on concrete existence

Existence precedes essence

Moral individualism

Subjectivity

Angst

Freedom

Authenticity and

inauthenticity

The absurdSlide12

Focus on concrete existence

Existentialist thinkers focus on the question of concrete human existence and the conditions of this existence rather than hypothesizing a human essence.

Existence comes from the

L

atin

“

existere

” meaning “to stand out”.

Man exists in a state of distance from the world that he nonetheless remains in the midst of.

Man is alone and he has to pursue his path from alone to alone in great solitude.Slide13

Existence precedes essence

Existence precedes essence(Sartre)

This implies that we first exist an humans and we then become whom we decide to be through our free will or choice.

Each individual has unique existence and his essence or essential character is the gradual and ever-changing product of his existence in the flux of time.

A man’s essence is formed by his total past, to which he adds in every moment of his life.

We are sum of our decisions or conscious choices.Slide14

Moral individualism

Morals not decided by society but by oneself.

Morals or laws decided by society or person in power, are all arbitrary.

Ethics is the responsible use of freedom.

Kierkegaard reacted against the tradition by insisting that the highest good for the individual is to find his or her own unique vocation.

I must find a truth that is true for me—the idea for which I can live or die

.(Kierkegaard

)

My Zarathustra fights with his hands so that they are free to bless.(

Nietzsche

)

Superman beyond good and evil (

Nietzsche

)Slide15

Subjectivity

Existentialists have stressed the importance of passionate individual action in deciding questions of both morality and truth.

Personal experience and acting on one’s own convictions are essential in arriving at the truth.

Understanding of a situation by someone involved in that situation is superior to that of a detached and objective observer.

Most important questions are not accessible to science or logic.

Phenomenology

: record of individual experiences. It is neither the deductive or empirical methods of natural science. It consists of realizing the presence of an object and elucidating the meaning through intuition.Slide16

Angst

Angst, sometimes called dread, anxiety or even anguish is common to all existentialists.

It reveals the character of human life and illuminates the nature of the world.

In Kierkegaard’s conception, dread (Angst) is not fear, caused by some external threat. In fear, constructive measures are possible to remove it. But angst is an inward passion, continuous melancholy or sudden terrifying emotion.

Sartre treats anguish as the reflective appreciation of the Self as freedom. It is the

realisation

that a nothingness slips in between the Self and my past and future so that nothing relieves me from the necessity of continually choosing myself and nothing guarantees validity of the values which I choose.Slide17

Freedom to choose

Humanity’s primary distinction is the freedom to choose.

Human beings do not have a fixed nature, or essence as other animals and plants do,

Each human being makes choices that create his or her own nature.

Choice is therefore central to human existence, and is inescapable, even the refusal to choose is a choice.

Freedom to choice entails commitment and responsibility.

As individuals are free to choose their own path, they must accept the risk and responsibility of following their commitment wherever it leads.Slide18

Authenticity

One has to “find oneself” and then live in accordance with this self.

The authentic act is one that is in accordance with one’s freedom.

One should let one’s actual values come into play when one makes a choice, so that one can take the responsibility for that act.Slide19

Absurd

There is no meaning to be found in the world beyond what meaning we give to it.

It is not essential that good people will

be rewarded

and bad people will

be punished

.

Anything can happen to anyone, and a tragic event can happen with anyone.Slide20

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Studied individual will, freedom, and anguish.

Because of his long association with criminals, he had an intense interest in abnormal and perverted types of psychology that he

analyzed

Notes from underground

, the

fictionized

diary explores a man’s inner thoughts and struggles.

Brothers Karamazov

-rationalism

vs

irrationalism, struggle between love and hatred, faith and unfaith, conflict between generations. Repulsive father(

Fyador

) and his four sons each representing a universal trait of humanity like saintliness(

Alyosha

), passion and sensuality(Dmitri), intellect(Ivan) and ugliness of body, mind and spirit(

Smerdyakov

).

Dostoevsky explores the right of a child to raise his hand against his father and by extension the right of man to raise his hand against God.Slide21

Soren Kierkegaard

He is considered the first existentialist, his works were popularized by Heidegger, and others.

Formulated the aesthetic, ethical and religious as modes of existence.

He insisted on the need for individual decision and leaps of faith in the search for religious truth and contradicted Protestant rationalist theology.

The individual must be prepared to defy the norms of society for the sake of higher authority of a personally valid way of life.Slide22

Friedrich Nietzsche

Perhaps the most suggestive and stimulating philosopher

Will to power (liberated

Schopenheur’s

vulantarism

from pessimism)

God is Dead and Superman is the hope.

Master mentality and slave mentality

Anything that crushes genius is evil.

Superman beyond good and evil.

How spirit transformed from camel, to lion, to child.

Thus

Spake

Zarathustra the future bible(

Archrya

Rajneesh)Slide23

Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous quotes and existentialism

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Of the necessity,

partymen

becomes liars.

Insanity in individuals is something rare-but in groups, parties, nations, it the rule.

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.Slide24

Friedrich Nietzsche and famous quotes

The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.

He who has a why to live can bear with almost anyhow.

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superman –a rope over an abyss.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.Slide25

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich

Nietzsche studied Schopenhauer’s work “the world and will and idea” based on the philosophy of will. But Nietzsche formed his philosophy on will to power.

Nietzsche is most influential philosopher found in most of writers, psychologists, etc.Slide26

Nietzsche

The

Übermensch

is a goal; it is what man should strive to become. Nietzsche argued that “Man is a rope stretched between animal and

the Superman”.

Nietzsche

thought that ‘man’ is an incomplete piece of work, waiting to become something more than just man. To do this, man has to reject Christianity “and install his own set of values which are ‘Beyond Good and Evil’… who could reject the ‘God hypothesis’, who could look the truths of pessimism in the face and still say ‘Yes’ to life, would cease to be an ordinary human; such an individual would in fact become a Superhuman

.”Slide27

Edmund Husserl

Austrian born German philosopher and mathematician

Developed the concept of essences and being

A leader in the development of the phenomenology

As phenomenologist interested in things as they appear to consciousness, rather than things in themselves.

Profound influence upon existentialists.Slide28

Martin Heidegger

Studied under Husserl and interested in the “question of being” (

Being and Time

)

Individual as being-in-the world is characterized by action and anxiety and considering that world is not our primary way of being in the world.

Attempted to reveal the concealed nature of being.

Why should there be being at all, when there should be nothing.Slide29

Jean Paul Sartre

Gifted

playwright,

novelist, philosopher and political activist.

He was offered the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964, but refused.

There is no fixed human nature or essence of

lonely human being

and so the individual has to choose his or her being.

This choice brings with it responsibility.

Those who do not choose, but base their lives on pre-arranged moral and philosophical systems are said to be acting in bad faith.Slide30

Jean Paul Satre

Nausea

(novel)-30 year old Antoine

Roquentin

frustrated by meaningless routine matters of existence, crimes, perversions, cheatings, hypocrisies, etc feels a ‘sweetish sickness’ called as nausea. In the end he accepts the indifference of the physical world to man’s aspirations and man is able to see that realization not only as a regret but also as an opportunity.

People are free to make their own meaning: a freedom that is also a responsibility, because without that commitment there will be no meaning. Slide31

Jean Paul Sartre

Being and Nothing

is the corner stone of existentialism. It encompasses the dilemmas and aspirations of individual in contemporary society.

Themes like Being, Existence, Essence, Nothingness, Freedom, anguish, etc. are explored.

Each of us is alone and helpless. Life has no meaning in itself, only the individual can give meaning to his life-by the free choice of his project and goal, and by recognizing his responsibility for the results. Slide32

Karl Jaspers

Contemporary of Sartre, Camus,

German psychiatrist, philosopher, and theologian.

Concerned with human reactions to extreme situations.

It is the work of Jaspers that the seeds sown by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche first grew into existentialism. (Walter Kaufmann)Slide33

Simone De Beauvior

Feminist writer, editor of many of Sartre’s works.

Women’s social subjugation is credited to patriarchal rather than biological or psychological structures.Slide34

Albert Camus

Life is essentially

absurd

: full of injustice, millions work in repetitive exploitative jobs.

We should rebel against these absurdities by refusing to participate in them.

He dramatized the problems of violence and morality, of “man versus the state” in four plays presented in Paris theaters.Slide35

Notes on Absurd

The emotional and intellectual awareness of the fact of death in contrast to the potent desire for immortality.

Contradiction between two things. This contradiction exists between

a person

’s

longing for duration and the inevitability of

his or her

death.

The absurd describes the relation

between a person

and the world.

People

are

born,

struggle,

and

die; they

are

innocent and yet

they

suffer

and ultimately

are

alone

Sisyphus

is the incarnation of the Absurd Hero.

The

realization

that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. Life can be

magnificent

and overwhelming .Slide36

Albert Camus-The Myth of Sisyphus

Human conditions as absurd, confrontation

between a person’s

desire for significance, meaning and clarity on the one hand and the cold and indifferent universe on the other hand.

Absurd leads to choice of suicide or leap of faith or recognition. Recognition is the only defensible option.

I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death and I refuse suicide.Slide37

Franz Kafka

Kafka presents a world that is at once real and dream like and in which individual burdened with guilt, isolation and anxiety makes a futile search for personal salvation.

Kafka stands between Nietzsche and the existentialists and pictures the world into which man is thrown into godless world and faces the absurd world.

His novels Trial(1925), The Castle(1926) present isolated men confronting vast, elusive, heartless bureaucracies.Slide38

The Metamorphosis

Kafka’s novel Metamorphosis depicts travelling salesman

Gregor

Samsa

who finds himself inexplicably transformed overnight into a gigantic insect with many legs

Kafka saw all life as an insect’s dream

Man is drawn into meaningless routines, manipulated by the outside world.Slide39

Maurice Merleau

Ponty

Phenomenologist Existentialist

Unlike many

phenomenologists

, he affirmed the reality of a world that transcends our consciousness of it.

In his studies of perception, he laid emphasis on the physical and the biological as levels of conceptualization that preconditioned as mental concepts.Slide40

Hermann Hesse

Steppenwolf

(Novel)-portrays man’s split between his humanity, and his wolf-like aggression and homelessness.

Duality of the nature is the major theme in the novel and two main characters-Harry

Hallar

and

Hermine

illustrate this duality. Harry illustrates the duality through inner conflict and an outer conflict.

Hermine

represents the duality of human nature through an outer conflict.

Hermine

is a socialite and she coerces Harry to agree to subject himself to society. Then Harry murders her. Slide41

Hermann Hesse-Sidhartha

Novel based upon Indian mysticism states that enlightenment is individualistic, knowledge can be transferred but one has to learn and earn the wisdom through one’s own efforts.

The hero,

Sidharatha

, has to undergo all the experiences like mendicant wanderer, wealthy businessman, and finally companion to a humble ferryman. His final peace comes only after he has had his full share of pleasure and pain.

One has to gain wisdom with one’s own efforts.Slide42

Victor Frankl

Man’s search for meaning.

Experiences of Nazi concentration camp

There are two races: decent and indecent.

Each man has unique meaning of life, that he has to discover and live for it.

If there are suffering in life, these suffering has unique meaning that individual has to find with his own efforts.

He who has a why to live can bear with almost anyhow

(

Friedrich Nietzsche

)Slide43

Milton

Long before Camus and

Satre

, John Milton

criticized

country’s

govt

and churches.

His works concern with individual choice and responsibility.

He considered the individuals more important than any created system such as

Govt

or Church.

Individual rights and free will are more important.

Govt

tries to condition the mind of the public by limiting what is being publically read.Slide44

Milton

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven or Hell, a Hell of Haven

Paradise Lost

.

To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell,

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

Paradise Lost Slide45

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe’s Faust finds himself lonely, alienated from his fellow men by his own intellect.

Faust legends feature a man driven by a quest for power, Goethe’s anti-hero is driven by quest to know and understand himself and absolute truth.

Faust features a man struggling to understand existence. His devotion to who and what he is makes him a heroic figure. Understanding why mankind exists, and in what terms it exists, is important enough for Faust to risk damnation. Slide46

John S Barth

Barth’s characters in novels are primarily on quests for self-definition.

Barth’s

heroes

are engaged in search for meaning, a justification for life amidst the tension between the relativism of post modern thought and a desire for a defined and rational ethics. Slide47

Samuel Backett

Samuel

Backett’s

Waiting for

Godot

is most popular absurdist play.

Structurally,

Godot

is a two-act play which is primarily cyclical. It begins with two lonely tramps on a roadside who are awaiting the arrival of a figure referred to as

Godot

and ends with the same premise.

Backett

uses his characters to show that waiting is truly anguish and one must actively pursue the meaning in their life.Slide48

Is Schopenhauer existentialist?

The answer is both yes as well as no.

Schopenhauer bit too serious student of life is influenced by Upanishads.

To him, “(Upanishads) have been the solace to my life, it will be the solace to my death”

His whole philosophy surrounds the will-the striving force mysteriously controlling our whole actions.

His analysis of the will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical and sexual desires can never be satisfied and therefore these desires be moderated and negated (similar teachings we find in Buddhism and Vedanta)Slide49

Schopenhauer’s determinism

To him, there is only one Will, not the individual wills of individuals

This idea is central to Schopenhauer’s form of determinism.

One is part of the universe like everything else, the basic energies of the universe flow through oneself, as they flow through everything else.Slide50

Schopenhauer’s existentialism

Schopenhauer reader of Kant and Hegel.

But criticized their logical optimism and the belief that individual morality could be determined by society and reason as individual is guided by his own basic desires.

These human desires are futile, illogical, directionless.

There is element of choice when these desires are sublimated to intellect.Slide51

Schopenhauer’s existentialism

Govt

limited role to play just to check the destructive tendencies innate to our species.

Leave each man free to work our his own salvation.

He opposes the traditional German idealists in their metaphysical elevation of self-consciousness(which is too intellectualistic in its approach)Slide52

The world as will

If one looks deeply into oneself, one will discover not only one’s own essence, but also the essence of the universe.

Within Schopenhauer’s vision of the world as will, there is no God to be comprehended, and the world is conceived as being meaningless.

This world is evil as there is endless striving and blind impulse with no end in view, devoid of knowledge, lawless, absolutely free, entirely self-determining and almighty. Slide53

The world as idea

The world which surrounds us is only as an idea existing in consciousness, and is only object in relation to subject, perception of a perceiver, in a world.

Man is free to transform the will through contemplation of philosophy and art like music, poetry, etc.

Ascetic’s struggle is none other than a supreme struggle against human nature.Slide54

What we can learn

We should not talk much about the abyss as we shall carry the risk of falling in the abyss.

We should avoid the company and thought of such negative persons. One should progress, not regress.

Everything is impermanent, both good or evil have their own days and nights.

Despite being pushed to our limits, we should transform the micro environment that suits one or another portfolios of passions or priorities.Slide55

What we can learn

Every

one of us has meaning of life.

If we associate our personal motive with the welfare of the others( that should develop out of genuine compassion) we shall create successful life

.