THE NOVELTY OF EXISTENTIALISM

THE NOVELTY OF EXISTENTIALISM

Existentialism is one of the most influential philosophical efforts on the twentieth century.  It emerged by way of bitter protest against the pretensions of human reason which came to its apogee in the philosophy of Hegel. The legacy of existentialism to philosophy is that;

*        Thought is not necessarily superior to action,

*        that thinking and acting are coordinate perspectives and

*        that philosophy should address the concrete problems of human existence.

*        More importantly, that the irrational cannot be ignored in philosophy.

1) One of the main innovations of existentialism in contemporary thought is the rejection of all-inclusive systems. All-inclusive systems refer to man’s tendency towards totalization. Organized religions such as rational Christianity and any system of thought that arrogates a rational grasp of the totality of experiences to itself such as Platonism and Hegelianism are eloquent examples of all-inclusive systems. The major crime of all-inclusive systems is that they impose a prior constraint on human essence; seeking to determine in advance how man should think and act and plotting a graph in advance containing patterns of behaviour and modes of thought of which man should avail himself and from which he must not deviate.

On the contrary, the existentialists argue that to determine how man should think in advance is to castrate his intellect, and, to determine how he should act before hand is to take away his freedom, personality and dignity. The question then should not be “What is Christianity?” or “What is faith?” but what is Christianity to me, and what is faith to me. Man should assert his distinctive character and not merely attach himself to a system. The otherwise will tantamount to congealing or fossilizing the distinctively human.

           

2) Another rewarding way of grasping the novelty of existentialism is to contrast it with some of the basic tenets of traditional philosophy. The central point of difference between traditional philosophy and existentialism concerns the issue of “essence” and “existence”. Whereas philosophers of the older tradition are concerned with the essence, existentialists are principally concerned with existence. With the intention of distinguishing the “real” from  the “unreal” so that human knowledge could be founded on a sound basis, the philosophers of the older tradition (right from Plato to F.H. Bradley) have tried to determine the essence or substance of things. To say that things have essences is to say that there is some substratum underlying the appearance of things. With Parmenides and Plato, the thinking that things have hidden essences became a metaphysical contagion which infected the whole of western philosophy.

The existentialists express their discountenance for the view that things have hidden essences. With the blow of a sledge hammer on the notion of substratum, Nietzsche announced the ‘death of God’ and the illusoriness of the ‘worlds-behind-the-scene’. It took also a Jean-Paul Sartre to argue vehemently that there is no longer an exterior for the existent. Thus, while traditional philosophers made a distinction between appearance and reality, existentialists repudiate such and argue that no such distinction can legitimately be made. In other words, the appearance of a thing is partly the reality of that thing.

3) Again, traditional philosophers always make a distinction between subject and object, between the knower and what is known. They claim that such distinction enables the inquirer to study entities objectively and impersonally. And some traditional philosophers often doubt the existence of the external world.

On the contrary, existentialists argue that such view of epistemic subject and object and the external world is entirely mistaken. The external world is there, real and needs no proof at all, just like both the object and the subject are real and very closely related. For existentialists, although objects in the world have independent existence, it would make no sense to talk about them without the knowing subject, the being of man. In the same way, for the being of man to be conscious at all, it has to be conscious of something, an object in the world. Thus, for existentialists, what is known must bear a direct relationship, necessarily, with the knower.

4) Furthermore, whereas traditional philosophers were preoccupied with fashioning out systems, over-all schemes or millennial blueprints for preserving consistency in human knowledge and for guiding social, economic and political actions, existentialists argue that reality cannot be systematized, or neatly packaged in concepts. Kierkegaard argues that we cannot think existence, because we abrogate existence the moment we think it. He further argues that while a logical system is possible, an existential system is not possible. If we say P implies Q, for example, we must assert Q whenever we say P. Hence, a logical system is possible. But, in issues concerning concrete existence, systematization would fail us. Hunger, for instance, is the cause of eating. But hunger cannot put food into your mouth. You could be hungry and yet refuse to eat. Thus, for existentialism, existence is so porous and precarious that we cannot present it as an interlocking system.

5) Finally, while traditional philosophers emphasize human reason, existentialists point to human affects. Existential analysis of the being of man shows that man is largely a sentient being with numerous outlets for cathartic expression. Existentialists therefore wonder why man is defined as a rational rather than as a sentient being. Hegel’s claim that ‘the real is rational and the rational is real’ has scandalized human reason. If reason plays part in philosophy, feeling also plays a role. A philosophy which emphasizes reason and shuns feeling misses the whole man. The whole man, the integrated person is a man of reason and affects.

The above is the thrust of what the putative novelty of existentialism consists in, as a modern literary and critical theory.