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Oct 8, 2024 · In sum, while existentialism played a crucial role in responding to the moral and philosophical crises of the mid-20th century, its focus on individual meaning and metaphysical concerns became less central as society shifted toward collective identity, structural critiques and the pursuit of material well-being in an increasingly globalized, technologically driven world.
- Overview
- Social and historical projections of existentialism
The metaphysical or theological dimension of existentialism does not leave humans with nothing to do. Once the nullity of the existential possibilities is recognized, humans cannot but resign themselves to Being, which, in one of its new manifestations in the world or beyond it, conducts them to a new epoch. Even someone like José Ortega y Gasset, the Spanish existentialist and writer, who, in examining the social aspects of existence, characterized his epoch by the advent of the masses and the socialization of humans, halted at the recognition of the crisis and the total uncertainty that dominates the future of humanity (La rebelión de las masas [1929; The Revolt of the Masses).
On the other hand, humanistic existentialism recognized the positive and the to-some-degree determining function that humans may have in history. It insisted, as in Merleau-Ponty, on the individual’s duty to assume the responsibility of an effective action for the transformation of society and, in general, of the world that he inhabits.
Along that line of assuming responsibility, existentialism moved toward Marxism, with which it shares the diagnoses of existence as the primordial and ineradicable relationship of humans with nature and with society. In the Critique de la raison dialectique (1960; Critique of Dialectical Reason), Sartre attempted a synthesis between existentialism and Marxism by modifying the notion of “project” that he defended in Being and Nothingness and by utilizing the notion of dialectic as understood by Marx. The project of which existence consists is not the result of an arbitrary choice (as Sartre had previously maintained); it is, instead, that of a conditioning by the objective possibilities that Sartre identifies (as does Marx) with “the material conditions of existence.” The project remains, however, that of the particular individual of a unique consciousness—but of a consciousness that tries to become totalized, or to enter into relationship with others so as to constitute, with others, human groups that are more and more comprehensive. In that manner it tends toward a complete and definitive totalization without appeals. Dialectical reason would be precisely such a process of growing totalization; and it becomes, moreover, the true protagonist of history and becomes that with which the interior freedom of any individuals who participate in history is identified.
From the defense of the freedom of the individual, Sartre thus moved to the defense of the absolute dialectical necessity of history despite its being interiorized and lived by individuals. A historical project of human life that tries to remove the characteristics of inauthenticity or of alienation from existence—a project that may bring existentialism and Marxism close together—thus ends by losing, in that form, its risky and problematic character and the awareness of the conditions and the modalities of its realization. Those features are also lost in the “transcendental project” of a new society elaborated by one of the leaders of the New Left, the German-born American philosopher Herbert Marcuse. While insisting on the requirement that the “transcendental project” be “in accord with the real possibilities open at the attained level of the material and intellectual culture,” Marcuse entrusted its realization to an impersonal and contemplative Reason, which cannot but invite the “great refusal” of contemporary society.
The metaphysical or theological dimension of existentialism does not leave humans with nothing to do. Once the nullity of the existential possibilities is recognized, humans cannot but resign themselves to Being, which, in one of its new manifestations in the world or beyond it, conducts them to a new epoch. Even someone like José Ortega y Gasset, the Spanish existentialist and writer, who, in examining the social aspects of existence, characterized his epoch by the advent of the masses and the socialization of humans, halted at the recognition of the crisis and the total uncertainty that dominates the future of humanity (La rebelión de las masas [1929; The Revolt of the Masses).
On the other hand, humanistic existentialism recognized the positive and the to-some-degree determining function that humans may have in history. It insisted, as in Merleau-Ponty, on the individual’s duty to assume the responsibility of an effective action for the transformation of society and, in general, of the world that he inhabits.
Along that line of assuming responsibility, existentialism moved toward Marxism, with which it shares the diagnoses of existence as the primordial and ineradicable relationship of humans with nature and with society. In the Critique de la raison dialectique (1960; Critique of Dialectical Reason), Sartre attempted a synthesis between existentialism and Marxism by modifying the notion of “project” that he defended in Being and Nothingness and by utilizing the notion of dialectic as understood by Marx. The project of which existence consists is not the result of an arbitrary choice (as Sartre had previously maintained); it is, instead, that of a conditioning by the objective possibilities that Sartre identifies (as does Marx) with “the material conditions of existence.” The project remains, however, that of the particular individual of a unique consciousness—but of a consciousness that tries to become totalized, or to enter into relationship with others so as to constitute, with others, human groups that are more and more comprehensive. In that manner it tends toward a complete and definitive totalization without appeals. Dialectical reason would be precisely such a process of growing totalization; and it becomes, moreover, the true protagonist of history and becomes that with which the interior freedom of any individuals who participate in history is identified.
From the defense of the freedom of the individual, Sartre thus moved to the defense of the absolute dialectical necessity of history despite its being interiorized and lived by individuals. A historical project of human life that tries to remove the characteristics of inauthenticity or of alienation from existence—a project that may bring existentialism and Marxism close together—thus ends by losing, in that form, its risky and problematic character and the awareness of the conditions and the modalities of its realization. Those features are also lost in the “transcendental project” of a new society elaborated by one of the leaders of the New Left, the German-born American philosopher Herbert Marcuse. While insisting on the requirement that the “transcendental project” be “in accord with the real possibilities open at the attained level of the material and intellectual culture,” Marcuse entrusted its realization to an impersonal and contemplative Reason, which cannot but invite the “great refusal” of contemporary society.
The history of existentialism may be better placed than the history of philosophy as a whole to provide a more satisfying response to the philosophy-sceptic. Existentialist philosophers including Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, as well as Sartre and Beauvoir, have consistently framed existentialist philosophy as a way of seeking meaning in life, and ...
Oct 24, 2024 · According to existentialism: (1) Existence is always particular and individual—always my existence, your existence, his existence, her existence. (2) Existence is primarily the problem of existence (i.e., of its mode of being); it is, therefore, also the investigation of the meaning of Being. (3) That investigation is continually faced with ...
Jan 6, 2023 · Existentialism. First published Fri Jan 6, 2023. As an intellectual movement that exploded on the scene in mid-twentieth-century France, “existentialism” is often viewed as a historically situated event that emerged against the backdrop of the Second World War, the Nazi death camps, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all of ...
Jan 14, 2024 · Existentialism was the product of the complex political, economic, and social crisis framework of the early postwar period. Known as “The Age of Anxiety,” the period 1918–1939 was marked by a series of artistic manifestations, cultural trends, and achievements in science destined to shake the social consciousness of the time to its core ...
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Although ‘existentialism’ remains a frequently mentioned term and Sartre arguably the most widely recognized philosopher of the 20th century, one often hears the claim that the movement is over; that it has been supplanted by two successive waves of French thought, structuralism in the 1960s and poststructuralism in the 1970s and 1980s, after which the momentum dissipated as the cohort of ...
