Existence

These are lines from the dialogue of Mr. Fox and Kiley the Opossum, from the film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Where Mr. Fox in the moment of questioning the purpose and the meaning of his existence. This is what it calls it an “existential crisis” or “existentialism”. However, these question did not prevent Mr. Fox from planning to do ‘one last job’ which is robbing a near by farms (Boggis’s chicken farms, Bunce’ a dwarfish duck and goose farm, and Bean’s turkey and apple farm ) but someone may say it actually encouraged him. The term “existentialism” used for first time by Jean-Paul Sartre and his associates, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus during the cultural movement in Europe in the 1940s-1950s . Clearly Mr. Fox is not satisfied with his job as a writer even though the one can notice that he like to give speeches, lecture and advise everyone around him, but that does not satisfied him and he is still looking for a meaning for his life. For Sartre “existence precedes essence” is the cure idea of existentialism, which means that the person is the one who create his identities and values . In another word the individual is the one who create what or who he is and why he is practicing a particular activity. Therefore Sartre may say for Mr. Fox you are in a good situation and these questions are meaningless because the existence come first and later on comes the essence.

Soren Kierkegaard writings basically speak about how human live and how human choose to live. Kierkegaard philosophize what its mean to be alive. His subject was the individual and his or her existence, the existing being. In Kierkegaard’s view, this purely subjective entity is lay beyond the reach of reason,

Existentialism is a philosophy that puts emphasis on the existence of a person’s freedom or life. In a human point of view, it means to believe in oneself, not a group or religion. (33)

Soren Kierkegaard is a Danish philosopher and theologian who attempted to deliver his existentialist point of views. Specifically, Kierkegaard emphasizes the need for humans to take responsibility for their actions and go beyond their “socially imposed identities” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). According to his earliest major work “Either/Or,” he suggests humans are reluctantly stuck between two spheres of life that they must choose between: aesthetic or ethical. He delves into what constitutes a life as either and suggests the practicalities associated with each choice. He stresses the importance of being responsible for the truth and living according to the truth we’ve committed to. In addition, the existential choice can be

There is no pre-programmed destiny, no inherent meaning in our lives. Instead, meaning arises from the individual's impetus to will freely, to do what we choose in any given moment, and to then reflect upon those choices and the ways in which they alter reality and the lives of others. Being and Nothingness defines every individual as just that: a lone individual. The nature of our being is truly isolated from the nature of other beings and the world around us – while our actions and essence contain an implicit interconnectedness with the world, while meaning can only come from the existence of external phenomena, our true self is like an island surrounded by impenetrable nothingness – pregnant with the potential for possibility, but always empty in-itself.

Society tends to live day to day without much question of their own existence. Humans are born into the world and without second thought begin to live their lives, but there comes a time when individuals begin to question the reason for their being. In Richard Taylor’s, “The Meaning of Life”, Taylor explores the thought that our existence, when viewed externally without our prejudices, is fundamentally pointless. A thorough analysis of Taylor’s ideas will be given to understand the reasoning behind his thoughts, his argument will then be defended from counter arguments that state that the meaning behind any entity’s life could have any alternative meaning.

Existentialism, a philosophical ideology conceptualized by Jean-Paul Sarte, encapsulates most thought processes where “the individual is obliged to make a choice as though he were choosing for all mankind” (Arnold, “Jean-Paul Sarte: Overview). Put simply, Sarte’s concept of existentialism is the thought process by which humans find themselves existing, and the analysis of their existence itself (Tulloch, Sartrian Existentialism). This analysis of existence found itself in many writings during the twentieth century, and acts a driving force in both Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room” and Lispector’s “The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman”.

  Existentialism is a philosophy dealing with man's aloneness in the universe. Either there is no God or else God stands apart from man, leaving him free will to make his own choices. From this basic idea of man being alone in an uncertain and purposeless world, many related ideas have developed. One great worry of existentialist writers is that life is becoming too complicated and too impersonal. People become more and more involved with their work, which is taking them away from their friends, family, and culture. However, these provide the only "meaning" that life could possibly have. One author prominently known for his work with existential ideas was Franz

Perhaps the most telling symptom of existentialist philosophers is their ever-divergent theories on the fundamental characteristics of human life and their steadfast refusal to assign an explicit meaning or reason to our existence at all. Contrary to criticism which therefore labels the movement cynically nihilistic, existentialism justifies life with reasoning similar to that of Zen Buddhism. Specifically, the notions of hopelessness and absurdity can be gleaned from Buddhism in a manner helpful to the understanding of existentialist viewpoints on the same.

Starting with Kierkegaard, it is best to understand that he has a deep fulfillment to God and that he feels is the absolute. This absolute is to live in the realm of a paradox and that paradox is proving the existence of God and experiencing it for yourself. To understand this is to go through the different stages, of aesthetic, moral and religious. The aesthetic is all about the individual and focuses on oneself as an individual. The moral is having to be antagonistic towards yourself in

Kierkegaard believed that subjective reflection was the key understanding meaning in life. He kind of complains with the objective reflection stating that it is impersonal and an indifferent relation to existence. As a matter of fact, this terminology as I shall call it, defines just what the objective world and objective reflection is: being independent of any human subjectivity. Subjective reflection naturally focuses on human existence in a personal, inward way without 'detachment' as Kierkegaard put it.

Life could sometimes be harsh and not grant us the ability to care for ourselves and therefore rely on others to survive. Being unable to care for oneself leads to a diminished sense of self-esteem. Not until the time we lack the ability to perform the things we want, do we feel the absence and thus wish for their existence. This is so because we have a humane nature of taking everything for granted. In his play Endgame, Beckett uses many absurd elements to make a connection between existence and absence. Throughout his characters Clov and Hamm, Beckett uses each of them to demonstrate their incompleteness and thus the need to seek the help of one other in order to survive and achieve their complete existence.

Kierkegaard's works are not straightforward proclamations of his philosophy: he wrote under pseudonyms and assumed the persona of these fictional characters in his writing. Thus, one must be careful when attributing a particular position to Kierkegaard -- often the view is advanced by a pseudonym, so various inferential processes must be applied in order to substantiate a claim that Kierkegaard really meant any statement.

The world we live in is an odd one; some cope with its absurdities through intensive faith, others through utter disregard of all its meaning. Existentialism, however, leads us down a peculiar path that blurs these concepts into one unique belief system. While we might be faced with situations beyond our complete control, we do have the power to control how we handle said situations and whether or not we choose to cultivate significance from them. The search for significance is very primitive and so are the answers that have accompanied it throughout human history. Obviously, life doesn’t have a clearly stated purpose to it; it is up to each individual to create their own relative purpose and find their own happiness in a life of suffering. This is exactly what Existentialism proposes, that it is not possible to know the truth, so it is up to the individual to create his or her own, and then create their own purpose. Merriam-Webster defines the philosophy theory of Existentialism as a “…philosophical movement embracing diverse doctrines but centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad.” But Existentialism is not a concept that can simply be defined in one fell swoop. Throughout our studies of philosophy, I found there to be two main concepts that act as the foundation for the basic

Kierkegaard suggests three stages of life that an individual experiences on his or her way to existence. For Kierkegaard, existence is not simply a condition of being alive; it is an active pursuit toward the type of person one “ought” to be (Stumpf, 2015, p. 374). ‘Existence’ is a qualitative statement that indicates a conscious and active will to make reflective choices (373). According to him, there is a graduated system; ‘three stages of life,’ that one navigates with a series of choices in order to fully exist.