Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of late 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that their philosophical thinking begins with the human subject - not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual. In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called the “existential attitude”, or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.
Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche were two of the first philosophers considered fundamental to the existentialist movement, though neither used the term “existentialism” and it is unclear whether they would have supported the existentialism of the 20th century. They focus on subjective human experience rather than the objective truths of mathematics and science, which they believed were too detached or observational to truly get at the human experience. Like Pascal, they were interested in people's quiet struggle with the apparent meaninglessness of life and the use of diversion to escape from boredom.
Concepts
Existence precedes essence
A central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the most important consideration for the individual is the fact that he or she is an individual - an independently acting and responsible conscious being (“existence”) - rather than what labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories the individual fits (“essence”). The actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called his or her “true essence” instead of there being an arbitrarily attributed essence used by others to define him or her. Thus, human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life.
The Absurd
The notion of the Absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning to be found in the world beyond what meaning we give it. This meaninglessness also encompasses the amorality or “unfairness” of the world. This contrasts with the notion that “bad things don't happen to good people”; to the world, metaphorically speaking, there is no such thing as a good or a bad person; what happens happens, and it may just as well happen to a “good” person as to a “bad” person.
Because of the world's absurdity, at any point in time, anything can happen to anyone, and a tragic event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the Absurd.
Facticity
Facticity is a concept defined by Sartre in Being and Nothingness as the “in-itself”, of which humans are in the mode of not being. This can be more easily understood when considering it in relation to the temporal dimension of the past: one's past is what one is in the sense that it co-constitutes oneself. However, to stay that one is only one's past would be to ignore a significant part of reality (the present and the future), while saying that one's past is only what one was, would entirely detach it from them now. A denial of one's own concrete past constitutes an inauthentic lifestyle, and the same goes for all other kinds of facticity (having a body - e.g., one that does not allow a person to run faster than the speed of sound - identity, values, etc.)
Facticity is both a limitation and a condition of freedom. It is a limitation in that a large part of one's facticity consists of things one couldn't have chosen (birthplace, etc.), but a condition in the sense that one's values most likely will depend on it. However, even though one's facticity is “set in stone” (as being past, for instance), it cannot determine a person: The value ascribed to one's facticity is still ascribed to it freely by that person. As an example, consider two men, one of whom has no memory of his past and the other remembers everything. They both have committed many crimes, but the first man, knowing nothing about this, leads a rather normal life while the second man, feeling trapped by his own past, continues a life of crime, blaming his own past for “trapping” him in his life There is nothing essential about his committing crimes, but he ascribes this meaning to his past.
However, to disregard one's facticity when one, in the continual process of self-making, projects oneself into the future, would be to put oneself in denial of oneself, and would thus be inauthentic. In other words, the origin of one's projection will still have to be one's facticity, although in the mode of not being it (essentially). Another aspect of facticity is that it entails angst, both in the sense that freedom “produces” angst when limited by facticity, and in the sense that the lack of the possibility of having facticity to “step in” for one to take responsibility for something one has done also produces angst.
Authenticity
The theme of authentic existence is common to many existentialist thinkers. It is often taken to mean that one has to “create oneself” and then lie in accordance with this self. What is meant by authenticity is that in acting, one should act as oneself, not as “one” acts or as “one's genes” or any other essence requires. The authentic act is one that is in accordance with one's freedom. Of course, as a condition of freedom is facticity, but not to the degree that this facticity can in any way determine one's choices (in the sense that one could blame one's background for making the choice one made) . The role of facticity in relation to authenticity involves letting one's actual values come into play when one makes a choice (instead of, like Kierkegaard's Aesthete, “choosing” randomly), so that one also takes responsibility for the act instead of choosing either-or without allowing the options to have different values.
In contrast to this, the inauthentic is the denial to live in accordance with one's freedom. this can take many forms, from pretending choices are meaningless or random, through convincing oneself that some form of determinism is true, a sort of “mimicry” where one acts as “one should”. How “one” should act is often determined by an image one has of how one such of oneself (say, a bank manager, lion tamer, prostitute, etc.) acts. This image usually corresponds to some sort of social norm, but this does not mean that all acting in accordance with social norms is inauthentic: The main point is the attitude that one takes to one's own freedom and responsibility, and the extent to which one acts in accordance with this freedom.
Angst
“Existential angst”, sometimes called dread anxiety, or anguish, is a term that is common to many existentialist thinkers. It is generally held to be a negative feeling arising from the experience of human freedom and responsibility. this archetypal example is the experience one has when standing on a cliff where one not only fears falling of it, but also dreads the possibility of throwing oneself off. In this experience that “nothing is holding me back”, one senses that the lack of anything that predetermines one to either throw oneself or to a stand still, and one experiences one's own freedom.
It can also be seen in relation to the previous point how angst is before nothing, and this is what sets it apart from fear that has an object. While in the case of fear, one can take definite measures to remove the object of fear, in the case of angst, no such “constructive” measures are possible. the use of the word “nothing” in this context relates both to the inherent insecurity about the consequences of one's actions, and to the fault that, in experiencing one's freedom as angst, one also realizes that one will be fully responsible for these consequences, there is no thing in a person (his or genes, for instance) that acts in her or his stead, and that he or she can “blame” if something goes wrong. Therefore, not every choice is perceived as having dreadful consequences (and, it can be claimed, human lives would be unbearable if every choice facilitated dread). However, this doesn't change the fact that freedom remains a condition of every action. Angst is often described as a drama an adolescent troubles with their drawing developmental years.
Despair
Despair, in existentialism, is generally defined as a loss of hope. More specifically, it is a loss of hope in reaction to a breakdown in one or more of the defining qualities of one's self or identity. If a person is invested in being a particular thing, such as a bus driver or an upstanding citizen, and then finds his being-thing compromised, he would normally be found in a state of despair - a hopeless state. For example, a singer who loses her ability to sing may despair if she has nothing else to fall back on, nothing on which to rely for her identity. She finds herself unable to be what defined her being.
What sets the existentialist notion of despair apart from the conventional definition is that existentialist despair is a state one is in even when he isn't overtly in despair. So long as a person's identity depends on qualities that can crumble, he is considered to be in perpetual danger.
Opposition to positivism and rationalism
Existentialists oppose definitions of human beings as primarily rational, and, therefore, oppose positivism and rationalism. Existentialism asserts that people actually make decisions based on subjective meaning rather than purely rationally. The rejection of reason as the source of meaning is a common theme of existentialist thought, as is the focus on the feelings of anxiety and dread that we feel in the face of our own radical freedom and our awareness of death. Kierkegaard advocated rationality as a means to interact with the objective world (e.g., in the natural sciences), but when it comes to existential problems, reason is sufficient: “Human reason has boundaries.”
Like Kierkegaard, Sartre saw problems with rationality, calling it a form of “bad faith”, an attempt by the self to impose structure on a world of phenomena - “the Other” - that is fundamentally irrational and random. According to Sartre, rationality and other forms of bad faith hinder people from finding meaning in freedom. To try to suppress their feelings of anxiety and dread, people confine themselves within everyday experience, Sartre asserts, thereby relinquishing their freedom and acquiescing to being possessed in one form or another by “the Look” of “the Other” (i.e., possessed by another person - or at least one's idea of that person).
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism
