Welcome Readers,
This blogpost highlights some worth pondering points of existentialism discussed in some of the videos. Here are ten short videos to learn the fundamentals of Existentialist philosophy.
“All that is transitory is but a metaphor.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. It focuses on the question of human existence and the feeling that there is no purpose or explanation at the core of existence. It holds that, as there is no God or any other transcendent force, the only way to counter this nothingness (and hence to find meaning in life) is by embracing existence. (Existentialism - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics of Philosophy)
Video 1: What is Existentialism?
We can apply this term existentialist to many great thinkers. All of the thinkers views differ from one another in a much profound sense.
For all of these philosophical thinking and existing begun with each thinking subject namely the individual.
Individuality
The first person who founded the whole moment Kierkegaard. The other two main and important parts that constitute existentialism is -
Passions
Freedom
It's only after realizing the absurdity of life or living in the absurdity that one can either fully devout oneself to God or can be rational and deny the existence of God. it cannot be preached or understand being in a part of the community, it is an individual process.
Philosophers like Camus argue that by believing in God, you have taken the easy way to out. One has to fully understand the absurd and has to fully embrace it. Believing in God is considered philosophical suicide. Existentialism is mainly popular among young people because it touches on subjects which a person in his or her youth might be struggling with. There were other subjects like suicide, anguish, absurdity, passions, emotions, death, freedom, disparage, etc. So in this video, there were all these pertinent points which I found very interesting.
Video 2: The Myth of Sisyphus: The Absurd Reasoning (Feeling of the Absurd)
The myth of Sisyphus is a longer but one of the significant works by Albert Camus. This video talks about absurd reasoning. Camus begins his essay by an unusual start-
"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."
-Albert Camus
He is focusing a lot on the matter of suicide from the beginning. According to his observation, many people die because they do not find life worth living. He says suicide is an individual. There is an absurd relationship between individual thought and suicide. And suicide is the last great work of art of our life.
"An elegant suicide is the ultimate work of art."
Film -Stay
He further asked that when does the thought of suicide gets into our mind and the answer is only when we think because beginning to think is beginning to undermine. when we pause to think we become aware of the absurdity of life.
"Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined."
"Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering."
- Albert Camus
- The divorce between man and this life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thought of their own suicide, it can be seen, without further explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing for death. (Camus)
- I cannot know unless I pursue, without reckless passion, in the sole light of the evidence, the reasoning of which I am here suggesting the source. This is what I call absurd reasoning. (Camus)
Video 3: The Myth of Sisyphus: the notion of philosophical suicide
This video talks about things like what is the absurd and how does it occur? The answer to this question is that Absurd is neither in the man nor in the world. It can only occur in the presence of both. It can be assumed that the world is irrational and to conceal this irrationality, a human being is needed and a kind of confrontation is needed between this two for absurd to occur.
"Absurd is neither in man not in the world, it can only occur in their presence together - man and the world"
We have to think that if there would not be any human being than there would not be any desire or human nostalgia to be satisfied. We have to accept all the consequences which we face and embrace all the consequences in our life and obviously, the absurdity ends with death.
"There can be no absurd outside the human mind and the absurd ends with death"
One can either negate oneself to get away from the absurd and commit physical suicide or can deny the absurd and live in perpetual denial and commit philosophical suicide wherein one will kill oneself as a philosopher to avoid the absurd.
Confront the problem of the absurd and struggle with it.
If anything conjures away these requirements, it is likely that one is committing one of the two forms of suicide and these requirements should not be confused with despair, renunciation and immature unrest.
Camus believed that the existentialist do recognize the absurd but instead of embracing it they suggest escape one way or another basically they all make an appeal to religion in its broader sense fir a forced hope and most of this existentialists consider a common theme-
Camus disapproves this because absurd becomes God in the broadest meaning of this world and that ability to understand because the existence illuminates everything. Nothing logically prepares this reasoning. Such behaviour towards the absurd is called a LEAP.
Video 4: Dadaism, Nihilism and Existentialism
This video brought to light the thoughts regarding one of the philosophical movements called Dadaism which rose up against the First World War. Dadaism was the rage that was boiling within the people against the values or the existing civilization of which had proven themselves to be wrong by bringing world war as upshot terrorism. Dadaism is a quest for change. It was a moment of young writers and artist in Paris which attempted to suppress the logical relationship between idea and statement and argued primarily for absolute freedom.
The term was meant to signify everything and nothing, or total freedom, anti-rules, ideals and tradition.
It was a tool that could make a new path to new values possible. Dadaism didn't contain any values in itself and if anything it was against every existing value and rule. As existentialism was the movement became a doctrine as an answer to the absurdity of life, it was comparable to the dada movement. A few artists such as Hugo Ball Bianco, Jean Arp and Lazaro, Tristan Tzara and others were disgusted by the war moved to Zurich and found the movement. every Dadaist mostly tries to question every value. rather than creating. Creation is not the primary goal of dadaism.
Existentialism urges one to become who one really is and not to accept what others impose on one. Similarly, Dadaism is a nihilistic revolt against all bourgeois ideas of rationality, meaning, form and order.
How can one get rid of everything that smack of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanized, enervated? By saying dada.
-Hugo (Menifesto)
The above-mentioned picture is the perfect example of the art according to the modern movement.
Is this really art?
If it is indeed an art, what kind of art is it?
Hence, this arises a possibility that would question everything one knows. [The art is the 'Fountain'- a readymade sculpture by Marcel Duchamp in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt"]
Most people see the world in binary categories. They believe that there is either an inherent moral good that we must all obey, or there are no rules and life is pointless anarchy. Nihilism argues for a middle path: we lack inherent order but are defined by our choices, which means that we must start making smarter choices by understanding the reality in which we live more than the human social reality which we have used to replace it in our minds. (Stevens)
Video 5: Existentialism - a gloomy philosophy
Existentialism is often accused of being a gloomy philosophy. So why is it thought of as a gloomy philosophy? Because it brings into discussion subjects like-
Anxiety
Despair
Absurdity
It urges one to judge away every value and choose one's own meaning in life and should take responsibilities for all the choices that have been made so far by the individual as well as accept the consequences of it. Existentialism is a Narcissistic philosophy is also an assumption. This video clarifies that being an individual does not mean that one is a narcissist. One can either choose to be a part of the herd and die or one can discover oneself as Nietzsche says-
"Become Who You Are"
Existentialism was a response to the emptiness of war. After the Second World War, the lives of the people become meaningless and devoid of any purpose with despair and hence it can be said that existentialism came to people's rescue as a cure.
Video 6: Existentialism and Nihilism: Is it one and the same?
This video explains that Existentialism and Nihilism are not the same things. Every existentialist has fought against nihilism in one or another way.
Emil Cioran explains nihilist consent, even for all his prays of suicide, it is his passivity that stops him from committing suicide and not his active life-affirming attitude.
This responsibility entails rebellion and Cioran rejects rebellion. In contrast to this Camus writer the two profound works
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Rebel
to argue that why rebellion is the only proper response to the absurdity of life.
Video 7: Let us introduce Existentialism again!
This video interestingly captures the overall ideas regarding existentialism that how existentialist thinkers had created some of the greatest works of philosophy and literature. It reflects the history of existentialism and examines what for the existentialist is the key concern for philosophy. It also examines the meaning of the often-quoted phrase-
"existence precedes essence"
as well as explains most significantly the difference between existentialism and nihilism. Watch it out for more insight into Sartre's famous statement.
Video 8: Explain Like I'm Five: Existentialism and Nietzsche:
Have you ever tried to think of explaining such a heavy concept of existentialism to children? Obviously, it is like a can of worms to open. But this video amazingly explains the wide concept of existentialism and nihilism as a piece of cake! Watch it out yourself.
Video 9: Why I like Existentialism? Eric Dodson
Video 10: Let us sum up: From Essentialism to Existentialism
My Questions-
Question 1.
How absurdism and existentialism share a positive view or inbound optimistic connection? Existentialism states that our lives have no inherent meaning or purpose while Absurdism characterizes the futile search for meaning within a meaningless existence. If penetrated deeply both the theories or movements seems related to each other but how to finalize or settle these theories as separate and different as a whole?
Question 2.
video 6
duration 10:56 to 11:08
---> denial of objective meaning
---> creating a subjective meaning,
what is it in the context of today? Are we becoming more conscious of our own self that-
we can sense the absurdities of our life and reject to ponder upon the meaning?
or
it leads us to find our subjective purpose of life leading to the enlightenment of self which moves to a progressive direction (the thing which the doctrine of Indian philosophy propagates or believes)
video 10
duration 0:52 to 0:58
"None can give your life a meaning"
- a statement to support the question
This question is asked because I am curious to observe, examine and know how far the field of existentialism can be stretched and where it has its limitations…
Question 3.
The core ideas of existentialism are that it liberates one from all moral codes and stresses its utmost focus on individual freedom, so here the major concern is that why (today) an individual is always in one or the other way, always is seen under any authority- be it political or religious… These political, religious or social structures always trap the individual, so it becomes hard to exercise this liberation or freedom which the theory of existentialism emphasized. If existentialism is an individual practice then is it possible to be accepted by a large number of people? If this would happen then what will be the course of life?
Question 4.
I found that understanding existentialism is hard but the most difficult thing is to explain the concept of existentialism to other people. And in this context-
Albert Camus suggests the meaning of life-
“The literal meaning of life is whatever you’re doing that prevents you from killing yourself.”
How can we analyses and explain this, avoiding the first thought that this statement leads one constantly on the verge of suicide, and replacing it with the light that it will give some meaning to our lives?
Thank you
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Works Cited-
Camus, Albert. The myth of Sisyphus. Penguin UK, 2013.
Camus, Albert. The rebel: An essay on man in revolt. Vintage, 2012.
"Existentialism - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics Of Philosophy". Philosophybasics.Com, 2020, https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_existentialism.html. Accessed 20 Nov 2020.
Sterling, Bruce. "Hugo Ball's Dada Manifesto, July 1916". Wired, 2016, https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2016/07/hugo-balls-dada-manifesto-july-2016/#:~:text=How%20can%20one%20get%20rid,soul%2C%20dada%20is%20the%20pawnshop. Accessed 20 Nov 2020.
Stevens, Brett. Nihilism: A Philosophy Based in Nothingness and Eternity. Australia, Manticore Press, 2016.
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