Existentialism

Existentialism was a broad movement in arts and culture. In definition it is acting, feeling, living individual existence. Different theorists have developed their own theories on how they view existentialism and all of them seem to be decisively bleak.

The first theorist to mention is Husserl. He believed in phenomenology, which was the lack of ability to come to valid conclusions based on subjective knowledge coming from a variety of different people expressing different opinions about the universe. Therefore there is no point seeking truth for any phenomenon and essentially highlights the modernist approach to gathering scientific empiric knowledge.

Soren Kirkegaard hated existence and believed that it was a problem which had to be dealt with due to the fact that he was a Christian and couldn’t commit suicide as it was a sin. He was essentially nihilistic and believed in the pointlessness of life, therefore he believed that one should give one’s self’s life meaning by living life passionately and sincerely, in spite of the obstacles and distractions. He believed that this method was needed in order to overcome the problem of existence, in his life he devoted himself to Christianity and immersed himself in faith. Nietzsche had similar beliefs and immersed himself with music in order to deal with life; ‘life without music is impossible’.

Heidegger was very nihilistic; he highlighted this with his term Dasein (existence or being) and his structure of being which consisted of the past, the present and the future. The past fills people with guilt and the present fills people with dread and angst about their unknown future, and inevitable end of their life with death. His only criticism of the Nazis was that they weren’t nihilistic enough, which was remarkable with their project of the eradication of the Jews.

Jean Paul Satre was a fanatical atheist and a student of Heidegger. He highlighted the existential dilemma which occurred as if everything is pointless, then why whould we take moralistic behaviour into consideration, as in the scale of thing nothing matters. In the case of the Nazi’s, do you conform to something which is morally repugnant because of this pointlessness?  

As far as Existential literature goes, the writer Kafka highlighted the bleakness of existence with his novel written about a metamorphosis of a human into a cockroach which meant he was essentially ignored by all those around him even his own family.

Overall Existentialism is a very bleak era which follows along the same path as modernism although effectively describes the terribleness of existence opposed to the unknowing factor of existence.