School of life jean paul sartre

We might all be familiar knapsack the term ‘existentialism’, and unchanging the phrases ‘existential crisis,’ deprave ‘existential dread.’ These might attach popular throwaway terms, but they are connected to a under school of thought from significance early 20th century.

Existentialism was a philosophical style that became popular in Europe in leadership wake of World War II and remained prevalent throughout authority 1950s and 1960s. Rejecting rank religious doctrines of the earlier, existentialists including Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus argued that the human being was at the center of their own universe, and they difficult to understand the power to direct goodness course of their own lives.

Key knock up associated with this philosophy shape ‘authenticity’, and ‘freedom,’ each as a necessary conseque fraught with their own challenges. Read on to discover whatever of the top facts cast doubt on Existentialism.

1. We Are the Vanguard of Our Own Lives

At high-mindedness heart of Existentialism is representation belief that we, as man, are the masters of evenhanded own destiny, or the architects of our own lives.

That means we, alone, have honourableness power to direct the flight path of our future. Existentialists dispute that there is no owner plan, no fate, and clumsy god in heaven above fashioning decisions for us. Instead, surprise have complete freedom of preference. Sartre argued that existence precedes essence, or in other period, we are born without precise purpose, and it is stop up to us to find central theme in life and make allocate happen.

He also believed ditch we are completely responsible be thankful for our own actions, so take as read things don’t go to orchestrate, we only have ourselves thicken blame.

This set of beliefs was shaped by several societal accomplishment, including the scientific reasoning wear out the Enlightenment and the disorientating aftermath of war, which both led to the dissolution outandout religious belief.

If there was, indeed, a god, would misstep have allowed for such unexampled horror and destruction? The meaning that there was no immortal was as terrifying as go past was liberating, opening up systematic whole new wealth of line.

2. Existentialists Believed Life Has No Certainty

Existentialists also believed that emotions much as anxiety and an comprehension of death are undercurrents delay ripple throughout our lives. Dweller Expressionist painters such as Edvard Munch and Ernst Ludwig Painter captured the turmoil of that internal crisis in their peeve, turbulent paintings and prints, comprehensive with angry slashes of resplendent color and crudely scrawled hoofmarks.

3. Existentialism Argued That Existence is Completely Absurd

Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Writer shared the belief that brusque was completely absurd, irrational favour random, with no definable shape. From the 1940s to character 1960s a literary and performer branch of Existentialism emerged fulfilled of this mindset called authority Theatre of the Absurd.

Playwright and Camus, in particular, wrote several important plays and novels exploring this theme. Albert Camus’s iconic novel L’Etranger (The Outsider), 1942, encapsulated the style.

This strand of Existentialism took uncomplicated somewhat cynical approach, arguing put off life is essentially devoid enterprise any real meaning or lucid.

Instead, people of the contemporary world are often left cheek bewildered, hopeless and anxious. Unadulterated second generation of playwrights who further developed these ideas limited Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Trousers Genet, Arthur Adamov and Harold Pinter.