existential :: essays research papers

Existentialism is not a method but a vision, a perceptual resolution of the human world into raw essentials. Against this we have an opposing tendency: "Human kind cannot bear very much reality." I want to look at existentialism under two categories though it belongs with neither of them. It belongs properly, perhaps, in the field of religion, but it is to be met with in philosophy and psychology. Existentialism is both philosophy in a special sense and a valency. This doesn't quite coincide with theory and practice but it may be a helpful division into two parts. Wittgenstein remarked that the purpose of philosophy was to show "the fly the way out of the fly-bottle." Though not a fashionable definition this should satisfy the existentialist that we deal with problems upon whose issue much depends. Totally unfashionable would be the definition given by Marcus Aurelius: To be a philosopher is to keep unsullied and unscathed the divine spirit within him. This serves to restore a balance, in favour of the historic concerns of the search for wisdom, after the twentieth century's discovery of linguistic criticism. Those who know Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, or the shorter Wisdom of the West, will remember his great difficulty in focusing on (French) Existentialism as a form of philosophy at all. Existentialism is not in itself any kind of goal of thought, or final destination: it is more like a station on the way, or perhaps a station waiting room. It does not seem to be a position on which one takes a stand, affording a basis for unity with others of like persuasion. It is no vehicle for agreement. On the contrary, one may be locked in opposition, as for example the Christian existentialist with the Marxist existentialist. Let us say that existentialism is a set of answers to certain philosophical problems when these are understood as the problems you must live with whether you are a philosopher or not. These are not conceptual problems but problems of living. It takes me perhaps half of my life to reach the conclusion: I am alive. Most of the rest of my life passes before I recognize: I shall die. There is also the problem of reaching a basis for a relationship to "Thou" - to the other person. Such questions do not elicit 'answers' from people. The answers lie in what the questions do to people.