Detailed slide-by-slide text content extracted from this presentation.
Slide 01
Existentialism
- Existence Precedes Essence -- the Philosophy of Radical Freedom
- Continental PhilosophyFreedomAuthenticityAbsurd19th-20th Century
- 1 / 30
Slide 02
What Is Existentialism?
- Existentialism holds that individual existence, freedom, and choice are the fundamental foundations of meaning. There is no pre-given human essence or divine purpose -- we must create ourselves through our choices.
- The Central Claim
- Jean-Paul Sartre's formula: "Existence precedes essence." We are thrown into the world before we have any fixed nature. Unlike a table (whose design precedes its construction), humans exist first and define themselves through living.
- A Movement, Not a School
- Existentialism includes atheists (Sartre, Camus) and theists (Kierkegaard, Marcel), pessimists and affirmers. What unites them is a focus on lived human existence over abstract systems.
- 2 / 30
Slide 03
Kierkegaard: The First Existentialist
- "The most common form of despair is not being who you are."Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death
- The Danish philosopher (1813-1855) wrote against Hegel's grand rational systems, insisting on the irreducible importance of individual subjective experience. He used pseudonyms to present different perspectives without privileging any one.
- The Three Stages of Existence
- Aesthetic: living for pleasure and novelty -- Don Juan. Ethical: commitment to duty and roles -- the Judge. Religious: the "leap of faith" beyond reason -- Abraham.
- The Leap of Faith
- Religious existence cannot be rationally justified. It requires a leap beyond ethics. Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac is absurd from reason's perspective -- yet Kierkegaard embraces it as the highest stage of existence.
- Subjectivity is Truth
- Existential truths -- how to live, what to commit to -- can only be apprehended through personal engagement, not objective observation. "Subjectivity is truth" does not mean truth is relative; it means how you hold a truth matters as much as what the truth is.
- 3 / 30
Slide 04
Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil
- Nietzsche (1844-1900) is not strictly an existentialist, but his ideas -- the death of God, the will to power, the Ubermensch, eternal recurrence -- shaped nearly every existentialist who followed.
- The Death of God
- "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." This is not a theological claim but a cultural diagnosis: the Enlightenment has destroyed the metaphysical foundations of European values. The question is: what now?
- Traditional morality loses its grounding
- European nihilism becomes the danger
- A revaluation of all values is required
- The Ubermensch
- Not a racial superman (Nazi appropriation was a gross distortion) but a person who creates their own values -- an affirmative yes-sayer to life. The Ubermensch embraces amor fati (love of fate) and the eternal recurrence: would you live this life again, exactly as it was?
- 4 / 30
Slide 05
Heidegger: Being-in-the-World
- Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) transformed philosophy by asking the forgotten question: What does it mean to be? His answer reshaped existentialism, phenomenology, and eventually literary theory and cultural studies.
- Dasein
- "Being-there" -- Heidegger's term for the kind of being humans are. Unlike rocks or hammers, Dasein always has a relationship to its own being. We are always already "thrown" into a world we didn't choose.
- Being-toward-Death
- Authentic existence requires confronting mortality -- not abstractly ("everyone dies someday") but personally ("I will die"). This confrontation wrests us from das Man -- the anonymous "they-self" of conformity.
- Authenticity vs. the They-Self
- Most people live as "das Man" -- doing what "one does," thinking what "one thinks." Authentic existence means owning your existence, making choices as genuinely yours rather than borrowed from the crowd.
- Care (Sorge)
- The fundamental structure of human existence is care -- we are always oriented toward projects, possibilities, and other beings. We are not detached observers but engaged participants thrown into a world that matters to us.
- 5 / 30
Slide 06
Sartre: Freedom and Facticity
- "Man is condemned to be free."Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism
- Sartre (1905-1980) brought existentialism to its most systematic form. Being and Nothingness (1943), written partly in a Paris cafe during the Nazi occupation, is the movement's defining text.
- Being-in-Itself vs. Being-for-Itself
- En-soi (in-itself): the being of objects -- dense, complete, non-conscious.
- Pour-soi (for-itself): the being of consciousness -- defined by lack, negation, and the power to imagine otherwise. Consciousness is not a thing but a nothing -- an absence that makes freedom possible.
- Radical Freedom
- We are radically free at every moment. We cannot escape freedom -- even refusing to choose is a choice. Our facticity (our situation, history, body) constrains us, but we always transcend it through the meanings we assign to it.
- 6 / 30
Slide 07
Sartre: Bad Faith (Mauvaise Foi)
- Bad faith is Sartre's most powerful concept -- the tendency to deny our own freedom by pretending we are determined, fixed, or obligated.
- The Waiter
- Sartre's famous example: a cafe waiter who plays the role of waiter too completely -- movements too precise, manner too eager. He is performing "waiter" as though it were his essential nature. But he is always more than his role.
- "I Have No Choice"
- When we say "I have to," "I must," "I can't help it" -- we are usually in bad faith. We always have a choice, though the alternatives may be terrible. Acknowledging this is anxiety-inducing but necessary for authenticity.
- Playing a Type
- Believing you "are" shy, lazy, or a failure -- treating your character as a fixed essence rather than a pattern of choices -- is bad faith about your own freedom to change.
- Why We Do It
- Freedom is terrifying. It means full responsibility. Bad faith is a psychological escape hatch -- by denying our freedom, we avoid the anguish of knowing we must choose without guarantee.
- 7 / 30
Slide 08
Sartre: Hell Is Other People
- "Hell is other people."Sartre, No Exit (Huis Clos, 1944)
- This line -- often misunderstood as misanthropic -- captures Sartre's ontology of intersubjectivity. Other people's gaze objectifies us, reducing us to a thing with fixed properties, threatening our freedom.
- The Look (Le Regard)
- When another person looks at me, I suddenly experience myself as an object in their world -- a thing being judged, categorized, fixed. This is the famous "look" -- the moment of alienating self-consciousness, like being caught doing something shameful.
- No Exit
- Three people trapped in a room together, unable to escape each other's judgment. No torturers, no instruments of pain -- just three consciousnesses locking each other into fixed self-images. "The other is the death of my possibilities."
- 8 / 30
Slide 09
Camus: The Absurd
- "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
- Camus (1913-1960) rejected the existentialist label but grappled with the same terrain. The Absurd arises from the collision between human desire for meaning and the universe's indifferent silence.
- The Absurd as Confrontation
- The Absurd is not in the world or in us separately, but in their confrontation. We crave meaning, clarity, unity -- the universe offers silence, ambiguity, and dissolution. This gap is the Absurd.
- Three Responses
- Physical suicide: eliminate the human side. Philosophical suicide: leap to faith, deny the tension (Kierkegaard). Revolt: accept the Absurd and live defiantly within it -- Camus's answer.
- Sisyphus
- Condemned to roll a boulder up a hill forever only for it to roll back down. "One must imagine Sisyphus happy" -- he owns his fate, and his revolt against the gods constitutes his freedom.
- 9 / 30
Slide 10
Camus: The Stranger
- Published in 1942, the same year as The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus's novel illustrates the Absurd through Meursault -- a man who cannot perform the emotional scripts society demands, and who faces death with defiant clarity.
- Meursault's Detachment
- Meursault doesn't cry at his mother's funeral, can't explain why he shot the Arab, and refuses to pretend religious conversion before his execution. He is not a villain -- he is simply honest about his indifference to meanings he doesn't feel.
- The Last Chapter
- In his cell, Meursault arrives at peace: life has no inherent meaning, death is coming, and this is fine. He opens his heart to "the gentle indifference of the world." The universe's meaninglessness becomes not a source of despair but of freedom.
- "I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself -- so like a brother, really -- I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again."Camus, The Stranger (final lines)
- 10 / 30
Slide 11
Simone de Beauvoir: Existential Feminism
- "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
- De Beauvoir (1908-1986) applied existentialist concepts to the situation of women, producing the founding text of modern feminism.
- The Second Sex
- Man defines himself as Subject (the for-itself, the norm). Woman is cast as the Other -- the in-itself, the object, defined in relation to man. This is not natural but constructed through history, economics, and social expectation. Women internalize this objectification, choosing bad faith.
- Authentic Freedom
- De Beauvoir extended Sartre's ethics: freedom must be reciprocal. I cannot be truly free if others are oppressed. This gives existentialism a political dimension -- liberation is not merely personal but social. Individual authenticity requires collective emancipation.
- 11 / 30
Slide 12
Existential Anxiety (Angst)
- Anxiety occupies a special place in existentialist thought -- not as a pathology to be cured but as an appropriate response to the human condition, revealing something real about existence.
- Kierkegaard's Dizziness
- Anxiety is "the dizziness of freedom" -- the vertigo we feel when we look into the abyss of our own unlimited possibilities. Not fear (which has a definite object) but anxiety before nothing -- our own freedom.
- Heidegger's Uncanny
- In anxiety, the familiar world becomes uncanny -- strange, not-at-home. Das Man loses its grip. We are suddenly aware of our naked existence, thrown into a world without guarantees.
- Sartre's Anguish
- Anguish arises from recognizing that we are completely responsible for what we are -- no God, no nature, no excuse. The gambler who resolves not to gamble again feels anguish: he knows nothing prevents him from gambling tomorrow.
- Productive Anxiety
- For existentialists, anxiety is not to be eliminated but used. It is the mood that discloses the deepest truth about existence and calls us to authenticity. Running from anxiety leads to bad faith.
- 12 / 30
Slide 13
Thrownness and Facticity
- We did not choose our birth, family, language, historical moment, or body. We are "thrown" (geworfen) into a situation not of our making. This is facticity -- the given from which we must work.
- What We Did Not Choose
- The era of history we are born into
- Our native language and culture
- Our family and initial social position
- Our bodily constitution
- The era's available meanings and possibilities
- Transcendence Beyond Facticity
- Facticity is the material we work with, not our destiny. What matters is what we make of what is made of us. Sartre: even a slave born into chains has a form of freedom -- the refusal to internalize the master's definition of their worth.
- "We are our choices."Sartre
- 13 / 30
Slide 14
Existential Literature
- Existentialism found its richest expression in literature. Novels and plays explored abstract concepts through concrete human situations with unmatched visceral force.
- Dostoevsky -- Notes from Underground (1864)
- The Underground Man rebels against rationalism: "I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man." His spite is the assertion of irrational freedom against the "crystal palace" of scientific utopianism.
- Kafka -- The Trial (1925)
- Josef K. is arrested and tried for a crime never specified. The faceless bureaucratic system is Kafka's image of the modern world: absurd, impenetrable, inescapable. A paradigm of existential confrontation with meaningless authority.
- Beckett -- Waiting for Godot (1953)
- "Nothing to be done." Vladimir and Estragon wait for someone who never comes. Two acts, no progress, no resolution -- the waiting is the content.
- Sartre -- Nausea (1938)
- Antoine Roquentin experiences existence itself as nauseating -- the brute contingency of things, their sheer thereness. "Existence precedes essence" is lived, not theorized.
- 14 / 30
Slide 15
Existentialist Ethics
- "In choosing myself, I choose man."Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism
- Existentialism is often accused of relativism -- if there are no objective values, anything goes. But Sartre and de Beauvoir argue that freedom itself grounds a universal ethics.
- Sartre's Universalism
- Every choice I make is a statement about what I think a human being should do in my situation. To choose cowardice is to affirm that cowardice is an appropriate response. This gives our choices a universal weight we cannot escape.
- De Beauvoir's Ambiguity
- In The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), de Beauvoir argues that genuine freedom requires the freedom of others. We cannot be authentic alone. This moves existentialism from radical individualism toward a philosophy of solidarity and mutual liberation.
- 15 / 30
Slide 16
The Sartre-Camus Rupture
- In 1952, the two towering figures of French intellectual life had a public falling-out over Camus's critique of revolutionary violence -- one of the most dramatic intellectual disputes of the 20th century.
- The Rebel (1951)
- Camus's L'Homme Revolte argued that revolutionary movements inevitably produce terror -- that the logic of historical messianism justifies present atrocities for future utopias. He saw Stalinism as the inevitable endpoint of revolutionary ideology and called for rebellion with limits.
- Sartre's Rebuttal
- Sartre, then sympathetic to the Soviet Union, published a brutal review in Les Temps Modernes. He accused Camus of political quietism -- a philosophy that served the status quo by refusing to support revolutionary struggle. They never reconciled. Camus died in 1960.
- The debate prefigures discussions about political violence, terrorism, and revolutionary ethics that still resonate today.
- 16 / 30
Slide 17
Phenomenology: The Foundation
- Existentialism grew from phenomenology -- Edmund Husserl's method of describing the structure of conscious experience as it appears, "bracketing" questions of external reality.
- Husserl's Epoche
- Bracketing the "natural attitude" -- our ordinary assumption that the world exists independently -- to describe the structure of consciousness itself. Philosophy starts from immediate experience, not from theories about what lies behind it.
- Intentionality
- Consciousness is always consciousness-of-something. There is no inner mental world separate from the world it is directed toward. This dissolves the Cartesian subject-object split that haunted Western philosophy since Descartes.
- Merleau-Ponty's Body
- Merleau-Ponty showed that consciousness is fundamentally embodied. The body is not an object the mind inhabits but the medium of all perception. We experience the world through our bodies, not despite them.
- 17 / 30
Slide 18
Existentialism and God
- ThinkerPositionKey Concept
- KierkegaardChristian theistLeap of faith beyond rational ethics
- NietzscheAtheist, anti-ChristianGod is dead; create your own values
- HeideggerPost-metaphysicalBeing itself, not a personal God
- SartreAtheist existentialistIf God existed, freedom would be impossible
- CamusAtheist, anti-nihilistRevolt against meaningless cosmos
- MarcelCatholic existentialistBeing as mystery, not problem
- BuberJewish dialogicalI-Thou relation as ground of meaning
- JaspersPhilosophical faithTranscendence without dogma
- 18 / 30
Slide 19
Existentialism in Art and Cinema
- The existentialist movement shaped post-war art, cinema, and culture more profoundly than any other philosophy -- partly because its themes (freedom, meaninglessness, authenticity) were urgently relevant after two World Wars.
- Film
- Ingmar Bergman -- death, silence of God, authentic choice
- Michelangelo Antonioni -- alienation and ennui
- Jean-Luc Godard -- radical freedom and rupture
- Akira Kurosawa -- death and meaning (Ikiru)
- Terrence Malick -- being, time, and wonder
- Visual Art and Music
- Abstract Expressionism -- the existential gesture (Pollock)
- Sartre's cafe milieu -- jazz as improvisational freedom
- Existentialist themes in Beat Generation writing
- Authenticity against commercialism in rock and punk
- 19 / 30
Slide 20
Eastern Parallels to Existentialism
- While not historically connected, several Eastern philosophical traditions grapple with similar questions about existence, self, freedom, and meaning.
- Zen Buddhism
- The emphasis on direct experience, the rejection of fixed essences, the concept of no-self (anatta), and the importance of being fully present map onto existentialist themes. Heidegger reportedly said Zen had already said what he was trying to say.
- Daoism
- The Daoist rejection of fixed categories and norms, the affirmation of life as process rather than fixed nature, and wu-wei (non-striving action) parallel existentialist authenticity and the rejection of rigid social scripting.
- The Kyoto School
- The Japanese Kyoto School (Nishida Kitaro, Nishitani Keiji) explicitly engaged with Heidegger and Sartre, producing a synthesis of Zen and Western existentialism that enriched both traditions.
- 20 / 30
Slide 21
Existential Psychotherapy
- Existentialist philosophy spawned a distinct therapeutic tradition focusing on meaning, freedom, isolation, and death -- the "ultimate concerns" of human existence that conventional psychiatry often ignores.
- Key Figures
- Viktor Frankl -- Logotherapy: meaning as primary human drive (survived Auschwitz)
- Irvin Yalom -- Existential therapy: the four ultimate concerns
- R.D. Laing -- Radical psychiatry: schizophrenia as response to impossible situation
- Ludwig Binswanger -- Daseinsanalysis: Heidegger applied clinically
- Yalom's Four Ultimate Concerns
- Death -- confronting our finitude honestly
- Freedom -- owning our radical responsibility
- Isolation -- the unbridgeable gap between self and other
- Meaninglessness -- creating meaning without given purpose
- The most potent therapy occurs when patients genuinely confront these concerns, not when they are avoided.
- 21 / 30
Slide 22
Viktor Frankl: Meaning in the Camps
- "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
- Frankl's experience in four Nazi concentration camps (including Auschwitz) led him to develop Logotherapy -- a form of existential analysis centered on the will to meaning.
- Key Insights
- Prisoners with a purpose to live for survived longer
- Suffering without meaning is unbearable; with meaning, bearable
- The last human freedom is the attitude toward one's fate
- Love of another can sustain one through the worst conditions
- Logotherapy
- Meaning can be found through: what we give to the world (creation), what we receive from it (experience and love), and the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. Meaning is discovered, not invented.
- 22 / 30
Slide 23
Post-Structuralist Critique
- From the 1960s onward, the post-structuralists (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze) challenged the existentialist subject, arguing that the unified, free individual was itself a historical construction.
- Foucault's Genealogy
- What we experience as "authentic selfhood" is produced by power structures -- disciplinary institutions (prisons, hospitals, schools) that shape subjects from the outside. There is no self prior to power.
- Derrida's Deconstruction
- The existentialist text always harbors hidden presuppositions it cannot master. "Presence" -- the immediate self-awareness Sartre relies on -- is always already mediated by language and difference.
- The Existentialist Response
- Sartre tried to synthesize Marxism and existentialism in the Critique of Dialectical Reason. De Beauvoir's situated freedom anticipated many post-structuralist moves. The dialogue was productive even in its antagonism.
- 23 / 30
Slide 24
Existentialism and Political Commitment
- Post-war existentialists -- especially Sartre -- insisted on political engagement. The intellectual who retreats into aesthetics is guilty of bad faith: choosing not to choose is itself a political act.
- Sartre's Engaged Intellectual
- Sartre coined the idea of the "committed" intellectual -- one who uses their platform to take sides on concrete political questions. He signed the Manifesto of the 121 against the Algerian War, was arrested, and de Gaulle declined to prosecute him: "You don't imprison Voltaire."
- Camus's Limits of Violence
- Camus argued for limits even in political commitment -- refusing to endorse revolutionary violence even for good ends. His position on the Algerian War was anguished and controversial: he supported Algerian rights but could not endorse terrorism, given his Algerian French roots.
- 24 / 30
Slide 25
Core Existentialist Concepts
- TermThinkerMeaning
- Bad FaithSartreDenying one's own freedom by pretending to be determined
- AuthenticityHeidegger / SartreOwning one's existence, choosing genuinely
- ThrownnessHeideggerBeing cast into a world and situation not of one's choosing
- The AbsurdCamusThe gap between human need for meaning and universe's silence
- The LookSartreThe objectifying gaze of the other that threatens freedom
- AngstKierkegaard / HeideggerAnxiety of freedom before unlimited possibility
- The LeapKierkegaardCommitment to faith beyond rational justification
- FacticitySartre / HeideggerThe given facts of one's situation that cannot be changed
- 25 / 30
Slide 26
Critiques of Existentialism
- The Individualism Objection
- Existentialism's focus on radical individual freedom ignores structural constraints -- class, race, gender -- that genuinely limit people's options. De Beauvoir began addressing this, but the tradition has blind spots.
- The Cognitive Science Objection
- Neuroscience suggests our choices are more constrained by unconscious processes than existentialists acknowledge. The "free conscious chooser" may be a retrospective narrative, not an accurate description of decision-making.
- Overstatement of Freedom
- Sartre says we are free even in chains -- but someone born into poverty has genuinely fewer meaningful choices than someone born wealthy. Radical freedom can obscure real structural unfreedom.
- The Communication Problem
- If existence precedes essence, why do existentialists communicate so much? Language and meaning seem to precede any individual's choices. Structuralists raised this objection forcefully against Sartre.
- 26 / 30
Slide 27
Existentialism's Contemporary Relevance
- Existentialism has not died but been absorbed. Its core insights animate contemporary philosophy of mind, ethics, psychology, and culture in ways that often go unacknowledged.
- Where It Lives On
- Existential therapy and positive psychology
- Philosophy of disability and chronic illness
- Theories of personal identity and narrative selfhood
- Climate anxiety and eco-existentialism
- AI consciousness debates (what makes something a subject?)
- The Enduring Questions
- Am I living authentically or performing a role?
- What meaning am I creating, not just finding?
- Am I taking responsibility for my choices?
- How do I confront death without flinching or hiding?
- How do I maintain my freedom while acknowledging others'?
- 27 / 30
Slide 28
The Essential Texts
- Beginners
- Existentialism is a Humanism -- Sartre (1945 lecture)
- The Myth of Sisyphus -- Camus (1942)
- Man's Search for Meaning -- Frankl (1946)
- Either/Or Vol. 1 -- Kierkegaard (1843)
- Intermediate
- Being and Time Part I -- Heidegger (1927)
- Nausea -- Sartre (1938)
- The Ethics of Ambiguity -- de Beauvoir (1947)
- The Second Sex introduction -- de Beauvoir (1949)
- Advanced
- Being and Nothingness -- Sartre (1943)
- Being and Time complete -- Heidegger
- The Rebel -- Camus (1951)
- Phenomenology of Perception -- Merleau-Ponty (1945)
- Fiction
- The Stranger -- Camus
- The Trial -- Kafka
- Notes from Underground -- Dostoevsky
- Waiting for Godot -- Beckett
- No Exit -- Sartre
- 28 / 30
Slide 29
Sartre's Final Years
- Sartre's intellectual journey traces the arc of 20th-century European thought -- from phenomenology to existentialism to Marxism to a late rapprochement with his long-estranged Jewish identity.
- Political Evolution
- 1945-55: Founder of Les Temps Modernes, anti-colonial stance
- 1952: Break with Camus, flirtation with Stalinism
- 1956: Condemns Soviet invasion of Hungary
- 1960: Critique of Dialectical Reason -- Marxist existentialism
- 1968: Sides with student revolt
- The Final Interview
- In his last major interview (1980, three weeks before death, nearly blind), Sartre surprised the world by discussing hope grounded in fraternity and his rediscovery of Jewish roots. He said: "I don't think one should despair... Despair is what I've been fighting against all my life."
- 29 / 30
Slide 30
The Existentialist Wager
- "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."Kierkegaard
- Existentialism offers not a system of answers but a posture of honest confrontation. Its wager is that facing existence directly -- without the comfort of eternal essences, divine guarantees, or fixed human nature -- is not a counsel of despair but the foundation of genuine freedom.
- The Wager
- Accept that you are radically free. Accept that you are mortal. Accept that meaning is created, not found. Then act -- with full commitment, knowing no guarantee exists. This is what it means to be human.
- One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy
- The absurd hero pushes the boulder knowing it will roll back. His revolt -- his refusal to despair, his ownership of his fate -- is his freedom. The struggle toward the heights is enough to fill a heart.
- The Practice
- Ask yourself today: Where am I in bad faith? What role am I playing that is not truly mine? What choice am I avoiding? What meaning am I failing to create? Then act differently.
- Freedom is terrifyingAuthenticity is possibleRevolt is enough
- 30 / 30
