Existentialism
Scope:
Existentialism is, in my view, the most exciting and important philosophical movement of the past century and a
half. Fifty years after the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre gave it its identity and one hundred and fifty years
after the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard gave it its initial impetus, existentialism continues to win new
enthusiasts and, in keeping with its still exciting and revolutionary message, vehement critics.
The message of existentialism, unlike that of many more obscure and academic philosophical movements, is about
as simple as can be. It is that every one of us, as an individual, is responsibleresponsible for what we do,
responsible for who we are, responsible for the way we face and deal with the world, responsible, ultimately, for the
way the world is. It is, in a very short phrase, the philosophy of “no excuses!” Life may be difficult; circumstances
may be impossible. There may be obstacles, not least of which are our own personalities, characters, emotions, and
limited means or intelligence. But, nevertheless, we are responsible. We cannot shift that burden onto God, or
nature, or the ways of the world. If there is a God, we choose to believe. If nature made us one way, it is up to us to
decide what we are to do with what nature gives uswhether to go along or fight back, to modify or transcend
nature. As the delightfully priggish Kate Hepburn says to a wonderfully vulgar Humphrey Bogart in the movie The
African Queen, “Nature is what we are put on this earth to rise above.” That is what existentialism is all about. We
are responsible for ourselves.
There are no excuses.
But to say that the basic message of existentialism is quite simple and straightforward is not to say that the
philosophers or the philosophies that make up the movement are simple and straightforward. The movement itself is
something of a fabrication. None of the major existentialist figures, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and
Camusonly excepting Sartrewould recognize themselves as part of a “movement” at all. Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche were both ferocious individualists who vehemently rejected all movements. To belong to a philosophical
movement, each of them would have said, would be to show cowardice and a lack of integrity, to be simply one of
the “herd.” Heidegger was deeply offended when he was linked with Sartre as one of the existentialists, and he
publicly denounced the association. Camus and Sartre once were friends, but they quarreled over politics and
Camus also broke the association and publicly rejected it.
Many of the other writers and philosophers who have been associated with the movement would have been equally
hesitant to embrace the title had they known of it. The main exceptions were those who have wanted or needed to
derive some fame and notoriety by associating themselves with existentialism. In the 1950s in the United States, for
example, Norman Mailer proudly took up the title, giving it his own definition, “hip.”
The existentialists’ writings, too, are by no means simple and straightforward. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche write
beautifully but in such challenging, often disjointed, exhortations that trying to summarize or systematize their
thoughts is something of a hopeless venture. Heidegger is among the most difficult writers in the entire history of
philosophy, and even Sartre—a lucid literary writer when he wants to beimitates some of the worst elements of
Heidegger’s notorious style. Much of the challenge of this course of lectures, accordingly, is to free the exciting and
revolutionary message of existentialism from its often formidable textual enclosures.
The course begins, after a brief introduction to the historical context and the very notion of “existentialism,” with a
discussion of the twentieth-century writer and philosopher Albert Camus (1913–1960). Chronologically, Camus is
already late in the game. (We will trace existentialist ideas as far back as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the mid-
nineteenth century, but we will not explore those figuressay Socrates or Saint Augustinewho with some
justification might be called their predecessors.) Philosophically, it is often said that Camus is more of a literary
figure, a lyrical essayist, than a philosopher. But the art of persuasive personal writing rather than dry philosophical
analysis is one of the earmarks of existentialism. (Even the obscure writings of Martin Heidegger [1889–1976] are
remarkable in their rhetorical and emotional efficacy.)
In this sense, Camus is exemplary in his combination of deep contemplation and often poetic writing and, because
his ideas are less complex than the probing and systematic works of the other existential writers before him, he
makes an ideal beginning. We will start with his most famous novel, The Stranger, published in the early 1940s,
which combines a disturbingly “flat” descriptive style with a horrifying sequence of events, introducing us to a
©2000 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 1
character whose reactions to the world are indeed “strange.” It is our reaction to this character, however, that makes
the novel so deeply philosophical. What is it that makes him so strange? The answer to that question starts us
thinking about the way we think about ourselves and each other, what we take for granted and do not normally
notice.
After an analysis of The Stranger, I want to take us through a number of Camus’s later works, beginning with a
philosophical essay he wrote about the same time, The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he introduces his infamous
concept of “The Absurd.” Then, in Lectures Five and Six, I want to examine two later novels, The Plague and The
Fall (the last novel Camus published in his lifetime, although his daughter recently published an unfinished novel
he was working on at the time of his death). My aim in these first half dozen lectures will be to set a certain mood
for the rest of the course, a rebellious, restless, yet thoroughly conscientious mood, which I believe Camus
exemplifies both in his writings and in his life.
In Lectures Seven through Nine, I want to turn to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) and his
revolutionary work. Kierkegaard was a deeply religious philosophera pious Christianand his existentialist
thought was devoted to the question, “What does it mean to beor rather, what does it mean to becomea
Christian?” We should thus be advised that, contrary to some popular misunderstandings, existentialism is by no
means an anti-religious or unspiritual philosophy. It can and often does embrace God, as well as a host of visions of
the world that we can, without apology, call “spiritual.” (We will see that Nietzsche and Heidegger both embrace
such visions, although in very different ways.)
In Lectures Ten through Thirteen, I want to consider in some detail the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–
1900) and his role in this rather eccentric movement. Nietzsche is perhaps best known for his bold declaration “God
is dead.” He is also well known as a self-proclaimed “immoralist.” In fact, both of these phrases are misleading.
Nietzsche was by no means the first person to say that God is dead (Martin Luther had said it three centuries
before), and Nietzsche himself was anything but an immoral person. He attacks moralityor rather, he attacks one
conception of moralitybut nevertheless he defends a profound view of ethics and human nature.
In Lecture Fourteen, I want to turn briefly to three diverse but exemplary figures from the history of literature. All
three display existentialist themes and temperaments in their works: Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), the great
Russian novelist; Franz Kafka (1883–1924), the brilliant Czech novelist and story writer; and Hermann Hesse
(1877–1962), a twentieth-century Swiss writer who combined a fascination with Asian philosophy with a
profoundly Nietzschean interest and temperament.
In Lecture Fifteen, I would like to briefly introduce the philosophical method of a philosopher who could not be
further from the existentialist temperament but yet had a profound influence on both Heidegger and Sartre. He is the
German-Czech philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), who invented a philosophical technique called
“phenomenology.” Both Heidegger and Sartre, at least at the beginning of their careers, thought of themselves as
phenomenologists. In the rest of that lecture and in Lectures Sixteen and Seventeen, I would like to consider Martin
Heidegger’s very difficult but extremely insightful philosophy.
Finally, in Lectures Eighteen through Twenty-Three, I want to consider the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–
1980), and in Lecture Twenty-Four, I would like to finish with a comparison and contrast with French philosophy
since his time. My suggestion will be that much of what is best in “postmodernism” is taken more or less directly
from Sartre, despite the fact that he is typically attacked as the very antithesis of postmodernism. Existentialism, I
want to argue, was and is not just another French intellectual fashion but a timely antidote to some of the worst self-
(mis)understandings of the end of the century.
How should one approach these lectures? My advice on the lecture on The Stranger is a good example of how I
think each lecture should be approached. Although the lectures are self-contained, it would be ideally desirable to
read the “Essential Reading” (in this case, the novel) before hearing or viewing the lecture. That way, you come to
the lecture ready to question and challenge with your interpretation and ideas. This will be true even for the very
difficult readings from Heidegger and Sartre. It is very helpful to have contact with their style and vocabulary even
if the ideas at first seem impenetrable. Initial contact is even more desirable with our other two major authors,
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Both write in a strikingly personal, provocative style, and nothing will impress the
reader more than an immediate, first-hand confrontation with their witty and sometimes shocking aphorisms and
observations.
Of course, many if not most viewers of the lectures will not have the opportunity to read the material before every
lecture. I do suggest, however, that some attempt be made to read the essential material soon after. (I hope the
lectures entice one to do so.) The questions are designed to help the reader straighten out the ideas and vocabulary,
make various comparisons, and most important, work out his or her own views regarding the material in the
lectures. In general, the introductory questions presume only a hearing of the lectures and perhaps some of the
essential reading. The advanced questions invite further reading and more extensive thought.
Existentialism is, first of all, a philosophy of life, a philosophy about who we are. The ultimate intent of the course,
accordingly, is not only to inform the viewer about a very exciting philosophy but also to enrich his or her life and
make all of us think about who we are in a very new and bold way. The main texts for the lectures can be found in
Robert C. Solomon, ed., Existentialism (New York: McGraw Hill/Modern Library, 1974). Secondary texts that
follow the perspective of the lectures can be found in Robert C. Solomon, From Rationalism to Existentialism
(Rowman and Littlefield, 1979), and Continental Philosophy Since 1750 (Oxford University Press, 1988).
Lecture One
What Is Existentialism?
Scope: Existentialism is best thought of as a movement, a “sensibility” that can be traced throughout the history of
Western philosophy. Its central themes are the significance of the individual, the importance of passion, the
irrational aspects of life, and the importance of human freedom. We will be looking primarily at five very
different figures, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul
Sartre.
Outline
I. Existentialism is a movement, a “sensibility,” not a set of doctrines.
A. It is not, as it is too often said, a necessarily “gloomy” philosophy. It is, rather, invigorating and positive.
B. Nor is it necessarily atheistic, a form of “secular humanism.” Søren Kierkegaard, the “first” existentialist,
was profoundly religious.
C. In a world pervaded by victim psychology, existentialism offers a refreshing sense of empowerment.
II. Existential attitudes can be found as far back as ancient times.
A. It is possible to trace existentialism, defined one way or another, back to Socrates and Augustine, perhaps
even to Heraclitus.
B. We will limit our examination to five definitive figures, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin
Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre.
1. They do not form a “school” or share any particular outlook on religion and politics.
2. Kierkegaard is a pious Christian; Nietzsche and Sartre are atheists.
3. Kierkegaard despised politics; Sartre was a Marxist; Camus, a humanitarian; Heidegger, a Nazi.
C. Strictly speaking, perhaps, the only true existentialist was Sartre, who defined the term to refer to his own
work during and immediately after the Second World War. He pursued the idea that “we make ourselves.”
D. Expanding our vision, however, the movement certainly includes such literary figures as Fyodor
Dostoevsky and Franz Kafka, among others.
III. Three themes pervade existentialism:
A. A strong emphasis on the individual (although this is variously defined and understood).
1. A lot of these writers were truly eccentric.
2. Each of them takes individuality in a different direction.
B. The central role of the passions, as opposed to the usual philosophical emphasis on reason and rationality.
The emphasis instead is on a passionate commitment. For the existentialist, to live is to live passionately.
C. The importance of human freedom. Existentialists are concerned with personal freedom, both political
freedom and free will.
1. This is central to Kierkegaard and Sartre, but not so obviously to Nietzsche and Heidegger.
2. The relationship between freedom and reason is particularly at issue.
3. Traditionally, acting “rationally” is said to be free, while acting out of emotion is considered being a
“slave to one’s passions.” The existentialists suggest that we live best and are most ourselves in terms
of passion. Kierkegaard’s notion of “passionate commitment” is central.
IV. The special meaning of the central term, “existence,” is first defined by Kierkegaard to refer to a life that is
filled with passion, self-understanding, and commitment. For Nietzsche, to really “exist” is to manifest your
talents and virtues—“becoming the person you really are.”
A. The key component of existentialism’s general “sensibility” is the striking realization of one’s own
“contingency.”
1. One might have never been born, or been born in a different place, at a different time, as a different
person, or possibly not as a person at all. Heidegger’s image of “thrownness” suggests how much of
our lives is given, not chosen.
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2. Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” in which a very ordinary middle-class man wakes up to find himself
changed into a giant cockroach, is a spectacularly unusual example of the contingency of our
particular existence.
B. Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” is a problem, not a solution to the question of existence. The
existentialists challenge the idea that human existence is so tied up with thinking.
C. Existentialism basically urges us to live our lives to the fullest, although what this means will take
somewhat different forms. Of all philosophers, it seems to me that existentialists are the most geared to our
own needs and expectations.
D. Although its origins are European, existentialism is perfectly suited to contemporary American thought.
Essential Reading:
Solomon, Existentialism, Introduction.
Recommended Reading:
Any decent short overview of existentialism, e.g., many encyclopedia entries (Collier’s, Grolier, Encyclopedia
Brittanica, and so on).
For a lighter treatment, read the mock interviews in Solomon, Introducing the Existentialists (Hackett). For an eye-
opener, there is always Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.”
Introductory Questions to Consider:
1. What do you mean by the phrase “personal freedom”? What counts as “being free” for you?
2. What is an individual? What (if anything) makes a person an individual, even “unique”?
Advanced Questions to Consider:
1. Are the passions, by their very nature, “irrational?” What is meant by the term “rationality”? Is rationality
always a good thing?
2. Do you believe in fate? What would this mean? If I were to introduce you to a very good fortune teller (who
had an accuracy rate of over 95%) and she offered to tell you the outcome of your marriage or the date of your
death, would you be willing to ask her? Why or why not?
Lecture Two
Søren Kierkegaard---“On Becoming a Christian”
Scope: Søren Kierkegaard was, in many ways, the first existentialist. He was also a devout Christian. He rejected
both career and marriage to pursue religious mission. He also rejected much of what his compatriots
considered “being a Christian.” Accordingly, he came to question the role of reason and suffering in life
and to celebrate individual choice and passion both in religion and life more generally.
Outline
I. Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) did not, in the usual sense, have a very happy or fulfilling life.
A. He was crippled in both his appearance and in his emotional development.
B. He was burdened by an oppressive sense of guilt and inadequacy.
C. He spent virtually his entire life in Copenhagen while he despised bourgeois complacency and the whole of
“the present age.”
D. As a young man, he carried on for a year in Berlin with his somewhat more hedonistic friend, Hans
Christian Andersen.
1. Hedonism was not for him, however. He experienced it as self-defeating, shameful, and humiliating.
2. He rejected both the life of pleasure and the life of friendship.
3. Pleasure (“the aesthetic”) would remain a problem for him throughout his career.
E. He rejected a promising career in the ministry and a potentially happy marriage to pursue his lonely and
often controversial philosophical and religious mission.
II. The place of reason and the role of suffering and passion in life became some of Kierkegaard’s primary
concerns, in particular with regard to religion and religious belief.
A. He described his own mission in philosophy as “to redefine what it means to be (or become) a Christian.”
1. He rejected the idea that simply being born a Christian is sufficient to be one.
2. He also rejected the idea that simply growing up with certain beliefs was sufficient to make one a
Christian.
3. He insisted, much to the dismay of many of his Christian compatriots, that it is easier to be(come) a
Christian if one is not already born one. Christianity is a commitment, not something to which one
passively adheres.
B. Most so-called Christians, Kierkegaard says (the “mob” of what he disdainfully calls “Christendom”) are
not that at all.
1. He accuses most Christians of blatant hypocrisy, empty belief conjoined with banal social
membership.
2. Most Christians display no passion for their faith at all.
3. Most of Christianity is a mass or “herd” phenomenon.
C. Christianity is not to be understood in terms of doctrines, rituals, or social belonging.
1. Belief in doctrines is a part of Christianity, but not the essential part.
2. Rituals are at most a minimal accouterment of Christianity. (This is obviously a reflection of
Kierkegaard’s Lutheranism and part of his rejection of Catholicism.)
3. The fact that other Christians exist in the world is somewhat irrelevant. One is, ultimately, a Christian
all by oneself.
D. Christianity is a paradox, but this paradox demands passionate faith.
1. The paradox is one of belief, but its proper response is passion.
2. In Kierkegaard’s day, one of the reigning paradoxes was the idea that God could be both eternal and
temporally present as a man.
3. Today, a more pressing paradox for most Christians would be the so-called “problem of evil,” the idea
that an all-powerful, all-knowing, good and kind God would allow so much suffering in the world. For
Kierkegaard, a leap of faith is necessary for a passionate religious belief.
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III. Kierkegaard’s philosophical bete noir was G. W. F. Hegel.
A. As a student, Kierkegaard studied with Friedrich Schelling in Berlin.
1. Schelling denounced Hegel’s philosophy as “negative.”
2. Schelling and Hegel had been college roommates and competitors.
B. Hegel, who (along with Kant) dominated philosophical thought in Denmark, defended the idea of a supra-
historical collective world-spirit (or Geist), leaving little room for the individual.
C. Hegel’s Geist was, according to the popular interpretation, identical with human consciousness and the
world.
1. Hegel thus denied the identity of God as entirely separate from his creation and from human beings.
2. Hegel also defended the idea that Geist was rational and could be rationally comprehended by human
beings.
3. Kierkegaard, by contrast, offers the fear and trembling of a personal confrontation with God. He
rejected both the collectivity of Geist and the idea that God could be rationally understood.
D. Hegel’s relationship with Schelling was complicated.
1. Schelling became famous very early, while Hegel was still struggling to find his way in philosophy.
2. Later, Hegel became even more famous, Schelling’s star faded, and Schelling was filled with jealousy
and wounded pride.
3. None of this was evident to Kierkegaard, but Schelling’s prejudices fit in perfectly with his own
predispositions.
E. While Kierkegaard was studying in Berlin, two of his other classmates were the proto-Marxist Friedrich
Engels and the anarchist Mikhael Bakunin.
F. In Hegel, Kierkegaard found a paradigm of collective, rationalist thinking.
G. In reaction, Kierkegaard became the champion of “the individual.”
Essential Reading:
Kierkegaard, Journals, (excerpted with other readings in Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 3–28).
Recommended Reading:
Gardiner, Kierkegaard; for a more literary perspective on Kierkegaard, see Mackey, A Kind of Poet.
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling. To appreciate Kierkegaard’s polemic against Hegel, take a look at Hegel’s
Introduction to The Philosophy of History; for Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, see also Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s
Relation in Hegel, and Solomon, Continental Philosophy Since 1750, “Kierkegaard.”
Introductory Questions to Consider:
1. Kierkegaard claimed that “it is easier to become a Christian when I am not a Christian than to become a
Christian when I am one.” What did he mean by this?
2. Would Kierkegaard have approved of the attempts by philosophers and theologians to prove that God exists?
Why not?
Advanced Question to Consider:
1. For Kierkegaard, God’s existence is more palpable than anything else that he encounters in this world. Yet, in
attempting to proselytize his reader, he deliberately refrains from insisting on the truth of God’s existence.
Why?
Lecture Three
Kierkegaard on Subjective Truth
Scope: Kierkegaard took “subjective truth” to be the central element in a meaningful life. There are only
subjective answers to the question “How should I live?” Subjectivity is “inwardness and passion.” It is
personal choice, “taking hold” of one’s life by committing oneself passionately to what one chooses.
Outline
I. The central concept of Kierkegaard’s philosophy is “subjective truth”: making a commitment, making the leap
of faith to believe.
A. Kierkegaard allows that objectivity is fine in its place (e.g., in science).
1. Kierkegaard is happy to say, “all power to the sciences, but…”
2. Questions concerning God and religion are not objective questions.
3. Science attempts to undermine the miracle by making it plausible—e.g., the case of Moses crossing the
Red Sea.
B. Objectivity should not be allowed to invade the existential realm, the realm of personal meaning and
significance.
1. This is the realm of religion.
2. It is also the realm of ethics, which Kierkegaard identifies with the philosophy of Kant.
3. Kierkegaard puts great stress on what he calls “the ethically existing individual,” the focus of his
existentialism.
C. To believe with Hegel that the world is ultimately rational does not give an answer to the question “How
should I live?”
II. Subjectivity is, first of all, “inwardness and passion.”
A. It is a commitment, not a mere discovery or “correctness.”
B. Subjectivity is the realm where we find that very special sense of “existence” (from which “existentialism”
will eventually get its name).
1. It is living fully, which may not be outwardly evident.
2. It is living inwardly, in the depth and richness of one’s feelings.
3. Passions, for Kierkegaard, are not mere feelings (sensations) but profound insights into the beings we
really are.
4. To say that a passion is subjective is to say (for one thing) that it can be known and appreciated only
“from the inside,” by the person whose passion it is.
C. Personal choice is the key to subjectivity, “taking hold” of one’s life.
1. One does this by committing oneself passionately to what one chooses.
2. Kierkegaard’s own choice, which he advocates throughout his twenty-some volumes of writing, is
Christianity, redefined in his own passionate way.
III. Christianity requires faith, which is not rational, but involves passion and commitment.
A. The paradoxes of Christianity, quite the contrary of making faith less plausible, are required to provoke the
passion that faith requires.
B. Christianityand existence more generallyinvolves “inwardness.”
1. Not only may it not be discernible “from the outside,” but it may well seem meaningless to anyone
else. You can love someone with all your heart without it being evident to anyone else.
2. Kierkegaard gives the example of two people making love, a performance that would seem ludicrous
to anyone other than the couple.
C. Religious passion cannot, therefore, be collectivized into an organized religion. Collectivism is the very
opposite of what a religious community might be (for example, a monastery where each individual keeps
his faith to himself). Kierkegaard says he wants to break back into the monastery. Most of what he says
could be translated to virtually any other religion.
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D. Because there is no “correct” form of subjectivity, it remains to a subjective author to seduce his readers,
not to convince them rationally. Kierkegaard’s books are an elaborate seduction. You can coax, not argue,
someone into authentic existence.
Essential Reading:
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, (excerpted with other readings in Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 3–
28).
Recommended Reading:
Gardiner, Kierkegaard; for a more literary perspective on Kierkegaard, see Mackey, A Kind of Poet.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
Introductory Questions to Consider:
1. What is the relationship between “subjective truth” and “objective uncertainty”? Are they in conflict? Is the
very notion of “subjective truth” self-contradictory? What is the relationship between “subjective truth” and
that which we take to be objectively certain, such as science, particularly with regard to religion?
2. In what sense is believing in God necessarily irrational? Is this necessarily a bad thing?
Advanced Question to Consider:
1. Kierkegaard, like Camus, introduces a notion of “the absurd.” For Kierkegaard, “the absurd isthat the eternal
truth has come into being in time, that God has come into being, has been born, has grown up, and so forth…”
For Camus, it is “the perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles.”
How do you see their two very different perspectives on “the absurd,” one having to do with the
incomprehensibility of God, the other having to do with the impossibility of a rational life? How are they
related?
Lecture Four
Kierkegaard’s “Existential Dialectic”
Scope: Kierkegaard contradicts Hegel’s philosophy with his “existential dialectic.” An “existential dialectic “ has
no ultimate purpose, no rational direction, only various choices, “modes of existence” that must be
approached subjectively. Kierkegaard distinguishes three modes, the aesthetic, the ethical, and the
religious. Although each mode of existence might dictate its own priorities or rationality, there is no reason
or rational standard for choosing one rather than another.
Outline
I. In conscientious contradiction to Hegel’s philosophy, Kierkegaard develops an “existential dialectic.”
A. Hegel developed a grand historical “dialectic,” proving that history and humanity have an ultimate
purpose, a pervasive rationality.
B. Kierkegaard develops his “existential dialectic,” a personal dialectic with no ultimate purpose, no rational
direction. In Hegel, history develops through conflict, an idea later echoed in Marx. But Kierkegaard’s
dialectic is solely about the individual.
1. We are faced with various choices, various “modes of existence” or “lifestyles.”
2. Although each mode of existence might dictate its own priorities or rationality, there is no reason or
rational standard for choosing one rather than another.
3. Kierkegaard distinguishes three such modes: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.
II. The aesthetic mode of existence is the life of pleasure, of desire and satisfaction. Unlike many philosophers,
Kierkegaard saw this mode—or its refusal—as a choice.
A. The aesthetic mode might be exemplified in the life of Don Juan, the Spanish libertine. (Kierkegaard’s
favorite opera was Mozart’s Don Giovanni.)
1. Don Juan pursued his own pleasures, without consideration for others.
2. He lived a life devoted to personal satisfaction.
B. But the aesthetic life need not be so vulgar. Mozart himself could also be seen as living the aesthetic life.
1. He lives in pursuit of the ideal satisfaction of beauty, to be found (or expressed) in the perfect piece of
music.
2. Nevertheless, the aesthetic life depends on personal satisfaction.
C. The problem with the aesthetic life is its tendency to boredom.
1. One becomes jaded with the very pleasures one pursues.
2. Thus, one becomes insatiable, and the aesthetic life becomes self-defeating (Kierkegaard’s own
youthful experience). As in Sisyphus, the repetition is numbing.
3. Goethe writes in Faust: “from desire I rush to satisfaction; from satisfaction I leap to desire.” Thus,
there is no aesthetic satisfaction.
III. The ethical mode of existence is the life of duty. The choice of being ethical is, for Kierkegaard, not itself a
rational choice.
A. Kierkegaard follows the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant by insisting on the centrality of duty and
moral principle.
B. Kierkegaard also believes, like Kant, in the universality of reason, but with a subtle twist. Reason is
universal in the realm of ethics, but not outside it.
C. The ethical mode is defined by universal moral principles and consideration for the well-being of others.
1. It is altruistic in the sense that it is other-directed rather than concerned with one’s own satisfaction.
2. The exemplar is Socrates, who died rather than compromise his virtue.
D. To choose the ethical life is to choose to live rationally, but one does not rationally choose the ethical life.
E. The ethical life has limits and frustrations, however, given the overwhelming number of injustices in the
world. Thus, the urge to good also becomes self-defeating, as in compassion “burnout.”
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IV. The religious mode of existence has as its basis the belief in God.
A. Kierkegaard seems to have paid little attention to religions other than Christianity.
B. By Christianity, he means a somewhat constrained, “fundamentalist” version of Lutheranism.
C. The religious life also includes aspects of the ethical life (Judeo-Christian morality), but conflict may exist
between the ethical and the religious.
1. This conflict is exemplified in the story of Abraham, which presents an intolerable dilemma to
someone who both believes that God’s word is ultimate and has a need to obey the moral rules.
2. One of the most obvious moral rules, against killing your own children, is called into question by
God’s command.
3. Kierkegaard describes the necessity for continued faith in such a dilemma as a “teleological
suspension of the ethical.”
Essential Reading:
Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 3–28.
Recommended Reading:
One of Kierkegaard’s most accessible books is Either/Or, 2 vols. The most systematic view of his religious
conception of subjectivity is Concluding Unscientific Postscript. For the significance of Kierkegaard’s thought in
the broader context of Western thought, see MacInytre, After Virtue.
Introductory Questions to Consider:
1. Kierkegaard discusses three “modes” or “styles” of existencethe aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.
Which are you? What does this mean? In what sense have you “chosen” this lifestyle? Does it make sense,
according to Kierkegaard, to say that “some days I am x, other days I am y”?
2. According to Kierkegaard, is there a rational basis on which one can decide which of these three modes of
existence to embrace, which one is right, which one is “right for you”?
Advanced Questions to Consider:
1. For Kant, ethics begins with the autonomous, rational individual, who dispassionately determines what duty
requires and acts accordingly. For Hegel, on the other hand, ethics begins with the community, which imbues
its citizens with its ethical “substance”; the citizens in turn define themselves by the community’s terms. Would
Kierkegaard embrace either of these positions? If not, what would his criticism of each position be?
2. Kierkegaard asserts that “boredom is the root of all evil.” Which mode of existence does he believe is most
susceptible to it? Explain. Is Kierkegaard suggesting that certain modes of existence run up against their own
internal contradictions? What would they be, in each case?
3. What does Kierkegaard mean by the “teleological suspension of the ethical”? Is he suggesting that the ethical
and religious modes of existence necessarily come into conflict? Consider the foundation of ethics for those
who look at the world from a highly religious perspective. Could Abraham have consistently rejected God’s
command in favor of his ethical precepts?
Lecture Five
From Existentialism to Postmodernism
Scope: Sartre’s existentialism is often said to have been eclipsed by postmodernism. In fact, most of the
postmodern philosophers were profoundly influenced and inspired by Sartre. Differences are exaggerated,
such as Sartre’s strong orientation toward subjectivity and his emphasis on the self and consciousness.
Some postmodernists also reject rationality, objectivity, truth, and knowledge. Mainly, I argue, what gets
lost in postmodernism is precisely what is most important and uncompromising in Sartre, that sense of
public engagement and responsibility.
Outline
I. Has existentialism gone out of fashion? I don’t think so.
A. Existentialism is more than a simple movement or period in history.
B. As Sartre said, to try and define it is to freeze itthus my own reticence about specifically defining the
movement.
C. Although the movement began in Europe, its real home now is in America. American ideas of self-
improvement and mobility share much with existentialism.
II. Existentialism seems to have been eclipsed by two generations of philosophers since Sartre.
A. Sartre was attacked by Levi-Strauss, a “structuralist” anthropologist, for his anthropocentrism and neglect
of other cultures.
B. Then he was rejected by a new generation of French philosophers under the banner of “postmodernism”
(also “poststructuralism”).
1. Key figures include Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Roland Barthes.
2. Barthes and Foucault put forward the idea of the “death of the author,” which denies Sartre’s notion of
Cartesian subjectivity.
3. In Deleuze, the impersonal play of forces also attempts to replace all subjectivity.
4. Although all these philosophers were profoundly influenced and inspired by Sartre, there has been
almost a conspiracy of silence regarding Sartre’s work.
III. First and foremost, Sartre’s strong orientation toward subjectivity (and with this, most of phenomenology, as
well) has been rejected.
A. The self, even “consciousness,” as Sartre understood it, has been rejected.
B. The postmodernists also reject rationality, objectivity, truth, and knowledge, as these concepts are
traditionally understood.
C. These claims are problematic, but they are also derivative of Sartre’s own theories, including the rejection
of ultimate rational guidelines.
IV. In addition, Sartre’s “Enlightenment project,” his ideal of a “purifying reflection,” and his politics of freedom
have been rejected. In Sartre, there is a raging sense of rationality.
A. Returning to the harsher views of Nietzsche, Foucault and Deleuze stress power and impersonal force as
the determinant of truth and values.
B. Derrida rejects Sartre’s overly unified notion of self. The self is marginalized, fragmented, in Derrida.
C. Nevertheless, there are serious questions about the locus of both political responsibility and morals in the
postmodern reaction.
D. The liberating project of Freud’s psychoanalysis may be analogous in some ways to the “purifying
reflection” of Sartre. But the emphasis on personal responsibility is a welcome rejoinder to the current
cultural paradigm of victimization.
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V. I would like to suggest that the existentialist view has much to recommend it, not just as an interesting
movement in twentieth-century philosophy but as an authentic way of life, much needed as this terrible but
remarkable century comes to a close.
Essential Reading:
Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind; Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida in Solomon, Continental Philosophy Since
1750, pp. 194–202.
Recommended Reading:
Dreyfus and Rabinow, The Essential Works of Michel Foucault; Sallis, Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts
of Jacques Derrida; Kumaf, A Derrida Reader; Norris, What’s Wrong with Postmodernism?; Miller, Michel
Foucault.
Introductory Questions to Consider:
1. What is postmodernism? What is modernism? In what sense is Sartre’s existentialism, in particular, a “modern”
philosophy? In what sense is Nietzsche, by contrast, “postmodern”?
2. To what extent is knowledge a matter of power, as Foucault suggests? What does it mean to say, “the subject is
socially constructed,” through power relations?
3. To what extent is there “nothing aside from the text,” as Derrida has famously argued? In what sense are the
world and ordinary life a text?
Advanced Questions to Consider:
1. In what ways does Sartre anticipate the postmodernists? In what ways does he advocate the elimination of “the
subject” from philosophy?
2. What could come after “postmodernism,” i.e., what is post-postmodernism? Is the Enlightenment dead and
gone, or is postmodernism possibly just another phase of Enlightenment (modernist) thinking?
Glossary
Absurd: For Camus, the confrontation and conflict between our rational expectations of the world (justice,
satisfaction, happiness) and the “indifference” of the world.
Aesthetic (mode of existence): Kierkegaard’s conception of a life based on desire and its satisfaction.
Authenticity: Heidegger’s notion of genuine human existence.
Bad faith: Sartre’s conception of those forms of self-deception in which we deceive ourselves about ourselves,
about our natures and responsibilities.
Being-for-itself: For Sartre, human consciousness.
Being-for-others: For Sartre, our painful awareness of other people and their effects on us through their judgments
and “looks.”
Being-in-itself: For Sartre, the existence of things in the world.
Being-towards-death: Heidegger’s notion of human mortality and the importance of full awareness in facing death.
Dasein: Heidegger’s conception of “the being through whom being comes into question,” i.e., human existence.
Das Man: Heidegger’s conception of the inauthentic self, the self constructed by and through other people.
Ethical (mode of existence): Kierkegaard’s conception of a life based on a chosen commitment to moral principles
and duty to others.
Existence (Existenz): For Kierkegaard, a full-blooded, freely chosen, passionately committed life; for Heidegger,
that which is essentially Dasein. Dasein has no essence other than the fact that it exists, that it has possibilities and
projects to undertake.
Existentialism: The philosophical movement that stresses individuality and personal responsibility, as epitomized
in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre.
Facticity: For Heidegger and Sartre, the brute facts that characterize us, such as our height, our weight, our date of
birth, and so on.
Fallenness: For Heidegger, a “pre-ontological” way of dealing in the world, a way in which Dasein fails to face up
to its ontological condition
Master morality: Nietzsche’s conception of a self-confident morality of virtue and excellence.
Objective uncertainty: Kierkegaard’s attempt to capture those realms of human existence in which knowledge
becomes irrelevant and personal decision becomes all-important.
Ontology: For Heidegger, the study of Being.
Phenomenology: In Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, the study of the essential structures of consciousness,
experience, or Dasein.
Postmodernism: Contemporary philosophy that rejects the idea of the unified self and the clarifying powers of
reason.
Religious (mode of existence): Kierkegaard’s conception of a life based on a chosen devotion to God and His
commandments.
Slave morality: Nietzsche’s conception of a reactive, resentful insistence on universal principles and the protection
of the weak.
Subjectivity: In Kierkegaard, the realm of personal passion and commitment. In Sartre, phenomenology, the realm
of consciousness.
Subjective truth: In Kierkegaard, passionate commitment.
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Thrownness: For Heidegger, our “existential” condition, the state in which we find ourselves thrown into this
world, that we are “abandoned.” It is the “there” in which Dasein finds itself.
Transcendence: For Sartre, the power of consciousness to negate and go beyond the facts of the matter.
Transcendental ego: For Husserl, the realm of consciousness.
Übermensch: Nietzsche’s dramatic image of a more than human being.
Will to power: Nietzsche’s conception of the fundamental motivation of all human behavior, including morality
and philosophy.
Biographical Notes
Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–1986). French novelist, essayist, and philosopher and Jean-Paul Sartre’s lifelong
companion. The author of The Ethics of Ambiguity and many other works. Best known for her insightful
commentaries on growing up female in a very male culture, living through the war years, and finally, on growing
old.
Camus, Albert (1913–1960). French-Algerian (pied noir) essayist and philosopher, author of The Stranger, The
Myth of Sisyphus, The Plague, and The Fall and many lyrical and political essays. Best known for his very personal
expressions of humanism. His friendship with Sartre erupted with their disagreements over the Algerian War and
the general question of violence as a legitimate political means.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1821–1881). Russian writer and religious thinker, author of Notes from Underground, The
Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, and other novels. Best known for his deep sense of anguish
and doubt regarding ultimate religious matters.
Foucault, Michel (1926–1984). French philosopher and polemicist, first categorized as a structuralist, then as a
post-structuralist and postmodernist. Author of such books as The Archaeology of Knowledge, The Order of Things,
and A History of Sexuality. Best known for his emphasis on power in the world of ideas and culture.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1770–1831). German philosopher who followed Kant as a “German idealist,” author of The
Phenomenology of Spirit and several other important works. Best known for his vision of an all-encompassing
historical world-spirit that it is just our luck to finally have made fully realized.
Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976). German philosopher who followed Husserl as a phenomenologist but expanded
his interests to include traditional theological and metaphysical matters, author of Being and Time and many other
works. Best known for his notion of “authenticity,” which came to dominate many existentialist concerns.
Hesse, Hermann (1877–1962). German-Swiss writer and author of Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddharta, and The Glass
Bead Game (for which he won a Nobel prize). Best known for his synthesis of Western and Eastern (Buddhist)
thinking.
Husserl, Edmund (1859–1938). German-Czech (Moravian) philosopher and mathematician; best known as the
founder of “Phenomenology.”
Kafka, Franz (1883–1924). Bohemian (Czech) writer famous for his tales of the bizarre, for instance,
“Metamorphosis,” The Trial, and The Castle.
Kant, Immanuel (1749–1804). German philosopher, “German idealist,” best known as the author of three
“critiques,” “The Critique of Pure Reason,” “The Critique of Practical Reason,” and “The Critique of Judgment.” As
a moral philosopher, he has long been characterized (or caricatured) as strictly rational and “rule-bound”; thus, he
becomes a point of departure for such different thinkers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855). Danish religious philosopher and first “existentialist.” He is best known for his
concept of an irrational “leap of faith” and his many religious works, many of them written under pseudonyms,
emphasizing the importance of personal choice and commitment in becoming a Christian and in living a full life
more generally. His philosophy has many important parallels with Nietzsche, despite their very different positions
on the desirability of Christianity.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900). German philosopher who attacked both the Judeo-Christian tradition and
contemporary culture and politics with great style and passion. Author of The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
Beyond Good and Evil, and many other works.
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–1980). French philosopher, essayist, and literary writer responsible for naming
“existentialism” and for definitively promoting some of its central themes, notably the theme of freedom and
responsibility that we have summarized as “No Excuses!” Author of Being and Nothingness and many other works.
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860). German philosopher who followed Kant (competing with Hegel) as a
“German idealist.” Author of The World as Will and Idea. Best known for his grumpy cosmic pessimism but
equally important for bringing together Western and Eastern (Buddhist) ideas.
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Zarathustra (sixth century B.C.E.). Persian prophet, founder of Zoroastrianism, belated hero of Nietzsche’s quasi-
Biblical epic, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Bibliography
The main texts for the lectures can be found in Robert C. Solomon, ed., Existentialism (New York: McGraw
Hill/Modern Library, 1974). Secondary texts that follow the perspective of the lectures can be found in Robert C.
Solomon, From Rationalism to Existentialism (Wash., D.C.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979), and Robert C.
Solomon, Continental Philosophy Since 1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Anderson, Thomas, Sartre’s Two Ethics (Open Court, 1993).
Barnes, Hazel, An Existentialist Ethics (New York: Vintage, 1971).
, Sartre (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott, 1973).
Beauvoir, Simone, The Ethics of Ambiguity (New York: Citadel Press, 1970).
Bree, Germaine, Camus (Harcourt Brace, 1964).
Calhoun, Cheshire, ed., What Is an Emotion? (New York: Oxford, 1984).
Camus, Albert, Notebooks, 1935–1951, translated by Philip Thody (New York: Knopf, 1963).
, The Fall, trans. by Justin O’Brien (New York: Random House, 1956).
, The Stranger (New York: Knopf, 1946, trans. by Stuart Gilbert [“British” translation]; 1988, trans. by
Matthew Ward [“American” translation]).
, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. by Justin O’Brien (New York: Random House, 1955) (partially reprinted in
Solomon, Existentialism, McGraw-Hill, pp. 177–188).
, The Plague, trans. by Stuart Gilbert (New York: Random House, 1948).
, The Rebel (New York: Knopf, 1956).
Danto, Arthur C., Sartre (London: Fontana Press, 1979).
Deleuze, Gilles, Nietzsche and Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
Derrida, Jacques, A Derrida Reader, ed. Peggy Kumaf (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Crime and Punishment (New York: Signet, 1968).
, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. by Constance Garnett (New York: Modern Library, 1975).
, Notes from Underground and The Grand Inquisitor, trans. by Ralph E. Matlaw (New York: Meridian,
1991).
Dreyfus, Hubert L., Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1 (Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 1991).
, and Paul Rabinow, eds., The Essential Works of Michel Foucault (New York: Norton, 1997).
Fell, Joseph P., Emotion in the Thought of Sartre (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965).
, Heidegger and Sartre: An Essay on Being and Place (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).
Fingarette, Herbert, Self-Deception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969).
Gardiner, Patrick, Kierkegaard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Guignon, Charles, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983).
Hallie, Philip, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).
Hegel, G. W. F., Phenomenology of Spirit (London: Oxford University Press, 1977).
, Introduction to the Philosophy of History (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1988).
Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. by Joan Stambaugh (New York: Routledge, 1997).
, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).
Hemingway, Ernest, For Whom the Bell Tolls (New York: MacMillan, 1968).
Hesse, Hermann, Demian, trans. by Michael Roloff and Michael Lebeck (New York: Harper, 1965).
, Steppenwolf, trans. by Basil Creighton (New York: Knopf, 1963).
Higgins, Kathleen M., Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).
, and R. Solomon, eds., Reading Nietzsche (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
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Hunt, Lester, Nietzsche and the Original of Virtue (New York: Routledge, 1991).
Husserl, Edmund, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology (The Hague: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1993).
, Paris Lectures (The Hague: Nijhaff, 1964; in Solomon, Phenomenology and Existentialism, Rowman and
Littlefield, 1979).
Jeanson, Francis, Sartre and the Problem of Morality (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1980).
Kafka, Franz, Metamorphosis and Other Stories (New York, Scribners, 1993).
, The Trial, trans. by Breon Mitchell (New York, Schocken, 1998).
Kaufmann, Walter, NietzschePhilosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).
Kierkegaard, Søren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944).
, Either/Or, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959).
, Fear and Trembling (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).
, Journals, trans. by Alexander Dru (London: Oxford University Press, 1938; excerpted in Solomon,
Existentialism, pp. 3–5).
Levi-Strauss, Claude, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).
Lottman, Herbert R., Camus: A Biography (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979).
Mackey, Louis, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971).
MacInytre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).
Melville, Herman, “Billy Budd, Sailor” (New York: Bantam Books, 1962).
Metha, J. L., The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
Miller, James, Michel Foucault (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993).
Murdoch, Iris, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (New Haven: Yale, 1953).
Natanson, Maurice, Critique of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Ontology (New York: Haskell House, 1972).
Nehamas, Alexander, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985).
Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Anti-Christ, trans. by Walter Kaufmann, in Walter Kaufmann, ed., The Viking Portable
Nietzsche (New York: Viking Press, 1954).
, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967).
, The Gay Science, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974).
, Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Walter Kaufmann, ed., The Viking Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking
Press, 1954).
, Twilight of the Idols, trans. by Walter Kaufmann, in Walter Kaufmann, ed., The Viking Portable Nietzsche
(New York: Viking Press, 1954).
, The Will to Power (New York: Vintage, 1967).
Norris, Christopher, What’s Wrong with Postmodernism? (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).
OBrien, Conor Cruise, Camus (London: Fontana, Collins, 1970).
Sallis, John, Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987).
Sartre, Jean-Paul, The Age of Reason, trans. by Eric Sutton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971).
, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1956).
, The Emotions: Sketch of a Theory (London: Methuen, 1962).
, The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness (New York: Hill and Wang,
1990).
, The Wall and Other Stories (New York: New Directions, 1948).
, Nausea (New York: New Directions, 1964).
, Notebooks for an Ethics (New York: Chicago, 1992).
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Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and Representation (New York: Dover, 1969); abridged version (London:
Everyman Press, 1997).
Schroeder, William, Sartre and His Predecessors (Boston : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984).
Sluga, Hans, Heidegger’s Crisis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
Soll, Ivan. “Sartre’s Rejection of the Freudian Unconscious,” in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul A.
Schilpp, ed. (Illinois: Open Court Publishing, 1981).
Solomon, Robert C., About Love (Rowman and Littlefield, 1994).
, “Camus’s l’etranger and the Truth,” in From Hegel to Existentialism (New York: Oxford University Press,
1988).
, Introducing the Existentialists (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983).
, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1993).
, “Sartre on the Emotions” in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul A. Schilpp, ed. (Illinois: Open Court
Publishing, 1981).
, and Kathleen M. Higgins, For the Love of Life: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Teaching
Company lecture series).
, and Kathleen M. Higgins, What Nietzsche Really Said (New York: Schocken Books, Random House,
2000).
Sprintzen, David, Camus (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988).
Stern, J. P. Friedrich Nietzsche (Harmondsworth, New York: Penguin Books, 1979).
Tanner, Michael, Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Thulstrup, Niels, Kierkegaard’s Relation in Hegel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
Todd, Olivier, Albert Camus: A Life, trans. by Benjamin Ivry (New York: Knopf, 1997).
Young, Julian, Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Existentialism
Scope:
Existentialism is, in my view, the most exciting and important philosophical movement of the past century and a
half. Fifty years after the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre gave it its identity and one hundred and fifty years
after the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard gave it its initial impetus, existentialism continues to win new
enthusiasts and, in keeping with its still exciting and revolutionary message, vehement critics.
The message of existentialism, unlike that of many more obscure and academic philosophical movements, is about
as simple as can be. It is that every one of us, as an individual, is responsibleresponsible for what we do,
responsible for who we are, responsible for the way we face and deal with the world, responsible, ultimately, for the
way the world is. It is, in a very short phrase, the philosophy of “no excuses!” Life may be difficult; circumstances
may be impossible. There may be obstacles, not least of which are our own personalities, characters, emotions, and
limited means or intelligence. But, nevertheless, we are responsible. We cannot shift that burden onto God, or
nature, or the ways of the world. If there is a God, we choose to believe. If nature made us one way, it is up to us to
decide what we are to do with what nature gives uswhether to go along or fight back, to modify or transcend
nature. As the delightfully priggish Kate Hepburn says to a wonderfully vulgar Humphrey Bogart in the movie The
African Queen, “Nature is what we are put on this earth to rise above.” That is what existentialism is all about. We
are responsible for ourselves.
There are no excuses.
But to say that the basic message of existentialism is quite simple and straightforward is not to say that the
philosophers or the philosophies that make up the movement are simple and straightforward. The movement itself is
something of a fabrication. None of the major existentialist figures, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and
Camusonly excepting Sartrewould recognize themselves as part of a “movement” at all. Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche were both ferocious individualists who vehemently rejected all movements. To belong to a philosophical
movement, each of them would have said, would be to show cowardice and a lack of integrity, to be simply one of
the “herd.” Heidegger was deeply offended when he was linked with Sartre as one of the existentialists, and he
publicly denounced the association. Camus and Sartre once were friends, but they quarreled over politics and
Camus also broke the association and publicly rejected it.
Many of the other writers and philosophers who have been associated with the movement would have been equally
hesitant to embrace the title had they known of it. The main exceptions were those who have wanted or needed to
derive some fame and notoriety by associating themselves with existentialism. In the 1950s in the United States, for
example, Norman Mailer proudly took up the title, giving it his own definition, “hip.”
The existentialists’ writings, too, are by no means simple and straightforward. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche write
beautifully but in such challenging, often disjointed, exhortations that trying to summarize or systematize their
thoughts is something of a hopeless venture. Heidegger is among the most difficult writers in the entire history of
philosophy, and even Sartre—a lucid literary writer when he wants to beimitates some of the worst elements of
Heidegger’s notorious style. Much of the challenge of this course of lectures, accordingly, is to free the exciting and
revolutionary message of existentialism from its often formidable textual enclosures.
The course begins, after a brief introduction to the historical context and the very notion of “existentialism,” with a
discussion of the twentieth-century writer and philosopher Albert Camus (1913–1960). Chronologically, Camus is
already late in the game. (We will trace existentialist ideas as far back as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the mid-
nineteenth century, but we will not explore those figuressay Socrates or Saint Augustinewho with some
justification might be called their predecessors.) Philosophically, it is often said that Camus is more of a literary
figure, a lyrical essayist, than a philosopher. But the art of persuasive personal writing rather than dry philosophical
analysis is one of the earmarks of existentialism. (Even the obscure writings of Martin Heidegger [1889–1976] are
remarkable in their rhetorical and emotional efficacy.)
In this sense, Camus is exemplary in his combination of deep contemplation and often poetic writing and, because
his ideas are less complex than the probing and systematic works of the other existential writers before him, he
makes an ideal beginning. We will start with his most famous novel, The Stranger, published in the early 1940s,
which combines a disturbingly “flat” descriptive style with a horrifying sequence of events, introducing us to a
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character whose reactions to the world are indeed “strange.” It is our reaction to this character, however, that makes
the novel so deeply philosophical. What is it that makes him so strange? The answer to that question starts us
thinking about the way we think about ourselves and each other, what we take for granted and do not normally
notice.
After an analysis of The Stranger, I want to take us through a number of Camus’s later works, beginning with a
philosophical essay he wrote about the same time, The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he introduces his infamous
concept of “The Absurd.” Then, in Lectures Five and Six, I want to examine two later novels, The Plague and The
Fall (the last novel Camus published in his lifetime, although his daughter recently published an unfinished novel
he was working on at the time of his death). My aim in these first half dozen lectures will be to set a certain mood
for the rest of the course, a rebellious, restless, yet thoroughly conscientious mood, which I believe Camus
exemplifies both in his writings and in his life.
In Lectures Seven through Nine, I want to turn to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) and his
revolutionary work. Kierkegaard was a deeply religious philosophera pious Christianand his existentialist
thought was devoted to the question, “What does it mean to beor rather, what does it mean to becomea
Christian?” We should thus be advised that, contrary to some popular misunderstandings, existentialism is by no
means an anti-religious or unspiritual philosophy. It can and often does embrace God, as well as a host of visions of
the world that we can, without apology, call “spiritual.” (We will see that Nietzsche and Heidegger both embrace
such visions, although in very different ways.)
In Lectures Ten through Thirteen, I want to consider in some detail the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–
1900) and his role in this rather eccentric movement. Nietzsche is perhaps best known for his bold declaration “God
is dead.” He is also well known as a self-proclaimed “immoralist.” In fact, both of these phrases are misleading.
Nietzsche was by no means the first person to say that God is dead (Martin Luther had said it three centuries
before), and Nietzsche himself was anything but an immoral person. He attacks moralityor rather, he attacks one
conception of moralitybut nevertheless he defends a profound view of ethics and human nature.
In Lecture Fourteen, I want to turn briefly to three diverse but exemplary figures from the history of literature. All
three display existentialist themes and temperaments in their works: Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), the great
Russian novelist; Franz Kafka (1883–1924), the brilliant Czech novelist and story writer; and Hermann Hesse
(1877–1962), a twentieth-century Swiss writer who combined a fascination with Asian philosophy with a
profoundly Nietzschean interest and temperament.
In Lecture Fifteen, I would like to briefly introduce the philosophical method of a philosopher who could not be
further from the existentialist temperament but yet had a profound influence on both Heidegger and Sartre. He is the
German-Czech philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), who invented a philosophical technique called
“phenomenology.” Both Heidegger and Sartre, at least at the beginning of their careers, thought of themselves as
phenomenologists. In the rest of that lecture and in Lectures Sixteen and Seventeen, I would like to consider Martin
Heidegger’s very difficult but extremely insightful philosophy.
Finally, in Lectures Eighteen through Twenty-Three, I want to consider the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–
1980), and in Lecture Twenty-Four, I would like to finish with a comparison and contrast with French philosophy
since his time. My suggestion will be that much of what is best in “postmodernism” is taken more or less directly
from Sartre, despite the fact that he is typically attacked as the very antithesis of postmodernism. Existentialism, I
want to argue, was and is not just another French intellectual fashion but a timely antidote to some of the worst self-
(mis)understandings of the end of the century.
How should one approach these lectures? My advice on the lecture on The Stranger is a good example of how I
think each lecture should be approached. Although the lectures are self-contained, it would be ideally desirable to
read the “Essential Reading” (in this case, the novel) before hearing or viewing the lecture. That way, you come to
the lecture ready to question and challenge with your interpretation and ideas. This will be true even for the very
difficult readings from Heidegger and Sartre. It is very helpful to have contact with their style and vocabulary even
if the ideas at first seem impenetrable. Initial contact is even more desirable with our other two major authors,
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Both write in a strikingly personal, provocative style, and nothing will impress the
reader more than an immediate, first-hand confrontation with their witty and sometimes shocking aphorisms and
observations.
Of course, many if not most viewers of the lectures will not have the opportunity to read the material before every
lecture. I do suggest, however, that some attempt be made to read the essential material soon after. (I hope the
lectures entice one to do so.) The questions are designed to help the reader straighten out the ideas and vocabulary,
make various comparisons, and most important, work out his or her own views regarding the material in the
lectures. In general, the introductory questions presume only a hearing of the lectures and perhaps some of the
essential reading. The advanced questions invite further reading and more extensive thought.
Existentialism is, first of all, a philosophy of life, a philosophy about who we are. The ultimate intent of the course,
accordingly, is not only to inform the viewer about a very exciting philosophy but also to enrich his or her life and
make all of us think about who we are in a very new and bold way. The main texts for the lectures can be found in
Robert C. Solomon, ed., Existentialism (New York: McGraw Hill/Modern Library, 1974). Secondary texts that
follow the perspective of the lectures can be found in Robert C. Solomon, From Rationalism to Existentialism
(Rowman and Littlefield, 1979), and Continental Philosophy Since 1750 (Oxford University Press, 1988).
Lecture One
What Is Existentialism?
Scope: Existentialism is best thought of as a movement, a “sensibility” that can be traced throughout the history of
Western philosophy. Its central themes are the significance of the individual, the importance of passion, the
irrational aspects of life, and the importance of human freedom. We will be looking primarily at five very
different figures, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul
Sartre.
Outline
I. Existentialism is a movement, a “sensibility,” not a set of doctrines.
A. It is not, as it is too often said, a necessarily “gloomy” philosophy. It is, rather, invigorating and positive.
B. Nor is it necessarily atheistic, a form of “secular humanism.” Søren Kierkegaard, the “first” existentialist,
was profoundly religious.
C. In a world pervaded by victim psychology, existentialism offers a refreshing sense of empowerment.
II. Existential attitudes can be found as far back as ancient times.
A. It is possible to trace existentialism, defined one way or another, back to Socrates and Augustine, perhaps
even to Heraclitus.
B. We will limit our examination to five definitive figures, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin
Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre.
1. They do not form a “school” or share any particular outlook on religion and politics.
2. Kierkegaard is a pious Christian; Nietzsche and Sartre are atheists.
3. Kierkegaard despised politics; Sartre was a Marxist; Camus, a humanitarian; Heidegger, a Nazi.
C. Strictly speaking, perhaps, the only true existentialist was Sartre, who defined the term to refer to his own
work during and immediately after the Second World War. He pursued the idea that “we make ourselves.”
D. Expanding our vision, however, the movement certainly includes such literary figures as Fyodor
Dostoevsky and Franz Kafka, among others.
III. Three themes pervade existentialism:
A. A strong emphasis on the individual (although this is variously defined and understood).
1. A lot of these writers were truly eccentric.
2. Each of them takes individuality in a different direction.
B. The central role of the passions, as opposed to the usual philosophical emphasis on reason and rationality.
The emphasis instead is on a passionate commitment. For the existentialist, to live is to live passionately.
C. The importance of human freedom. Existentialists are concerned with personal freedom, both political
freedom and free will.
1. This is central to Kierkegaard and Sartre, but not so obviously to Nietzsche and Heidegger.
2. The relationship between freedom and reason is particularly at issue.
3. Traditionally, acting “rationally” is said to be free, while acting out of emotion is considered being a
“slave to one’s passions.” The existentialists suggest that we live best and are most ourselves in terms
of passion. Kierkegaard’s notion of “passionate commitment” is central.
IV. The special meaning of the central term, “existence,” is first defined by Kierkegaard to refer to a life that is
filled with passion, self-understanding, and commitment. For Nietzsche, to really “exist” is to manifest your
talents and virtues—“becoming the person you really are.”
A. The key component of existentialism’s general “sensibility” is the striking realization of one’s own
“contingency.”
1. One might have never been born, or been born in a different place, at a different time, as a different
person, or possibly not as a person at all. Heidegger’s image of “thrownness” suggests how much of
our lives is given, not chosen.
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2. Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” in which a very ordinary middle-class man wakes up to find himself
changed into a giant cockroach, is a spectacularly unusual example of the contingency of our
particular existence.
B. Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” is a problem, not a solution to the question of existence. The
existentialists challenge the idea that human existence is so tied up with thinking.
C. Existentialism basically urges us to live our lives to the fullest, although what this means will take
somewhat different forms. Of all philosophers, it seems to me that existentialists are the most geared to our
own needs and expectations.
D. Although its origins are European, existentialism is perfectly suited to contemporary American thought.
Essential Reading:
Solomon, Existentialism, Introduction.
Recommended Reading:
Any decent short overview of existentialism, e.g., many encyclopedia entries (Collier’s, Grolier, Encyclopedia
Brittanica, and so on).
For a lighter treatment, read the mock interviews in Solomon, Introducing the Existentialists (Hackett). For an eye-
opener, there is always Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.”
Introductory Questions to Consider:
1. What do you mean by the phrase “personal freedom”? What counts as “being free” for you?
2. What is an individual? What (if anything) makes a person an individual, even “unique”?
Advanced Questions to Consider:
1. Are the passions, by their very nature, “irrational?” What is meant by the term “rationality”? Is rationality
always a good thing?
2. Do you believe in fate? What would this mean? If I were to introduce you to a very good fortune teller (who
had an accuracy rate of over 95%) and she offered to tell you the outcome of your marriage or the date of your
death, would you be willing to ask her? Why or why not?
Lecture Two
Søren Kierkegaard---“On Becoming a Christian”
Scope: Søren Kierkegaard was, in many ways, the first existentialist. He was also a devout Christian. He rejected
both career and marriage to pursue religious mission. He also rejected much of what his compatriots
considered “being a Christian.” Accordingly, he came to question the role of reason and suffering in life
and to celebrate individual choice and passion both in religion and life more generally.
Outline
I. Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) did not, in the usual sense, have a very happy or fulfilling life.
A. He was crippled in both his appearance and in his emotional development.
B. He was burdened by an oppressive sense of guilt and inadequacy.
C. He spent virtually his entire life in Copenhagen while he despised bourgeois complacency and the whole of
“the present age.”
D. As a young man, he carried on for a year in Berlin with his somewhat more hedonistic friend, Hans
Christian Andersen.
1. Hedonism was not for him, however. He experienced it as self-defeating, shameful, and humiliating.
2. He rejected both the life of pleasure and the life of friendship.
3. Pleasure (“the aesthetic”) would remain a problem for him throughout his career.
E. He rejected a promising career in the ministry and a potentially happy marriage to pursue his lonely and
often controversial philosophical and religious mission.
II. The place of reason and the role of suffering and passion in life became some of Kierkegaard’s primary
concerns, in particular with regard to religion and religious belief.
A. He described his own mission in philosophy as “to redefine what it means to be (or become) a Christian.”
1. He rejected the idea that simply being born a Christian is sufficient to be one.
2. He also rejected the idea that simply growing up with certain beliefs was sufficient to make one a
Christian.
3. He insisted, much to the dismay of many of his Christian compatriots, that it is easier to be(come) a
Christian if one is not already born one. Christianity is a commitment, not something to which one
passively adheres.
B. Most so-called Christians, Kierkegaard says (the “mob” of what he disdainfully calls “Christendom”) are
not that at all.
1. He accuses most Christians of blatant hypocrisy, empty belief conjoined with banal social
membership.
2. Most Christians display no passion for their faith at all.
3. Most of Christianity is a mass or “herd” phenomenon.
C. Christianity is not to be understood in terms of doctrines, rituals, or social belonging.
1. Belief in doctrines is a part of Christianity, but not the essential part.
2. Rituals are at most a minimal accouterment of Christianity. (This is obviously a reflection of
Kierkegaard’s Lutheranism and part of his rejection of Catholicism.)
3. The fact that other Christians exist in the world is somewhat irrelevant. One is, ultimately, a Christian
all by oneself.
D. Christianity is a paradox, but this paradox demands passionate faith.
1. The paradox is one of belief, but its proper response is passion.
2. In Kierkegaard’s day, one of the reigning paradoxes was the idea that God could be both eternal and
temporally present as a man.
3. Today, a more pressing paradox for most Christians would be the so-called “problem of evil,” the idea
that an all-powerful, all-knowing, good and kind God would allow so much suffering in the world. For
Kierkegaard, a leap of faith is necessary for a passionate religious belief.
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III. Kierkegaard’s philosophical bete noir was G. W. F. Hegel.
A. As a student, Kierkegaard studied with Friedrich Schelling in Berlin.
1. Schelling denounced Hegel’s philosophy as “negative.”
2. Schelling and Hegel had been college roommates and competitors.
B. Hegel, who (along with Kant) dominated philosophical thought in Denmark, defended the idea of a supra-
historical collective world-spirit (or Geist), leaving little room for the individual.
C. Hegel’s Geist was, according to the popular interpretation, identical with human consciousness and the
world.
1. Hegel thus denied the identity of God as entirely separate from his creation and from human beings.
2. Hegel also defended the idea that Geist was rational and could be rationally comprehended by human
beings.
3. Kierkegaard, by contrast, offers the fear and trembling of a personal confrontation with God. He
rejected both the collectivity of Geist and the idea that God could be rationally understood.
D. Hegel’s relationship with Schelling was complicated.
1. Schelling became famous very early, while Hegel was still struggling to find his way in philosophy.
2. Later, Hegel became even more famous, Schelling’s star faded, and Schelling was filled with jealousy
and wounded pride.
3. None of this was evident to Kierkegaard, but Schelling’s prejudices fit in perfectly with his own
predispositions.
E. While Kierkegaard was studying in Berlin, two of his other classmates were the proto-Marxist Friedrich
Engels and the anarchist Mikhael Bakunin.
F. In Hegel, Kierkegaard found a paradigm of collective, rationalist thinking.
G. In reaction, Kierkegaard became the champion of “the individual.”
Essential Reading:
Kierkegaard, Journals, (excerpted with other readings in Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 3–28).
Recommended Reading:
Gardiner, Kierkegaard; for a more literary perspective on Kierkegaard, see Mackey, A Kind of Poet.
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling. To appreciate Kierkegaard’s polemic against Hegel, take a look at Hegel’s
Introduction to The Philosophy of History; for Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, see also Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s
Relation in Hegel, and Solomon, Continental Philosophy Since 1750, “Kierkegaard.”
Introductory Questions to Consider:
1. Kierkegaard claimed that “it is easier to become a Christian when I am not a Christian than to become a
Christian when I am one.” What did he mean by this?
2. Would Kierkegaard have approved of the attempts by philosophers and theologians to prove that God exists?
Why not?
Advanced Question to Consider:
1. For Kierkegaard, God’s existence is more palpable than anything else that he encounters in this world. Yet, in
attempting to proselytize his reader, he deliberately refrains from insisting on the truth of God’s existence.
Why?
Lecture Three
Kierkegaard on Subjective Truth
Scope: Kierkegaard took “subjective truth” to be the central element in a meaningful life. There are only
subjective answers to the question “How should I live?” Subjectivity is “inwardness and passion.” It is
personal choice, “taking hold” of one’s life by committing oneself passionately to what one chooses.
Outline
I. The central concept of Kierkegaard’s philosophy is “subjective truth”: making a commitment, making the leap
of faith to believe.
A. Kierkegaard allows that objectivity is fine in its place (e.g., in science).
1. Kierkegaard is happy to say, “all power to the sciences, but…”
2. Questions concerning God and religion are not objective questions.
3. Science attempts to undermine the miracle by making it plausible—e.g., the case of Moses crossing the
Red Sea.
B. Objectivity should not be allowed to invade the existential realm, the realm of personal meaning and
significance.
1. This is the realm of religion.
2. It is also the realm of ethics, which Kierkegaard identifies with the philosophy of Kant.
3. Kierkegaard puts great stress on what he calls “the ethically existing individual,” the focus of his
existentialism.
C. To believe with Hegel that the world is ultimately rational does not give an answer to the question “How
should I live?”
II. Subjectivity is, first of all, “inwardness and passion.”
A. It is a commitment, not a mere discovery or “correctness.”
B. Subjectivity is the realm where we find that very special sense of “existence” (from which “existentialism”
will eventually get its name).
1. It is living fully, which may not be outwardly evident.
2. It is living inwardly, in the depth and richness of one’s feelings.
3. Passions, for Kierkegaard, are not mere feelings (sensations) but profound insights into the beings we
really are.
4. To say that a passion is subjective is to say (for one thing) that it can be known and appreciated only
“from the inside,” by the person whose passion it is.
C. Personal choice is the key to subjectivity, “taking hold” of one’s life.
1. One does this by committing oneself passionately to what one chooses.
2. Kierkegaard’s own choice, which he advocates throughout his twenty-some volumes of writing, is
Christianity, redefined in his own passionate way.
III. Christianity requires faith, which is not rational, but involves passion and commitment.
A. The paradoxes of Christianity, quite the contrary of making faith less plausible, are required to provoke the
passion that faith requires.
B. Christianityand existence more generallyinvolves “inwardness.”
1. Not only may it not be discernible “from the outside,” but it may well seem meaningless to anyone
else. You can love someone with all your heart without it being evident to anyone else.
2. Kierkegaard gives the example of two people making love, a performance that would seem ludicrous
to anyone other than the couple.
C. Religious passion cannot, therefore, be collectivized into an organized religion. Collectivism is the very
opposite of what a religious community might be (for example, a monastery where each individual keeps
his faith to himself). Kierkegaard says he wants to break back into the monastery. Most of what he says
could be translated to virtually any other religion.
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D. Because there is no “correct” form of subjectivity, it remains to a subjective author to seduce his readers,
not to convince them rationally. Kierkegaard’s books are an elaborate seduction. You can coax, not argue,
someone into authentic existence.
Essential Reading:
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, (excerpted with other readings in Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 3–
28).
Recommended Reading:
Gardiner, Kierkegaard; for a more literary perspective on Kierkegaard, see Mackey, A Kind of Poet.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
Introductory Questions to Consider:
1. What is the relationship between “subjective truth” and “objective uncertainty”? Are they in conflict? Is the
very notion of “subjective truth” self-contradictory? What is the relationship between “subjective truth” and
that which we take to be objectively certain, such as science, particularly with regard to religion?
2. In what sense is believing in God necessarily irrational? Is this necessarily a bad thing?
Advanced Question to Consider:
1. Kierkegaard, like Camus, introduces a notion of “the absurd.” For Kierkegaard, “the absurd isthat the eternal
truth has come into being in time, that God has come into being, has been born, has grown up, and so forth…”
For Camus, it is “the perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles.”
How do you see their two very different perspectives on “the absurd,” one having to do with the
incomprehensibility of God, the other having to do with the impossibility of a rational life? How are they
related?
Lecture Four
Kierkegaard’s “Existential Dialectic”
Scope: Kierkegaard contradicts Hegel’s philosophy with his “existential dialectic.” An “existential dialectic “ has
no ultimate purpose, no rational direction, only various choices, “modes of existence” that must be
approached subjectively. Kierkegaard distinguishes three modes, the aesthetic, the ethical, and the
religious. Although each mode of existence might dictate its own priorities or rationality, there is no reason
or rational standard for choosing one rather than another.
Outline
I. In conscientious contradiction to Hegel’s philosophy, Kierkegaard develops an “existential dialectic.”
A. Hegel developed a grand historical “dialectic,” proving that history and humanity have an ultimate
purpose, a pervasive rationality.
B. Kierkegaard develops his “existential dialectic,” a personal dialectic with no ultimate purpose, no rational
direction. In Hegel, history develops through conflict, an idea later echoed in Marx. But Kierkegaard’s
dialectic is solely about the individual.
1. We are faced with various choices, various “modes of existence” or “lifestyles.”
2. Although each mode of existence might dictate its own priorities or rationality, there is no reason or
rational standard for choosing one rather than another.
3. Kierkegaard distinguishes three such modes: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.
II. The aesthetic mode of existence is the life of pleasure, of desire and satisfaction. Unlike many philosophers,
Kierkegaard saw this mode—or its refusal—as a choice.
A. The aesthetic mode might be exemplified in the life of Don Juan, the Spanish libertine. (Kierkegaard’s
favorite opera was Mozart’s Don Giovanni.)
1. Don Juan pursued his own pleasures, without consideration for others.
2. He lived a life devoted to personal satisfaction.
B. But the aesthetic life need not be so vulgar. Mozart himself could also be seen as living the aesthetic life.
1. He lives in pursuit of the ideal satisfaction of beauty, to be found (or expressed) in the perfect piece of
music.
2. Nevertheless, the aesthetic life depends on personal satisfaction.
C. The problem with the aesthetic life is its tendency to boredom.
1. One becomes jaded with the very pleasures one pursues.
2. Thus, one becomes insatiable, and the aesthetic life becomes self-defeating (Kierkegaard’s own
youthful experience). As in Sisyphus, the repetition is numbing.
3. Goethe writes in Faust: “from desire I rush to satisfaction; from satisfaction I leap to desire.” Thus,
there is no aesthetic satisfaction.
III. The ethical mode of existence is the life of duty. The choice of being ethical is, for Kierkegaard, not itself a
rational choice.
A. Kierkegaard follows the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant by insisting on the centrality of duty and
moral principle.
B. Kierkegaard also believes, like Kant, in the universality of reason, but with a subtle twist. Reason is
universal in the realm of ethics, but not outside it.
C. The ethical mode is defined by universal moral principles and consideration for the well-being of others.
1. It is altruistic in the sense that it is other-directed rather than concerned with one’s own satisfaction.
2. The exemplar is Socrates, who died rather than compromise his virtue.
D. To choose the ethical life is to choose to live rationally, but one does not rationally choose the ethical life.
E. The ethical life has limits and frustrations, however, given the overwhelming number of injustices in the
world. Thus, the urge to good also becomes self-defeating, as in compassion “burnout.”
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IV. The religious mode of existence has as its basis the belief in God.
A. Kierkegaard seems to have paid little attention to religions other than Christianity.
B. By Christianity, he means a somewhat constrained, “fundamentalist” version of Lutheranism.
C. The religious life also includes aspects of the ethical life (Judeo-Christian morality), but conflict may exist
between the ethical and the religious.
1. This conflict is exemplified in the story of Abraham, which presents an intolerable dilemma to
someone who both believes that God’s word is ultimate and has a need to obey the moral rules.
2. One of the most obvious moral rules, against killing your own children, is called into question by
God’s command.
3. Kierkegaard describes the necessity for continued faith in such a dilemma as a “teleological
suspension of the ethical.”
Essential Reading:
Solomon, Existentialism, pp. 3–28.
Recommended Reading:
One of Kierkegaard’s most accessible books is Either/Or, 2 vols. The most systematic view of his religious
conception of subjectivity is Concluding Unscientific Postscript. For the significance of Kierkegaard’s thought in
the broader context of Western thought, see MacInytre, After Virtue.
Introductory Questions to Consider:
1. Kierkegaard discusses three “modes” or “styles” of existencethe aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.
Which are you? What does this mean? In what sense have you “chosen” this lifestyle? Does it make sense,
according to Kierkegaard, to say that “some days I am x, other days I am y”?
2. According to Kierkegaard, is there a rational basis on which one can decide which of these three modes of
existence to embrace, which one is right, which one is “right for you”?
Advanced Questions to Consider:
1. For Kant, ethics begins with the autonomous, rational individual, who dispassionately determines what duty
requires and acts accordingly. For Hegel, on the other hand, ethics begins with the community, which imbues
its citizens with its ethical “substance”; the citizens in turn define themselves by the community’s terms. Would
Kierkegaard embrace either of these positions? If not, what would his criticism of each position be?
2. Kierkegaard asserts that “boredom is the root of all evil.” Which mode of existence does he believe is most
susceptible to it? Explain. Is Kierkegaard suggesting that certain modes of existence run up against their own
internal contradictions? What would they be, in each case?
3. What does Kierkegaard mean by the “teleological suspension of the ethical”? Is he suggesting that the ethical
and religious modes of existence necessarily come into conflict? Consider the foundation of ethics for those
who look at the world from a highly religious perspective. Could Abraham have consistently rejected God’s
command in favor of his ethical precepts?
Lecture Five
From Existentialism to Postmodernism
Scope: Sartre’s existentialism is often said to have been eclipsed by postmodernism. In fact, most of the
postmodern philosophers were profoundly influenced and inspired by Sartre. Differences are exaggerated,
such as Sartre’s strong orientation toward subjectivity and his emphasis on the self and consciousness.
Some postmodernists also reject rationality, objectivity, truth, and knowledge. Mainly, I argue, what gets
lost in postmodernism is precisely what is most important and uncompromising in Sartre, that sense of
public engagement and responsibility.
Outline
I. Has existentialism gone out of fashion? I don’t think so.
A. Existentialism is more than a simple movement or period in history.
B. As Sartre said, to try and define it is to freeze itthus my own reticence about specifically defining the
movement.
C. Although the movement began in Europe, its real home now is in America. American ideas of self-
improvement and mobility share much with existentialism.
II. Existentialism seems to have been eclipsed by two generations of philosophers since Sartre.
A. Sartre was attacked by Levi-Strauss, a “structuralist” anthropologist, for his anthropocentrism and neglect
of other cultures.
B. Then he was rejected by a new generation of French philosophers under the banner of “postmodernism”
(also “poststructuralism”).
1. Key figures include Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Roland Barthes.
2. Barthes and Foucault put forward the idea of the “death of the author,” which denies Sartre’s notion of
Cartesian subjectivity.
3. In Deleuze, the impersonal play of forces also attempts to replace all subjectivity.
4. Although all these philosophers were profoundly influenced and inspired by Sartre, there has been
almost a conspiracy of silence regarding Sartre’s work.
III. First and foremost, Sartre’s strong orientation toward subjectivity (and with this, most of phenomenology, as
well) has been rejected.
A. The self, even “consciousness,” as Sartre understood it, has been rejected.
B. The postmodernists also reject rationality, objectivity, truth, and knowledge, as these concepts are
traditionally understood.
C. These claims are problematic, but they are also derivative of Sartre’s own theories, including the rejection
of ultimate rational guidelines.
IV. In addition, Sartre’s “Enlightenment project,” his ideal of a “purifying reflection,” and his politics of freedom
have been rejected. In Sartre, there is a raging sense of rationality.
A. Returning to the harsher views of Nietzsche, Foucault and Deleuze stress power and impersonal force as
the determinant of truth and values.
B. Derrida rejects Sartre’s overly unified notion of self. The self is marginalized, fragmented, in Derrida.
C. Nevertheless, there are serious questions about the locus of both political responsibility and morals in the
postmodern reaction.
D. The liberating project of Freud’s psychoanalysis may be analogous in some ways to the “purifying
reflection” of Sartre. But the emphasis on personal responsibility is a welcome rejoinder to the current
cultural paradigm of victimization.
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V. I would like to suggest that the existentialist view has much to recommend it, not just as an interesting
movement in twentieth-century philosophy but as an authentic way of life, much needed as this terrible but
remarkable century comes to a close.
Essential Reading:
Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind; Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida in Solomon, Continental Philosophy Since
1750, pp. 194–202.
Recommended Reading:
Dreyfus and Rabinow, The Essential Works of Michel Foucault; Sallis, Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts
of Jacques Derrida; Kumaf, A Derrida Reader; Norris, What’s Wrong with Postmodernism?; Miller, Michel
Foucault.
Introductory Questions to Consider:
1. What is postmodernism? What is modernism? In what sense is Sartre’s existentialism, in particular, a “modern”
philosophy? In what sense is Nietzsche, by contrast, “postmodern”?
2. To what extent is knowledge a matter of power, as Foucault suggests? What does it mean to say, “the subject is
socially constructed,” through power relations?
3. To what extent is there “nothing aside from the text,” as Derrida has famously argued? In what sense are the
world and ordinary life a text?
Advanced Questions to Consider:
1. In what ways does Sartre anticipate the postmodernists? In what ways does he advocate the elimination of “the
subject” from philosophy?
2. What could come after “postmodernism,” i.e., what is post-postmodernism? Is the Enlightenment dead and
gone, or is postmodernism possibly just another phase of Enlightenment (modernist) thinking?
Glossary
Absurd: For Camus, the confrontation and conflict between our rational expectations of the world (justice,
satisfaction, happiness) and the “indifference” of the world.
Aesthetic (mode of existence): Kierkegaard’s conception of a life based on desire and its satisfaction.
Authenticity: Heidegger’s notion of genuine human existence.
Bad faith: Sartre’s conception of those forms of self-deception in which we deceive ourselves about ourselves,
about our natures and responsibilities.
Being-for-itself: For Sartre, human consciousness.
Being-for-others: For Sartre, our painful awareness of other people and their effects on us through their judgments
and “looks.”
Being-in-itself: For Sartre, the existence of things in the world.
Being-towards-death: Heidegger’s notion of human mortality and the importance of full awareness in facing death.
Dasein: Heidegger’s conception of “the being through whom being comes into question,” i.e., human existence.
Das Man: Heidegger’s conception of the inauthentic self, the self constructed by and through other people.
Ethical (mode of existence): Kierkegaard’s conception of a life based on a chosen commitment to moral principles
and duty to others.
Existence (Existenz): For Kierkegaard, a full-blooded, freely chosen, passionately committed life; for Heidegger,
that which is essentially Dasein. Dasein has no essence other than the fact that it exists, that it has possibilities and
projects to undertake.
Existentialism: The philosophical movement that stresses individuality and personal responsibility, as epitomized
in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre.
Facticity: For Heidegger and Sartre, the brute facts that characterize us, such as our height, our weight, our date of
birth, and so on.
Fallenness: For Heidegger, a “pre-ontological” way of dealing in the world, a way in which Dasein fails to face up
to its ontological condition
Master morality: Nietzsche’s conception of a self-confident morality of virtue and excellence.
Objective uncertainty: Kierkegaard’s attempt to capture those realms of human existence in which knowledge
becomes irrelevant and personal decision becomes all-important.
Ontology: For Heidegger, the study of Being.
Phenomenology: In Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, the study of the essential structures of consciousness,
experience, or Dasein.
Postmodernism: Contemporary philosophy that rejects the idea of the unified self and the clarifying powers of
reason.
Religious (mode of existence): Kierkegaard’s conception of a life based on a chosen devotion to God and His
commandments.
Slave morality: Nietzsche’s conception of a reactive, resentful insistence on universal principles and the protection
of the weak.
Subjectivity: In Kierkegaard, the realm of personal passion and commitment. In Sartre, phenomenology, the realm
of consciousness.
Subjective truth: In Kierkegaard, passionate commitment.
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Thrownness: For Heidegger, our “existential” condition, the state in which we find ourselves thrown into this
world, that we are “abandoned.” It is the “there” in which Dasein finds itself.
Transcendence: For Sartre, the power of consciousness to negate and go beyond the facts of the matter.
Transcendental ego: For Husserl, the realm of consciousness.
Übermensch: Nietzsche’s dramatic image of a more than human being.
Will to power: Nietzsche’s conception of the fundamental motivation of all human behavior, including morality
and philosophy.
Biographical Notes
Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–1986). French novelist, essayist, and philosopher and Jean-Paul Sartre’s lifelong
companion. The author of The Ethics of Ambiguity and many other works. Best known for her insightful
commentaries on growing up female in a very male culture, living through the war years, and finally, on growing
old.
Camus, Albert (1913–1960). French-Algerian (pied noir) essayist and philosopher, author of The Stranger, The
Myth of Sisyphus, The Plague, and The Fall and many lyrical and political essays. Best known for his very personal
expressions of humanism. His friendship with Sartre erupted with their disagreements over the Algerian War and
the general question of violence as a legitimate political means.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1821–1881). Russian writer and religious thinker, author of Notes from Underground, The
Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, and other novels. Best known for his deep sense of anguish
and doubt regarding ultimate religious matters.
Foucault, Michel (1926–1984). French philosopher and polemicist, first categorized as a structuralist, then as a
post-structuralist and postmodernist. Author of such books as The Archaeology of Knowledge, The Order of Things,
and A History of Sexuality. Best known for his emphasis on power in the world of ideas and culture.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1770–1831). German philosopher who followed Kant as a “German idealist,” author of The
Phenomenology of Spirit and several other important works. Best known for his vision of an all-encompassing
historical world-spirit that it is just our luck to finally have made fully realized.
Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976). German philosopher who followed Husserl as a phenomenologist but expanded
his interests to include traditional theological and metaphysical matters, author of Being and Time and many other
works. Best known for his notion of “authenticity,” which came to dominate many existentialist concerns.
Hesse, Hermann (1877–1962). German-Swiss writer and author of Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddharta, and The Glass
Bead Game (for which he won a Nobel prize). Best known for his synthesis of Western and Eastern (Buddhist)
thinking.
Husserl, Edmund (1859–1938). German-Czech (Moravian) philosopher and mathematician; best known as the
founder of “Phenomenology.”
Kafka, Franz (1883–1924). Bohemian (Czech) writer famous for his tales of the bizarre, for instance,
“Metamorphosis,” The Trial, and The Castle.
Kant, Immanuel (1749–1804). German philosopher, “German idealist,” best known as the author of three
“critiques,” “The Critique of Pure Reason,” “The Critique of Practical Reason,” and “The Critique of Judgment.” As
a moral philosopher, he has long been characterized (or caricatured) as strictly rational and “rule-bound”; thus, he
becomes a point of departure for such different thinkers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855). Danish religious philosopher and first “existentialist.” He is best known for his
concept of an irrational “leap of faith” and his many religious works, many of them written under pseudonyms,
emphasizing the importance of personal choice and commitment in becoming a Christian and in living a full life
more generally. His philosophy has many important parallels with Nietzsche, despite their very different positions
on the desirability of Christianity.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900). German philosopher who attacked both the Judeo-Christian tradition and
contemporary culture and politics with great style and passion. Author of The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
Beyond Good and Evil, and many other works.
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–1980). French philosopher, essayist, and literary writer responsible for naming
“existentialism” and for definitively promoting some of its central themes, notably the theme of freedom and
responsibility that we have summarized as “No Excuses!” Author of Being and Nothingness and many other works.
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860). German philosopher who followed Kant (competing with Hegel) as a
“German idealist.” Author of The World as Will and Idea. Best known for his grumpy cosmic pessimism but
equally important for bringing together Western and Eastern (Buddhist) ideas.
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Zarathustra (sixth century B.C.E.). Persian prophet, founder of Zoroastrianism, belated hero of Nietzsche’s quasi-
Biblical epic, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Bibliography
The main texts for the lectures can be found in Robert C. Solomon, ed., Existentialism (New York: McGraw
Hill/Modern Library, 1974). Secondary texts that follow the perspective of the lectures can be found in Robert C.
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