EXISTENTIALISM

KIERKEGAARDIAN PHILOSOPHY

• Subjectivity is Truth
• Truth is found in Paradox
• Ethics of Self-Realizationism
• Reality of the Individual
• The Moment (of Decision)
• The Choice: Either/Or

KIERKEGAARDIAN PHILOSOPHY

• A person CAN DO what he WILLS
• The Leap (of Faith) in fear & trembling
• Anti-Hegelianism & anti-rationalism
• Emphasis upon Existence
• Passion (not reason) as the criterion of existence
• The infallible law (as an idee fixe)- guilt & punishment

KIERKEGAARDIAN PHILOSOPHY

• Self-Transparency (in the psychological sense)
• The Crowd as Untruth
• Repetition - forward-looking recollection
• Possibility & Freedom
• The concept of Dread as dizziness
• The concept of Despair as Sin
• Faith (not virtue) as the opposite of Sin

What does Kierkegaard mean when he says truth is subjectivity?

SUBJECTIVITY IS TRUTH

• Thought & Existence are fused together in KE;
• Without Inwardness,subjectivity, genuine knowledge is impossible;
• Experience (existence) is primarily inwardness, introspection, a peering into the individual’s existence;

Kierkegaard's famous phrase "subjectivity is truth" must be understood in this light. It does not mean that truth is nothing but our subjective notion of it but rather that what happens to the subject is a prime aspect of truth. The meanings of "subjectivity is truth" are several and interrelated.

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• Reason is grossly handicapped, whereas feeling is capable of delving deep into the recesses of the human being.
• Reason, a suitable instrument for acquiring facts & universal concepts, fails in gaining access to internal subjectivity.
• “Existence involves first & foremost particularity, & this is why thought must abstract from existence, because the particular cannot be thought, but only the universal.”

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• Reason never gives us direct knowledge of existence or actuality, only universals or essences, yet man exists as an actuality, not as a universal essence.
• In contrast to Hegel’s contention that the “truth is the whole,” Kierkegaard argues that truth is individual, belonging to the existent subject; it is subjectivity (not subjective).

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• “Subjectivity is truth, subjectivity is reality.”
• Inner light regarding subjectivity is acquired thru passion or an “intensity of feeling;” this vehicle also grants us a relationship with God and provides us communication with other individuals.
• Such individual relationships are wrought thru intense feeling, passion, not reason; we don’t know by reason, that is, we cannot prove by logic the existence of other persons or God; we know them by passion;

How did Kierkegaard define truth?

Kierkegaard's definition of "truth": "An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth attainable for the individual." ... Truth is an idea paradoxical for finite reason, requiring both a risk and a "leap of faith."

He is sometimes taken to be saying that "subjectivity" is the criterion of "truth" in general, at least where human beings are concerned: in short, that propositions uttered by human beings are true if and only if those who utter them passionately affirm or believe them.

A Quick Review: What is the central theme of existentialism?

The major theme of existentialism is, as the term indicates, existence, the word being understood as a “standing out” from the mere biological vitality by which all subhuman forms of existence are characterized. Life, which is Ortega's major theme, is unquestionably used by him in the same sense.

ETHICS OF SELF-REALIZATION

• An ethics of pessimism;
• Preference of suffering over sin;
• Man, an egoist by nature, regenerated thru despair;
• Self-realization is, the transformation of potentialities into actualities:

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• Three stages of ethical dialectic, (a) aesthetic, (b) ethical, (c) religious;
• Life confronts a person with an either/or choice from which there is neither escape nor evasion;

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• Purity of heart is to will one thing, namely, the good in truth;
• Self-acceptance and the primacy of will.

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• The moral sphere of existence is “inwardness,” the realm wherein passionate intensity, the individual in freedom makes “the choice.”

AESTHETIC LIFE

• Is chiefly composed of Eudaemonism, physical well-being and happiness, or Hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure & physical satisfaction;

THE ETHICAL LIFE

• Is dominated by remorse, pathos and the repudiation of pleasure.