Theological noncognitivism is the non-theist position that religious language, particularly theological terminology such as 'God', is not intelligible or meaningful, and thus sentences like 'God exists' are cognitively meaningless. This would also imply that sentences like the negation of 'God exists'
or 'God does not exist' are likewise meaningless, i.e., neither true nor
false. It may be considered synonymous with ignosticism (also called igtheism), a term coined in 1964 by Sherwin Wine, a rabbi and a founding figure of Humanistic Judaism.
Arguments
Theological noncognitivists argue in different ways, depending on what one considers the "theory of meaning" to be.
One argument holds to the claim that definitions of God are irreducible, self-instituting relational, circular.
For example, a sentence stating that "God is He who created everything,
apart from Himself", is seen as circular rather than an irreducible
truth.
Michael Martin writing from a verificationist perspective concludes that religious language is meaningless because it is not verifiable.
George H. Smith uses an attribute-based approach in an attempt to prove that there is no concept for God: he argues that there are no meaningful attributes, only negatively defined or relational attributes, making the term meaningless. An example: Consider the proposition of the existence of a "pink unicorn".
When asserting the proposition, one can use attributes to at least
describe the concept such that a cohesive idea is transferred in
language. With no knowledge of "pink unicorn", it can be described
minimally with the attributes "pink", "horse", and "horn". Only then can
the proposition be accepted or rejected. The acceptance or rejection of
the proposition is distinct from the concept.
Relationship to other non-theist perspectives
Steven J. Conifer contrasts theological noncognitivism with positive atheism,
which describes not only a lack of a belief in gods but furthermore
denies that gods exist thereby giving credence to the existence of a
concept of something for "God" to refer to, because it assumes that
there is something understandable to not believe in.
Paul Kurtz finds the view to be compatible with both weak atheism and agnosticism. However, Theodore Drange distinguishes noncognitivism and agnosticism,
describing the latter as accepting that theological language is
meaningful but being noncommittal about its truth or falsity on the
grounds of insufficient evidence.
The first recordings that survive of monotheistic conceptions of God, borne out of henotheism and (mostly in Eastern religions) monism, are from the Hellenistic period.
Of the many objects and entities that religions and other belief
systems across the ages have labeled as divine, the one criterion they
share is their acknowledgment as divine by a group or groups of human
beings.
In his Metaphysics, Aristotle discusses the meaning of "being as being". Aristotle holds that "being" primarily refers to the Unmoved Movers,
and assigned one of these to each movement in the heavens. Each Unmoved
mover continuously contemplates its own contemplation, and everything
that fits the second meaning of "being" by having its source of motion
in itself, i.e., moves because the knowledge of its Mover causes it to
emulate this Mover (or should).
Aristotle's definition of God attributes perfection to this
being, and, as a perfect being, it can only contemplate upon perfection
and not on imperfection; otherwise perfection would not be one of his
attributes. God, according to Aristotle, is in a state of "stasis"
untouched by change and imperfection. The "unmoved mover" is very unlike
the conception of God that one sees in most religions. It has been
likened to a person who is playing dominos
and pushes one of them over, so that every other domino in the set is
pushed over as well, without the being having to do anything about it.
Although, in the 18th century, the French educator Allan Kardec brought a very similar conception of God during his work of codifying Spiritism, this differs from the interpretation of God in most religions, where he is seen to be personally involved in his creation.
Hermeticism
In the ancient Greek philosophical Hermetica, the ultimate reality is called by many names, such as God, Lord, Father, Mind (Nous), the Creator, the All, the One, etc. However, peculiar to the Hermetic view of the divinity is that it is both the all (Greek: to pan) and the creator of the all: all created things pre-exist in God, and God is the nature of the cosmos (being both the substance from
which it proceeds and the governing principle which orders it), yet the things themselves and the cosmos were all created by God. Thus, God creates itself, and is both transcendent (as the creator of the cosmos) and immanent (as the created cosmos). These ideas are closely related to the cosmo-theological views of the Stoics.
The term "Abrahamic God", in this sense, refers to the conception of
God that remains a foundational point of belief and doctrine in all
three of the largest and best-known Abrahamic religious traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. (While similar views also predominate among those Abrahamic faiths to which there are far fewer adherents, such as Samaritanism and Babism, the quintessentially-Abrahamic conception of deity is most well-attested in the aforementioned three overarching faiths.)
The Baháʼí Faith believes in a single, imperishable God, the creator of all things, including all the creatures and forces in the universe. In Baháʼí belief, God is beyond space and time but is also described as
"a personal God, unknowable, inaccessible, the source of all
Revelation, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent and almighty." Though inaccessible directly, God is nevertheless seen as conscious of
creation, possessing a mind, will and purpose. Baháʼís believe that God
expresses this will at all times and in many ways, including Manifestations, a series of divine "messengers" or "educators". In expressing God's intent, these manifestations are seen to establish religion in the world. Baháʼí teachings state that God is too great for humans to fully comprehend, nor to create a complete and accurate image. Bahá'u'lláh often refers to God by titles, such as the "All-Powerful" or the "All-Loving".
Within Christianity, the doctrine of the Trinity states that God is a single being that exists, simultaneously and eternally, as a perichoresis of three hypostases (i.e. persons; personae, prosopa): the Father (the Source, the Eternal Majesty); the Son (the eternal Logos ("Word"), manifest in human form as Jesus and thereafter as Christ); and the Holy Spirit (the Paraclete
or advocate). Since the 4th Century AD, in both Eastern and Western
Christianity, this doctrine has been stated as "One God in Three
Persons", all three of whom, as distinct and co-eternal "persons" or "hypostases", share a single divine essence, being, or nature.
Following the First Council of Constantinople, the Son is described as eternally begotten by the Father ("begotten of his Father before all worlds").
This generation does not imply a beginning for the Son or an inferior
relationship with the Father. The Son is the perfect image of his
Father, and is consubstantial
with him. The Son returns that love, and that union between the two is
the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is
consubstantial and co-equal with the Father and the Son. Thus, God
contemplates and loves himself, enjoying infinite and perfect beatitude within himself. This relationship between the other two persons is called procession.
Although the theology of the Trinity is accepted in most Christian
churches, there are theological differences, notably between Catholic
and Orthodox thought on the procession of the Holy Spirit (see filioque).
Some Christian communions do not accept the Trinitarian doctrine, at
least not in its traditional form. Notable groups include the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christadelphians, Unitarians, Arians, and Adoptionists.
Unitarianism
5th century Arian Baptistry Chapel
Within Christianity, Unitarianism is the view that God consists of only one person, the Father, instead of three persons as Trinitarianism states. Unitarians believe that mainstream Christianity has been corrupted over history, and that it is not strictly monotheistic.
There are different Unitarian views on Jesus, ranging from seeing him
purely as a man who was chosen by God, to seeing him as a divine being,
as the Son of God who had pre-existence. Thus, Unitarianism is typically divided into two principal groups:
Arianism, which believes in the pre-existence of the Logos, and holds that the Son was God's first creation.
Socinianism, the view that Jesus was a mere man, and had no existence before his birth.
Even though the term "unitarian" did not first appear until the 17th century in reference to the Polish Brethren, the basic tenets of Unitarianism go back to the time of Arius
in the 4th century, an Alexandrian priest that taught the doctrine that
only the Father was God, and that the Son had been created by the
Father. Arians rejected the term "homoousios" (consubstantial) as a term describing the Father and Son, viewing such term as compromising the uniqueness and primacy of God, and accused it of dividing the indivisible unit of the divine essence. Unitarians trace their history back to the Apostolic Age, arguing, as do Trinitarians and Binitarians, that their Christology most closely reflects that of the early Christian community and Church Fathers.
Binitarianism is the view that there exist two equal co-ruling powers in heaven. Within Christianity, it is the belief that there were originally two
beings in the Godhead – the Father and the Word – that became the Son
(Jesus the Christ). Binitarians normally believe that God is a family, currently consisting of the Father and the Son.Some binitarians believe that others will ultimately be born into that divine family. Hence, binitarians are nontrinitarian, but they are also not unitarian. Binitarians, like most unitarians and trinitarians, claim their views were held by the original New Testament Church. Unlike most unitarians and trinitarians
who tend to identify themselves by those terms, binitarians normally do
not refer to their belief in the duality of the Godhead, with the Son
subordinate to the Father; they simply teach the Godhead in a manner
that has been termed as binitarianism.
The word "binitarian" is typically used by scholars and
theologians as a contrast to a trinitarian theology: a theology of "two"
in God rather than a theology of "three", and although some critics prefer to use the term ditheist or dualist instead of binitarian, those
terms suggests that God is not one, yet binitarians believe that God is
one family. It is accurate to offer the judgment that most commonly
when someone speaks of a Christian "binitarian" theology the "two" in
God are the Father and the Son... A substantial amount of recent
scholarship has been devoted to exploring the implications of the fact
that Jesus was worshipped by those first Jewish Christians, since
in Judaism "worship" was limited to the worship of God" (Barnes M.
Early Christian Binitarianism: the Father and the Holy Spirit. Early
Christian Binitarianism - as read at NAPS 2001). Much of this recent
scholarship has been the result of the translations of the Nag Hammadi and other ancient manuscripts that were not available when older scholarly texts (such as Wilhelm Bousset's Kyrios Christos, 1913) were written.
In the Mormonism represented by most of Mormon communities, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "God" means Elohim (the Father), whereas "Godhead" means a council of three distinct entities; Elohim, Jehovah (the Son, or Jesus), and the Holy Spirit.
The Father and Son have perfected, material bodies, while the Holy
Spirit is a spirit and does not have a body. This conception differs
from the traditional Christian Trinity;
in Mormonism, the three persons are considered to be physically
separate beings, or personages, but indistinguishable in will and
purpose. As such, the term "Godhead" differs from how it is used in traditional Christianity. This description of God represents the orthodoxy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(LDS Church), established early in the 19th century. However, the
Mormon concept of God has expanded since the faith's founding in the
late 1820s.
Allāh, without plural or gender, is the divine name of God mentioned in the Quran, while "ʾilāh" is the term used for a deity or a god in general.
Islam's most fundamental concept is a strict monotheism called tawḥīd. God is described in the surahAl-Ikhlas
as: "Say: He is God, the One; God, the Eternal, the Absolute; He begot
no one, nor is He begotten; Nor is there to Him equivalent anyone." Muslims deny the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and divinity of Jesus, comparing it to polytheism. In Islam, God is beyond all comprehension or equal and does not resemble any of his creations in any way. Thus, Muslims are not iconodules and are not expected to visualize God. The message of God is carried by angels to 124,000 messengers starting with Adam and concluding with Muhammad. God is described and referred in the Quran by certain names or attributes, the most common being Al-Rahman, meaning "Most Compassionate" and Al-Rahim, meaning "Most Merciful" (see Names of God in Islam). Al Qayyum, sometimes rendered "the Sustainer", is one of the 99 Names of God in Islam.
Muslims believe that creation of everything in the universe is brought into being by God's sheer command “‘Be, and it is.” and that the purpose of existence is to please God, both by worship and by good deeds. There are no intermediaries, such as clergy, to contact God: “He is nearer to his creation than the jugular vein”
In Judaism, God has been conceived in a variety of ways. Traditionally, Judaism holds that Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the national god of the Israelites, delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and gave them the Law of Moses at biblical Mount Sinai as described in the Torah. According to the rationalist stream of Judaism articulated by Maimonides, which later came to dominate much of official traditional Jewish thought, God is understood as the absolute one, indivisible, and incomparable being who is the ultimate cause of all existence. Traditional interpretations of Judaism generally emphasize that God is personal yet also transcendent, while some modern interpretations of Judaism emphasize that God is a force or ideal.
Some Kabbalistic
thinkers have held the belief that all of existence is itself a part of
God, and that we as humanity are unaware of our own inherent godliness
and are grappling to come to terms with it.[citation needed] The standing view in Hasidism
currently, is that there is nothing in existence outside of God – all
being is within God, and yet all of existence cannot contain him. Regarding this, Solomon stated while dedicating the Temple, "But will God in truth dwell with mankind on the earth? Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You."
Modern Jewish thinkers have constructed a wide variety of other
ideas about God. Hermann Cohen believed that God should be identified
with the "archetype of morality," an idea reminiscent of Plato's idea of the Good. Mordecai Kaplan believed that God is the sum of all natural processes that allow man to become self-fulfilled, and Humanistic Judaism fully rejects the notion of the existence of a God.
In Mandaeism, Hayyi Rabbi (Classical Mandaic: ࡄࡉࡉࡀ ࡓࡁࡉࡀ, romanized: Hiia Rbia, lit.'The Great Life'), or 'The Great Living God' is the Supreme God from which all things emanate. He is also known as 'The First Life', since during the creation of the material world, Yushamin emanated from Hayyi Rabbi as the "Second Life." According to Qais Al-Saadi, "the principles of the Mandaean doctrine:
the belief of the only one great God, Hayyi Rabbi, to whom all absolute
properties belong; He created all the worlds, formed the soul through
his power, and placed it by means of angels into the human body. So He
created Adam and Eve, the first man and woman." Mandaeans recognize God to be the eternal, creator of all, the one and only in domination who has no partner.
The non-adherence to the notion of a supreme God or a prime mover is seen as a key distinction between Buddhism and other religious views. In Buddhism, the sole aim of the spiritual practice is the complete alleviation of distress (dukkha) in samsara, called nirvana. The Buddha neither denies nor accepts a creator, denies endorsing any views on creation and states that questions on the origin of the world are worthless. Some teachers instruct students beginning Buddhist meditation that the notion of divinity is not incompatible with Buddhism, but dogmatic beliefs in a supreme personal creator are considered a hindrance to the attainment of nirvana, the highest goal of Buddhist practice.
Despite this apparent non-theism, Buddhists consider veneration of the Noble Ones very important although the two main schools of Buddhism differ mildly in their reverential attitudes. While Theravada Buddhists view the Buddha as a human being who attained nirvana or arahanthood through human efforts, Mahayana Buddhists consider him an embodiment of the cosmic dharmakaya (a notion of transcendent divinity), who was born for the benefit of others and not merely a human being. In addition, some Mahayana Buddhists worship their chief Bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara and hope to embody him.
Buddhists accept the existence of beings known as devas in higher realms, but they, like humans, are said to be suffering in samsara, and not necessarily wiser than us. In fact, the Buddha is often portrayed as a teacher of the gods, and superior to them. Despite this, there are believed to be enlightened devas on the path of Buddhahood.
In Buddhism, the idea of the metaphysical absolute is deconstructed
in the same way as of the idea of an enduring "self", but it is not
necessarily denied. Reality is considered as dynamic, interactive and
non-substantial, which implies rejection of Brahman or of a divine substratum. A cosmic principle can be embodied in concepts such as the dharmakaya. Though there is a primordial Buddha (or, in Vajrayana, the Adi-Buddha, a representation of immanentenlightenment
in nature), its representation as a creator is a symbol of the presence
of a universal cyclical creation and dissolution of the cosmos and not
of an actual personal being. An intelligent, metaphysical underlying
basis, however, is not ruled out by Buddhism, although Buddhists are
generally very careful to distinguish this idea from that of an
independent creator God.
In Hinduism, the concept of god is complex and depends on the particular tradition. The concept spans conceptions from absolute monism to henotheism, monotheism and polytheism.
In the Vedic period monotheistic god concept culminated in the
semi-abstract semi-personified form of creative soul dwelling in all god
such as Vishvakarman, Purusha, and Prajapati. In the majority of Vaishnavism traditions, he is Vishnu, and the text identifies this being as Krishna, sometimes referred as svayam bhagavan. The term isvara - from the root is, to have extraordinary power. Some traditional sankhya systems contrast purusha (divine, or souls) to prakriti (nature or energy), however the term for sovereign god, ishvara is mentioned six times in the Atharva Veda, and is central to many traditions. As per Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy the notion of Brahman (the highest Universal Principle) is akin to that of god; except that unlike most other philosophies Advaita likens Brahman to atman (the true Self of an individual). For Sindhi Hindus, who are deeply influenced by Sikhism, God is seen as the omnipotent cultivation of all Hindu gods and goddesses. In short, the soul paramatma of all gods and goddesses are the omnipresent Brahman and are enlightened beings.
The conception of a deity in a sustaining/conserving/preserving mode is also used in Hindu theology where the Godhead, or Trimūrti in Sanskrit, consists of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver/Sustainer, and Shiva the Destroyer.
Brahman
is the eternal, unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent
reality which is the divine ground of all matter, energy, time, space,
being and everything beyond in this Universe. The nature of Brahman is described as transpersonal, personal and impersonal by different philosophical schools. The word Brahman is derived from the verb brh (Sanskrit: to grow), and connotes greatness and infinity.
Brahman is talked of at two levels (apara and para).
He is the fountainhead of all concepts but he himself cannot be
conceived. He is the universal conceiver, universal concept and all the
means of concept. Apara-Brahman is the same Para Brahma but for human understanding thought of as universal mind cum universal intellect from which all human beings derive an iota as their mind, intellect etc.
Ishvara
is a philosophical concept in Hinduism, meaning controller or the
Supreme controller (i.e. God) in a monotheistic or the Supreme Being or
as an Ishta-deva of monistic thought. Ishvara is a transcendent
and immanent entity best described in the last chapter of the Shukla
Yajur Veda Samhita, known as the Ishavasya Upanishad. It states "ishavasyam idam sarvam"
which means whatever there is in this world is covered and filled with
Ishvara. Ishvara not only creates the world, but then also enters into
everything there is. In Saivite traditions, the term is used as part of the compound "Maheshvara" ("great lord") later as a name for Siva.
Bhagavan literally means "possessing fortune, blessed, prosperous" (from the noun bhaga,
meaning "fortune, wealth", cognate to Slavic bog "god"), and hence
"illustrious, divine, venerable, holy", etc. In some traditions of
Hinduism it is used to indicate the Supreme Being or Absolute Truth, but
with specific reference to that Supreme Being as possessing a
personality (a personal God).This personal feature indicated in Bhagavan differentiates its usage
from other similar terms such as Brahman, the "Supreme Spirit" or
"spirit", and thus, in this usage, Bhagavan is in many ways analogous to
the general Christian and Islamic conception of God.
Jainism does not support belief in a creator deity. According to Jain doctrine, the universe
and its constituents—soul, matter, space, time, and principles of
motion—have always existed. All the constituents and actions are
governed by universalnatural laws.
It is not possible to create matter out of nothing and hence the sum
total of matter in the universe remains the same (similar to law of conservation of mass). Jain text claims that the universe consists of Jiva (life force or souls) and Ajiva (lifeless objects). Similarly, the soul of each living being is unique and uncreated and has existed since beginningless time.
The Jain theory of causation
holds that a cause and its effect are always identical in nature and
hence a conscious and immaterial entity like God cannot create a
material entity like the universe. Furthermore, according to the Jain
concept of divinity, any soul who destroys its karmas and desires,
achieves liberation/Nirvana. A soul who destroys all its passions and
desires has no desire to interfere in the working of the universe. Moral
rewards and sufferings are not the work of a divine being, but a result
of an innate moral order in the cosmos; a self-regulating mechanism whereby the individual reaps the fruits of his own actions through the workings of the karmas.
Through the ages, Jain philosophers have adamantly rejected and opposed the concept of creator and omnipotent God. This has resulted in Jainism being labeled as nastika darsana (atheist philosophy) by rival religious philosophies.
The theme of non-creationism and absence of omnipotent God and divine
grace runs strongly in all the philosophical dimensions of Jainism,
including its cosmology, concepts of karma and moksa and its moral code of conduct. Jainism asserts a religious and virtuous life is possible without the idea of a creator god.
The term for God in Sikhism is Waheguru. Guru Nanak describes God as nirankar (from the Sanskrit nirākārā, meaning "formless"), akal (meaning "eternal") and alakh (from the Sanskrit alakśya, meaning "invisible" or "unobserved"). Sikhism's principal scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, starts with the figure "1", signifying the unity of God. Nanak's interpretation of God is that of a single, personal and transcendental creator with whom the devotee must develop a most intimate faith and relationship to achieve salvation. Sikhism advocates the belief in one god who is omnipresent (sarav vi'āpak),
whose qualities are infinite and who is without gender, a nature
represented (especially in the Guru Granth Sahib) by the term Ek Onkar.
Nanak further emphasizes that a full understanding of God is
beyond human beings, but that God is also not wholly unknowable. God is
considered omnipresent in all creation and visible everywhere to the
spiritually awakened. Nanak stresses that God must be seen by human
beings from "the inward eye" or "heart" and that meditation
must take place inwardly to achieve this enlightenment progressively;
its rigorous application is what enables communication between God and
human beings.
Sikhs
believe in a single God that has existed from the beginning of time and
will survive forever. God is genderless, fearless, formless, immutable,
ineffable, self-sufficient, omnipotent and not subject to the cycle of
birth and death.
God in Sikhism is depicted in three distinct aspects: God as
deity; God in relation to creation; and God in relation to man. During a
discourse with siddhas (wandering Hindu adepts),
Nanak is asked where "the Transcendent God" was before creation. He
replies: "To think of the Transcendent Lord in that state is to enter
the realm of wonder. Even at that stage of sunn, he permeated all that
void" (GG, 940).
The esoteric Christian teachings of the Rosicrucian Fellowship, promulgated to the western world in the early 20th century as Western Wisdom Teachings, present the conception of The Absolute—unmanifested
and unlimited "Boundless Being" or "Root of Existence", beyond the
whole universe and beyond comprehension—from whom proceeds the Supreme
Being at the dawn of manifestation: The One, the "Great Architect of the Universe". From the threefold Supreme Being proceed the "seven Great Logoi"
who contain within themselves all the great hierarchies that
differentiate more and more as they diffuse through the six lower Cosmic Planes.
The Central Sun (6th Cosmic Plane), which is the invisible source of all that is in our Solar System (7th Cosmic Plane). / Credit: NASA's illustration of the Gamma-ray bubbles from Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center of the Milky Way.
In the Highest World of the seventh (lowest) Cosmic Plane dwells the
God of the solar systems in the universe. These great beings are also
threefold in manifestation, like the Supreme Being; their three aspects
are Will, Wisdom and Activity.
According to these teachings, in the beginning of a Day of Manifestation a certain collective Great Being, God, limits himself to a certain portion of space, in which he elects to create the Solar System for the evolution of added self-consciousness.
In God there are contained hosts of glorious hierarchies and lesser
beings of every grade of intelligence and stage of consciousness, from omniscience to an unconsciousness deeper than that of the deepest trance condition.
During the current period of manifestation, these various grades of
beings are working to acquire more experience than they possessed at the
beginning of this period of existence. Those who, in previous
manifestations, have attained to the highest degree of development work
on those who have not yet evolved any consciousness. In the Solar
system, God's Habitation, there are seven Worlds
differentiated by God, within Himself, one after another. Mankind's
evolutionary scheme is slowly carried through five of these Worlds in
seven great Periods ("Days") of manifestation—the pilgrimage through a
succession of Solar systems throughout the Cosmic Day of the Universe; billions and billions of years during which the evolving virgin Spirit becomes first human and, then, a God.
Concepts about deity are diverse among UUs. Some have no belief in
any gods (atheism); others believe in many gods (polytheism). Some
believe the question of the existence of any god is most likely
unascertainable or unknowable (agnosticism). Some believe God is a
metaphor for a transcendent reality. Some believe in a female god
(goddess), a passive god (Deism), an Abrahamic god, or a god manifested
in nature or the universe (pantheism). Many UUs reject the idea of
deities and instead speak of the "spirit of life" that binds all life on
Earth. UUs support each person's search for truth and meaning in
concepts of spirituality. Historically, unitarianism and universalism
were denominations within Christianity. Unitarianism
referred to a belief about the nature of Jesus Christ that affirmed God
as a singular entity and rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Universalism
referred to a theological belief that all persons will be reconciled to
God because of divine love and mercy (Universal Salvation).
Brahma Kumaris
According to Brahma Kumaris, God is the incorporeal soul with the maximum degree of spiritual qualities such as peace and love.
Some comparatively new belief systems and books portray God as extraterrestrial life.
Many of these theories hold that intelligent beings from another world
have been visiting Earth for many thousands of years and have influenced
the development of our religions. Some of these books posit that
prophets or messiahs were sent to the human race in order to teach
morality and encourage the development of civilization (see, for
example, Rael and Zecharia Sitchin).
Meher Baba
The spiritual teacher Meher Baba
described God as infinite love: "God is not understood in His essence
until He is also understood as Infinite Love. Divine Love is unlimited
in essence and expression, because it is experienced by the soul through
the soul itself. The sojourn of the soul is a thrilling divine romance
in which the lover, who in the beginning is conscious of nothing but
emptiness, frustration, superficiality and the gnawing chains of
bondage, gradually attains an increasingly fuller and freer expression
of love and ultimately disappears and merges in the Divine Beloved to
realize the unity of the Lover and the Beloved in the supreme and
eternal fact of God as Infinite Love."
Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, espoused the view that "god" is a creation of man, rather than man being a creation of "god". In his book, The Satanic Bible,
the Satanist's view of god is described as the Satanist's true "self"—a
projection of his or her own personality—not an external deity. Satan is used as a representation of personal liberty and individualism. LaVey discusses this extensively in The Book of Lucifer,
explaining that the gods worshipped by other religions are also
projections of man's true self. He argues that man's unwillingness to
accept his own ego has caused him to externalize these gods so as to
avoid the feeling of narcissism that would accompany self-worship.
"If man insists on externalizing
his true self in the form of "God," then why fear his true self, in
fearing "God,"—why praise his true self in praising "God,"—why remain
externalized from "God" in order to engage in ritual and religious ceremony in his name? Man needs ritual and dogma, but no law states that an externalized
god is necessary in order to engage in ritual and ceremony performed in
a god's name! Could it be that when he closes the gap between himself
and his "God" he sees the demon of pride creeping forth—that very
embodiment of Lucifer appearing in his midst?"
In both views, God is not omnipotent in the classical sense of a
coercive being. Reality is not made up of material substances that
endure through time, but serially-ordered events, which are experiential
in nature. The universe is characterized by process and change carried
out by the agents of free will. Self-determination
characterizes everything in the universe, not just human beings. God
and creatures co-create. God cannot force anything to happen, but rather
only influence the exercise of this universal free will by offering
possibilities. Process theology is compatible with panentheism, the concept that God contains the universe (pantheism) but also transcends
it. God as the ultimate logician - God may be defined as the only
entity, by definition, possessing the ability to reduce an infinite
number of logical equations having an infinite number of variables and
an infinite number of states to minimum form instantaneously.
A posthuman God
is a hypothetical future entity descended from or created by humans,
but possessing capabilities so radically exceeding those of present
humans as to appear godlike. One common variation of this idea is the
belief or aspiration that humans will create a God entity emerging from
an artificial intelligence. Another variant is that humanity itself will evolve into a posthuman God.
The concept of a posthuman god has become common in science fiction. Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke
said in an interview, "It may be that our role on this planet is not to
worship God, but to create him." Clarke's friend and colleague, the
late Isaac Asimov, postulated in his story "The Last Question" a merger between humanity and machine intelligence that ultimately produces a deity capable of reversing entropy and subsequently initiates a new Creation trillions of years from the present era when the Universe is in the last stage of heat death. In Frank Herbert's science-fiction series Dune, a messianic figure is created after thousands of years of controlled breeding. The Culture series, by Iain M. Banks, represents a blend in which a transhuman society is guarded by godlike machine intelligences. A stronger example is posited in the novel Singularity Sky by Charles Stross,
in which a future artificial intelligence is capable of changing events
even in its own past, and takes strong measures to prevent any other
entity from taking advantage of similar capabilities. Another example
appears in the popular online novella The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
in which an advanced artificial intelligence uses its own advanced
quantum brain to resolve discrepancies in physics theories and develop a
unified field theory which gives it absolute control over reality, in a
take on philosophical digitalism.
The philosopher Michel Henry defines God from a phenomenological
point of view. He says: "God is Life, he is the essence of Life, or, if
we prefer, the essence of Life is God. Saying this we already know what
is God the father the almighty, creator of heaven and earth, we know it
not by the effect of a learning or of some knowledge, we don't know it
by the thought, on the background of the truth of the world; we know it
and we can know it only in and by the Life itself. We can know it only
in God."
This Life is not biological life defined by objective and
exterior properties, nor an abstract and empty philosophical concept,
but the absolute phenomenological life,
a radically immanent life that possesses in it the power of showing
itself in itself without distance, a life that reveals permanently
itself.
Existentialism is associated with several 19th- and 20th-century
European philosophers who shared an emphasis on the human subject,
despite often profound differences in thought. Among the 19th-century figures now associated with existentialism are philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, all of whom critiqued rationalism and concerned themselves with the problem of meaning. The word existentialism, however, was not coined until the mid 20th century, during which it became most associated with contemporaneous philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Paul Tillich, and more controversially Albert Camus.
Many existentialists considered traditional systematic or
academic philosophies, in style and content, to be too abstract and
removed from concrete human experience. A primary virtue in existentialist thought is authenticity. Existentialism would influence many disciplines outside of philosophy, including theology, drama, art, literature, and psychology.
Existentialist philosophy encompasses a range of perspectives,
but it shares certain underlying concepts. Among these, a central tenet
of existentialism is that personal freedom, individual responsibility,
and deliberate choice are essential to the pursuit of self-discovery and
the determination of life's meaning.
Etymology
The term existentialism (French: L'existentialisme) was coined by the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel in the mid-1940s.When Marcel first applied the term to Jean-Paul Sartre, at a colloquium in 1945, Sartre rejected it. Sartre subsequently changed his mind and, on October 29, 1945, publicly
adopted the existentialist label in a lecture to the Club Maintenant in
Paris, published as L'existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism Is a Humanism), a short book that helped popularize existentialist thought. Marcel later came to reject the label himself in favour of Neo-Socratic, in honor of Kierkegaard's essay "On the Concept of Irony".
Some scholars argue that the term should be used to refer only to
the cultural movement in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s associated with
the works of the philosophers Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus. Others extend the term to Kierkegaard, and yet others extend it as far back as Socrates. However, it is often identified with the philosophical views of Sartre.
Definitional issues and background
The labels existentialism and existentialist are often
seen as historical conveniences in as much as they were first applied to
many philosophers long after they had died. While existentialism is
generally considered to have originated with Kierkegaard, the first
prominent existentialist philosopher to adopt the term as a
self-description was Sartre. Sartre posits the idea that "what all
existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence", as the philosopher Frederick Copleston explains. According to philosopher Steven Crowell,
defining existentialism has been relatively difficult, and he argues
that it is better understood as a general approach used to reject
certain systematic philosophies rather than as a systematic philosophy
itself. In a lecture delivered in 1945, Sartre described existentialism as "the
attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism". For others, existentialism need not involve the rejection of God, but
rather "examines mortal man's search for meaning in a meaningless
universe", considering less "What is the good life?" (to feel, be, or
do, good), instead asking "What is life good for?".
Although many outside Scandinavia
consider the term existentialism to have originated from Kierkegaard,
it is more likely that Kierkegaard adopted this term (or at least the
term "existential" as a description of his philosophy) from the
Norwegian poet and literary critic Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven. This assertion comes from two sources:
The Norwegian philosopher Erik Lundestad refers to the Danish
philosopher Fredrik Christian Sibbern. Sibbern is supposed to have had
two conversations in 1841, the first with Welhaven and the second with
Kierkegaard. It is in the first conversation that it is believed that
Welhaven came up with "a word that he said covered a certain thinking,
which had a close and positive attitude to life, a relationship he
described as existential". This was then brought to Kierkegaard by Sibbern.
The second claim comes from the Norwegian historian Rune Slagstad, who claimed to prove that Kierkegaard himself said the term existential was borrowed from the poet. He strongly believes that it was Kierkegaard himself who said that "Hegelians do not study philosophy 'existentially;' to use a phrase by Welhaven from one time when I spoke with him about philosophy."
Sartre argued that a central proposition of existentialism is that
existence precedes essence, which is to say that individuals shape
themselves by existing and cannot be perceived through preconceived and a priori
categories, an "essence". The actual life of the individual is what
constitutes what could be called their "true essence" instead of an
arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them. Human beings,
through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life. This view is in contradiction to Aristotle and Aquinas, who taught that essence precedes individual existence. Although it was Sartre who explicitly coined the phrase, similar
notions can be found in the thought of existentialist philosophers such
as Heidegger, and Kierkegaard:
The subjective thinker's form, the form of his communication, is his style. His form must be just as manifold as are the opposites that he holds together. The systematic eins, zwei, drei
is an abstract form that also must inevitably run into trouble whenever
it is to be applied to the concrete. To the same degree as the
subjective thinker is concrete, to that same degree his form must also
be concretely dialectical. But just as he himself is not a poet, not an
ethicist, not a dialectician, so also his form is none of these
directly. His form must first and last be related to existence, and in
this regard he must have at his disposal the poetic, the ethical, the
dialectical, the religious. Subordinate character, setting, etc., which
belong to the well-balanced character of the esthetic production, are in
themselves breadth; the subjective thinker has only one
setting—existence—and has nothing to do with localities and such things.
The setting is not the fairyland of the imagination, where poetry
produces consummation, nor is the setting laid in England, and
historical accuracy is not a concern. The setting is inwardness in
existing as a human being; the concretion is the relation of the
existence-categories to one another. Historical accuracy and historical
actuality are breadth.
— Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Postscript, Hong pp. 357–358.)
Some interpret the imperative to define oneself as meaning that
anyone can wish to be anything. However, an existentialist philosopher
would say such a wish constitutes an inauthentic existence – what Sartre
would call "bad faith".
Instead, the phrase should be taken to say that people are defined only
insofar as they act and that they are responsible for their actions.
Someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, defined
as a cruel person. Such persons are themselves responsible for their new
identity (cruel persons). This is opposed to their genes, or human nature, bearing the blame.
As Sartre said in his lecture Existentialism is a Humanism:
"Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the
world—and defines himself afterwards." The more positive, therapeutic
aspect of this is also implied: a person can choose to act in a
different way, and to be a good person instead of a cruel person.
Jonathan Webber interprets Sartre's usage of the term essence
not in a modal fashion, i.e. as necessary features, but in a
teleological fashion: "an essence is the relational property of having a
set of parts ordered in such a way as to collectively perform some
activity".For example, it belongs to the essence of a house to keep the bad
weather out, which is why it has walls and a roof. Humans are different
from houses because—unlike houses—they do not have an inbuilt purpose:
they are free to choose their own purpose and thereby shape their essence; thus, their existence precedes their essence.
Sartre is committed to a radical conception of freedom: nothing
fixes our purpose but we ourselves, our projects have no weight or
inertia except for our endorsement of them. Simone de Beauvoir, on the other hand, holds that there are various factors, grouped together under the term sedimentation, that offer resistance to attempts to change our direction in life. Sedimentations
are themselves products of past choices and can be changed by choosing
differently in the present, but such changes happen slowly. They are a
force of inertia that shapes the agent's evaluative outlook on the world
until the transition is complete.
Sartre's definition of existentialism was based on Heidegger's magnum opus Being and Time (1927). In the correspondence with Jean Beaufret later published as the Letter on Humanism,
Heidegger implied that Sartre misunderstood him for his own purposes of
subjectivism, and that he did not mean that actions take precedence
over being so long as those actions were not reflected upon. Heidegger commented that "the reversal of a metaphysical statement
remains a metaphysical statement", meaning that he thought Sartre had
simply switched the roles traditionally attributed to essence and
existence without interrogating these concepts and their history.
Sisyphus, the symbol of the absurdity of existence, painting by Franz Stuck (1920)
The notion of the absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning
in the world beyond what meaning we give it. This meaninglessness also
encompasses the amorality or "unfairness" of the world. This can be
highlighted in the way it opposes the traditional Abrahamic religious perspective, which establishes that life's purpose is the fulfillment of God's commandments. To live the life of the absurd means rejecting a life that finds or
pursues specific meaning for man's existence since there is nothing to
be discovered. According to Albert Camus, the world or the human being
is not in itself absurd. The concept only emerges through the juxtaposition of the two; life becomes absurd due to the incompatibility between human beings and the world they inhabit. This view constitutes one of the two interpretations of the absurd in
existentialist literature. The second view, first elaborated by Søren Kierkegaard,
holds that absurdity is limited to actions and choices of human beings.
These are considered absurd since they issue from human freedom,
undermining their foundation outside of themselves.
The absurd contrasts with the claim that "bad things don't happen
to good people"; to the world, metaphorically speaking, there is no
such thing as a good person or a bad person; what happens happens, and
it may just as well happen to a "good" person as to a "bad" person. Because of the world's absurdity, anything can happen to anyone at any
time and a tragic event could plummet someone into direct confrontation
with the absurd. Many of the literary works of Kierkegaard, Beckett, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Ionesco, Miguel de Unamuno, Luigi Pirandello, Sartre, Joseph Heller, and Camus contain descriptions of people who encounter the absurdity of the world.
It is because of the devastating awareness of meaninglessness that Camus claimed in The Myth of Sisyphus
that "There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that
is suicide." Although "prescriptions" against the possible deleterious
consequences of these kinds of encounters vary, from Kierkegaard's
religious "stage" to Camus' insistence on persevering in spite of
absurdity, the concern with helping people avoid living their lives in
ways that put them in the perpetual danger of having everything
meaningful break down is common to most existentialist philosophers. The
possibility of having everything meaningful break down poses a threat
of quietism, which is inherently against the existentialist philosophy. It has been said that the possibility of suicide
makes all humans existentialists. The ultimate hero of absurdism lives
without meaning and faces suicide without succumbing to it.
Facticity is defined by Sartre in Being and Nothingness (1943) as the in-itself, which for humans takes the form of being and not being. It is the facts of one's personal life and as per Heidegger, it is "the way in which we are thrown into the world."
This can be more easily understood when considering facticity in
relation to a person's past: one's past forms the person who exists in
the present. However, to reduce a person to their past would ignore the
change a person undergoes in the present and future, while saying that
one's past is only what one was, would entirely detach it from the
present self. A denial of one's concrete past constitutes an inauthentic
lifestyle, and also applies to other kinds of facticity (having a human
body with all its limitations, identity, values, etc.).
Facticity is a limitation and a condition of freedom. It is a
limitation in that a large part of a person's facticity consists of
things they did not choose (birthplace, etc.), but a condition of
freedom in the sense that one's values most likely depend on these
factors. However, even though one's facticity is fixed, it cannot
determine a person: they may choose to assign as much value to their
facticity as they choose. As an example, consider two men, one of whom
has no memory of his past and the other who remembers everything. Both
have committed many crimes, but the first man, remembering nothing,
leads a rather normal life while the second man, feeling trapped by his
past, continues a life of crime, blaming his own past. There is nothing
essential about his committing crimes, but he ascribes this meaning to
his past.
However, to disregard one's facticity during the evolution of
one's sense of self would be a denial of the conditions shaping the
present self and would be inauthentic. An example of the focus solely on
possible projects without reflecting on one's current facticity would
be continually thinking about future possibilities related to being rich
(e.g. a better car, bigger house, better quality of life, etc.) without
acknowledging the facticity of not currently having the financial means to do so.
In this example, considering both facticity and transcendence, an
authentic mode of being would be considering future projects that might
improve one's current finances (e.g. putting in extra hours, or
investing savings) in order to arrive at a real future, or future-facticity of a modest pay rise, further leading to purchase of an affordable car.
Another aspect of facticity is that it entails angst.
Freedom "produces" angst when limited by facticity and the lack of the
possibility of having facticity to "step in" and take responsibility for
something one has done also produces angst.
Another aspect of existential freedom is that one can change
one's values. One is responsible for one's values, regardless of
society's values. The focus on freedom
in existentialism is related to the limits of responsibility one bears,
as a result of one's freedom. The relationship between freedom and
responsibility is one of interdependency and a clarification of freedom
also clarifies that for which one is responsible.
Many noted existentialists consider the theme of authentic existence important. Authenticity
involves the idea that one has to "create oneself" and live in
accordance with this self. For an authentic existence, one should act as
oneself, not as "one's acts" or as "one's genes" or as any other
essence requires. The authentic act is one in accordance with one's
freedom. A component of freedom is facticity, but not to the degree that
this facticity determines one's transcendent choices (one could then
blame one's background for making the choice one made [chosen project,
from one's transcendence]). Facticity, in relation to authenticity,
involves acting on one's actual values when making a choice (instead of,
like Kierkegaard's Aesthete, "choosing" randomly), so that one takes
responsibility for the act instead of choosing either-or without
allowing the options to have different values.
In contrast, the inauthentic is the denial to live in accordance with one's freedom. This can take many forms, from
pretending choices are meaningless or random, convincing oneself that
some form of determinism is true, or "mimicry" where one acts as "one should".
How one "should" act is often determined by an image one has, of
how one in such a role (bank manager, lion tamer, sex worker, etc.)
acts. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre uses the example of a
waiter in "bad faith". He merely takes part in the "act" of being a
typical waiter, albeit very convincingly. This image usually corresponds to a social norm, but this does not mean
that all acting in accordance with social norms is inauthentic. The
main point is the attitude one takes to one's own freedom and
responsibility and the extent to which one acts in accordance with this
freedom.
The Other (written with a capital "O") is a concept more properly belonging to phenomenology and its account of intersubjectivity.
However, it has seen widespread use in existentialist writings, and the
conclusions drawn differ slightly from the phenomenological accounts.
The Other is the experience of another free subject who inhabits the
same world as a person does. In its most basic form, it is this
experience of the Other that constitutes intersubjectivity and
objectivity. To clarify, when one experiences someone else, and this
Other person experiences the world (the same world that a person
experiences)—only from "over there"—the world is constituted as
objective in that it is something that is "there" as identical for both
of the subjects; a person experiences the other person as experiencing
the same things. This experience of the Other's look is what is termed
the Look (sometimes the Gaze).
While this experience, in its basic phenomenological sense,
constitutes the world as objective and oneself as objectively existing
subjectivity (one experiences oneself as seen in the Other's Look in
precisely the same way that one experiences the Other as seen by him, as
subjectivity), in existentialism, it also acts as a kind of limitation
of freedom. This is because the Look tends to objectify what it sees.
When one experiences oneself in the Look, one does not experience
oneself as nothing (no thing), but as something (some thing). In
Sartre's example of a man peeping at someone through a keyhole, the man
is entirely caught up in the situation he is in. He is in a
pre-reflexive state where his entire consciousness is directed at what
goes on in the room. Suddenly, he hears a creaking floorboard behind him
and he becomes aware of himself as seen by the Other. He is then filled
with shame for he perceives himself as he would perceive someone else
doing what he was doing—as a Peeping Tom.
For Sartre, this phenomenological experience of shame establishes proof
for the existence of other minds and defeats the problem of solipsism.
For the conscious state of shame to be experienced, one has to become
aware of oneself as an object of another look, proving a priori, that
other minds exist. The Look is then co-constitutive of one's facticity.
Another characteristic feature of the Look is that no Other
really needs to have been there: It is possible that the creaking
floorboard was simply the movement of an old house; the Look is not some
kind of mystical telepathic experience of the actual way the Other sees
one (there may have been someone there, but he could have not noticed
that person). It is only one's perception of the way another might
perceive him.
"Existential angst", sometimes called existential dread, anxiety, or anguish,
is a term common to many existentialist thinkers. It is generally held
to be a negative feeling arising from the experience of human freedom
and responsibility. The archetypal example is the experience one has when standing on a
cliff where one not only fears falling off it, but also dreads the
possibility of throwing oneself off. In this experience that "nothing is
holding me back", one senses the lack of anything that predetermines
one to either throw oneself off or to stand still, and one experiences
one's own freedom.
It can also be seen in relation to the previous point how angst
is before nothing, and this is what sets it apart from fear that has an
object. While one can take measures to remove an object of fear, for
angst no such "constructive" measures are possible. The use of the word
"nothing" in this context relates to the inherent insecurity about the
consequences of one's actions and to the fact that, in experiencing
freedom as angst, one also realizes that one is fully responsible for
these consequences. There is nothing in people (genetically, for
instance) that acts in their stead—that they can blame if something goes
wrong. Therefore, not every choice is perceived as having dreadful
possible consequences (and, it can be claimed, human lives would be
unbearable if every choice facilitated dread). However, this does not
change the fact that freedom remains a condition of every action.
Despair is generally defined as a loss of hope. In existentialism, it is more specifically a loss of hope in reaction
to a breakdown in one or more of the defining qualities of one's self or
identity. If a person is invested in being a particular thing, such as a
bus driver or an upstanding citizen, and then finds their being-thing
compromised, they would normally be found in a state of despair—a
hopeless state. For example, a singer who loses the ability to sing may
despair if they have nothing else to fall back on—nothing to rely on for
their identity. They find themselves unable to be what defined their
being.
What sets the existentialist notion of despair apart from the
conventional definition is that existentialist despair is a state one is
in even when they are not overtly in despair. So long as a person's
identity depends on qualities that can crumble, they are in perpetual
despair—and as there is, in Sartrean terms, no human essence found in
conventional reality on which to constitute the individual's sense of
identity, despair is a universal human condition. As Kierkegaard defines
it in Either/Or:
"Let each one learn what he can; both of us can learn that a person's
unhappiness never lies in his lack of control over external conditions,
since this would only make him completely unhappy." In Works of Love, he says:
When the God-forsaken worldliness
of earthly life shuts itself in complacency, the confined air develops
poison, the moment gets stuck and stands still, the prospect is lost, a
need is felt for a refreshing, enlivening breeze to cleanse the air and
dispel the poisonous vapors lest we suffocate in worldliness. ...
Lovingly to hope all things is the opposite of despairingly to hope nothing
at all. Love hopes all things—yet is never put to shame. To relate
oneself expectantly to the possibility of the good is to hope. To relate
oneself expectantly to the possibility of evil is to fear. By the
decision to choose hope one decides infinitely more than it seems,
because it is an eternal decision.
Existentialists oppose defining human beings as primarily rational, and, therefore, oppose both positivism and rationalism. Existentialism asserts that people make decisions based on subjective meaning rather than pure rationality.
The rejection of reason as the source of meaning is a common theme of existentialist thought, as is the focus on the anxiety and dread that we feel in the face of our own radical free will
and our awareness of death. Kierkegaard advocated rationality as a
means to interact with the objective world (e.g., in the natural
sciences), but when it comes to existential problems, reason is
insufficient: "Human reason has boundaries".
Like Kierkegaard, Sartre saw problems with rationality, calling
it a form of "bad faith", an attempt by the self to impose structure on a
world of phenomena—"the Other"—that is fundamentally irrational and
random. According to Sartre, rationality and other forms of bad faith
hinder people from finding meaning in freedom. To try to suppress
feelings of anxiety and dread, people confine themselves within everyday
experience, Sartre asserted, thereby relinquishing their freedom and
acquiescing to being possessed in one form or another by "the Look" of
"the Other" (i.e., possessed by another person—or at least one's idea of
that other person).
An existentialist reading of the Bible would demand that the reader recognize that they are an existing subject
studying the words more as a recollection of events. This is in
contrast to looking at a collection of "truths" that are outside and
unrelated to the reader, but may develop a sense of reality/God. Such a
reader is not obligated to follow the commandments as if an external
agent is forcing these commandments upon them, but as though they are
inside them and guiding them from inside. This is the task Kierkegaard
takes up when he asks: "Who has the more difficult task: the teacher who
lectures on earnest things a meteor's distance from everyday life—or
the learner who should put it to use?" Philosophers such as Hans Jonas and Rudolph Bultmann introduced the concept of existentialist demythologization into the field of early Christianity and Christian theology, respectively.
Although nihilism
and existentialism are distinct philosophies, they are often confused
with one another since both are rooted in the human experience of
anguish and confusion that stems from the apparent meaninglessness of a
world in which humans are compelled to find or create meaning. A primary cause of confusion is that Friedrich Nietzsche was an important philosopher in both fields.
Existentialist philosophers often stress the importance of angst
as signifying the absolute lack of any objective ground for action, a
move that is often reduced to moral or existential nihilism. A pervasive theme in existentialist philosophy, however, is to persist through encounters with the absurd, as seen in Albert Camus's philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942): "One must imagine Sisyphus happy". It is only very rarely that existentialist philosophers dismiss morality or one's self-created meaning: Søren Kierkegaard
regained a sort of morality in the religious (although he would not
agree that it was ethical; the religious suspends the ethical), and Jean-Paul Sartre's final words in Being and Nothingness
(1943): "All these questions, which refer us to a pure and not an
accessory (or impure) reflection, can find their reply only on the
ethical plane. We shall devote to them a future work."
Kierkegaard is generally considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher. He proposed that each individual—not reason, society, or religious orthodoxy—is solely tasked with giving meaning to life and living it sincerely, or "authentically".
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were two of the first philosophers
considered fundamental to the existentialist movement, though neither
used the term "existentialism" and it is unclear whether they would have
supported the existentialism of the 20th century. They focused on
subjective human experience rather than the objective truths of
mathematics and science, which they believed were too detached or
observational to truly get at the human experience. Like Pascal, they
were interested in people's quiet struggle with the apparent
meaninglessness of life and the use of diversion to escape from boredom.
Unlike Pascal, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche also considered the role of
making free choices, particularly regarding fundamental values and
beliefs, and how such choices change the nature and identity of the
chooser. Kierkegaard's knight of faith and Nietzsche's Übermensch are representative of people who exhibit freedom,
in that they define the nature of their own existence. Nietzsche's
idealized individual invents his own values and creates the very terms
they excel under. By contrast, Kierkegaard, opposed to the level of
abstraction in Hegel, and not nearly as hostile (actually welcoming) to Christianity
as Nietzsche, argues through a pseudonym that the objective certainty
of religious truths (specifically Christian) is not only impossible, but
even founded on logical paradoxes. Yet he continues to imply that a leap of faith
is a possible means for an individual to reach a higher stage of
existence that transcends and contains both an aesthetic and ethical
value of life. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were also precursors to other
intellectual movements, including postmodernism, and various strands of psychotherapy. However, Kierkegaard believed that individuals should live in accordance with their thinking.
In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche's sentiments resonate the idea of "existence precedes essence." He writes, "no one gives
man his qualities-- neither God, nor society, nor his parents and
ancestors, nor he himself...No one is responsible for man's being there
at all, for his being such-and-such, or for his being in these
circumstances or in this environment...Man is not the effect of some
special purpose of a will, and end..." Within this view, Nietzsche ties in his rejection of the existence of
God, which he sees as a means to "redeem the world." By rejecting the
existence of God, Nietzsche also rejects beliefs that claim humans have a
predestined purpose according to what God has instructed.
Dostoyevsky
The first important literary author also important to existentialism was the Russian, Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground
portrays a man unable to fit into society and unhappy with the
identities he creates for himself. Sartre, in his book on existentialism
Existentialism is a Humanism, quoted Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as an example of existential crisis.
Other Dostoyevsky novels covered issues raised in existentialist
philosophy while presenting story lines divergent from secular
existentialism: for example, in Crime and Punishment,
the protagonist Raskolnikov experiences an existential crisis and then
moves toward a Christian Orthodox worldview similar to that advocated by
Dostoyevsky himself.
In the first decades of the 20th century, a number of philosophers
and writers explored existentialist ideas. The Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo, in his 1913 book The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations,
emphasized the life of "flesh and bone" as opposed to that of abstract
rationalism. Unamuno rejected systematic philosophy in favor of the
individual's quest for faith. He retained a sense of the tragic, even
absurd nature of the quest, symbolized by his enduring interest in the
eponymous character from the Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote.
A novelist, poet and dramatist as well as philosophy professor at the
University of Salamanca, Unamuno wrote a short story about a priest's
crisis of faith, Saint Manuel the Good, Martyr, which has been collected in anthologies of existentialist fiction. Another Spanish thinker, José Ortega y Gasset,
writing in 1914, held that human existence must always be defined as
the individual person combined with the concrete circumstances of his
life: "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" ("I am myself and my
circumstances"). Sartre likewise believed that human existence is not an
abstract matter, but is always situated ("en situation").
Although Martin Buber wrote his major philosophical works in German, and studied and taught at the Universities of Berlin and Frankfurt,
he stands apart from the mainstream of German philosophy. Born into a
Jewish family in Vienna in 1878, he was also a scholar of Jewish culture
and involved at various times in Zionism and Hasidism. In 1938, he moved permanently to Jerusalem. His best-known philosophical work was the short book I and Thou, published in 1922. For Buber, the fundamental fact of human existence, too readily
overlooked by scientific rationalism and abstract philosophical thought,
is "man with man", a dialogue that takes place in the so-called "sphere
of between" ("das Zwischenmenschliche").
Two Russian philosophers, Lev Shestov and Nikolai Berdyaev,
became well known as existentialist thinkers during their
post-Revolutionary exiles in Paris. Shestov had launched an attack on
rationalism and systematization in philosophy as early as 1905 in his
book of aphorisms All Things Are Possible. Berdyaev drew a
radical distinction between the world of spirit and the everyday world
of objects. Human freedom, for Berdyaev, is rooted in the realm of
spirit, a realm independent of scientific notions of causation. To the
extent the individual human being lives in the objective world, he is
estranged from authentic spiritual freedom. "Man" is not to be
interpreted naturalistically, but as a being created in God's image, an
originator of free, creative acts. He published a major work on these themes, The Destiny of Man, in 1931.
Gabriel Marcel,
long before coining the term "existentialism", introduced important
existentialist themes to a French audience in his early essay "Existence
and Objectivity" (1925) and in his Metaphysical Journal (1927). A dramatist as well as a philosopher, Marcel found his philosophical
starting point in a condition of metaphysical alienation: the human
individual searching for harmony in a transient life. Harmony, for
Marcel, was to be sought through "secondary reflection", a "dialogical"
rather than "dialectical" approach to the world, characterized by
"wonder and astonishment" and open to the "presence" of other people and
of God rather than merely to "information" about them. For Marcel, such
presence implied more than simply being there (as one thing might be in
the presence of another thing); it connoted "extravagant" availability,
and the willingness to put oneself at the disposal of the other.
Marcel contrasted secondary reflection with abstract, scientific-technical primary reflection, which he associated with the activity of the abstract Cartesian
ego. For Marcel, philosophy was a concrete activity undertaken by a
sensing, feeling human being incarnate—embodied—in a concrete world. Although Sartre adopted the term "existentialism" for his own
philosophy in the 1940s, Marcel's thought has been described as "almost
diametrically opposed" to that of Sartre. Unlike Sartre, Marcel was a Christian, and became a Catholic convert in 1929.
In Germany, the psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers—who later described existentialism as a "phantom" created by the public—called his own thought, heavily influenced by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Existenzphilosophie. For Jaspers, "Existenz-philosophy
is the way of thought by means of which man seeks to become
himself...This way of thought does not cognize objects, but elucidates
and makes actual the being of the thinker".
Jaspers, a professor at the university of Heidelberg, was acquainted with Heidegger, who held a professorship at Marburg before acceding to Husserl's chair at Freiburg in 1928. They held many philosophical discussions, but later became estranged over Heidegger's support of National Socialism. They shared an admiration for Kierkegaard, and in the 1930s, Heidegger lectured extensively on Nietzsche.
Nevertheless, the extent to which Heidegger should be considered an
existentialist is debatable. In Being and Time he presented a method of rooting philosophical explanations in human existence (Dasein) to be analysed in terms of existential categories (existentiale); and this has led many commentators to treat him as an important figure in the existentialist movement.
Following the Second World War, existentialism became a well-known
and significant philosophical and cultural movement, mainly through the
public prominence of two French writers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, who wrote best-selling novels, plays and widely read journalism as well as theoretical texts. These years also saw the growing reputation of Being and Time outside Germany.
Sartre dealt with existentialist themes in his 1938 novel Nausea and the short stories in his 1939 collection The Wall, and had published his treatise on existentialism, Being and Nothingness,
in 1943, but it was in the two years following the liberation of Paris
from the German occupying forces that he and his close associates—Camus,
Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and others—became
internationally famous as the leading figures of a movement known as
existentialism. In a very short period of time, Camus and Sartre in particular became
the leading public intellectuals of post-war France, achieving by the
end of 1945 "a fame that reached across all audiences." Camus was an editor of the most popular leftist (former French Resistance) newspaper Combat; Sartre launched his journal of leftist thought, Les Temps Modernes, and two weeks later gave the widely reported lecture on existentialism and secular humanism to a packed meeting of the Club Maintenant. Beauvoir wrote that "not a week passed without the newspapers discussing us"; existentialism became "the first media craze of the postwar era."
By the end of 1947, Camus' earlier fiction and plays had been reprinted, his new play Caligula had been performed and his novel The Plague published; the first two novels of Sartre's The Roads to Freedom trilogy had appeared, as had Beauvoir's novel The Blood of Others. Works by Camus and Sartre were already appearing in foreign editions. The Paris-based existentialists had become famous.
Sartre had traveled to Germany in 1930 to study the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, and he included critical comments on their work in his major treatise Being and Nothingness. Heidegger's thought had also become known in French philosophical circles through its use by Alexandre Kojève in explicating Hegel in a series of lectures given in Paris in the 1930s. The lectures were highly influential; members of the audience included not only Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, but Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Louis Althusser, André Breton, and Jacques Lacan. A selection from Being and Time was published in French in 1938, and his essays began to appear in French philosophy journals.
French philosopher, novelist, and playwright Albert Camus
Heidegger read Sartre's work and was initially impressed, commenting:
"Here for the first time I encountered an independent thinker who, from
the foundations up, has experienced the area out of which I think. Your
work shows such an immediate comprehension of my philosophy as I have
never before encountered." Later, however, in response to a question posed by his French follower Jean Beaufret, Heidegger distanced himself from Sartre's position and existentialism in general in his Letter on Humanism. Heidegger's reputation continued to grow in France during the 1950s and
1960s. In the 1960s, Sartre attempted to reconcile existentialism and Marxism in his work Critique of Dialectical Reason. A major theme throughout his writings was freedom and responsibility.
Camus was a friend of Sartre, until their falling-out, and wrote several works with existential themes including The Rebel, Summer in Algiers, The Myth of Sisyphus, and The Stranger, the latter being "considered—to what would have been Camus's irritation—the exemplary existentialist novel." Camus, like many others, rejected the existentialist label, and considered his works concerned with facing the absurd. In the titular book, Camus uses the analogy of the Greek myth of Sisyphus
to demonstrate the futility of existence. In the myth, Sisyphus is
condemned for eternity to roll a rock up a hill, but when he reaches the
summit, the rock will roll to the bottom again. Camus believes that
this existence is pointless but that Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning
and purpose in his task, simply by continually applying himself to it.
The first half of the book contains an extended rebuttal of what Camus
took to be existentialist philosophy in the works of Kierkegaard,
Shestov, Heidegger, and Jaspers.
Simone de Beauvoir, an important existentialist who spent much of her life as Sartre's partner, wrote about feminist existentialist ethics in her works, including The Second Sex and The Ethics of Ambiguity. Although often overlooked due to her relationship with Sartre, de Beauvoir integrated existentialism with other forms of thinking such as feminism, unheard of at the time, resulting in alienation from fellow writers such as Camus.
Paul Tillich, an important existentialist theologian following Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, applied existentialist concepts to Christian theology, and helped introduce existential theology to the general public. His seminal work The Courage to Be
follows Kierkegaard's analysis of anxiety and life's absurdity, but
puts forward the thesis that modern humans must, via God, achieve
selfhood in spite of life's absurdity. Rudolf Bultmann
used Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's philosophy of existence to
demythologize Christianity by interpreting Christian mythical concepts
into existentialist concepts.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, an existential phenomenologist, was for a time a companion of Sartre. Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (1945) was recognized as a major statement of French existentialism. It has been said that Merleau-Ponty's work Humanism and Terror
greatly influenced Sartre. However, in later years they were to
disagree irreparably, dividing many existentialists such as de Beauvoir, who sided with Sartre.
Colin Wilson, an English writer, published his study The Outsider in 1956, initially to critical acclaim. In this book and others (e.g. Introduction to the New Existentialism),
he attempted to reinvigorate what he perceived as a pessimistic
philosophy and bring it to a wider audience. He was not, however,
academically trained, and his work was attacked by professional
philosophers for lack of rigor and critical standards.
Stanley Kubrick's 1957 anti-war filmPaths of Glory "illustrates, and even illuminates...existentialism" by examining the "necessary absurdity of the human condition" and the "horror of war". The film tells the story of a fictional World War I French army
regiment ordered to attack an impregnable German stronghold; when the
attack fails, three soldiers are chosen at random, court-martialed by a "kangaroo court", and executed by firing squad. The film examines existentialist ethics, such as the issue of whether objectivity is possible and the "problem of authenticity". Orson Welles's 1962 film The Trial, based upon Franz Kafka's book of the same name (Der Prozeß),
is characteristic of both existentialist and absurdist themes in its
depiction of a man (Joseph K.) arrested for a crime for which the
charges are neither revealed to him nor to the reader.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a Japanese science fiction animation series created by the anime studio Gainax and was both directed and written by Hideaki Anno.
Existential themes of individuality, consciousness, freedom, choice,
and responsibility are heavily relied upon throughout the entire series,
particularly through the philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Søren Kierkegaard. Episode 16's title, "The Sickness Unto Death, And..." (死に至る病、そして, Shi ni itaru yamai, soshite) is a reference to Kierkegaard's book, The Sickness Unto Death.
Existential perspectives are also found in modern literature to varying degrees, especially since the 1920s. Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit,
1932) celebrated by both Sartre and Beauvoir, contained many of the
themes that would be found in later existential literature, and is in
some ways, the proto-existential novel. Jean-Paul Sartre's 1938 novel Nausea was "steeped in Existential ideas", and is considered an accessible way of grasping his philosophical stance. Between 1900 and 1960, other authors such as Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, Yukio Mishima, Hermann Hesse, Luigi Pirandello,Ralph Ellison, and Jack Kerouac
composed literature or poetry that contained, to varying degrees,
elements of existential or proto-existential thought. The philosophy's
influence even reached pulp literature shortly after the turn of the
20th century, as seen in the existential disparity witnessed in Man's
lack of control of his fate in the works of H. P. Lovecraft.
Theatre
Sartre wrote No Exit in 1944, an existentialist play originally published in French as Huis Clos (meaning In Camera
or "behind closed doors"), which is the source of the popular quote,
"Hell is other people." (In French, "L'enfer, c'est les autres"). The
play begins with a Valet leading a man into a room that the audience
soon realizes is in hell. Eventually he is joined by two women. After
their entry, the Valet leaves and the door is shut and locked. All three
expect to be tortured, but no torturer arrives. Instead, they realize
they are there to torture each other, which they do effectively by
probing each other's sins, desires, and unpleasant memories.
Existentialist themes are displayed in the Theatre of the Absurd, notably in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot,
in which two men divert themselves while they wait expectantly for
someone (or something) named Godot who never arrives. They claim Godot
is an acquaintance, but in fact, hardly know him, admitting they would
not recognize him if they saw him. Samuel Beckett, once asked who or
what Godot is, replied, "If I knew, I would have said so in the play."
To occupy themselves, the men eat, sleep, talk, argue, sing, play games,
exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide—anything "to hold the terrible silence at bay". The play "exploits several archetypal forms and situations, all of which lend themselves to both comedy and pathos." The play also illustrates an attitude toward human experience on earth:
the poignancy, oppression, camaraderie, hope, corruption, and
bewilderment of human experience that can be reconciled only in the mind
and art of the absurdist. The play examines questions such as death,
the meaning of human existence and the place of God in human existence.
Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdisttragicomedy first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare'sHamlet. Comparisons have also been drawn to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot,
for the presence of two central characters who appear almost as two
halves of a single character. Many plot features are similar as well:
the characters pass time by playing Questions,
impersonating other characters, and interrupting each other or
remaining silent for long periods of time. The two characters are
portrayed as two clowns or fools in a world beyond their understanding.
They stumble through philosophical arguments while not realizing the
implications, and muse on the irrationality and randomness of the world.
Jean Anouilh's Antigone also presents arguments founded on existentialist ideas. It is a tragedy inspired by Greek mythology and the play of the same name (Antigone,
by Sophocles) from the fifth century BC. In English, it is often
distinguished from its antecedent by being pronounced in its original
French form, approximately "Ante-GŌN." The play was first performed in
Paris on 6 February 1944, during the Nazi occupation of France. Produced
under Nazi censorship, the play is purposefully ambiguous with regards
to the rejection of authority (represented by Antigone) and the
acceptance of it (represented by Creon). The parallels to the French
Resistance and the Nazi occupation have been drawn. Antigone rejects
life as desperately meaningless but without affirmatively choosing a
noble death. The crux of the play is the lengthy dialogue concerning the
nature of power, fate, and choice, during which Antigone says that she
is, "... disgusted with [the]...promise of a humdrum happiness." She
states that she would rather die than live a mediocre existence.
Critic Martin Esslin in his book Theatre of the Absurd pointed out how many contemporary playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov
wove into their plays the existentialist belief that we are absurd
beings loose in a universe empty of real meaning. Esslin noted that many
of these playwrights demonstrated the philosophy better than did the
plays by Sartre and Camus. Though most of such playwrights, subsequently
labeled "Absurdist" (based on Esslin's book), denied affiliations with
existentialism and were often staunchly anti-philosophical (for example
Ionesco often claimed he identified more with 'Pataphysics or with Surrealism than with existentialism), the playwrights are often linked to existentialism based on Esslin's observation.
A major offshoot of existentialism as a philosophy is existentialist
psychology and psychoanalysis, which first crystallized in the work of Otto Rank, Freud's closest associate for 20 years. Without awareness of the writings of Rank, Ludwig Binswanger was influenced by Freud, Edmund Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. A later figure was Viktor Frankl, who briefly met Freud as a young man. His logotherapy can be regarded as a form of existentialist therapy. The existentialists would also influence social psychology, antipositivist micro-sociology, symbolic interactionism, and post-structuralism, with the work of thinkers such as Georg Simmel and Michel Foucault.
Foucault was a great reader of Kierkegaard even though he almost never
refers to this author, who nonetheless had for him an importance as
secret as it was decisive.
An early contributor to existentialist psychology in the United States was Rollo May, who was strongly influenced by Kierkegaard and Otto Rank. One of the most prolific writers on techniques and theory of existentialist psychology in the US is Irvin D. Yalom. Yalom states that
Aside from their reaction against
Freud's mechanistic, deterministic model of the mind and their
assumption of a phenomenological approach in therapy, the existentialist
analysts have little in common and have never been regarded as a
cohesive ideological school. These thinkers—who include Ludwig
Binswanger, Medard Boss, Eugène Minkowski,
V. E. Gebsattel, Roland Kuhn, G. Caruso, F. T. Buytendijk, G. Bally,
and Victor Frankl—were almost entirely unknown to the American
psychotherapeutic community until Rollo May's highly influential 1958
book Existence—and especially his introductory essay—introduced their work into this country.
A more recent contributor to the development of a European version of existentialist psychotherapy is the British-based Emmy van Deurzen.
Anxiety's importance in existentialism makes it a popular topic in psychotherapy. Therapists often offer existentialist philosophy
as an explanation for anxiety. The assertion is that anxiety is
manifested of an individual's complete freedom to decide, and complete
responsibility for the outcome of such decisions. Psychotherapists using
an existentialist approach believe that a patient can harness his
anxiety and use it constructively. Instead of suppressing anxiety,
patients are advised to use it as grounds for change. By embracing
anxiety as inevitable, a person can use it to achieve his full potential
in life. Humanistic psychology also had major impetus from existentialist psychology and shares many of the fundamental tenets. Terror management theory, based on the writings of Ernest Becker and Otto Rank,
is a developing area of study within the academic study of psychology.
It looks at what researchers claim are implicit emotional reactions of
people confronted with the knowledge that they will eventually die.
Walter Kaufmann
criticized "the profoundly unsound methods and the dangerous contempt
for reason that have been so prominent in existentialism." Logical positivist philosophers, such as Rudolf Carnap and A. J. Ayer, assert that existentialists are often confused about the verb "to be" in their analyses of "being". Specifically, they argue that the verb "is" is transitive and pre-fixed to a predicate (e.g., an apple is red)
(without a predicate, the word "is" is meaningless), and that
existentialists frequently misuse the term in this manner. Colin Wilson
has stated in his book The Angry Years that existentialism has
created many of its own difficulties: "We can see how this question of
freedom of the will has been vitiated by post-romantic philosophy, with
its inbuilt tendency to laziness and boredom,
we can also see how it came about that existentialism found itself in a
hole of its own digging, and how the philosophical developments since
then have amounted to walking in circles round that hole."
Sartre's philosophy
Many critics argue Sartre's philosophy is contradictory.
Specifically, they argue that Sartre makes metaphysical arguments
despite his claiming that his philosophical views ignore metaphysics. Herbert Marcuse criticized Being and Nothingness
for projecting anxiety and meaninglessness onto the nature of existence
itself: "Insofar as Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine, it
remains an idealistic doctrine: it hypostatizes
specific historical conditions of human existence into ontological and
metaphysical characteristics. Existentialism thus becomes part of the
very ideology which it attacks, and its radicalism is illusory."
In Letter on Humanism, Heidegger criticized Sartre's existentialism:
Existentialism says existence precedes essence. In this statement he is taking existentia and essentia according to their metaphysical meaning, which, from Plato's time on, has said that essentia precedes existentia.
Sartre reverses this statement. But the reversal of a metaphysical
statement remains a metaphysical statement. With it, he stays with
metaphysics, in oblivion of the truth of Being.
