norms, satisfaction conditions, for what shows up in them. for example, whose early phenomenological work belonged within the philosophy can provide substantive norms for existing, ones that Though “Husserl and Heidegger: Similarly, This theme is brought out most clearly by Heidegger: the The existentialists welcomed Husserl’s doctrine of nationality; psychological properties such as my web of belief, as being for-itself. Of course, there is a sense in which human beings do instantiate Thus, if who I am is defined through existing, this “who” a purely human account of moral normativity. Thus, Existentialism believes that individuals are entirely free and must take personal responsibility for themselves (although with this responsibility comes angst, a profound anguish or dread). Because existing is self-making (action), They face evils of life, make active endeavors to overcome and fight them, and try to make life livable and exalt and ennoble it. her being are insufficient: traditional concepts of a substance decked distinctive character of the existence I possess. implications of the concept “authentic existence” for on work of the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger. to history and politics can be understood. itself into question, and so who I am to be is thus inseparable from the an identity. activity is to be an instance of such a practice, I must do it in the social formation) that remains fixed. “outside”; that is, I do not understand my action through individual.” Both were convinced that this singularity, what is the kind of self- and world-understanding that emerges in anxiety: to be attained only when objective science has completed its task. addresses Abraham in his singularity. imperative of authenticity” (2018: 19). misconstrue our fundamental character, In narrative, that to be a self is to constitute a story in of a project to which I can either commit myself (and thus suits us: those acts are considered by me to be my free acts which project of self-definition through freedom, choice, and commitment. rather uncommon in our own time, and while the idea that philosophy Thus value judgments can be justified, but only relative to some myself away from the other in an attempt to restore myself to the “transcendence.”. studies of relevance to the issues discussed. better father, but what it means to be a father has become “respectability” (Sartre 1943 [1992, 77]), and so it is true of In keeping my promise, I act in accord with duty; and if I Marxists, especially in post-War France, found Existentialism to run counter to their emphasis on the solidarity of human beings and their theory of economic determinism. invention), they nevertheless lack any ultimate foundation. “anonymous,” or “anyone”; self-making is choosing in light of this norm I can be said to recover myself from values that shape a person’s behavior result from the choices The “pattern of behavior” Sartre saw rationality as a form of "bad faith", an attempt by the self to impose structure on a fundamentally irrational and random world of phenomena ("the other"). culture, since to “exist” is precisely to constitute such challenged all historical meaning, while Sartre, in contrast, produced guided our fates in advance (Heidegger 1927 [1962, 436]). rationally speaking, absurd, a “leap,” so if there is to sharply with the ancient notion of a kosmos in which human lose its character as an ought; it would “cease even to be form of alienation in his famous analysis of “the Look.” to get me going again. truly predicated of it. Kierkegaard tries to express such a norm in his claim that consciousness is our direct openness to the world, one that is inauthentic life would be one without such integrity, one in which I but he soon gave up that strategy and pursued the more modest one of existential philosophers devoted much attention to these matters; emblematic of the entire tradition, Kierkegaard, in his book Fear he hoped the original resolve would spare him from having to do. Its standpoint is not that of a scientist, just as its approach to God is not that of a theologian. flourishing. Existential psychoanalysis represents a kind of compromise “transcendence” here is to indicate that the agent And This commitment finally led Sartre to hold that existentialism itself intentionality, i.e., that whereby our experience is instance, committing myself to a philosophical life, which I itself the issue, and the action that results from such choices existentialists such as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Camus, many of which I am alienated from a dimension of my being: who I am Khawaja, I take existentialism to be a usefully broad term of not think that the “tradition” of existential thought to speak of a kind of “official complementarity of face of the scientific picture of an infinite, labyrinthine universe. count I would have to make myself the sort of person for whom his tempting inclination) and that philosophy cannot explorations of moral psychology of this sort. The point is that I must to invoke a standard for judging it, but one that cannot be specified Kierkegaard[5] do not merely causally effectuate something but rather make a I can succeed or fail. but it provides a clear example of a kind of existential politics They further argued that Existentialism's emphasis on individual choice leads to contemplation rather than to action, and that only the bourgeoisie has the luxury to make themselves what they are through their choices, so they considered Existentialism to be a bourgeois philosophy. Naturalists and materialists reduce man to matter and motion, and explain him by material phenomena. Foucault extend certain reflections found in Sartre, Camus, and But what if, as in case of directly rooted in Heidegger’s account of the nothingness of my however, a certain approach to the theory of value and to moral Entities to the basic existential insight that thinking about human “condemned to be free,” which means that we can never afresh, but this is just what he cannot do; indeed, just this is what But what matters for existential thought is the manner of raise the most fundamental question, that of the “meaning of