3 Answers

  1. Historical change of popular worldviews: theism — > deism — > naturalism — > nihilism — > existentialism –>>???

    Ec. was born as a response to the problem and horror of nihilism, which, in turn, appeared as a consequence of naturalism (which finally removed the existence of God from the already slippery deism).

    Agreeing with nihilism that the objective world is absurd, eck. seeks meaning in the subjective world of man. And then – as in the comments above.

  2. In the recent past, and even today – in the Russian – speaking world, in any case-this is a fashionable word, and like any fashionable word, its meaning should be treated with great caution.

    The beginning was laid, as far as I understand, in France-by the writer and philosopher J. P. Sartre and his comrades. He, in turn, used the (completely misunderstood, as they say) philosophy of Martin Heidegger, who was not an existentialist at all.

    The central theme of M. Heidegger was to distinguish between being and being (existence, existence). Being is what gives rise to existence, and the memory of it is lost, and the question is lost. Roughly speaking, being is “more important”, but the path to it is overgrown.
    Being is not God. Because if God “exists,” then something gives him a reason to exist. And if there is no God , then there is nothing to talk about. Being is more important than God.

    So existence * (existence) turns out to be groundless, not grounded in anything. Not only human, but “everything in general.” You were incorrectly told that existentialism is a reaction to rationalism. Quite the opposite. It is a consequence of the awareness of the absurdity (groundlessness, alogism, irrationality) of existing, existing, existence. There's no point. There is no goal. There are no values. “Man is abandoned in this world.”

    • This is roughly how the French existentialist interprets “existentialism”. (But this is not the idea of M. Heidegger. More precisely – not his whole idea and not even the main one).�

    A person in his existence (existential) is forced to make some decisions. Make a choice.�
    But there are no grounds (reasonable). Nothing to rely on. This is the” existential ” drama.
    In everyday life, this understanding has sunk to the comic : “I want a drink, but I don't have any money, so I have to go work as an advertising manager or campaign for Putin. This is my existential choice.”
    The existentialists themselves still had an idea of the scale of the human crisis. That is, they still distinguished between “serious “questions of being and “frivolous” ones (and if they distinguished – then contrary to their theory, they still had some grounds!).

    • See and read the plays of J. P. Sartre. There's no long stuff. It will become more or less clear to you what this is all about.�
      (This is followed by an absurdist drama, but it is no longer quite “existentialism”).

  3. Existentialism is a philosophical trend that proclaims the existence of a person as unique and irrational.

    Existentialism emerged in response to rationalism, which considered the world as an object(what is being studied) and a subject (who/what is being studied or trying to understand), i.e. separating it. From the point of view of existentialism, the world is not always a logical, but a community of subject and object.�

    Also, according to E.'s philosophy, a person knows himself when he finds himself in some borderline or stressful situation, for example, fear of the inevitability of death, etc. On the other hand, proponents of this philosophical trend believe that man, unlike animals, is not able to think and realize his being, and therefore, is considered in existentialism as responsible for his existence. A person must be aware of himself and be responsible for himself if he wants to become himself.

    In existentialism, according to R. May, a person is always perceived in the process of becoming, in the potential experience of a crisis (hence the very existential crisis that people are so fond of diagnosing themselves), in which they experience anxiety, despair, alienation from themselves and conflicts.

    Also in existentialism, the problem of freedom and the very understanding of the term “freedom”is well revealed. Freedom, as ects understand it, is not freedom from everything, but freedom of choice and responsibility for the actions that a person chooses. That is, you can't blame Obama for running out of beer.�

    I hope I answered your question. I will accept criticism with pleasure.

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