Existentialism

[Chapter 24]

I have, of course, heard of the term and heard it being used in conversations concerning philosophy, but whenever I look it up to read up on it I never seem to receive a clear definition as to what it is. So I figure, hey I'll try RL's philosophy section and see if I can get some insight on it there. I mean, dictionaries are great and everything, but actually reading someone who knows about the subject's definition of it has always been easier for me than looking it up in Webster's. Besides the definition, I would like to know if existentialism and Marxism are two contradictory concepts, and if so, what are some of the things that they agree with each other on.
Thanks in advance. :)

[Bilan]

My understanding of existentialism (although being elementary) would be what epitomised by what Sartre said, "Existentialism is a philosophy which seeks to understand the world from a position of consistent atheism".

[Hegemonicretribution]

It is hard to nail down what it is, as it is mostly tendencies and trends.

Typically it is a form of atheism, and also moral anti-realism. It is a philosophy which seeks to make sense of a world which is understood as having no objective meaning, or moral content.

It is not simply global skepticism, and is not usually too concerned with skeptical problems about the external world etc. It tends to focus on issues such as reasons to live, and motivations for action in a world without meaning. Often an agent-specific project is suggested as a rejection of absurdity, or simply as a creation of some meaning. If meaning does exist in the world it is that which stems from the individual. I won't get too into objectivity as this usually depends on a phenomenological perspective. Roughly though, if we are to have some purpose, then it will come through us via our actions. What will be is up to us.

Different people say different things on this, and most would deny being existentialist, so again I am highlighting a few issues without trying to over-represent the ideas of just one thinker. Are there any specific questions you have? The problems with defining this trend is that will only be understood properly by delving in and reading a few representatives; it is a collection of tendencies rather than a strict school of thought.

As for compatability with communism; well Sartre thought it was (I would not suggest reading him on this though). It certainly does not preclude Marxism. There are more than one way to make the case, but arguments have included appeals to a shared experience of the created world or humanism....

You could reconcile the views in a complicated way, but as existentialism often assumes the ability of the agent to choose, you could simply say they have taken Marxist principles and chosen these as a project/undertaking which gives meaning to their lives. I know how rough this all sounds, but as I said I did not want to get too tied up in any one thinker, because even the atheism claim is not quite true in ever case.

[Random Precision]

There's not really any such thing as a unified existentialist philosophy. Think of it as more of a trend that appeared in philosophy and literature at various points in the 19th and 20th centuries, that seeks to affirm one's own existence. As such it has burrowed heavily from liberal, individualist, and religious philosophy.

Existentialists have had many different philosophies and are all over the map politically. You have Dostoevsky's Tsarism, Sartre's Marxism, Camus' reformism etc.

As for whether it is compatible with Marxism, I would say that so far no one has found an existentialist philosophy that is. Obviously we rule out any kind of religious existentialism, and as for Sartre's attempt to reconcile the two, George Novack does a pretty thorough job of demolishing it here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/works/history/ch12.htm).

[autotrophic]

I would suggest that you try and read Existentialism is a Humanism (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm) by Sartre. It really helped me get some of the general ideas of existentialism. A few quotes that I really like:

Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God.
What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself.What he was saying was that you cannot define human nature according to our actions. We are not inherently good, evil, smart, stupid, selfish, altruistic, etc. These are all things that develop later, not out of 'human nature.'

[Hegemonicretribution]

I would suggest that you try and read Existentialism is a Humanism (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm) by Sartre. It really helped me get some of the general ideas of existentialism.
It is good to get an idea of a possible solution, but not necessarily one as Sartre saw it. His actual ideas are somewhat more complicated.


What he was saying was that you cannot define human nature according to our actions. We are not inherently good, evil, smart, stupid, selfish, altruistic, etc. These are all things that develop later, not out of 'human nature.'

On the other hand he says you are also in bad faith to deny that your past actions fit you with a certain description up to that point. It is actions that define us (in a modified sense), and whilst these do not constitute our 'nature' they are still more important than perhaps you have suggested. It is true that we are free because we can break from our past actions, but until we do we are not exempt from the criticisms made against someone who is acting as we have done. It is only once our actions change that we separate ourselves from these actions, and can no longer be treated as an agent of such action.

Sartre says we are determined by our actions, but the role of the description is only to account for past actions. You cannot treat someone merely as the agent who acts in a particular way (example a chef who cooks), as this would be to treat them as 'being-in-itself'. Instead you realise that they have been chef-like, and have acted as such, but also that they are free and therefore can cease acting as a chef at any point; if they were being-in-itself they could not do this and would be condemned to be a chef.

That said I would probably suggest staying clear of B&N.

[Led Zeppelin]

George Novack does a pretty thorough job of demolishing it here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/works/history/ch12.htm).

That actually does a terrible job of demolishing it.

For example:



For existentialism the universe is irrational; for Marxism it is lawful. The propositions of existentialist metaphysics are set in a context of cataclysmic personal experience. They all flow from the agonising discovery that the world into which we are thrown has no sufficient or necessary reason for existence, no rational order. It is simply there and must be taken as we find it. Being is utterly contingent, totally without meaning, and superfluous.

That is incorrect, and he bases it on two quotes which he takes out of context and assigns a meaning to which they do not have.

This can be easily proven by quoting Sartre himself:



Let us go further. We agree with Garaudy when he writes (Humanité, May 17, 1955): “Marxism forms today the system of coordinates which alone permits it to situate and to define a thought in any domain whatsoever-from political economy to physics, from history to ethics.”

And we should agree all the more readily if he had extended his statement (but this was not his subject) to the actions of individuals and masses, to specific works, to modes of life, to labor, to feelings, to the particular evolution of an institution or a character.

To go further, we are also in full agreement with Engels when he wrote in that letter which furnished Plekhanov the occasion for a famous attack against Bernstein:

“There does not exist, as one would like to imagine now and then, simply for convenience, any effect produced automatically by the economic situation. On the contrary, it is men themselves who make their history, but within a given environment which conditions them and on the basis of real, prior conditions among which economic conditions – no matter how much influenced they may be by other political and ideological conditions – are nevertheless, in the final analysis, the determining conditions, constituting from one end to the other the guiding thread which alone puts us in a position to understand.”

It is already evident that we do not conceive of economic conditions as the simple, static structure of an unchangeable society; it is the contradictions within them which form the driving force of history. It is amusing that Lukács, in the work which I have already quoted, believed he was distinguishing himself from us by recalling that Marxist definition of materialism: “the primacy of existence over consciousness” – whereas existentialism, as its name sufficiently indicates, makes of this primacy the object of its fundamental affirmation.

To be still more explicit, we support unreservedly that formulation in Capital by which Marx means to define his “materialism”: “The mode of production of material life generally dominates the development of social, political, and intellectual life.”
Search For A Method (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/critic/sartre1.htm)

[black magick hustla]

If the universe is "lawful" for Marxists then I am not a marxist. the cosmos does not follow laws.

[BobKKKindle$]

In addition to being a philosophy based on the premise of atheism, existentialism can also be seen as the philosophy of human freedom. In many of his plays and stories, exemplified by Intimacy, a story included in a set of short stories entitled The Wall, Sartre emphasizes that what makes humans different from animals is our ability to look beyond our immediate circumstances and imagine what might be, and this is what allows us to be free, and be held morally accountable for our actions. He also shows that humans often try to pretend that we are not free in order to abdicate moral responsibility - in Intimacy, for example, the main character walks with her lover in an area of Paris where she is certain to be seen by her husband, and when her husband attempts to pull her away from her lover, she falls limp, so as to avoid having to make a choice between them. This is what Sartre describes as "bad faith" and he constantly warns against falling into this trap.

[Hit The North]

If the universe is "lawful" for Marxists then I am not a marxist. the cosmos does not follow laws.

If it's not "lawful" then you must think its arbitrary and chaotic? Then how can we predicted anything? And if we can't predict anything, what is the good of science?

[black magick hustla]

If it's not "lawful" then you must think its arbitrary and chaotic? Then how can we predicted anything? And if we can't predict anything, what is the good of science?

I dont think the issue here is whether it is "arbitrary" or "lawful", there is no law dictated by god and thus no rationalization behind it to call it arbitrary. Creating theoretical frameworks that might be useful for prediction has nothing to do with laws.

Now you might think I am being nitpicky here. But I think the distinction is important, because the call of "laws" is the starting point for a call of platonic forms.

[Hit The North]

I dont think the issue here is whether it is "arbitrary" or "lawful", there is no law dictated by god and thus no rationalization behind it to call it arbitrary. Creating theoretical frameworks that might be useful for prediction has nothing to do with laws.

Now you might think I am being nitpicky here. But I think the distinction is important, because the call of "laws" is the starting point for a call of platonic forms.

Fair enough. However, reading your post I'm unclear what distinction you are making. If you don't want to call these observable regularities "laws", what do you want to call them?

[black magick hustla]

Fair enough. However, reading your post I'm unclear what distinction you are making. If you don't want to call these observable regularities "laws", what do you want to call them?
:shrugs:, i dont ever feel the need to call them anything. i just wanted to mention that something being "orderly" is just a category of the mind and beyond casual conversation or theoretical frameworks, the universe is not "self conscious" of its order, if you get what i mean.

[Hegemonicretribution]

I assume this is when adopting an existentialist perspective Marmot? It could well be the case that the observed object does not have order in itself; that is something brought about by consciousness perceiving the 'intentional' object in relation to a particular activity.

Nevertheless the regularity is at least phenomenologically real. And it would not be very existentialist to say the regularity is actually in the mind; there is a real feature of the world which allows for us to perceive this regularity. Consciousness apprehends the regularity, but it does not act as a container. It is empty.

Of course this is if you stay with the existentialistthing.

[black magick hustla]

I am not an existentialist. I like some of the early existentialists like kierkergaard for starting the assault against traditional philosophy and metaphysics. A lot of them still well imbued by the spectre of philosophy though, but atleast they get a badge for attempting to dismantle it. I just dont think this type of things can lead to any sort of meaningful discourse because they are private objects. "reality is absurd" is a complete nonsense statement.

[Led Zeppelin]

"reality is absurd" is a complete nonsense statement.

Well, firstly, in which context was that said? Have you considered that?

Secondly, how is life and reality not absurd and meaningless? Is it not us as people who give meaning to it (not saying that we give meaning to it free from internal and external influences and factors)?

It actually makes a lot of sense to say that there is no sense or "inner meaning" to existence. We're here due to blind chance, nothing more and nothing less. If a meteor hit the earth 5000 years ago, we would not be here. If the planet didn't cool off hundreds of millions of years ago, we would not be here. If our galaxy didn't come into being due to whatever reason, we would not be here.

It's blind chance when we're talking about it in those terms.

However, when we're talking about it in terms of humanity, of human processes and processes of nature that we have been able to observe and "map", we can certainly find some "rationality" and "order" in it. Sartre never denied this. In fact, existentialism is about accepting this reality, because if you don't, you're in Bad Faith, to use his terms. This is why he was drawn to Marxism, and this is also why he didn't believe in it like the dogmatics did (existence is based on "laws" or the universe if "lawful").

[Chapter 24]

Thanks for giving definitions and links of people and works within the existentialist movement. Hold on, wait - is there even an actual movement? It certainly does not look by these definitions of the word "existentialism" that it is at all incompatible with Marxist theory. Or am I sadly mistaken?
Thanks for helping me out on this one, guys. As I grow more and more interested in philosophy, it helps to have an internet where I can ask people about this stuff.

[Decolonize The Left]

Thanks for giving definitions and links of people and works within the existentialist movement. Hold on, wait - is there even an actual movement? It certainly does not look by these definitions of the word "existentialism" that it is at all incompatible with Marxist theory. Or am I sadly mistaken?
Thanks for helping me out on this one, guys. As I grow more and more interested in philosophy, it helps to have an internet where I can ask people about this stuff.

There is, and cannot be, anything called 'an existentialist movement.' Such a movement would cease to be existentialist the second it emerged, for existentialism is primarily a form of individualism.

It is important to remember that existentialism is apolitical and individual. It is merely a way of relating to one's existence - a perspective.

- August

[Led Zeppelin]

Thanks for giving definitions and links of people and works within the existentialist movement. Hold on, wait - is there even an actual movement?

AugustWest is right on this, though I want to clarify a bit on what he said. There's indeed no formal "existentialist movement" in the shape of a party, organization or group. There is however an existentialist movement in literature, philosophy, and as Augustwest said, there are people who share an existentialist perspective on life.

I consider myself one of them. :)


It certainly does not look by these definitions of the word "existentialism" that it is at all incompatible with Marxist theory. Or am I sadly mistaken?

Nope, you're not mistaken at all. At least I don't believe you are. I mean, I consider myself to be an existentialist, and also a Marxist. Actually, when I started reading more into existentialism I started to appreciate Marxism more as a scientific non-dogmatic theory than before.

Of course it's not just the politics. For example Sartre was a fan of Mao and Castro, and I'm a Trotskyist, so in terms of ideological direction you don't necessarily have to be influenced one way or the other. It's separate from existentialism as a philosophy and 'way of thinking'.

That's where the beauty of it lies though. You should read some "existentialist" novels, they're among the best out there. I recommend Sartre's Nausea, Dostoyevksy's Notes From The Underground and Kafka's The Trial.


It is important to remember that existentialism is apolitical and individual. It is merely a way of relating to one's existence - a perspective.

Hmm, well, of course politics is part of existence, and Sartre understood this which is why he attempted (with some success, in my opinion) to merge his mostly apolitical philosophy with the more political theory of Marxism.

When you think in an existential manner and accept the existentialist philosophy it certainly influences how you view politics and ideologies. At least it did with me. :)

[Decolonize The Left]

Hmm, well, of course politics is part of existence, and Sartre understood this which is why he attempted (with some success, in my opinion) to merge his mostly apolitical philosophy with the more political theory of Marxism.

When you think in an existential manner and accept the existentialist philosophy it certainly influences how you view politics and ideologies. At least it did with me. :)

Of course existentialism can affect political persuasions. My point was that, in itself, existentialism is nothing more than a perspective on human existence. Whatever that perspective brings you in regards to political beliefs, economic leanings, etc... is up to you and varies from individual to individual.

I'm happy that it influenced you politically, as I believe you to be highly competent, but it always runs the risk of nihilism - a risk I believe we should take, but a risk none-the-less.

- August

[Led Zeppelin]

Of course existentialism can affect political persuasions. My point was that, in itself, existentialism is nothing more than a perspective on human existence. Whatever that perspective brings you in regards to political beliefs, economic leanings, etc... is up to you and varies from individual to individual.

That's true of existentialism in general (that is, the 'movement' as a whole including the likes of Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche) but with "Sartrean existentialism" you'll find that it's very much tied to Marxism and certain Marxist "principles".

Of course not a specific ideology within the wide range that Marxism holds, but certainly Marxism in general.


I'm happy that it influenced you politically, as I believe you to be highly competent, but it always runs the risk of nihilism - a risk I believe we should take, but a risk none-the-less.

Hmm, that's very true for certain people, but I don't believe they have really understood existentialism (or at least the Sartrean take on it) if they take it to conclusions which result in nihilism.

Sartre was pretty clear about this subject. Just because there's no objective or inherent meaning or essence to being, doesn't mean that being cannot have any meaning. It is the meaning we as people give to it. So it's not meaningless in subjectivity, it's only meaningless in objectivity (as far as we can comprehend objectivity of course). If you deny the ability of us as people to give meaning and make choices to our being, you are, according to Sartre, in Bad Faith. Denying your own existence as a free being and denying that there's any meaning to it, or that any meaning can be given to it.

Ironically nihilists would fall under the same category!

But yeah, you are right though, there are some people who are drawn towards existentialism and get some nihilist tendencies, but that's probably more because of the "existence is meaningless..." part than the part which comes after it. They (and many others) tend to leave that part out, probably because it makes a lot of them uncomfortable. :lol:

[Decolonize The Left]

That's true of existentialism in general (that is, the 'movement' as a whole including the likes of Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche) but with "Sartrean existentialism" you'll find that it's very much tied to Marxism and certain Marxist "principles".

Indeed. In fact, that was Sartre's primary objective - to tie existentialism in with Marxism and/or humanism.


Of course not a specific ideology within the wide range that Marxism holds, but certainly Marxism in general.

I believe that existentialism can relate to Marxism in positive ways, and that they may (and often are) beneficial for one another.


Hmm, that's very true for certain people, but I don't believe they have really understood existentialism (or at least the Sartrean take on it) if they take it to conclusions which result in nihilism.

Nitpick: they do not 'take it to conclusions which result in nihilism,' rather, they avoid taking existentialism to conclusions, and hence remain in nihilism.


Sartre was pretty clear about this subject. Just because there's no objective or inherent meaning or essence to being, doesn't mean that being cannot have any meaning. It is the meaning we as people give to it. So it's not meaningless in subjectivity, it's only meaningless in objectivity (as far as we can comprehend objectivity of course). If you deny the ability of us as people to give meaning and make choices to our being, you are, according to Sartre, in Bad Faith. Denying your own existence as a free being and denying that there's any meaning to it, or that any meaning can be given to it.

Correct - that is the pretty standard existentialist point.


Ironically nihilists would fall under the same category!

Also correct. I agree with Nietzsche that nihilism is the greatest problem of our era.


But yeah, you are right though, there are some people who are drawn towards existentialism and get some nihilist tendencies, but that's probably more because of the "existence is meaningless..." part than the part which comes after it. They (and many others) tend to leave that part out, probably because it makes a lot of them uncomfortable. :lol:

Existentialism is rooted in nihilism - in fact, it adopts the premise of nihilism (that life is inherently meaningless). The whole point of existentialism is to move beyond nihilism.

- August