Existential humanism is humanism that validates the human subject as struggling for self-knowledge and self-responsibility.
Concepts
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , , ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on ...
suggested that the best use of our capacity for making choices is to freely choose to live a fully human life, rooted in a personal search for values, rather than an external code.
Jean-Paul Sartre said "
existentialism is a humanism" because it expresses the power of human beings to make freely-willed choices, independent of the influence of religion or society. Unlike traditional humanisms, however, Sartre disavowed any reliance on an essential nature of man – on deriving values from the facts of human nature – but rather saw human value as self-created through undertaking projects in the world: experiments in living.
Albert Camus, in his book ''
The Plague
Plague or The Plague may refer to:
Agriculture, fauna, and medicine
*Plague (disease), a disease caused by ''Yersinia pestis''
* An epidemic of infectious disease (medical or agricultural)
* A pandemic caused by such a disease
* A swarm of pe ...
'', suggests that some of us may choose to be heroic, even knowing that it will bring us neither reward nor salvation; and
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even th ...
, in her book ''
The Ethics of Ambiguity'', argues that embracing our own personal freedom requires us to fight for the freedoms of all humanity.
Criticism
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...
attacked Sartre's concept of existential humanism in his ''
Letter on Humanism'' of 1946, accusing Sartre of elevating
Reason above
Being
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
.
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
followed Heidegger in attacking Sartre's humanism as a kind of theology of man, though in his emphasis on the self-creation of the human being he has in fact been seen as very close to Sartre's existential humanism.
[B. Leiter/M. Rosen eds., ''The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy'' (2007) p. 702]
See also
References
{{Reflist, 2}
Types of existentialism
Humanism