Existential humanism is humanism that validates the human subject as struggling for self-knowledge and self-responsibility.
Concepts
Søren Kierkegaard 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
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lit ...
said "
existentialism is a humanism
''Existentialism Is a Humanism'' (french: L'existentialisme est un humanisme) is a 1946 work by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, based on a lecture by the same name he gave at Club Maintenant in Paris, on 29 October 1945. In early translations, ...
" 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
Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His work ...
, in his book ''
The Plague'', 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, in her book ''
The Ethics of Ambiguity
''The Ethics of Ambiguity'' (french: Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté) is Simone de Beauvoir's second major non-fiction work. It was prompted by a lecture she gave in 1945, after which she claimed that it was impossible to base an ethical sys ...
'', 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 ce ...
attacked Sartre's concept of existential humanism in his ''
Letter on Humanism
"Letter on Humanism" (german: Über den Humanismus) refers to a famous letter written by Martin Heidegger in December 1946 in response to a series of questions by Jean Beaufret (10 November 1946) about the development of French existentialism. Hei ...
'' of 1946, accusing Sartre of elevating
Reason
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...
above
Being.
Michel Foucault 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