An Existential Life

Existential issues in general have been thoroughly analyzed by philosophers such as Kirkegaard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, Frankl, and others. These authors address a range of existential questions. Briefly, it can be mentioned that Kirkegaard focused on death anxiety and the dread for annihilation.  He was the first to make a clear distinction between fear (for something) and diffuse unfocused anxiety (dread). As such, anxiety (e.g., death anxiety) cannot be located and the source cannot be defined, it can neither be understood nor confronted and it begets a feeling of helplessness. Jaspers emphasized the impact of boundary or border situations (e.g., a cancer diagnosis) on human behavior: such unalterable experiences make us either live more intensely, in a more authentic fashion, or make us give up. This was also emphasized by Heidegger, who stated that only true awareness of our personal death can shift us from one mode of existence (“unauthentic”) to a higher one (“authentic”). We value life when death is a reality.

Heidegger and Frankl also stressed the impact of meaning, although partly from different angles. Both stressed that meaning is essential for life and that humans are intentional: looking for or creating meaning, as meaninglessness is impossible to endure. However, according to Frankl, life has an inherent meaning, whereas Heidegger’s point of departure was the concept of meaninglessness: There is no given meaning in life and this lack of meaning drives us to search for or create our personal meaning.

Sartre was the forerunner for the concept of man’s freedom: man is doomed to freedom, meaning that man must always choose and choices create anxiety. However, one is always responsible for one’s own life. Also, Frankl stressed the freedom of will: we have freedom to find meaning in existence and to choose our attitude to suffering.

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As a philosopher who came upon the role along a circuitous path, Jaspers’ legacy is a merging of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Much like these two predecessors, Jaspers disliked formal philosophy, especially as taught at universities. However, when merging the basics of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche into a foundation for existentialism, Jaspers did take liberties a “serious” philosopher would not have. According to Walter Kaufmann:

To Jaspers the differences between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche seem much less important than that which they have in common. What mattered most to them, does not matter to Jaspers: he dismisses Kierkegaard’s “forced Christianity” no less than Nietzsche’s “forced anti-Christianity” as relatively unimportant; he discounts Nietzsche’s ideas as absurdities, and he does not heed Kierkegaard’s central opposition to philosophy. All the many philosophers since Hegel and Schelling, however, fare far worse: they are at best instructive but lack human substance: “The original philosophers of the age are Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.” The crucial fact for Jaspers is that their thinking was not academically inspired but rooted in their Existenz.

Maybe it was his willingness to discard the prominent themes of both men that allowed Jaspers to create something unique and exciting.Kierkeaard’s Christianity was central to his writings, yet Jaspers had no difficulty dismissing Kierkegaard’s faith. Nietzsche’s “anti-Christian” tone was dismissed with equal ease by Jaspers.

Existentialism; Kaufmann, p. 23