Existentialist Perception Of The Human Condition: With Special Reference To Sartre

Existentialist Perception Of The Human Condition: With Special Reference To Sartre

ABSTRACT: Existentialism lays stress on the existence of humans; Sartre believed that human existence is the result of chance or accident. There is no meaning or purpose of our lives other than what our freedom creates, therefore, we must rely on our own resources. Sartre thought that existence manifests itself in the choice of actions, anxiety and freedom of the will. In this way the responsibility of building one's future is in one's hands, but the future is uncertain and so one has no escape from anxiety and despair. We are always under the shadow of anxiety; higher responsibility leads to higher anxiety. The pursuit of being leads to an awareness of nothingness, nothingness to an awareness of freedom, freedom to bad faith and bad faith to the being of consciousness which provides the condition for its own possibility. Concluding his thought, Sartre says that existentialism is not pessimism. He says that existentialism does not aim at plunging us into despair: its final goal is to prepare us through anguish, abandonment and despair for a genuine life, and it is basically concerned with the human condition as a complete form of choice. The fundamental issue, therefore, is an authentic meaning of life.

Existentialism is a contemporary trend in the sphere of Philosophy. It lays stress on the existence of man. Existentialism was a protest against the traditional notions of man. It purports to form a 'just' concept of man, rejecting underestimation or overestimation of Man's personality. The Chief tenate of existentialism is "Existence precedes essence". It thinks that the existence of the individual is the highest truth. To it existence is m...

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...tialism does not ignore the human society and that in taking a decision it decides on behalf of the whole mankind. Existentialism does not aim at plunging man into despair : its final goal is to prepare man through anguish, abandonment and despair for a genuine life, it is basically concerned with the human condition as a complete form of choice. The fundamental issue, therefore, is authentic meaning of life.

Notes

(1) Sartre, J.P., Existentialism and Human (Methuen, London, 1948).

(2) Walter Odajnyle, Marxism and Existentialism (Garden City, New York, Double day and Comp, Inc, 1965).

(3) Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time (Harper Row Publisher, 1962), 68.

(4) Sartre, Jean Paul, Being and Nothingness (Methuen and Company Ltd., London, 1969), 471.

(5) Sartre, J.P., Nausea (Penguin Modern Classics, 1966), 238

(6) Ibid , 159-160.

(7) Ibid, 25.