Existentialism as a Philosophy

Author(s): John Wild

Source: The Journal of Philosophy , Jan. 21, 1960, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Jan. 21, 1960), pp. 45-
62
Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

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 VOLUME LVII, No. 2 JANUARY 21, 1960

THE JOuRNAL OF PHIL

EXISTENTIALISM AS A PHILOSOPHY'

M ANY of us have seen the plays and read the novels of Jean-
Paul Sartre. We know that in these works certain philo-
sophical ideas of Sartre have been given literary expression, and
some philosophers are familiar with the way in which the more
striking of these ideas have been more carefully expressed in Being
and Nothingness. This has focused the attention of English and
American readers almost exclusively on Sartre as the existentialist
philosopher, and has widely conveyed the impression that this mode
of thought is not so much a disciplined philosophy as a form of
literary expression, incapable of eliciting any responsible inter-
subjective agreement.
Neither of these impressions is accurate.
In developing his own peculiar version of existential phe-
nomenology, as I shall call it, Sartre was deeply influenced by such
noteworthy predecessors as Kierkegaard, E. Husserl, and Heideg-
ger, who had already arrived at certain common insights before
Sartre took them over. None of them would accept such distinc-
tively Sartrian doctrines as that of nausea, for example, which
have attracted such wide attention in this country. All of them,
however, have used similar methods of phenomenological investiga-
tion, and have been led to a number of common but less familiar
results which have been confirmed in the work of such philosophers
as Jaspers, Marcel, Sartre himself in his more disciplined conclu-
sions, Merleau-Ponty, and the Spaniard, Ortega y Gasset.
In this paper I shall select certain of these common themes and
shall try to clarify them insofar as the limitations of time and space
permit. I am hoping not so much to convince anybody of the
truth of existentialism as to convey a more adequate impression of
an important philosophical movement of our time, and perhaps to
open up some of its first, disciplined results for intelligent criticism
and discussion.
First of all I shall select one basic theme, the Lebenswelt, as
Husserl called it, the life-world of existing persons, the ultimate
1 This paper is based on an address given before the Conference on
Methods in Philosophy and the Sciences at the New School in New York,
November 30, 1958.

45

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46 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

horizon of life as it is lived by you and me in our everyday

existence. This world horizon has been at least vaguely and dimly
recognized throughout our Western history as the starting point
from which all disciplined reflection and science must take their
origin, and has been called by many names. Thus Plato referred
to it as a realm of shadowy confusion. Later on it was the realm
of sensation and feeling. In modern times it was called immediate
experience, and William James spoke of it as a "blooming buzzing
confusion." According to Kant, it was the noumenal or un-
knowable realm of freedom. As these epithets clearly indicate,
ever since Plato wrote his famous analogy of the Cave, this
primordial world of lived experience has been disparaged by the
dominant tradition of objective reason and science, and dismissed
as "private," "subjective," and "irrational."
Certainly it is inaccessible to the detached methods and cate-
gories of the rationalist tradition. In this sense Kant was right.
It cannot be brought before a worldless mind as an object or set of
objects. But recent phenomenology has succeeded in developing
new methods which have already shown that it is far from a mere
confusion and have shed light on some of its distinctive structures.
If this world horizon differs from any scientific perspective, as
phenomenologists now believe, we may find it illuminating to con-
sider five basic questions.
1. How do world facts differ from scientific facts?
2. Is human freedom a world fact or a scientific fact?
3. How do basic world structures, like lived space, as we may
call it, and the lived body, differ from these same structures when
they are objectively regarded from a rational or scientific point
of view?
4. Is this new approach capable of shedding any real light on
such problematic structures as the relation of the individual to the
group?
5. And finally, how does the phenomenological method, which
is capable of revealing world facts and world structures as they
are lived, differ from the objective methods of science?
Let us now try to suggest briefly how these questions may be
answered.

1. WORLD FACTS VS. SCENTIFIC FACTS

The facts that make up what we call human history belong to a

human situation, as, now, in writing this paper to meet a dead-
line, I find a yellow pencil on the table at my right. They simply
arise without special abstraction or contrivance in history, and
while they can be just as certainly known and just as exactly

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 EXISTENTIALISM AS A PHILOSOPHY 47

analyzed as scientific facts, they must be known and analyzed

in different ways. The fact that water boils under normal at-
mospheric pressure at 100 degrees centigrade is a scientific fact.
I shall now consider three basic differences between these two
kinds of facts.2
Scientific facts are abstract and universal. They are not
simply thrown up in the course of world history. They require a
special point of view and special conditions, like normal, atmos-
pheric pressure, which may be only approximated in the concrete
course of events. It is true that before abstract laws are estab-
lished, science must begin by the measurement and analysis
of individual world facts. But such analysis always proceeds
from a special point of view that never grasps the whole human
situation in its entirety. Thus there is a geometrical analysis of
this pencil on the table; a chemical analysis of the pencil and the
table; and an economic analysis of their value. But each of these
singles out certain aspects for its kind of measurement. No
single science, nor all of them together, can orient me in this situa-
tion as a whole. There is no science of the world, nor of the course
of world events we know as history.
Nevertheless, every waking moment of my life I am facing
such a concrete situation. Every moment I must feel my way
through such situations and orient myself with respect not to
scientific abstractions but to world facts in their full concreteness.
I do not live my life merely in the Milky Way nor in any other
limited objective dimension, but in that ultimate and more con-
crete horizon which we call the world. Science begins with the
familiar facts of this Lebenswelt. It does not stay with them and
dwell with them. It leaves them as fast as possible for those more
special and unfamiliar facts which must be expressed in a tech-
nical language of its own. But such technical languages are far
too abstract and restricted to express the inexhaustible richness
and dynamic ambiguity of world facts. For this, we must employ
the so-called ordinary language of the Lebenswelt.
So far, we have called attention to a very general difference.
World facts are in the ultimate world horizon. They are richer
and more concrete. Now we must try to specify this general dif-
ference more exactly. What world factors are omitted by any
purely objective perspective? Two such factors are peculiarly
important.
The first of these was clearly noted by Husserl, who pointed out
2 For a fuller discussion of this distinction, I may refer the reader to my
recent article, " Is There a World of Ordinary Language ? " Philosophical
Review, Vol. LXVII, No. 4, October, 1958.

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48 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

that the Lebenswelt includes subjective factors and is relative to

man.3 Traditional rationalism tried to abstract from these factors
in order to attain a perfectly objective vision of the object from
a detached point of view not situated in history but in a purely
empty or immaterial mind separated from its body, and, indeed,
from its world. Thus the active reason of Aristotle is an empty,
indeterminate power which can function by itself alone, not only
apart from the individual body but from personal desires and even
memories. In Descartes, we find a version of this rationalistic
dualism which is even more extreme. Modern science, of course,
does not wish to commit itself to such dualistic theories. Neverthe-
less, the attitude of the scientific observer is basically similar. He
also tries to abstract from subjective factors involved in his per-
sonal situation, in order to obtain an objective view that can be
verified by any qualified observer.
It is, of course, impossible to deny the revealing power of this
objectivist perspective not only with respect to sub-human entities
but also with respect to man. It opens up an inexhaustible
dimension of what we are calling scientific (or objective) facts.
But it is important to recognize that it abstracts from certain
factors which remain inaccessible to it, and which it calls "sub-
jective." It is an abstract perspective which is able to manifest
a certain dimension of the Lebenswelt, not the Lebenswelt itself.
This world is neither exclusively objective nor exclusively sub-
jective but both together in one. It contains all the original data
of the different sciences, not merely confused together as the
tradition has maintained, but ordered together in world structures
which transcend the distinction between subjective and objective,
since they involve elements of both. Thus the pencil here before
me is at my right. The world around me is centered in my body,
and in a sense is relative to me. Hence we speak naturally of my
world, Jones' world, the world of the Greeks, and the Western
world. But I am not enclosed within a containing vessel or sub-
stance. I am a network of intentions or references which radiate
out from my body into the past which I have been and am, into the
future which I project ahead of myself, and into the life-space
around me. These intentions reveal ranges of independent things
and persons which are open to other perspectives than my own, in-
cluding that of science, and are, therefore, rightly regarded as
public. Thus the life-world in which I exist is both privately
centered and also opens into a common or public world. As the
British philosopher, W. H. F. Barnes, remarks at the close of his
3 Cf. E. Husserl, Die Krisis der Europdischen Wissenschaften und die
Transzendentale Phdnomenologie, Haag, Nyhoff, 1954, pp. 123 if.

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 EXISTENTIALISM AS A PHILOSOPHY 49

interesting essay On Seeing and Hearing: "I have merely tried

to bring out the simple and obvious feature about the senses which
makes us feel rightly that each person is, by having senses, at once
given access to a common world, and at the same time possessed of
a private one. "
Science is an exploration of the public phase of this horizon,
which leaves out the personal center and the intentions radiating
therefrom, or better takes them for granted. We may say that it
reveals the objective dimension of the Lebenswelt, not the Lebens-
welt itself as it is lived by me. In this lived existence, I am not
only aware of objects of different kinds. I am also aware of the
intentional attitudes with which each of these objects is necessarily
correlated, such as love-hate, hope-despair, and the disinterested
observation which is characteristic of what we call reasont and
science. I am aware of these attitudes not only in myself but in
others with whom I can communicate, and who reveal themselves
to me as other intentional centers, inhabiting other worlds of their
own. Thus my world transcends itself and points to a further
horizon, the world, of which my world, your world, and the public
world of science are only partial perspectives. This is the ultimate
horizon of world facts which cannot be placed within any broader
frame but within which every other kind of system, perspective,
and fact can be placed in the course of world history.
I have tried to show that as against scientific facts, world facts
are concrete, uncontrived, and involve "subjective " as well as
objective factors. But this is still very indeterminate. Let us
now ask whether we can refer to any pervasive factual elements of
this sort which are neither exclusively objective nor exclusively sub-
jective. I shall now suggest that what we call values are world
elements of this sort, and shall offer a few critical considerations
in support of this suggestion.
The view that values are objective facts wholly independent of
human opinion and choice has been often defended in our history as
by representatives of the natural law tradition and by such modern
moral realists as Scheler and Hartmann. But it is subject to
certain basic criticisms of which two are peculiarly important.
First, it fails to do justice to the well-known facts of ethical rela-
tivity. The values of one culture are notoriously different from
those of another, and even in a single culture, individual lives
show different value structures. Second, when such life struc-
tures are placed within an objective frame and simply observed
from the outside, as scientific facts, something essential is lost,
4 Contemporary British Philosophy, Third Series, New York, Macmillan,
1956, pp. 63-83.

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50 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

as even the convinced objectivist will admit. From this point of

view, however, this is all to the good, for this "lost" factor is
merely a "subjective bias" which distorts and blurs our mental
vision.
But unfortunately it has been clearly shown that in my per-
sonal existence I am a living bias, opening into a moving world-
horizon that is filled with ambiguity, and where even the urge
towards clarity and objectivity represents a choice ruling out other
possibilities, and therefore bearing with it a certain risk. For
a human person to give up all bias is simply to commit suicide.
To be alive is to pursue certain values rather than others, and
these values cannot be placed in a separate realm or region of
their own. They are necessarily involved in the act of existing.
These objections, to which many others can be added, are fatal to
traditional forms of moral objectivism.
They have led many contemporary thinkers into an opposed
"subjective" theory of value which is really a version of objec-
tivism. According to this theory, the real universe is originally
a mere array of valueless, objective facts. Then the human sub-
ject appears on the scene and projects his prejudices into things.
Among these projections are value predicates, like good, right,
and their synonyms, which represent a later addition to the ob-
jective universe as it really is, apart from man, and as it can be
revealed by the purifying methods of scientific research. But this
well-known theory is also subject to criticism.
In the first place, it is now quite clear that the world into which
the child is born is already filled with values which are neither
purely subjective nor purely objective, but which pervade his
world as a whole. Value is the source of meaning. That which
is valueless is also without meaning to u-S. As long as I exist, the
world bears meaning not merely in its "subjective" center, but in
its objects and regions as well. Thus "pencil" is a value term;
it means something that can be used for (having an instrumental
value for) writing. The whole region of my study is for some-
thing, and fits with other regions into an order of lived value
which constitutes the meaning of my life-world as a whole. It is
true that this is the world in which I carry on my mature existence.
But some social version of it also precedes me. In terms of our
history, the objective universe of science did not precede the life-
world. It rather emerged out of it in the course of world history
as the later result of a project of abstraction. Other difficulties
might be mentioned but we must be content with these.
By this brief account we may have been able to suggest that in
addition to the criticisms which are fatal to moral objectivism,

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 EXISTENTIALISM AS A PHILOSOPHY 51

there are others which are equally fatal to subjectivism. Taken

together, they point to a new account of the so-called data of im-
mediate experience which is quite distinct from traditional forms
of realism and idealism. According to this account, the things
and persons we encounter are entirely independent of our opinions
and desires, and exist in their own right. But the meaning of
these beings is ambiguous and open to many diverse interpreta-
tions in the exercise of human freedom. Hence while the value-
meaning of the world order in which we exist is not created by us
ex nihilo, it is partly determined by human choice and freedom.
Let us now turn to this phenomenon of human freedom. Can
it be squeezed without distortion into a purely objective perspec-
tive of reason (or science) or does it require a world of its own?

2. Is THERE A WORLD oF FREEDOM ?

Traditional thought in the West has set up the "problem" of

freedom within an objective frame such as that of the classical
cosmic order or the modern universe of science. Every object in
such a frame has certain determinate traits that can be measured
and described, and which are connected with certain modes of
energizing, to use an Aristotelian term, which can also be measured.
In classical thought, the action of each thing was determined by
its form or nature, the growth of the plant by the form of the
seed, and human action by human nature and the understanding
of this nature inherent in every individual. Similar forms will
bring forth similar actions. Hence the whole of objective nature
is governed by uniform laws which, in spite of chance exceptions,
hold for the most part (eirL ro sroXv), and maintain the regular se-
quence of events in nature. In modern times the notions of formal
and final cause were dispensed with, but the notions of efficient
energy and lawful uniformity proved to be indispensable. The
universe of science is composed of determinate objects. These act
in accordance with statistical laws which hold good for the most
part, and fit into a regular order of natural events.
The Greeks were aware of the phenomenon of choice and were
sensitive to the ideal of human self-rule (autarchy), though they
were aware of its necessary limitations. But they restricted choice
to a very narrow range, and always placed it within a cosmic
frame. Aristotle, for example, defines it as the result of a process
of rational deliberation concerned with specific acts and with means
rather than ends.5 Such processes occur only within the indi-
vidual human substance, and last for only brief intervals of time.
The cosmic order encompassing such deliberations is absolutely
5 Cf. Nic. Eth., Book III, Ch. 3.

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52 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

fixed and essentially unaffected by these internal or "subjective"

occurrences within the active agent. This is also true of the final
end of man which is fixed by nature. Owing to interfering causes,
this end may be misunderstood in various ways which may upset
the natural order of human life. But it is impervious to human
choice. It is even implied that the process of deliberation itself
may be affected by objective causes, both internal and external,
and the Latin Averroists later interpreted Aristotelian thought in
this way, with strong support from the texts, as a closed, de-
terministic system.
This classic approach to the mystery of freedom exerted a
powerful influence on the later history of Western thought. Ever
since this time the question of freedom has been raised, with only
a few exceptions, against an objective, causal background where it
appears as a strange and paradoxical intruder. In a realm of
definite determination it is a factor of indetermination. In an
objective universe, it is something private and subjective. Where
all is caused, it is an uncaused cause. In a frame which calls for
regularity and predictability, it is irregular and unpredictable.
With this a priori framework presupposed, it is no wonder that
determinists have had the advantage over indeterminists in the
age-long debate concerning human freedom. Indeed, in the cosmic
order of Greek rationalism or in the objective universe of modern
science, it has very little chance.
It was Kant, of course, who first revealed the a priori nature
of this rational framework, and who first realized that freedom
could never be brought before the mind as an object. Following
certain suggestions of Descartes, he glimpsed the radical nature of
human freedom, and he was the first among Western thinkers to
see clearly that freedom required a world of its own. But he was
so impressed by the need for objective categories in all human
understanding that he had to regard this world as noumenal.
Since it was inaccessible to rational and scientific categories, it
could not be known at all by the finite mind of man. This view
was a traditional inheritance. For Plato also, the free world of
personal existence was subjective, irrational, and, therefore, un-
knowable. Modern phenomenology, we may say, is the struggle to
find ways of revealing this familiar but non-objective world of our
everyday existence, a struggle which has now succeeded in shedding
some light.
I am a network of intentions, and my world is the field of these
meanings and their objects. The things that appear are inde-
pendent of me. But over their meaning for me I have some con-
trol. Thus the world of the East is different from the world of the

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 EXISTENTIALISM AS A PHILOSOPHY 53

West, and within a given culture, different individuals live in

different worlds of their own. This constitution of a whole world
order is the most radical expression of human freedom. It is not
contained within an individual substance nor restricted to a brief
interval of time. It is rather projected intentionally around the
person in a history that develops throughout his life. This his-
tory cannot be understood in causal terms, for the object of my
intention does not cause the meaning that it has for me. This mean-
ing is rather constituted through a unique historical dialectic in
which each factor, the subjective as well as the objective, requires
the other. The world in which I exist is not made up merely of
the independent things and persons among whom I am thrown. It
is also constituted by an order of meaning for me which, within
certain limits, I am free to alter. This historical Lebenswelt, while
it can be understood and accurately expressed, cannot be fitted into
any purely objective system, where it can be causally explained.
To reveal and to express its essential structure is precisely the
task of phenomenology, a basic branch of philosophy.
The universe of objects, which can be causally explained by
other objects and fitted into a system of uniform laws, is a certain
abstract dimension which cannot include the life-world but remains
within it. To reveal these systems of objects is the task of the
sciences. But the scientist himself, together with his laboratories,
equipment, experiments, laws, and practical applications, all exist
in the Lebenswelt. This world and its history is the expression of
a radical human freedom whose spirit can be found in the history
of philosophy where new world orders are constantly formed.
This radical freedom cannot be objectified or fitted into any en-
compassing frame. It is not a thing or a process in nature. It
is not a set of deliberations and choices in man. It is rather
expressed in the whole of human existence and in the ordering
of a free world of its own.

3. STRUCTURES OF LIVED EXISTENCE

(a) Space

While many questions remain unanswered, modern phenome-

nology has now shown that the lived space of our everybody
existence is very different from any purely objective, geometric
space. Since I have dealt with this distinction in a recent article,6
I shall merely indicate some major differences in a summary man-
ner. Geometric space has no natural center. Any point is like
6 "Is There a World of Ordinary LanguageI" Philosophical Review,
October 1958, pp. 469-470.

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54 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

any other, and it is entirely arbitrary which one in particular is

chosen as the center of a coordinate system. In lived space, my
body is the natural center with reference to which I establish all
external places and directions. Objective distance, which is
measured in terms of yards and meters and eliminated by mere
motion, is not the same as the lived distance which is measured by
care, and eliminated by approach. Thus a friend many miles away
may be actually "closer" to me than a distant acquaintance in
the next room.
Geometric space is lacking in such directions as left and right.
But these directions are necessarily involved in the lived space of
our everyday existence. In this space, objects which are near at
hand lie around the body. This phenomenon of surrounding ob-
jects and the "horizon" are missing from geometric space, for
there is no natural center. In this objective space, all points are
alike. Our life-space, on the other hand, is divided into the differ-
ent objects and regions of different modes of care. Finally this
space is oriented with respect to the human body and its inten-
tions. Things are to the right and left, and one is on top of, or
under another. Geometric space is more abstract, and blind to
these orientations.
For an accurate description of this life-space one should con-
sult Merleau-Ponty 7 and Heidegger.8

(b) The Lived Body

One of the most important results of modern phenomenological

research is the discovery of the radical difference between the
objective body as it is observed from the outside by a detached
spectator, and my body as it is lived from the inside by me as I
pursue my projects in the world of which it is the center. Ob-
jective observations of my body, and pictures of it are of no help
in giving me the knowledge I need in order to live it. Thus it has
been shown that a person cannot even recognize a hand as his own
from photographs. My body is not an object but a network of
intentions stretching out to the things at hand which I can reach
and use. I cannot learn about it by any kind of watching. I
must live it and be it.
The knowledge I gain in this way is of a peculiar kind which
has nothing to do with "reason " or science. Thus I have an
immediate awareness of my own insides, and, indeed, of many parts
of my body which I have never "seen" at all as objects. I know

7 PhknomWnologie de la Perception, Gallimard, 1945, pp. 281-345.

8 Sein und Zeit, Halle, Niemeyer, 1927, Sees. 19-24.

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 EXISTENTIALISM AS A PHILOSOPHY 55

them, as I know my hands, by a feeling that dwells in their very

act, and reveals them in their operations. This discovery of the
lived body has been of great importance in psychiatry, where,
for a long time, statements that seemed "strange" from an ob-
jectivist point of view, made by patients about their bodies, were
discounted as mere "subjective" delusions and projections. Now,
however, the psychiatrist can understand their real meaning, which
has nothing to do with the objective body the surgeon sees, but
rather with his body as the person lives it intentionally in his acts.
Thus the refusal of a certain person to "accept"' the amputation
of a limb can now be understood as an expression of his capacity to
face his world and to perform all his necessary functions in spite of
the loss. The body which he feels directly in walking, reaching,
and struggling to exist is, of course, no mere object, nor is he him-
self, as he lives his body, a mere ghost in a machine, to use Pro-
fessor Ryle 's phrase. Such Cartesian dualism, and also the less
extreme dualism of the Aristotelian tradition, have failed to meet
the evidence. As Wittgenstein summarizes these developments in
a clairvoyant statement: " If one sees the behavior of a living
thing, one sees its soul." 9
These developments are still far from finished. But they al-
ready point very clearly to the radical inadequacy of our inherited
concepts of body and mind. Maurice Merleau-Ponty has written
a cogent critique of rationalistic and supposedly " empirical "
analyses of the ambiguous notion of behavior in his La Strtucture
dat Comportement (Paris, P.U.F., 1953), and has given us a
penetrating and exhaustive study of the lived' body in his im-
portant work La Phenomennologie de la Perception (Paris, Gal-
limard, 1945).

4. THE RELATION OF THE PERSON TO THE COMMUNITY

Many other structures of the Lebenswelt have now been analyzed

with some degree of clarity. We shall choose one which is of
basic importance in social theory for a few comments to suggest
the revolutionary possibilities of this new approach to the world
of lived experience. This is the relation of the individual person
to the human group.
Traditional philosophy in the West, both realistic and idealistic,
has regarded the individual in an objective manner as either a
physical organism or an organism containing a mind. From this
point of view there is no qualitative difference between the per-
son and the group, but only one which is quantitative in character.
9 Ph ilosophlical Investigations, Oxford, Blackwell, 1953, p. 113 e.

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56 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

The group is larger than the individual, and includes him in its
more comprehensive and more enduring structures. What is one
body or one embodied mind to one hundred million bodies, or body-
minds? The group precedes the helpless individual infant, condi-
tions and determines him, and outlasts him in the end. As Plato
puts it, the community is the individual writ large, and, as we often
forget to infer, the individual is the community writ small. There
is no radical qualitative difference between the two. This concep-
tion has dominated our whole history, even in its modern idealistic
phases, where we find Hegel, for example, asserting the priority of
objectiver Geist over personal choice and reflection, and Marx
following him in identifying personal freedom with social necessity.
Four conclusions have regularly been drawn from these ob-
jectivist preconceptions.
First, the same moral principles (of natural law) are held to
legislate for the individual and the group.
Second, since the group is an object for personal reflection, and
since objective ethics is always dominated by the idea of calculation
for power and realization, any realistic ethics for an individual or
state must be an ethics of eudaimnonism or self-realization. As a
matter of fact, every purely philosophic ethics so far advanced in
our Western intellectual history has been some version of self-
realization.
Third, personal freedom has been put in an objective frame, and
restricted to the conditions imposed by the order established by
power politics.
Fourth, in cases where conflicts arise between the individual
and the community, precedence must be given to the community
in virtue of its greater inclusiveness, objectivity, and power.
Thus for Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, the common good takes
precedence over the personal good, and for Hegel and the Marxists,
as for objective scientific thought in general, the public reflection
and power which dominate world history take precedence over the
unstable, eccentric thoughts of the fragile and fleeting individual
person.
On the whole, this objectivist, social view has dominated our
Western intellectual history. But a few rebels have challenged its
claims. In recent times, Reinhold Niebuhr and Berdyaev have
cogently indicated the inferior character of social behavior and
the dual standards we apply to the individual on the one hand,
from whom we sometimes expect sheer generosity and self-sacrifice,
and to the nation-state on the other, from which we expect only
mass egotism and realization to the nth degree.
In his denial that the injury of another could ever be justified

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 EXISTENTIALISM AS A PHILOSOPHY 57

by any rational calculation, Socrates seemed to have glimpsed the

possibility of an ethics beyond eudaimonism (cf. Rep. I and
Crito). But whether this was more than an eccentric phase of his
thought may be seriously questioned. And in any case it was
overwhelmed by the rationalistic prudentialism of his successors,
Plato and Aristotle, who wanted to show that justice really paid
in the end.
Thinkers like Augustine, Pascal, and Stirner have questioned
the traditional mistrust and hedging in of personal freedom.
Finally Kierkegaard in particular has challenged the age-old
dogmas of the priority of objective thought and group supremacy
over the recalcitrant and rebellious individual. But these rebels
have been rare and exceptional figures. On the whole, their radical
questions have been forgotten and their protests overcome by the
rationalistic faith in a single ethics, valid for both societies and
individuals, and in moral law as the very source and principle of
freedom.
Now, however, these questions have been given a firmer founda-
tioIn by the new methods of behavioral analysis. If human exist-
einee is no longer conceived as being contained within objective
substanlces but dynamically understood as being stretched out iInto
a field of action, the whole question of the relation of the individual
to the group appears in a new light. It is no longer a simple
matter of comparing one object with a hundred million objects,
but rather two different fields of action, the more open world of
the individual person which he holds in and for himself, and the
more closed, public world which he shares with others. When
understood in this way, the traditional answer to the -question as
to which world is the more inclusive is by no means obvious.
A society is really a number of individuals, each existing in a
world of his own with an immediate grasp of his subjectivity and
the unique features of his historic situation. Making use of Hegel's
expressive terminology, we may say that such an individual person
exists in and for himself; that is, he is an originating source of
action in himself, and can understand this in relation to himself
(for himself) and not merely as an object for others. But he can
also abstract from his own particular existence and regard him-
self objectively as a citizen, for instance, sharing certain general
interests with others in a common world. The group is a complex
object of this kind. It is, of course, very real. But it does not
exist in itself, that is, it exists only as a pattern of objective thought
and action in the behavior of individuals. Neither is it free to
think and act for itself but only within an abstract framework of
law that can be agreed upon by individuals as meeting their com-

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58 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

mon needs. These considerations would seem to require a radical

distinction between the more abstract and restricted mode of
existence of the group and the more concrete and open existence of
the free person. They would also seem to offer a firm foundation
for the four criticisms of traditional ethics which we have just
noted.
The individual and his world can no longer be understood as
included within the public world of the group as a part is included
in the whole. He exists in a way that is radically and qualita-
tively different and if we seriously raise the question, it is the
personal world that is richer, since it includes not only objective
features but other factors of lived existence which can never be
objectified. lience Niebuhr is wholly justified in pointing to the
inferior and subordinate character of social behavior, which is by
its nature incomplete and relative to something beyond. It is
probably true that social action must be guided by norms of
survival and realization, but this is not, perhaps, the final aim of
man. The aim of any soundly organized society should be to
bring forth and to support the exercise of personal freedom. This
task can be achieved only by objective legislation for life and
realization. But such principles, while they can guide the state,
are not capable of giving affirmative guidance to the free person
without placing him in an alien frame which is closed to certain
possibilities.
This radical freedom is expressed not so much in brief de-
liberations concerning specific acts as in those basic choices which
determine the order of the world in which we live, and which well
up from the depths of our being as the work of a life-time. The
"natural," or moral, laws of the tradition are directed to the
realization and survival of life. They lay down the conditions
without which freedom cannot be exercised. They suffice for the
general direction of social policy. Hence they are binding on the
individual in a negative sense. To violate a law of this kind is
incompatible with his existence. But they are incapable of giving
him positive guidance in the exercise of his freedom. When taken
in this way, they reduce him to an object and put his freedom in
chains.
The rationalistic tradition has been profoundly mistaken in
applying the same eudaimonistic principles to the individual which
it correctly applies to the group. Instead of trying to absorb him
into the group as a mere part and to subject him to the same ethic
of self-realization, it should have understood the more radical
nature of his personal freedom and his openness to further pos-
sibilities beyond any fixed end to be realized by prudential calcula-

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 EXISTENTIALISM AS A PHILOSOPHY 59

tion. Personal freedom cannot be placed in an objective frame.

As Kant clearly saw, it is beyond all such objective frames. What
is actually true is rather the opposite. Law and order are sub-
ordinate. They must be finally judged in terms of the exercise
of a freedom they may make possible, and in the light of which
alone they may be finally justified.

5. THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD

We have already referred to the methods of objective observa-

tion and analysis which have been almost exclusively emphasized
in our intellectual history until recent times. In all their many
modes, these methods agree in focusing their attention on an
object of some sort that can be brought before the mind with the
aid of sense and imagination. An attempt is made to eliminate all
a priori prejudices and biases. But beyond this, little attention
is paid to the attitude or intention of the observer himself. It is
simply assumed that this attitude is detached from the particu-
larities of any given situation, and that it is capable of assimilating
the objective structure as it is. Under this tacit assumption, the
observer then concentrates exclusively on the object which is to
be measured, analyzed, and described precisely as it appears out
there before the mind.
There is, of course, no question that this method has an ex-
tensive and important revealing power. Every entity, in fact, can
be brought before the mind in this perspective which discloses what
we may call a certain dimension of being. But there are other
perspectives capable of revealing other dimensions. Each human
attitude is correlated with certain objects which it discloses in its
own peculiar way. Thus the novelist discloses individual existence
in the concrete Lebenswelt to his attentive reader. Each basic
concern, like love, or hope, has objects of its own which are not
accessible to science but which must be revealed in its own peculiar
way. Phenomenology began as an attempt to describe these in-
tentional structures in their entirety, the attitude itself together
with its peculiar objects, each dependent on the other. At first, it
was thought by Husserl and others that these intentional relations
could be brought before another transcendental observing con-
sciousness, and objectively described without distortion. But this
procedure is subject to several criticisms.
The most serious is this. An attitude of basic concern, and the
world that is ordered around it as lived from the inside, is very
different from what it appears to be as an object for an objective
observer. For the agent, it is the unique possibility on which he
has risked his being in the open world of his choice. For the ob-

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60 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

server, on the other hand, it is only one possibility among many

others in a closed, objective frame. Many other aspects of lived
experience will also be distorted or lost. As the force of such
objections has been more clearly recognized, the phenomenological
method has become broadened and transformed. It is always pos-
sible for us to reflect on an act objectively after it has occurred, by
another act of awareness.
But there is a different mode of consciousness that inhabits our
acts as they proceed, and is capable of revealing them by the use of
expressive language as they are lived from within. Such self-
awareness is present throughout our waking life, but usually as a
dim, unthematized undertone. The aim of phenomenology, as it is
now being practiced, is to explore this mode of consciousness, to
intensify it, and to bring it to self-expression. First of all, the
phenomenologist can attend to his own acts in this way, trying to
let them reveal themselves from their subjective origin to their
intentional objects. Then by the use of sympathy, expressive com-
munication, and the study of literature, he can gain an understand-
ing of the worlds of others as they are lived from within. By
distinguishing the essential from the accidental, he can also hope
to grasp something of the nature of such necessary world struc-
tures as those of which we have been speaking, oriented space,
world time, the lived body, anxiety, choice, and death, not regarded
as objects but as lived by the existing person. This is the phe-
nomenological method as it is now being practiced by the Swiss
psychiatrist Binswanger, and the French philosopher Merleau-
Ponty.
One point deserves a further comment. The poet and the
novelist are also concerned with revealing the world of human
experience as it is lived from the inside. Thus it is true to say
that the phenomenologist now has more in common with them than
with the pure objective scientist. The age-long struggle between
philosophers and poets, inaugurated by Plato, has at last come to
an end. Art and philosophy are now in communication, and be-
ginning to learn from each other. This has led certain critics,
moved by traditional ideals of objectivism, to say that they can see
little difference between existential phenomenology and literature.
Such an opinion, however, slurs over a significant difference to
which we have briefly referred, but which deserves a second
emphasis.
As Plato saw, art is more than a merely decorative or pleasure-
giving enterprise. It is also concerned with the truth. But Plato
was wrong in his restricted conception of truth as exclusively ra-
tional and objective. In order to attain this, he advised all serious

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 EXISTENTIALISM AS A PHILOSOPHY 61

thinkers to climb out of the Cave and to abandon the historic

Lebenswelt which is temporal and relative to man. But to-day
we are not so sure that we can climb out of this world, nor that this
would be advisable even if we could.
This world in which we live also needs to be revealed. The
artist tries to reveal it in its full individual concreteness, as we
have indicated. This is his own mode of truth, quite different from
that of the scientist. But the truth of the philosopher is different
from both. Unlike the scientist, he is primarily concerned not
merely with objects but with the structure of the Lebenswelt which
is neither exclusively subjective nor exclusively objective, but both
together in one. Unlike the artist, however, he is interested not
so much in concrete individual existence with all its variable ac-
cidents as in the constant, underlying patterns of the human
world as lived from the inside. This concern for ontological
structure clearly marks off Kierkegaard 's Concluding Unscien-
tific Postscript, Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, and Merleau-Ponty's
Phe'nome'nologie de la Perception from literature.

CONCLUSION

In our own time, the phenomenological thought inaugurated by

Husserl and the existential thought inaugurated by Kierkegaard
have joined together to constitute a new mode of philosophizing
which may be accurately described as existential phenomenology.
We are now familiar in this country with some of the individual
expressions of this philosophy, particularly that of Sartre. In
this paper, I have tried rather to call the reader's attention to
certain common attitudes and themes which are found in all the
representatives of this new movement of thought. These basic
themes are, in my opinion, more significant than the variable per-
sonal views of different authors.
They all share a concern for the human Lebenswelt which has
been neglected and dismissed as "subjective" by the major tradi-
tions of Western thought. They all agree that this world horizon
differs radically from any objective or scientific perspective, and
that what lies in it can be revealed only by an approach quite
different from that of any traditional form of "empiricism." I
have tried to explain and to clarify the distinction between world
facts and scientific facts, and to show that freedom is a way of
existing which cannot be placed in an objective frame. I then
tried to show the difference between oriented space and the lived
body as they have been revealed by recent phenomenology, and
these same structures when they are seen as scientific objects.

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 62 THE JO URNAL OF PflrILOSOPIIY

After this, I indicated how further light might be shed on the

ancient question concerning the individual person in relation to
his society by a new phenomenological approach. Finally I said
a few words about the phenomenological method as it is now being
practiced in the exploration of the world of our lived existence.
This distinctively philosophical task has long been neglected but
is now being seriously grappled with by so-called phenomenologists
on the European continent. In a somewhat different way, it is also
being pursued by the linguistic analysts in England and the United
States. Ordinary language is the language of the Lebenswelt, and
the one cannot be adequately understood without the other. These
movements are supplementary approaches to the same basic task.
I have found that these facts are neither widely nor clearly known
in this country. I believe that they may be of interest to philoso-
phers everywhere, to whatever school of thought they may belong.

IIARVARD UNIVERSITY JOHN WILD

HUSSERL'S PHENOMENOLOGY AND

EXISTENTIALISM *

PHILOSOPHERS do not seem to have had more success than

other mortals in reaching centenarian age. This failure has
for them the awkward consequence that between their death and
the first centennial of their birth their fame has to undergo some-
thing like a probationary period during which they are no longer
protected by the public's reverence for superannuity and by wor-
shipful societies of disciples.
Outwardly Husserl's prestige has weathered this probationary
period surprisingly well. At his death 21 years ago, he may
well have seemed headed for total oblivion. His own University of
Freiburg-to be sure, under Nazi pressure-had removed his very
name from the roster of its emeriti. Moreover, philosophically he
seemed deserted by most of his erstwhile students. The remarkable
comeback of his fame since then is attested by such events as the
foundation of the Husserl Archives at the Universities of Louvain
and Cologne, by the edition of seven volumes from his unpublished
writings, and by the general aseendency of phenomenology espe-
cially in France and in other Latin-speaking countries. This very
* This paper was read in a Symposium on Phenomenology and Existential-
ism arranged by the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association
for its Annual Meeting at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on April 30,
1959. Two papers on the same subject by William Earle (Northwestern Uni-
versity) and Maurice Natanson (University of North Carolina) followed it.

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