Existentalism: Man's Search For Meaning: Manuel B. Dy JR

EXISTENTALISM:
Man’s Search for

Meaning
Manuel B. Dy Jr
“ Philosophy of man is an overview on the nature,
activities and destiny of man. It attempts to asses his
place in and his relationship to the world. Through
such an overview, an understanding of what man is
and who he is will emerge. In some respect,
Philosophy of man constitutes a metaphysics of man,
for it is a probe of the deepest causes and meaning of
man”.
( Reflections on Man by Jesse Mann et. al, p.13) 2
Some Themes of Philosophy of Man:
1.Man as Embodied Subjectivity.
2.Man as Being-in-the-World
3.Man as being-with: The interhuman
and the Social
4.Man as Person and his crowning
activity is love which presupposes
Justice.
• Philosophizing here begins from the inner restlessness
which is linked to the drive of fullness.
• Philosophical Questions ultimately can be reduced to
question of: “WHO AM I?”
• IN+QUIRY……
• The TRUTH who man is?
• The MEANING of Man’s Exitence?
Philosophical
Approaches to the
study of Man
• Ancient Greek : Cosmocentric Approach
• The Greek were concerned with the Nature and Order
of the Universe.
• Man was part of the cosmos, a microcosm. So like the
Universe, Man is made up of Matter (body) and Form
(soul).
• Man must maintain the balance and unity with the
cosmos.
• Medieval ( Christian era: St. Augustine, St
Thomas Aquinas ) Theocentric Approach
• Man is understood as from the point of view of
God, as a creature of God, made in His image
and likeness, and therefore the apex of His
creation.
• Modern ( Descartes, Kant) Anthropocentric
Approach
• Man is now understood in his own terms, but
basically on reason, thus rationalistic.
With the mergence of Descartes’s Cogito, philosophy
became the anthropocentric. The question of man was
now on the foreground of other questionings on nature or
on God. Reason was now liberated from nature and
faith, sufficient to inquire on its own truth.
• Contemporary Philosophies arose as a reaction
against Hegel.
• One reaction is Marx who criticized Hegel’s geist,
spirit, mind and brought out his dialectical
materialism.
Another reaction is Soren Kierkegaard who was against
the system of Hegel and emphasized the individual and
his direct relationship with God. Kierkegaard led the
existentialist movement which became popular after
the two world wars.
On such reaction is Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the
acknowledged father of existentialism. Reacting against
the System of Hegel, Kierkegard emphasized the
individual man who cannot be placed as a “cog in a
machine” or part of a system. Reacting against the
rationalism of Hegel, he stressed the infinite passion of
man. Truth is what is held on with the passion of the
infinite. With Kieregaard, philosophy became the search
for the meaning of life. The search for truth was now
the search for meaning.
EXISTENTIALISM AND MAN
SEARCH FOR MEANING
By Manuel B. Dy Jr.
What is the meaning
of LIFE?
The father of Existentialism is a Danish Philosopher
Soren Kierkegaard ( 1813-1855 )
• Three events in Kierkegaard’s life influence his
philosophy:
a. unhappy childhood, strict upbringing by his father
b. break-up with the woman he loved
c. quarrel with a university professor
• These events and his criticism of the rationalistic
Hegelian system led him to emphasize the individual
and feelings.
• The aim of Kierkegaard is to awaken his people to the true
meaning of Christianity.
• Two ways to achieve his aim: a. the direct confrontation
( which is risky ) b. indirect: to start from where the people
are and lead them to the truth.
• example 1: two ways to help a friend who fell in a ditch.
( a ) direct: pull him out from above which he may refuse or he
may bring you down.
( b ) indirect: to jump into the ditch with him and lead him
up.
• example2 : two ways to help a jilted friend: a )
direct: tell him to forget the woman because there
are other women, in which case he may avoid you.
b ) indirect: sympathize and share the hurt with
him and gradually lead him to the realization that
it’s not the end of the world.
• Kierkegaard chose the indirect way and saw himself
as another Socrates: The indirect way is the
Socratic Method.
• 1. Kierkegaard started from where the people were, the
aesthetic stage, the stage of pleasure, so he wrote his first
aesthetic works.
• 2. The next stage is the ethical stage, the stage of morality
( of good and evil ) with reason as the standard.
• 3. The highest stage is the religious, where the individual
stands in direct immediate relation
( no intermediary ) with God.
• Here, because God is infinite and man is finite, the
individual is alone, in angst, in fear and trembling.
• What comes here is faith, the individual’s belief in
God, going beyond reason.
• The favorite example of Kierkegaard here is
Abraham who was asked by God to sacrifice his son
Isaac (by his wife Sarah) to test his faith. The
command was between God and Abraham alone,
cannot be mediated by others (Sarah would not
understand it), and to apply the ethical would be a
murder.
• Existentialism is not a philosophical system but a
movement, because existentialists are against
systems.
• There are many different existentialist

philosophies, but in general they can be grouped
into two camps: Theistic (those who believe in God)
and Atheistic (those who do not believe in God.
Theistic Atheistic
• Soren Kierkegaard • Albert Camus
• Karl Jaspers • Jean Paul Sartre
• Gabriel Marcel • Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Martin Heidegger
(he is in-between the two camps because he refuses to talk
about God)
• In spite of their divergence, there are common
features of existentialist philosophies to label them as
existentialist.
• First, existentialist emphasize man as an actor in
contrast to man as spectator.
• Many existentialists used literature like drama, novel,
short story, to convey this idea.
• Second, existentialists emphasize man as subject, in
contrast to man as object.
• Being as Object is not simply being-as-known but
known in a certain way: conceptually, abstractly,
scientifically, its content does not depend on the
knower. It is the given, pure datum, impersonal, all
surface, no depth, can be defined, circumscribed.
• Being as Subject is the original center, source of initiative,
inexhaustible. The “I” which transcends all determinations,
unique, the self, in plenitude, attainable only in the very act by
which it affirms itself.
• Man is both Subject and Object, as can be shown in reflexive acts
(e.g I brush myself, I wash myself, I slap myself) where there is
the object-me(changing and divisible) and the subject-I
(permanent and indivisible).
• The existentialists, however, while not denying the reality of man
as object, emphasize the Subjectivity of man, of man as unique,
irreducible, irreplaceable, unrepeatable being. E.g. as a
passenger in a crowded bus, I am treated like a baggage, but I am
more than that.
• The subjective must not be confused with subjectivism
or being subjectivistic.
• The subjective merely affirms the importance of man as
origin of meaning (in contrast to the emphasis of ancient
& medieval periods on truth)
• e.g. God , not the object proven but God-for-me.
• e.g. values both objective and subjective (value-for-me)
• Thirdly, existentialists stress man’s existence, man as
situatedness, which takes on different meaning for each
existentialist.
• for Kierkegaard, existence is to be directly related to
God in fear and trembling.
• For Heidegger, existence is Dasein, There-being, being
thrown into the world as self-project.
• For Jaspers, to exist is not only to determine one’s
own being horizontally but also vertically, to realize
oneself before God.
• For Marcel, esse est co-esse,to exist is to co-exist, to
participate in the life of the other.
• For Sartre, to exist is to be free.
• For Merleau-Ponty, to exist is to give meaning.
• For Camus, to exist is to live in absurdity.
• Fourthly, existentialists stress on freedom which
means differently for each existentialist.
• For Kierkegaard, to be free is to move from aesthetic
stage to ethical to religious.
• For Heidegger, to be free is to transcend oneself in
time.
• For Sartre, to be free is to be absolutely determine of
oneself without God.
• For Marcel, to be free is to say “yes” to Being, to pass
from having to being in love.
• Fifth, Existentialists propagate authentic existence versus
inauthentic existence.
• Inauthentic existence is living the impersonal “they” in the
crowd, in bad faith (half conscious, unreflective)e.g. D’etranger
of Camus, functionalized man of Marcel, monologue of Buber.
• Authentic existence is free, personal commitment to a project,
cause, truth, value. To live authentically is to be response-
able.
• All existentialists make use of the PHENOMENOLOGICAL
METHOD which does not explain deductively or inductively but
simply describes the experience of man as he actually lives it.

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EXISTENTALISM:

Man’s Search for

• There are many different existentialist

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