Existentialism becoming a catachresis?

Question

As I understand it, existentialism is a philosophy that ponders specifically the meaning of existence, and that human ideals are specifically subjective and individual. Also, it explores the random placement of placing humans in a harsh world completely separate from them.

So then HOW are Fight Club, Donnie Darko, Lost in Translation existentialist? They're great movies, but I have no idea how they are existential!!

Answer 1

Existentialism has changed a lot over the past 200 years... i get the feeling that the modern, popular version of existentialism is unaware of its own roots. If these movies are existential in some way, it's because they suggest that we do some thinking about what it means to exist. In the case of fight club, for instance, the film might make you wonder what it means for a human existence if that person is not what we'd call "sane" and believes a non-entity to exist in his own world .... and not just a ghost, but something that actually acts on the world outside of himself, that has reality to other people... i mean, *does* the alternate person actually exist? is it actually separate or one in the same as the main character?
IF that movie is 'existential', i imagine that would be one point about which it is existential...

Answer 2

What you said is essentially correct (ha ha! Is essentially the most apt word here). It starts out with two components of being - existence and essence (that it exists, and what it is). Sartre said that existence precedes essence. And that it is people who decide what the essence is, making it very subjective as you said.

Of the movies you mentioned, I only saw Lost in Translation which I selpt through. Whatever part made it an existentialist movie, I must have had my eyes close when it happened. In most works of fiction with existentialism as a topic, usually involves one person who does something totally different from somebody else. He may even seem like a villain. The novel crime and punishment was made into a movie (which I've never seen) and it was about a man who murdered an old woman with an axe. With essense being left for you to define, are you able to break the moral code that you have been taught and build an entirely new moral code?

Perhaps some of the most familiar stories involving existentialist themes would include The Lord of the Flies, where a group of kids are left alone in an isolated island and are forced to make rules on their own.

Another favorite of mine are the Hans Christian Andersen fables. He is what is known to be a Christian existentialist. While other existentialist involve man defining meaning in the world, Andersen wants man to put complete trust God. This is rather extreme and even some people who call themselves Christian would actually not be a christian according to this view. If you search Y!A you will find that when someone asked "If god told you to beat up your wife, will you do it" most christians object! But hey God actually told abraham to kill his son! Oh and that was the subject of one of the best Christian existentialist works, Fear and Trembling.

But back to Andersen. In many of Andersen's tales, the hero or heroine is able to completely surrender herself for that of another. The little mermaid, the tin soldier, and the snowman who was in love with an oven, were all willing to die for the object of his love. But in dying they are raised to a new and greater life.

Answer 3

There are more than one existentialistic position, and I think most of them would say we are responsible or potentially competent or may become competent for our own becoming as a personality. Some say our choices form our person and lifes meaning. So, life is not an emptiness of meaning for those who understand this, but may well be for those who do not, and certainly not. The assumption that humans are randomly placed is an abandonment of responsibility, wittingly or unwittingly, an abandonment or a failure to identify the scientific principle that there ARE principles in existence, not merely a collection of contingent substances and that the total history may be understood or comprehended of these principles, that they may be applied now in creativity and used to predict within our limits, our future.

In regards to the movies you have mentioned, I don't know them, but perhaps they contain something of life choices and personological development.

Answer 4

Well, they were all existential Heros of their reality. The movies are all existentialistic because each protagonist explored the meaning of their situation in a reality that was alien to them.