what is to be an existentialist?

Question

have you read the works of martin heiddeger, are you an existentialist?

Answer 1

i've read a bit of existential thinkers, yes including Heidegger (however you classify him). I've yet to encounter any existential thinker with any theory that even remotely resembles what prron1 has to say.
The problem in answering the question is there are many different existential thinkers, not all of which like to be called existentialists, and most of whom disagree with each other. I will try my best to give some general features that are true of most existential thinkers.

General features of 'existential' oriented thinking are

1) an emphasis on the interhuman and the world. The self is not defined as a seperate entity from other people and from the world. the self is not in your head and not confined to your body.
2) anti-dualism. existentials are typically against mind-body/ self-other/thinking-feeling/ inner-outer/ motive-action type dualisms. they tend to stress that both sets of phenomena are just aspects of deeper phenomena that have been covered over. that reality is UNITARY and that we SPLIT up the phenomena so we can understood it conceptually. e.g., an existentialist would not normally talk about emotions as being 'inside' oneself. or of making 'inner decisions', or of saying a 'motive' caused an 'action'. rather we're always in a temporal flow of actions and meanings and it's usually when we abstract out of that that we split things up into those categories.
3) they stress that our traditional ways of thinking about things are the results of historically conditioned conceptual categories that hide the actual phenomena. moreover, the tend to think that the truths of ones life have to be lived, they cannot be understood conceptually or through third-person cause-effect thinking because concepts put things at a distance and also seperates them (creates dualisms). Existentilists are generally wary of systematizing and general theories that purport to explain everything.
4) they tend to think that there are no objective "essential" external or internal (moral, religious, scientific, or philosophical) guides to how one ought to live ones life, and that indeed reliance on such guides reflects a kind of cowardice that runs away from giving ones life meaning by ones own subjective acts and stances. That is, the truths and meanings of ones existence are LIVED OUT and not given in advance.
5) tendancy to think that human beings behave in 'herd-like' ways that hide the truth of their subjective conditions
6) emphasis on this life, as opposed to theories about what happens afterwards. even existential oriented theologens (Tillich, Buber) stress THIS life and having a subjective relation with God through being connected to reality (As opposed to using concepts and reasoning to get at objective moral laws and truths).
7) while there is no 'objective' univerally true moral order, we are nonetheless born into a meaningful world. we don't just willy-nilly decide 'hey, this is a chair', rather we're born into a world with ready-made cultural meaning and it is out of this mileau that we fashion ourselves and make our choices. They tend to believe neither that we are entirely determined nor that we are free to do whatever we want (there are notable exceptions however).


In general when you hear about existentialists it's almost certainly the most extreme type of existentialism, the one advocated by Sartre. I've tried to give some aspects of existential thought that are more neutral.

Answer 2

Wow ! Even an existentialist doesn't know the answer to this one.
I wish I could make a diagram for you...

Existentialism is the product of a short circuited faith.
An existentialist is one whose philosophy of life is thus:

Our soul has essentially 5 parts:
(1) mind > defines what something is and relays information to Volition and Emotions.
(2) Emotions > expresses feelings about the information received from Mind to the Volition.
(3) Volition > evaluates information and feelings; decides what to do about it, and initiates to Self-consciousness.
(4) Conscience > during the above process initiates to Mind what it SHOULD perceive; to Emotions what it SHOULD feel; and to Volition what it SHOULD do about it.
(5) Self-consciousness > having received initiation from Volition links up with the motor nerve fibers of the body function to respond to the original incoming information.

What happens in the mind of the existentialist is that for one reason or another Mind, Emotions, and Volition do not agree. One of them "cops out" on the decision making process, the result being that "what you see is not what you get" when the body function is performed.

Sometimes existentialism is called a "leap-of-faith" I think, because the decision making process has literally leapt over one of the elements of the government of the soul.

Our time-space existence is a faith economy. The energy of faith operates like the energy in a circuit. If we imagine Mind, Emotions, and Volition to be the elements of the circuit, and if one of them disagrees in the evaluation process of incoming information, and if the other two elements that agree go with it anyway, then what has happened in effect is that we have a "short-circuit".

Example: Mind hears the words "I love you" and relays to Volition and Emotions "YES". Emotions (which have been hurt by those words before} relays to Volition "NO!". Volition chooses to side with Mind and initiates "YES" to Self-consciousness, which responds accordingly. But is the love real? NO... because Emotions are not in agreement. Result: What you see is not what you get. The response is an "existential" leap-of-faith.

I believe the Bible's word for existentialism is "iniquity". I think you can see why. The Bible also says: "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." (Romans 14:23).
God does not appreciate the existential mentality.

Hey ! God Bless !

Answer 3

What even is?.... i (can) wonder ;)