The Four Themes Of Existentialism

The four themes of Existentialism that I found to be the most significant and recurring in the works of the existentialists are as follows: the individual, God, being, and truth. The individual is a theme prevalent in every existential philosopher as pondering one’s own individual existence is the core essence of the movement. Furthermore, being is often an accompanied attribute to the self and is pondered alongside the self. God is necessarily pondered in the philosophies of existentialism because of the enormous effect that religion or God makes on a person’s life’s meaning and significance. And of course, truth, which is often seen to be a subjective phenomenon, is often times recurring in the works of existentialists. This seems to be because …show more content…
His motivation for a focus on the individual arrived from his faith in Christianity, deplacement with modern Christendom, and being a reactory to Hegel’s historical and political philosophies. Kierkegaard saw the individual to be of the most importance when evaluating concepts such as truth and religion because Kierkegaard saw all truth to be a subjective phenomenon; therefore, every philosophical system can only be true insofar as it allows for the individual to reach the individual's version of truth; for Kierkegaard, truth was found by a “leap of faith” into the religious life. Nietzsche, on the other hand, did not believe that there was truth for the individual, and that the individual was to create the individual's own truth. Nietzsche held the individual in high esteem, in other words, because he believed for the individual to be the only one that can choose to live the good life and he/she does this by willing to power himself over all other obstacles in his/her …show more content…
To be, according to Sartre, is to be thrusted into existence with no say so. To be is to have a specific individualism and, so, existentialism attempts to focus through the perspective if this individuals forced existence. Kierkegaard says that the individual’s forced being only makes sense when the individual has made a “leap of faith” into the religious life. Nietzsche, on the other hand, held that the self’s being is actualized once the self chooses to master himself/herself so that the self can then master its environment. Of course, Nietzsche’s view here is accompanied by his theory of truth. For Nietzche, truth is a completely perspectival phenomena. There is no overarching truth and, so, the individual must make truth for himself/herself. Kierkegaard held a similar view. But, in Kierkegaard's theory of truth, one could not come to know the truth until one became in the truth via a “leap of faith”. Sartre was a nihilist and believed that, if there was some form of truth, it did not give life a meaning. Instead, the individual has to give meaning to one’s life by