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Contemporary existentialism is very similar to Nietzsche's master morality. Some say that Jean-Paul Sartre, father of contemporary existentialism, stole his ideas from Nietzsche's works. Both believe that in regards to the world, God is dead. Whether he truly exists or not is not the issue; the issue is that God has no influence or control over the world. This, as with master morality, leads to free will and everything that comes with it. Existentialists say that we suffer from forlornness for knowing that God is basically dead. We also, they say, suffer from anguish from having complete freedom since that is a great burden upon us. This also means that our decisions affect everyone since there is no outside force to protect others from us or vice versa. Think of it this way: when you are put in charge of a small group you often suffer from stress from the great burden of responsibility, knowing that your decisions affects the whole group. Now think of the amount of stress now that you know that your decisions affect the entire planet. That is anguish. One way that existentialism tries to separate itself is in its definition of things in the world. First, you must realize that our ethics of Western philosophy is based on the work of Plato. He believed in something called Forms, which are the perfect ideal for everything. So a perfect circle is actually just the embodiment of the Form of the Circle. So there is an essence of everything that precedes existence. Existentialists, on the other hand, stating that there is no God or anything of that nature, say that there is existence before essence, but not the other way. For example, if you bent a thin piece of metal into a shape and said that is a paper clip, you made the existence before the essence. A Platonist would say that you already had the idea of a paper clip and then you made it. This all ties into existentialism's view that nothing exists before our choices. Many people consider existentialism a very bleak view of the world. Since it basically says that it is us against the world and everything that happens to you is of your own doing, it can be very bleak. But that is the world that we live in according to existentialism, so you might as well make the best of it... |