Existentialist View Of Death In American Beauty By Sartre

The only thing humans are certain about, is their imminent death. Many existentialists such as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre attempt to analyze death and how it affects human beings. It goes without saying that Heidegger and Sartre do have a lot in common in their theories about freedom, authenticity, love, and death. Although, Sartre provides a more realistic approach to death, Heidegger provides a more idealistic theory on the subject. I will analyze each of their positions about what death is, and use the film American Beauty, to provide an example of where this existentialism can be perceived in popular culture.

The idea of death has shifted throughout history. In early history, from the times of Plato, all the way to the late eighteenth century, European philosophy focused on descriptions and lessons based on the possibility of judgment. This judgment was set to occur when one encountered death. Greek philosophers saw death as the need to
It is in his book Being and Nothingness, were Sartre began using his ideas that existence precede essence, which is the idea people live their lives, therefore that is what defines what they truly are, rather than being an objective set of characteristics. Thus, Sartre believed that humans are subjective; since they have the ability to change, and transcend their facticity.
Sartre portrays his idea of death as something that can be seen as a relationship or struggle between I and the Other, rather than something that is actually perceived in the the for-itself. “In fact, death is the final ‘fact’ that “alienates us wholly in our life to the advantage of the Other-To be dead, is to be a prey for the living”(Being and Nothingness). In fact, Sartre looked as death to be intertwined with his idea of