Cartesian Skepticism to Existentialism The nature of our reality and existence has been a topic of debate since at least the ancient Greeks. Do we exist? Why do we exist? Does it even matter? These are questions I will attempt to address thoroughly. Answers may not be comfortable or satisfactory‚ but it’s better to rip that band-aid off now than continue blindly in the dark. Rationalism and Empiricism have both attempted to prove existence‚ but at their most extremes they fall apart. Using
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responsible for the birth of existentialist thought. Existentialism is the theory that individuals are independent beings and are free to exercise their own free will. It focuses on questions such as: Do humans have a predetermined essence or do they live completely free from restrictions? If a divine creator does exist‚ what is its true nature? And whether the universe is indifferent to human existence. This paper takes a deeper look into existentialism and how it can apply to literature. Mary Shelley’s
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Existentialism is a Humanism Jean-Paul Sartre‚ 19451 My purpose here is to defend existentialism against several reproaches that have been laid against it. Existentialism has been criticised for inviting people to remain in a quietism of despair‚ to fall back into a the middle-class luxury of a merely contemplative philosophy. We are reproached for underlining human nastiness‚ and forgetting‚ as the Catholic Mme. Mercier has it‚ the smile of the child. All and sundry reproach us for treating
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Many people describe places by their emotions. Existentialists are subjective people instead of objective. This means that they believe in facts and not emotions from others. Many have different emotions than others about a same place in the world. People connect places that they have traveled to different emotion that they have felt towards a certain place. In the novel The Catcher in the Rye‚ J.D. Salinger writes about the adventures of teenager Holden Caulfield after he flunks out of his prep
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Existentialism as Exemplified in ‘The Seventh Seal’ The Seventh Seal is a 1957 Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. The film offers interwoven storyline. It starts with a game of chess between a medieval knight‚ Antonius Block‚ and Death – in which if Block won‚ Death will prolong the knight’s life. This game goes on in intermittent times. The knight is accompanied by his squire‚ Jöns‚ as they go back to the knight’s castle to be reunited with his wife. Throughout their journey
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Edgar Allan Poe is noted as one of the most controversial authors. He was rejected by many and his works like his life are captivating‚ horrifying‚ and deal with love‚ death‚ terror‚ revenge and often brand evil. He had a love for the arts‚ alcohol and women. Death surrounded much of Poe’s early years and it is no wonder that many of his works deal with death and dying. His writings did not deal with the supernatural world of vampires or ghosts but dealt with the evil from within our souls that
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Anthony Caruso Dr. Mosser American Literature 5 October 2017 The Sculpting of Existentialism F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway identify the meagerness of American democracy in a gradually marketable and purchaser ethos and cast-off the capitalistic morals‚ characteristics‚ and customs given by and strengthened through the increasingly domineering social‚ and political structures of American culture. For Fitzgerald and Hemingway‚ what is at stake is the person‚ the creative essence‚ and the
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"Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one experiences life as a "single individual"‚ giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking‚ and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment." In the book‚ "The Hunger Games" by Suzzanne Collins‚ one such character displays her life as a "single individual" Her name is Katniss Everdeen. Even before the moment she became a tribute she had to be strong and help provide for her family. She began to provide
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The Existentialist school of thought poses that humans live in an irrational universe and try‚ to no avail‚ to forge meaning out of the chaos and stress. Franz Kafka expresses this sentiment in his novella‚ Metamorphosis‚ in which Gregor Samsa awakes to find he has transformed into a human-sized dung beetle and struggles to maintain that which makes him human. Through Kafka’s expression of Existential ideas of living-for-others and isolation‚ the author encapsulates Gregor’s descent into animalistic
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Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe‚ regards human existence as unexplainable‚ and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one ’s acts. This philosophy is essentially the crux of the novel The Stranger and not only serves as one of the themes but probably the main reason Albert Camus wrote the book altogether. Presented in first person narration through the eyes
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