Existentialists College Essays Samples For Students

Existentialism is a doctrine that states that every action means both an environment and a human subjectivity. There are two types of existentialists. The first ones are the Christians, such as Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel. The second ones are the existential atheists, namely the French existentialists.
Christians consider each person as the realization of a concrete conception that lives. On the other hand, atheistic existentialists state that is God does not exist, then there is someone whose existence comes before its essence. It means that a person first of all lives, examines himself and the world and determines himself.
The first ...

Two of the most important existential philosophers have been Albert Camus, well known for both his novels and his philosophy, and Jean Paul Sartre, who, is aligned with the ideas of existentialism more than any other philosopher. In addition to sharing some ideas about existentialism (although both men also developed very different systems of this philosophy), both thinkers were atheists, and developed their systems of philosophy, from their belief in a world, or a universe without god. For Camus, the absence of god was one of the reasons why man could find the nature of existence meaningless, and his ...

In this quote Sartre reveals the main ideas of the existentialism movement. According to the philosopher, a person has influence on what he or she will be in the future. This means that an individual is responsible for creating his own inner world. Existentialists believe that nurture is more important than nature for the personal development. Furthermore, existence comes before essence. A person should define essence by him or herself. Also, Sartre states that life is hard and a person would encounter pain and constant struggling with many obstacles. However, it is the only way of defining a person and his or ...

1) Morris Braverman was a 39-year old social worker with a very serious and repressed demeanor. He gave the impression of being “intelligent and concerned” but with “enormous over control” as he went through the experiment, shocking the ‘learner’ up to the maximum voltage (Milgram 53). As he kept pushing the buttons, he started laughing, very softly at first but increasing in intensity until his laughter became very loud and disruptive. He asked the ‘experimenter’ if he had to continue to follow these instructions and was told that he had no choice, the experiment must be completed, even while the victim ...

Summary and Response

Sartre as teacher believes that doctrines should be based on the one truth. And the absolute truth, according to him, is rooted in the man. Through the mediation, one can get closer to the absolute truth. Sartre’s theory is about the dignity of man and he does not treat the man as an object. Contrary to materialists, existentialists value humans. For Sartre, humans are isolated from the material world but never isolated from other men. The subjectivity of the individual is significant. Moreover, he sees the world around us as intersubjective. The man’s existence in this world ...

I would like to begin with one short story that I have heard some time ago and which is still in my head. Answering the question what is man, Plato said that a human is a two-legged animal with feathers. Then, he proposed such alternatives: 1) but if to pluck the feathers from a cock, will he become a human; 2) and if a man is without legs then he will be not a human anymore?
According to this, it is important to think about human not only as one of the biological kinds of mammals, not only as a biological creature, but a spiritual one. ...