Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre

Man stands alone in the universe, responsible for his condition, likely to remain in a lowly state, but free to reach above the stars.

The self is essentially intangible and must be understood in terms of possibilities, dread, and decisions. When I behold my possibilities, I experience that dread which is "the dizziness of freedom," and my choice is made in fear and trembling.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

Few words in world literature equal the impact of this saying. All man’s alibis are unacceptable: no gods are responsible for his condition; no original sin; no heredity and no environment; no race, no caste, no father, and no mother; no wrong-headed education, no governess, no teacher; not even an impulse or a disposition, a complex or a childhood trauma. Man is free; but his freedom does not look like the glorious liberty of the Enlightenment; it is no longer the gift of God. Once again, man stands alone in the universe, responsible for his condition, likely to remain in a lowly state, but free to reach above the stars.

To the intellect all else, in comparison with what is correct, counts only as feeling, subjectivity, instinct. In this division, apart from the bright world of the intellect, there is only the irrational, in which is lumped together, according to the point of view, what is despised or desired. The impulse which pursues real truth by thought springs from the dissatisfaction with what is merely correct. The division, spoken of previously, paralyses this impulse; it causes man to oscillate between the dogmatism of the intellect that transcends its limits and, as it were, the rapture of the vital, the chance of the moment, life. The soul becomes impoverished in all the multiplicity of disparate experience. Then truth disappears from the field of vision and is replaced by a variety of opinions which are hung on the skeleton of a supposedly rational pattern. Truth is infinitely more than scientific correctness.

Gözönünde tutulacak ilk nokta, varoluşçuluğun herhangi bir özel politik programı gerektirmediği, üç önemli varolşçunun Hitler yıllarında birbirinden apayrı yollar tutmalarının hiç de şaşırtıcı olmadğıdır. Ama bu, üçünün de yazdıklarına aynı ölçüde bağlı kaldıkları anlamına gelmez. Sein und Zeit'de durmadan ölümü yiğitçe karşılamaktan söz eden Heidegger, Hitler'in yetkiyi ele geçirişinden sonra Nazilerle birleşerek, üniversitenin rektörü olarak öyle bir açılış konuşması yapmıştır ki, bu konuşmanın herkesce okunmadığına ne denli sevinse yeridir. Şimdi, o zaman Nazilerden hemen yüz çevirmiş olduğunu söylüyorsa da, bu kararını o günlerde hiç belli etmemiş olması yüzünden, bugün bile birçoklarınca şüphe ile karşılanır. Yahudi bir kadınla evli olan Jaspers de o zaman sesini çıkarmamayı yeğ görmüştür, ama 1945'te yine suçtan, batmış gemiden, korkudan, ölümden söz etmeye hazırdır. Onlar için söyleyeceğimiz şu söz büyük bir incelik olur yine de: sesleri Nietzsche ile Kierkegaard'ın sesi olmakla birlikte yaşamları Kant ile Hegel'in yaşamlarıdır.

The value of a human being, Nietzsche said, does not lie in his usefulness: for it would continue to exist even if there were nobody to whom he could be useful.

The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life—that is the heart of existentialism.

When it is founded on decision, love is no longer an unreliably moving passion, but the fulfillment to which alone real Being reveals itself.

Romanticism yearns for deliverance from the cross of the Here and Now: it is willing to face anything but the facts.