Christian Existentialism

1
Christian Existentialism

• Kierkegaards attack on Christendom.
• O Lord Jesus Christ, would that we also might be
  contemporary with thee, see thee in thy true
  form,not in the form in which an empty and
  meaningless tradition, or a thoughtless and
  superstitious historical tradition has deformed
  thee.

2
Existentialism

• Authentic vs inauthentic faith.
• Lessings ugly ditch The impossibility of
  basing ones eternal happiness on a more or less
  probable historical claim.
• The necessity and desirability of a passionate,
  irrational, leap of faith.

3
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) AKA Johannes
Climacus Johannes Anticlimacus.

• Once it was at the risk of his life that a man
  dared to profess himself a Christian now it is
  to make oneself suspect to venture to doubt that
  one is a Christian.

• Religion can make self-centeredness seem
  respectable. Authentic Christianity isnt based
  on doctrinal or historical certainties, it is
  passionate subjectivity.
• If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do
  not believe, but...because I cannot do this I
  must believe.

4
Kierkegaards Thought

• Approximation argument Objective historical
  reasoning can never be more than approximately
  true, hence it can never provide a basis for an
  eternal happiness.
• Postponement argument Since all the evidence
  will never be in, an objective inquirer must
  always postpone faith.
• Passion argument Objectivity is inversely
  proportional to passion.

5
Atheistic Existentialism

• Nietzsche, Heidegger, Camus, Sartre.
• What are the consequences of the non-existence of
  God for modern man?

6
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

• God is dead.
• Traditional religious and metaphysical systems
  have been undermined by the scientific method.
  Without some new basis for morality and meaning,
  nihilism will prevail.

• A new naturalism (which affirms life) is
  necessary to replace the old myths.
• I entreat you my brothers, remain true to the
  earth, and do not believe those who speak to you
  of superterrestial hopes. They are despisers of
  life, self-poisoned men of whom the earth is
  weary.

7
Nietzsches Naturalism

• Master vs slave morality. The weak, in an effort
  to protect themselves from the strong, created
  slave moralities of kindness and compassion.

• The master exerts his will to power and
  recognizes that what is good is what is good for
  him. He affirms his life instinct and exists
  beyond good and evil.

8
Aphorisms

• What is good?- All that heightens the feeling of
  power, the will to power, power itself in man.
• To live alone one must be an animal or a god-
  says Aristotle. There is yet a third case one
  must be both- a philosopher.
• Madness is something rare in individuals- but in
  groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule.
• We have no organ at all for knowledge, for truth
  we know, or believe or imagine, precisely as much
  as may be useful in the interest of the human
  herd, the species and even what is here called
  usefulness is in the end only a belief, something
  imagined and perhaps precisely that most fatal
  piece of stupidity by which we shall one day
  perish.
• The man of knowledge must be able not only to
  love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

• Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven
  first found the power thereto in his own hell.
• You will never get the crowd to cry Hosanna until
  you ride into town on an ass.
• Thoughts are the shadows of our sensations-
  always darker, emptier, simpler than these.
• The philosopher believes that the value of his
  philosophy lies in the whole, in the building
  posterity discovers it in the bricks with which
  he built and which are then often used again for
  better building in the fact, that is to say,
  that that building can be destroyed and
  nonetheless possess value as material.

9
Jean Paul Sartre (1905- 1980)

• The existentialist finds it very embarrassing
  that God does not exist, for there disappears
  with Him all possibility of finding values in an
  intelligible heaven.

10
Sartres Subjectivism

• Existence precedes essence. There is no
  universal human nature because there is no God to
  create one. Each of us must create our own
  essence by the actions we do, the choices we
  make. To fail to choose for oneself is
  bad-faith.
• The necessity of choice with nothing to guide us
  creates angst.

11
Existential Abandonment

• The anguish of Abraham.
• The anguish of Sartres student Join the
  resistance or care for mother?
• No moral theory can guide his choice.

• Abstract values dont apply to concrete cases.
• You are free, therefore choose- that is to say,
  invent.
• The moral choice is comparable to the
  construction of a work of art.