Existentialism

[Istvan]

Existentialism is basically the concept that our actions and encounters throughout life are what define us.

This makes me wonder about the well-known phrase "existence precedes essence." 

It seems like a really helpful phrase -- Existentialism in a nutshell -- if you sort of squint. But if I think about it carefully it's pretty difficult, simply because "essence" is not a word we use much any more. 

I suspect that to Sartre and de Beauvoir, who had deep training in philosophy (École normale supérieure!) it had a very precise meaning. Just because a lot of those Aristotelian/Thomist words (like "cause") which used to be exact have now become fuzzy. 

So what does it mean that I create my essence, after I come into existence? Is it just my personality? My likes and dislikes? My successes and failures? 

Do I have to decide on some meaning for my life to have an essence ("I am here on this earth to save stray cats"), or can I just sort of fumble along?

I think it's a handy slogan because it describes the thrust of existentialism. Much harm has been done in the name of human nature, essentialism, bad faith and cultural identity. So it's a necessary corrective to the way of thinking that defines us in terms of a pre-existing function or nature; we need to recognize that humans have constructed these functions and natures for their own ends.

Simone De Beauvoir also gets a lot of mileage out of a phrase she attributes to Sartre: Man is a being who makes himself a lack of being in order that there might be being. In other words, the human being needs to realize that we are nothing except what we make of ourselves, so we need to define ourselves in terms of the lack of what we wish to become and thereby disclose Being. And all this deciding and intending is nothing without action.

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Yeah, Giacometti was on one cover of Irrational Man, a popular survey of Existentialist philosophers.

I've walked next to Walking Man at the Art Institute of Chicago. And I just recently reread Irrational Man, which I consider an excellent summary of the ideas and historical context of existentialism.