Existentialism is a philosophical movement of the early twentieth century: summary, precursors, exponents and characteristics.
Existentialism in philosophy is a current that has as its precursor Kierkegaard , who in turn criticizes Hegel ‘s philosophy . The industrial and technological development of the 20th century seeks only the useful and the functional, putting human values in the background. But the war interrupts evolution and progress and causes man to fall back into the precariousness of life. The main themes of existentialism are:
- The precariousness of life;
- The banality of existence;
- Anguish, despair, possibility, hope, shipwreck, failure (Kierkegaard’s key word).
EXISTENTIALISM, PERIOD
The development of existentialism as a philosophical movement was simultaneously influenced by the historical disappointment represented by the war and the cultural disappointment towards the ideals of the 19th century. On the one hand, Romanticism was now outdated and the war caused all optimism to collapse. On the other hand, art, influenced by extra-European trends, saw the disappearance of form, space, figures and colour.
EXISTENTIALISM, DECADENTISM AND HERMETICISM
Existentialism is closely linked to Dostoevsky ‘s The Brothers Karamazov , where the theme of man continually choosing the possibilities of his life, realizing them and bringing them to an end with all the consequences that they entail is present. In Kafka , on the other hand, existence appears under the weight of a threat that ends only with death (in The Trial); another theme is that of daily banality that even takes away from man his human features (Metamorphosis).
These themes are also present in Camus , who in The Myth of Sisyphus describes the hero as a symbol of the absurdity of existence. The absurd arises from a divorce between the expectations of reason and the harsh reality of facts. Existentialism and Decadentism are united by the theme of death, in fact in Decadentism the presence of death within life itself is enunciated.
Another current that develops in Italy, parallel to existentialism, is Hermeticism and insists on themes such as: solitude, the illusion of living, death, mystery, oblivion, the irrevocability of time.
EXISTENTIALISM, THEMES
The themes of existentialism can therefore be summarized as follows:
- reflection on existence , understood as a way of being specific to man and different from that of all other living beings. This way of being is described as a relationship with being.
- The problematic relationship between man and being represents the central point of existentialism .
This relationship is interpreted as something that requires a certain choice from man that is open to risk. Consequently, according to the existentialists, man is an entity that is faced with the alternative between authenticity and inauthenticity . The appeal to choice and authenticity imply that man lives as an individual , that is, as an unrepeatable entity.
Therefore, philosophical existentialism is a historiographical concept to indicate all those forms of thought that, from the 1920s to the 1940s, shared the conception of existence as a way of being specific to man, qualified by certain characteristics, such as the relationship with being.
Way of being in relation to which the individual, in his finite and unrepeatable singularity, is called to decide for his authenticity and fulfillment.
