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Existentialism
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=== Existence precedes essence === {{Main|Existence precedes essence}} Sartre argued that a central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which is to say that individuals shape themselves by existing and cannot be perceived through preconceived and ''a priori'' categories, an "essence". The actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called their "true essence" instead of an arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them. Human beings, through their own [[consciousness]], create their own values and determine a meaning to their life.<ref>(Dictionary) "L'existencialisme" – see "l'identité de la personne" {{in lang|fr}}.</ref> This view is in contradiction to [[Aristotle]] and [[Aquinas]], who taught that essence precedes individual existence.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Aquinas: Metaphysics {{!}} Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/thomas-aquinas-metaphysics/ |access-date=2022-11-10 |language=en-US}}</ref> Although it was Sartre who explicitly coined the phrase, similar notions can be found in the thought of existentialist philosophers such as Heidegger, and Kierkegaard: {{Blockquote|The subjective ''thinker's form'', the form of his communication, is his ''style''. His form must be just as manifold as are the opposites that he holds together. The systematic ''eins, zwei, drei'' is an abstract form that also must inevitably run into trouble whenever it is to be applied to the concrete. To the same degree as the subjective thinker is concrete, to that same degree his form must also be concretely dialectical. But just as he himself is not a poet, not an ethicist, not a dialectician, so also his form is none of these directly. His form must first and last be related to existence, and in this regard he must have at his disposal the poetic, the ethical, the dialectical, the religious. Subordinate character, setting, etc., which belong to the well-balanced character of the esthetic production, are in themselves breadth; the subjective thinker has only one setting—existence—and has nothing to do with localities and such things. The setting is not the fairyland of the imagination, where poetry produces consummation, nor is the setting laid in England, and historical accuracy is not a concern. The setting is inwardness in existing as a human being; the concretion is the relation of the existence-categories to one another. Historical accuracy and historical actuality are breadth.|source=Søren Kierkegaard (''Concluding Postscript'', Hong pp. 357–358.)}} Some interpret the imperative to define oneself as meaning that anyone can wish to be anything. However, an existentialist philosopher would say such a wish constitutes an inauthentic existence – what Sartre would call "[[bad faith (existentialism)|bad faith]]". Instead, the phrase should be taken to say that people are defined only insofar as they act and that they are responsible for their actions. Someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, defined as a cruel person. Such persons are themselves responsible for their new identity (cruel persons). This is opposed to their genes, or ''human nature'', bearing the blame. As Sartre said in his lecture ''[[Existentialism is a Humanism]]'': "Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards." The more positive, therapeutic aspect of this is also implied: a person can choose to act in a different way, and to be a good person instead of a cruel person.<ref>{{cite book |last=Baird |first=Forrest E. |author2=Walter Kaufmann |title=From Plato to Derrida |publisher=Pearson Prentice Hall |year=2008 |location=Upper Saddle River, New Jersey |isbn=978-0-13-158591-1}}</ref> Jonathan Webber interprets Sartre's usage of the term ''essence'' not in a modal fashion, i.e. as necessary features, but in a teleological fashion: "an essence is the relational property of having a set of parts ordered in such a way as to collectively perform some activity".<ref name="Webber">{{cite book |last1=Webber |first1=Jonathan |title=Rethinking Existentialism |date=2018 |publisher=Oxford: Oxford University Press |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/WEBRE-3}}</ref>{{rp|3}}{{sfn|Crowell|2020}} For example, it belongs to the essence of a house to keep the bad weather out, which is why it has walls and a roof. Humans are different from houses because—unlike houses—they do not have an inbuilt purpose: they are free to ''choose'' their own purpose and thereby shape their essence; thus, ''their existence precedes their essence''.<ref name="Webber"/>{{rp|1–4}} Sartre is committed to a radical conception of freedom: nothing fixes our purpose but we ourselves, our projects have no weight or inertia except for our endorsement of them.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Burnham |first1=Douglas |title=Existentialism |url=https://iep.utm.edu/existent/ |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=16 November 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Cox |first1=Gary |title=The Sartre Dictionary |date=2008 |publisher=[[Continuum International Publishing Group|Continuum]] |pages=41–42 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/COXTSD}}</ref> Simone de Beauvoir, on the other hand, holds that there are various factors, grouped together under the term ''sedimentation'', that offer resistance to attempts to change our direction in life. ''Sedimentations'' are themselves products of past choices and can be changed by choosing differently in the present, but such changes happen slowly. They are a force of inertia that shapes the agent's evaluative outlook on the world until the transition is complete.<ref name="Webber"/>{{rp|5,9,66}} Sartre's definition of existentialism was based on Heidegger's magnum opus ''[[Being and Time]]'' (1927). In the correspondence with [[Jean Beaufret]] later published as the ''[[Letter on Humanism]]'', Heidegger implied that Sartre misunderstood him for his own purposes of subjectivism, and that he did not mean that actions take precedence over being so long as those actions were not reflected upon.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964) |last=Heidegger |first=Martin |publisher=Harper San Francisco |editor=David Farrell Krell |year=1993 |isbn=0-06-063763-3 |edition=Revised and expanded |location=San Francisco, California |oclc=26355951}}</ref> Heidegger commented that "the reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement", meaning that he thought Sartre had simply switched the roles traditionally attributed to essence and existence without interrogating these concepts and their history.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of thinking (1964) |url=https://archive.org/details/basicwritings00heid |url-access=limited |last=Heidegger |first=Martin |publisher=Harper San Francisco |editor=David Farrell Krell |year=1993 |isbn=0-06-063763-3 |edition=Revised and expanded |location=San Francisco, California |pages=[https://archive.org/details/basicwritings00heid/page/n128 243] |oclc=26355951}}</ref>
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