1. Contemporary philosophy refers to philosophical thinking from the late 19th century to the present dealing with existentialism, phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and continental philosophy. 2. Existentialism focuses on individual existence, freedom and choice, the question of meaning, and the absurdity and anxiety of human life. 3. Major existentialist philosophers discussed include Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Heidegger, who all emphasized individual responsibility and the importance of how one chooses to live. 4. Nietzsche notably declared "God is dead" and argued this poses challenges around nihilism but also opportunities for individuals to create their own meaning

1. CONTEMPORAR
Y
PREPARED BY RAIZZA
P. CORPUZ

2. CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY
•
refers to the current era of
philosophy, generally dealing with
philosophers from the late 19th
century through to the 21st

3. • The19th century also began to see a division in the approach to philosophy being
taken in different areas of western philosophy.
• In the United Kingdom and North America, a focus on logic, language and the
natural sciences was becoming predominant in philosophy, and this tradition was
labelled analytic philosophy.

4. • Those who did not find themselves in this analytic trend were mostly based in
Europe, and the idea of continental philosophy was born.
• The names are already considered obsolete, in some
senses, but many philosophers still observe a
difference between the logical and scientific
approach of analytic philosophy and the
existentialism, phenomenology and other approaches
of continental philosophy.

5. EXISTENTIALISM IN
CONTEMPORARY
PHILOSOPHY

6. • that philosophical thinking begins with
the human subject—not merely
the thinking subject, but the acting,
feeling, living human individual.

7. • Individual's starting point is characterized by
what has been called "the existential
attitude"

8. EXISTENTIALISM AND THE WORLD
• Focuses on limitless capacity for ethically and intellectually
engaging people to enact change in the world.
• No explanation of why we are alive instead, we are
“abandoned” with nothing more than an awareness of our
surroundings and a need to cope with surroundings in order
to survive.

9. THUS,
1. Perspectives, aesthetics, and approaches to dealing
with the world and its inherent difficulties
2. Deals with the recurring problem of finding
meaning in existence.
3. The individual must create meaning for him/her
self.
4. Gets a reputation for being pessimistic and
meaningless or absurd and is associated with things
like angst, boredom and fear

10. THEREFORE, THE SELF IS
ALWAYS IN PROCESS
Individualism, Self-Actualization, and
Self-Branding/Personal Branding
Disavows a sense of pattern in the
universe.
Creativity is much more highly prized
than conformity.
Therefore, effort is prized more than skill
Sincerity, self-analysis, and conviction
is what one can expect in regard to
ethical decisions

11. IT SIMPLY IMPLIES THAT : IT SIMPLY ABOUT
YOU!

12. PHILOSOPHERS
1.Soeren Kierkegaard
2.Friedrich Nietzsche
3.Martin Heidegger
4.Jean -Paul Sartre
5.Arthur Schopenhauer

13. SØREN KIERKEGAARD
• 1813-1855, Danish
• Considered to be the first Existential
Philosopher
• Considered as “the Father of
Existentialism”
• Insisted on the distinctiveness of personal
experience/subjectivity.
• He argues, “subjectivity is truth, truth is
subjectivity

14. HUMAN NATURE
• For Kierkegaard, human beings stand out
as responsible individuals who must
make free choices.

15. • According to him the deepest "inwardness" of the human being is the place of
passionate choice wherein one must take a "leap of faith" despite one's finitude,
the fact that we can never know with certainly the outcome of our choices despite
our accountability for them.
• His psychological work explored the emotions and feelings of individuals when
faced with life choices.

16. THERE ARE THREE MODES OF
EXISTENCE THAT CAN BE
CHOSEN BY AN INDIVIDUAL.
(3 Sphere/Stages of Life’s Way)
1.aesthetic = a redefined hedonism, consisting of the
search for pleasure
2.ethical = involves intense commitment to one’s duty
in faith and social obligations
3.religious = submission to God, and only God’s will

17. “Christianity is therefore not a doctrine, but the fact that
God has existed.”
"...the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find
the idea for which I can live and die"

18. ARTHUR
SCHOPENHAUER
• The World as Will and Idea /
Representation
• The human body and all its parts
being the visible expression of
the will and its several desires.
• The teeth, throat, and bowels for
example being "objectified"
hunger.

19. • For Schopenhauer, who is considered to
be a pessimistic philosopher, the tragedy
of life arises from the nature of the will,
which constantly urges the individual
toward the satisfaction of successive
goals, none of which can provide
permanent satisfaction for the infinite
activity of the life force, or will.

20. • The title of Schopenhauer’s masterwork
contains the central thesis of his philosophy.
• The world is a “phenomenon,” a
representation or idea ; Schopenhauer
makes no distinction between a
phenomenon and an appearance; he says
that the two are identical.
• The world as we know it is an appearance or
deception.

21. JEAN PAUL SARTRE
• 1905-1980
• 20th
century’s greatest existential thinker
• French
• “Existence precedes essence”-
• What makes you who you are by what you
make of yourself.
• We are all “condemned to be free”
Believed that there is no authority that
defines freedom or provides rules or
guarantees decisions.

22. EXISTENCE – HUMANISM--
ESSENCE
IT
MEANS:

23. BEING AND NOTHINGNESS
EXISTENTIALISM IS HUMANISM
• Meaning there is total responsibility on the
individual for all actions.
• Sartre is convinced that human responsibility makes
sense only if there is no God; otherwise
divine foreknowledge and predestination
necessarily exclude alternative options and
consequently responsibility.

24. THERE ARE AT LEAST THREE CIRCLES IN THE
EXTENSION OF OUR RESPONSIBILITY:
1. Individual responsibility: If existence precedes essence man is
responsible for his own actions (and his individuality)
2. Total Responsibility: If man is free to choose what he is going to
make of himself, he is entirely responsible for what he is
becoming;
3. Universal Responsibility: If man is fully responsible for what he is
presenting as the image of man, he is responsible for all men
• Individual responsibility corresponds to the common sense
notion of responsibility

25. “HELL IS OTHER
PEOPLE”- NO EXIT
Hell is other people because
we can try and force the
others to see us in the
way we want them to see
us, but they will always
see us in the way they
want to see us. The form
which is easiest for them
in most cases.

26. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

27. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND NIHILISM
• So in saying “God is dead” this was
what he really meant:
• Nietzsche sought to draw the
consequences of the death of God, the
collapse of any theistic support for
morality
• In such a situation the individual is
forced back upon himself.
AKA. Personal responsibility

28. THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO TAKE THIS:
• On the one hand, if he is weakly
constituted he may fall victim to despair
in the face of nihilism, the recognition
that life has no intrinsic meaning.
• On the other hand, for a “strong” or
creative individual nihilism presents a
liberating opportunity to take
responsibility for meaning, to exercise
creativity by “trans valuing” her values,
establishing a new “order of rank.”

29. Friedrich Nietzsche is notable for having declared that
God is dead and for having
written several of his works in the presumption that man must
find a new mode of being given the death of
God.

30. GOD IS DEAD
• Implications of the Death of God according to
Nietzsche:
• Rejection of absolute values. (Can’t have a
"secularized" form of Christianity)
• Nihilism (because most men in the West know
no other values but Christian values)
• "Active nihilism" a nihilism that seeks to
destroy what it no longer believes

31. SUPERMAN
• Ubermensch or superman [Zarathustra] is
not superior in breeding or endowment, but
in power and strength. The superman
confronts all the possible terrors and
wretchedness of life and still joyously affirms
it.
• In Thus Spake Zarathustra Nietzsche
proclaims, "Not `humanity’ but Superman is
the goal." "Man is something that must be
surpassed; man is a bridge and not a goal."

32. • Superman is not inevitable, the result of some
determined process.
• It is more a myth, a goal for the will: "Superman
is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say:
Superman is to be the meaning of the earth."
Superman cannot come unless superior
individuals have the courage to transvalue all
values.

33. • For Nietzsche a recognition that God is Dead to his
own generation of men and women ought to come
as a Joyous Wisdom allowing individuals to lead less
guilt-ridden lives in a world that was no longer to be
seen as being inherently sinful.
• He considered that earthly lives could become more
joyful, meaningful and "healthy" when not lived
within narrow limits set by faith-related concerns for
the state of an individual's eternal soul.

34. • Nietzsche seems to be suggesting that the
acceptance that God is dead will also involve the
ending of long-established standards of morality
and of purpose.
• Without the former and accepted widely
standards society has to face up to the possible
emergence of a nihilistic situation where peoples
lives are not particularly constrained by faith-
based considerations of morality or particularly
guided by any faith-related sense of purpose.

35. • Given what he saw as the "unbelievability" of
the "God-hypothesis" Nietzsche himself
seemed to favour the creation of a new set of
values "faithful to the earth."
• This view perhaps being associable with the
possibility of the "Overman" or "Superman."

36. • "I teach you the overman. Man is something
that shall be overcome. What have you done
to overcome him? All beings so far have
created something beyond themselves; and do
you want to be the ebb of this great flood and
even go back to the beasts rather than
overcome man?
• What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a
painful embarrassment. And man shall be just
that for the overman: a laughingstock or a
painful embarrassment..."

37. NIHILISM- NOTHINGNESS
• Nihilism- belief that traditional
morals, values, ideas, etc. have no
worth or value
• The denial of existence as any basis
for knowledge or truth
• There is no meaning or purpose to
existence (nil).

38. MARTIN HEIDEGGER 1889-1976
• German philosopher known for his existential and
phenomenological explorations of the "question of
Being".
• Maintained that our way of questioning defines our
nature.
• As with Kierkegaard and Sartre, Heidegger believed the
existence of a physical body preceded the essence of
self.

39. • At some point in the development process, a
being becomes aware that it exists. This pivotal
point in time is when essence begins to form;
the individual decides to acknowledge and
embrace an essence at this moment.
• Heidegger is a controversial figure, largely for
his affiliation with Nazism prior to 1934, for
which he neither apologized nor expressed
regret, except in private when he called it "the
biggest stupidity of his life- this calls to question
Heidegger's thought and his connection to
National Socialism.

40. DASEIN SORGE- EXISTENCE", (AS IN "I
AM "PLEASED WITH MY EXISTENCE)
SORGE-CARE
Dasien Sorge was Heidegger's term for concern
and caring about the self and its existence.
When confronted with the world and other beings, the individual feels anxiety and dread. The world
appears complex and unsafe -- which it is.
As a result, the human being, Dasein, must care for itself as no one else can or
will.
•Concern, or Sorge, is the ability to care about the self, in relation to phenomena.
This belief that death defines life complements Søren Kierkegaard's thought that
God does not exist, but is real.
•Existence, or Existenz, represents knowing one is and is changing.
•Finally, moods, or Stimmungen, are reactions to other beings, further allowing one
to define the self.

41. FIVE MODES OF DASEIN
• The five modes of Dasein described by
Heidegger are: 1. authenticity, 2.
inauthenticity, 3. everydayness, 4.
averageness, and 5. publicness. Authentic
being represents a choice of self and
achievement. All other modes represent a
failing to embrace the individuality available
to all people.

42. -END-