Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

The Awakening of Existentialism: 蛻變:生命存在與昇華的實相(國際英文版:卷二)
The Awakening of Existentialism: 蛻變:生命存在與昇華的實相(國際英文版:卷二)
The Awakening of Existentialism: 蛻變:生命存在與昇華的實相(國際英文版:卷二)
Ebook697 pages9 hours

The Awakening of Existentialism: 蛻變:生命存在與昇華的實相(國際英文版:卷二)

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

 Nowadays, you and I are in the midst of AI, big data, multimedia, gossip, rumors, materialistic desires, and the great trend of the times.In the midst of the confusion and material satisfaction caused by complicated and novel things, have you ever thought about examining life with a reflective attitude and taking a careful and quiet look a

LanguageEnglish
PublisherEHGBooks
Release dateFeb 1, 2023
ISBN9781647842697
The Awakening of Existentialism: 蛻變:生命存在與昇華的實相(國際英文版:卷二)

Read more from Shan Tung Chang

Related to The Awakening of Existentialism

Titles in the series (7)

View More

Related ebooks

Body, Mind, & Spirit For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for The Awakening of Existentialism

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    The Awakening of Existentialism - Shan Tung Chang

    Table of Contents

    Table of Contents

    Preface

    Chapter 1. The awakening of existentialism-

    1. The Difference between Nihilism and Existentialism

    2. Existence precedes essence

    3. Autonomy

    (1) The origin of existentialism

    (2) The Concept of Existentialism

    Chapter 2: The Existential Philosophy of Life

    1. The discourses of the masters of existentialism

    I. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

    II. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

    III. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905~1980)

    IV. Martin Buber (1878-1965)

    V. Jaspers (Karl Jaspers, 1833-1969)

    VI. Nietzsche (1844-1900)

    2. Other important existentialist masters

    Chapter 3:Existential Guide Orientation is divided into four general categories.

    01. Inspirational psychoanalytic orientation.

    02. Behavioral Rational Guidance Orientation.

    03. Cognitive-rational guidance orientation.

    04. Humanistic psychology orientation.

    Chapter 4:Key concepts underlying existential guidance theory.

    Proposition 1: The capacity for self-awareness

    Proposition 2: Freedom and Responsibility

    1. Human beings enjoy several types of freedom, of which there are two.

    Proposition 3: The Pursuit of Self-identity and Interpersonal Relationships

    I. Identify yourself and understand yourself

    2. The courage to be

    3. The experience of aloneness

    4. The experience of relatedness

    5. Struggling with our identity

    Proposition 4: Seeking the meaning, purpose, value, and goal of life's existence.

    (1) Characteristics of the meaning of life

    (2) The meaninglessness of life

    (3) The difference between the meaning of life existence and life experience

    Proposition 5: Anxiety is a state of being

    01. How to deal with chronic anxiety

    02. Common causes of chronic anxiety

    03. Effects of chronic anxiety on physical and mental health

    Proposition 6: Awareness of death and non-existence

    1. Perspectives on death.

    2. The revelation of the meaning of death?

    Chapter 5. Existential Learning and Cognition【Groundhog Day】

    1. Today Temporarily Stopped

    2. Interpreting Existentialism's Philosophy of Life and Interest in Life.

    Proposition 1: The ability of self-awareness.

    Proposition 2: Freedom and responsibility.

    Proposition 3: Pursuit of Self-identity and Interpersonal Relationships

    Proposition 4: Seeking the meaning, purpose, value and goal of existence.

    Proposition 5: Anxiety is a phenomenon of life.

    Proposition 6: Awareness of death and ceasing to exist.

    3. The final conclusion:

    Chapter 6: Rational Guidance of Existentialism

    (1). The psychology of "nagging and complaining

    (2). Down with complaints Four ways to replenish positive energy

    (3). Ways to relieve stress

    (4). The harm of whining and complaining nagging

    (5) The psychological mechanism behind complaining

    (6) How to eliminate complaints?

    (7) Summary

    Chapter 7: Existentialism's Rational Guidance to Break Through Inertial Thinking

    1. Recognition of autonomous inertia thinking

    01. Identify the meaning of inertial thinking

    02. Identify the errors of biased cognition

    03. learn wisdom from old horses and ants

    04. Reverse inertia thinking four patterns

    05. Decentralization

    06. How to break, break, change, and avoid inertia

    07. Conclusion

    2. Decide your own life

    1. about the meaning of life existence

    2. Your own values guide your life

    3. decide your own life

    4. The meaning of self-determination in one's own life

    3. Awareness and perception of the meaning of life existence and "value of life

    4. Philosophical Thinking of Inertia and Existence

    5. I love the trial chain of clinging to inertial thinking

    Chapter 8: Wake up from confusion and confusion, and come to enlightenment.

    Preface

    All objects or phenomena that exist objectively in nature have a cause and a stage and process of emergence that may not be easily understood, or may even be obscure.

    For example, we do not experience the process of birth and death, which is not known, but only from the mouth of our parents, or even through others, based on known scientific facts and scientific principles.

    The truth of birth and death is known only through the speculations and explanations made by others based on known scientific facts and principles about the studied natural phenomena and their regularity, and the data are classified, summarized and analyzed in detail to obtain a tentative, but acceptable, narrative.

    Therefore, for all objects or phenomena that exist objectively in nature, it is necessary to search for the origin of all things and objects that exist objectively, to search from the root, to clarify the development of all objects and phenomena that exist objectively, and to try to anticipate all things and phenomena that exist objectively.

    This is no exception for philosophy, which uses analytical thinking to inquire and reflect on fundamental questions about life, knowledge, and values.

    In the study of Eastern and Western philosophy, ancient Greece is a substantial part of the Western study of universal and fundamental issues, including the fields of existence, knowledge, value, reason, mind, language, etc. The ancient Greek square philosophy, to the philosophy of the Academy, is the source of Western philosophy.

    Western philosophy originated in ancient Greece, and has undergone the stages of ancient Greek philosophy, the Academy of Philosophy, Christian philosophy, and modern philosophy, etc. During its long development process, Western philosophy is concerned with the study of universal, fundamental issues of the disciplines, including existence, knowledge, value, reason, and language.

    The philosophical problems in the fields of existence, knowledge, value, reason, mind, language, etc., have been constantly changing, and there have been two turns in the philosophy of the academy and modern philosophy.

    Modern Western philosophy focused on epistemology, while modern Western philosophy began to change to existentialism, which advocates a human-centered thinking that values human beings. At the same time, existentialism was added to the philosophy, emphasizing freedom, the value of individual decisions, and the meaning of life.

    Although the development of Western philosophy after ancient Greece was different, it still inherited the spirit of ancient Greek philosophy, which expressed concern for the reasons behind various phenomena, rational reasoning as the basis of thought, benevolence and fraternity as the basic value, and the pursuit of certainty.

    The pursuit of certainty, especially after the Industrial Revolution and the First and Second World Wars, has led to the hollowing out and floating of the human heart and to nihilism. The scholars of nihilism

    It may be seen as a label attached to various philosophies, or as a unique historical concept arising from nominalism, skepticism, and philosophical pessimism, or it may come from Christianity itself.

    Contemporary understandings of this idea derive in large part from Nietzsche's nihilistic crisis, from which two central concepts emerge: the destruction of higher values and the rejection of life-affirmation.

    However, earlier forms of nihilism may have been more selective in rejecting social, moral, political, and aesthetic ideas, beliefs or behaviors (folk customs) with symbolic or specific meanings inherited from a group, or society, that originated in a particular hegemony of the past.

    The term is sometimes used in conjunction with derangement to explain a general feeling of despair at the meaninglessness or arbitrariness of the existence of human principles and social institutions. Nihilism has also been described as being significant or constitutive of certain historical periods.

    Jean Baudrillard and others, for example, have described postmodernity as a nihilistic era or way of thinking. Similarly, some theologians and religious figures have suggested that many aspects of postmodernity and modernity represent nihilism through the denial of religious principles. However, nihilism is widely attributed to religious and non-religious views.

    Thus, there is a context in which everything happens, not to mention the currents of thought that converge from the human heart. The essence of wisdom that comes from the life experience of the spiral of a thinker's life

    The essence of the wisdom that a thinker's life spirals through life experiences must come from the constraints and refinements of the historical context and social atmosphere in which he or she is placed. Each wave of religious philosophy is largely a product of the time in which the thinker lived, with a grand and intolerant heart, attempting to answer the reflections of the general public on the lamentations of the temporal times.

    Chapter 1. The awakening of existentialism-

    1. The Difference between Nihilism and Existentialism

    We can even say in a serious way that an age is not defined by what it has, but by what it lacks in its existence, or by the lack of understanding of the true meaning of life itself.

    Philosophy, therefore, is only a way of inquiry, not a consolation for a specific, specialized body of knowledge. In terms of the issues it discusses, it can be broadly divided into four levels.

    Epistemology explores how people know the world, ontology (cosmology) explores the origin and nature of the world, existentialism discusses the process of human life and existence, and moralism (ethics) attempts to judge the goodness and wickedness of the human heart.

    image1.png

    In this paper, we will also follow this four-level structure to discuss the distinction between nihilism and existentialism.

    Epistemology: The study of the origin of knowledge, the process of development, the method of knowing, and the relationship between knowledge and practice. It can be divided into empiricism and rationalism. At the epistemological level, nihilism doubts or even denies the ability of human beings to know the world.

    It holds that man can only see the appearance of all the objects or phenomena that exist in nature, and that the appearance is unpredictable and ungraspable, and that the nature of all the things and objects that exist objectively cannot be known, and that absolute truth is unattainable.

    Husserl's phenomenology is an epistemological revolution in the history of philosophy. Phenomenology believes that human beings live in this world and perceive the combination of all things into a form, when the objective object is not presented in front of the subject.

    When the objective objects are not presented in front of the subject, the image of the objective objects maintained in the concept and the process of reproducing the image of the object in the concept are intuitive and evident, from which the values and truths we need can be recovered.

    Existentialism presupposes phenomenology and recognizes that one can know the world partially correctly at the phenomenal level. Scharthe inherited the concept of phenomenology, asserting that consciousness is the most fundamental being, the prerequisite for the manifestation of the world.

    This became the starting point of Sassa's existentialism. As the epistemology of existentialism, phenomenology is one of the two historical roots of existentialism (the other roots are the ideas of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche).

    Ontology: The study of the concepts of being, existence, generation, and reality. It includes the question of how to group entities into basic categories and which of these entities exist at the most fundamental level.

    Both agree that the origin and nature of the universe is unknowable, and that humans do not necessarily need to know it. The universe as a whole is a self-existent thing, indifferent to human destiny and without any ultimate goal or meaning. It rejects general or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning.

    Unlike the nihilistic position, which holds a different view that human values are baseless, that life has no meaning, that knowledge is impossible, or that certain entities do not exist or are meaningless

    03. Survivalism: Survivalist philosophy is the study of man's existence, how man survives in relation to both his existence and how he exists, i.e., in relation to the way he does it.

    In the end, the core of survival theory is the question of the way of being. The survivalist hierarchy is a philosophy of human life, and it is here that the most serious differences arise between nihilism and existentialism.

    In the face of the purposelessness of the universe and the inevitability of its ultimate annihilation, reason must infer the meaninglessness of human activity as a whole and the meaninglessness of individual life activities. This being the case, nihilism directly denies the meaning of life.

    It thinks that what one does is futile, and that it is futile to do it. Note that this is the result of purely rational deduction.

    Nietzsche, on the other hand, thought that pessimism corrupts the joy of life from a sensual point of view, and instead proposed the doctrine of strong will and superman, hoping to set up a goal for human beings to strive for.

    Existentialism takes up Nietzsche's banner and recognizes that life is objectively and macroscopically meaningless, but subjectively and microscopically, human beings can give themselves meaning.

    For example, in the real world of people's lives, we can intuitively see all kinds of existents, and for existents, in fact, they refer to the concrete form of existence.

    With the objective existence of all objects or phenomena in the natural world, the specific style of existence is different. For any objectively existing thing (phenomenon) and object

    The way of existence is relatively stable and certain, but is constantly changing.

    In a certain sense, the way of existence of all objects or phenomena that exist objectively in nature is the way of their movement and change.

    Thus, when we talk about the way of existence of living things, we are referring to the way of existence of living things themselves, the metabolic movement of living things themselves, which characterizes human survival activities.

    As different organisms have different needs, they adopt different ways of satisfying their needs, and thus, different organisms have their own ways of being.

    Obviously, what we mean here by the way of being of life itself is not the way of being of living things in the general sense, but the way of being of human beings. In general, the human way of being is not the way of being.

    Generally speaking, the human way of being refers to the way of living, which is the specific expression of existence under specific conditions.

    It focuses on the study of how people survive or how the style of survival is like. However, the existence of the universe is the way of being of the existence of life itself, and the existence of people is their actual process of living. 

    Individual beings exist in their own way of being, and how they express their lives is how they are.

    Therefore, what they are is consistent with the will of the way of being of their own being. It is consistent with the state of mind in which they consciously strive to realize a certain ideal or to achieve a certain purpose, and it is consistent with how they will.

    It can be seen that the activity of human consciousness and the way of being of human life existence itself are consistent with each other's understanding, and the former forms the core and foundation of the latter.

    In order to realize a certain ideal, or to achieve a certain purpose, and to consciously work for survival, human beings must carry out various activities to make their own survival needs satisfied.

    However, because human activity is subject to both action or thinking as the object of the target thing, and depends on the producer's own ability to determine the behavior of the main situation.

    These factors not only determine the ability to achieve a certain ideal, or to achieve a certain purpose, but also determine the existence of human life itself, the way of life, how to achieve a certain ideal, or to achieve a certain purpose.

    Therefore, the specific style adopted by different activities is different, which determines the way of survival is not the same.

    The survival of human is different from the survival of the way of being of the animal life existence itself, which is an instinctive activity, while the human activity is the way of being of the human life existence itself, which is to consciously and actively carry out the realization of a certain ideal, or to achieve a certain purpose.

    or to achieve a certain purpose. The reason why this survival activity of man is different from the survival activity of animals is that this survival activity of man is not only the conscious mental effort of man to realize a certain ideal or to achieve a certain purpose, but also the conscious effort of man to achieve a certain goal.

    From this, the way of being of the life existence of the universe itself is self-creative, and its psychological state of consciously working for the realization of a certain ideal, or the achievement of a certain purpose.

    While acting or thinking in accordance with the possibility of the target and the needs and abilities of the person himself, it also depends to a great extent on the life experience, the life experience, and the quenching of the person's life experience.

    It also depends, to a great extent, on the life experience, the survival experience, and the life beliefs that a person has lived and hardened, and that the meaning of human existence can be consciously awakened. It is for this reason that each person is obliged to find for himself the path of life existence and the meaning of his own life existence.

    04. Moralism: Moral philosophy or ethics expresses the purpose of human social life and practical activities in terms of good and evil, conscience, rights, obligations, codes of conduct, ideals and values of life, and other conceptual systems.

    It is one of the sciences that human beings use to improve and perfect themselves; its main issues are: (1) the origin of morality and its development; (2) the highest principles of morality; (3) the scope of morality and the norms of morality; (4) the choice of morality and the evaluation of morality; (5) the perspective of life and the ideal of morality; (6) moral education and moral cultivation, etc.

    In the development of ethics, in terms of the characteristics of the structure and research methods, it can be broadly divided into three categories: Descriptive Ethics, Analytical Ethics, and Normative Ethics.

    Descriptive ethics is the ethical doctrine of description and empirical proof of moral phenomena, the study of actual customs, habits, and forms of social discipline.

    It does not judge the value of human behavior, nor does it establish principles and standards, but only describes the phenomena. Therefore, even if we find facts of life that violate morality in society, we do not guide and correct them.

    Analytical ethics is a doctrine that analyzes and explores various ethical theories, concepts, methods of argumentation, etc. It does not deal with actual moral judgments such as lying is wrong, but rather analyzes and clarifies the meaning of concepts such as good and evil, justice, responsibility, values, and standards in such judgments.

    Analytical ethics attempts to analyze and explain moral concepts in logical and semantic terms, and does not advocate a historical or empirical approach to ethics, nor does it view ethics as a normative science.

    In a narrow sense, normative ethics is a doctrine that focuses on the study of moral normative systems and aims to explore the nature of human behavior, and takes the explanation and justification of moral principles and moral norms as the main task, presenting the basic characteristics of ethics as a normative science.

    In a broad sense, any ethical theory that uses theory to study and argue how human behavior and interrelationships should and should not be, and that proposes basic principles of behavior, belongs to normative ethics.

    It is in these two senses that many thinkers, beginning with the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, have regarded ethics as a normative science.

    In short, normative ethics deals with the proof and application of moral standards of right and wrong, good and evil, and pays close attention to moral norms and moral judgments that have a direct impact on human behavior, temperament, character, and lifestyle.

    Thus, nihilism holds that morality is humanly prescribed and that there is no absolute right or wrong. Existentialism, on the other hand, has little to say about morality and is careful in its expression, for example, Scharthe denies the existence of God or any other predefined rules.

    He rejects any rebellious elements in life because they reduce one's freedom of choice. If there is no such resistance, then the only problem a person has to solve is which path he chooses to take.

    Schartre suggests that the other is hell. This view may seem contradictory to the view that man has the freedom to choose, but in fact everyone is free to choose, but as to the consequences of that choice

    In the process of choosing, the biggest problem that people face is the choice of others, because everyone has the freedom to choose, but each person's freedom may affect the freedom of others.

    That is why it is said that others are hell. Obviously, in the face of the futility of life and the absurdity of the world, existentialists have a certain moral bias, and their tone is to celebrate resistance and oppose decadence.

    In general, if we focus on the meaning in life, we are surprised that the typical sources of meaning are so similar. The same things that make human life meaningful are true of all cultures around the world.

    There is indeed a universality to the human condition, and identifying what characteristics, personalities, and needs unite us has become very important in this globalized world, perhaps more important than ever before.

    But in identifying our basic human condition, we can also learn to be compassionate and tolerant and to understand each other better.

    If one looks more closely, one finds that we tend to find meaning in life in much the same way, regardless of cultural differences. While nihilism is a rational understanding of the objective world, existentialism is a subjective approach to human nature.

    Existentialism does not oppose the basic view of nihilism, but develops an active and aggressive attitude on top of the same view, allowing people to live with freedom of will and more autonomy, satisfying the pursuit of the meaning of life existence inherent in human nature, and giving people philosophical and psychological comfort.

    2. Existence precedes essence

    The Western philosophical tradition from Socrates to the beginning of the nineteenth century has a common feature, that is, the attempt to find objective truth in the subjective world. Therefore, most philosophers believe that essence is prior to existence.

    For example, when an artisan wants to set up and make a glazed work, he must first have the idea of the glazed work in his mind, and then make it according to this idea. The core of the idea is to consider what to express and how to express.

    To answer these two questions, the following four points must be addressed: the focus of expression, the angle of expression, the method of expression and the form of expression. In this case, the conception of the glazed work is the essence of the glazed work first.

    Therefore, in the traditional thinking, when making glazed works, the idea (essence) of the glazed works must precede the existence (glazed works). In other words, the objective viewpoint is used to search for the eternal truth or knowledge.

    Another traditional feature of Western philosophy is that the content of rational thinking is more important than the feelings of the sensual mind. The existentialist movement believes that the opposite should be true. For it is the feelings of the mind that are the most important thing in human existence.

    For example, existentialists reject Descartes' I think, therefore I am, which uses thinking as the basis for human existence (Descartes believed that thinking is the essence of human nature).

    Existentialism, however, holds that the consciousness of existence itself is the basis of existence, and that the so-called thinking comes only after existence.

    Existentialism, on the other hand, breaks with rationalism and empiricism and moves away from the objective world to seek the cognition of the subjective world of individual autonomy, which is a major revolution in thinking that subverts traditional ideologies.

    Therefore, in their eyes, there cannot be a common essence for all human beings, because in the objective world, God does not exist as a concrete fact before the eyes.

    In philosophical terms, this refers to the necessary essence of things, without which things cannot be established. He argues, for example, that all knowledge is actually obtained from a subjective point of view.

    When we look beyond the subjective to the objective knowledge, our knowledge system generates many ideological conflicts.

    For example, we cannot prove that the objective world really exists, and so on. Therefore, he believes that we must return to the subjective world to rebuild our knowledge of it. Otherwise, God would be the creator of man, and man would not exist before nature.

    "Man receives life without a choice, spends it under conditions of helplessness, and finally gives it back with an irresistible struggle.

    Therefore, man must struggle on his own in order to develop an active, collective social life, a certain nature of connection and existence for all objects or phenomena that exist objectively in the natural world, the interaction between things, the interaction between things, and the connection between man and man or man and things.

    No one can decide anything for him, no one can be born for him, no one can grow old for him, no one can be sick for him, and no one can die for him.

    Therefore, from the standpoint of existentialism, one's own sins can only be borne by oneself, and there is no room for salvation or grace. In addition to this, existence precedes nature means that man is completely independent of any predetermined moral principles.

    To paraphrase Schart, man is his own master, not God's slave, and he is to shift all responsibility from God's shoulders to his own.

    Nietzsche, who proclaimed that God is dead, furthermore pointed out: "Christianity, with its mercy, grace and salvation, has seriously corrupted the vitality of man and the tone of noble life; it has made man vulnerable and greatly damaged his dignity.

    When man renounces God, man will truly exist ......." Thus, the death of God is a way of saying that human beings can no longer believe in this cosmic order, because they cannot recognize whether it really exists or not.

    They had various religious, political, and philosophical orientations, but they also shared some of the same ideas and issues, such as opposition to rationalist and empirical dogma, and the primacy of the question of being over philosophical inquiry into knowledge.

    In their common approach to natural and social phenomena, they share empirical knowledge, experience, facts, laws, cognition, and tested hypotheses, and make logical inferences through generalizations and deductive reasoning, etc. The main concern is the nature of human beings, their relationship with the world, and the concept of "being.

    Existentialists believe that existence cannot be the subject of objective inquiry, but can only be revealed through one's reflection on one's own unique, concrete existence in time and space.

    Each self-awakened individual knows his own existence by his own experience and situation. Existentialists therefore pay special attention to the fundamental difference between human existence and the existence of things.

    In the case of Schart, for example, he distinguishes the following difference: existence for itself is partly human, partly ought to be human, and therefore one has to strive for it; existence in itself is all objects or phenomena that exist objectively in nature.

    It is emphasized that the existence of human beings lies in the autonomy of human initiative and creativity, while all objects or phenomena that exist objectively in nature do not act according to their own will and power, without interference from others; therefore, things are as they are, but human beings are not determined as things are.

    The earliest philosophies of existence date back to Basga in the seventeenth century and Kierkegaard in the nineteenth century, both of whom were devout Christians.

    But let's put aside Christian existential philosophy for the moment, because what really took off after World War II was the atheistic existentialism led by the French Saudis - the anti-Christian trend mentioned above.

    Looking at the history of the West, since the Renaissance, the development of thought has been basically a revolution against theocracy (or the Church).

    Economic development and the rise of the middle class were certainly a major factor, but the Church became a place where dirt and filth were also important incentives - papal inerrancy, heretical inquisition, atonement tickets, and other absurdities, as well as the hypocrisy and false theological concepts brought about by the unity of church and state, all made many intellectuals resent Christianity.

    The reflection of Kierkegaard tore away the false mask of the Church's hypocrisy and brought faith back to the direct level of personal trust and prayer with God, and many other critical reflections on Christianity became anti-Christian rhetoric. Why is this irrational thinking so deeply rooted in people's hearts?

    Apart from the stain of the Church's history (to this day, countless killings are in full swing in the name of God), it is true that human-centered thinking is more accessible to different cultures and societies than Christianity, and more contemporary to objective things or situations.

    Today, Jesus Christ has become a choice of faith rather than a necessity, and this may not be a better metamorphosis and sublimation of Christianity, which is centered on the love of God, than a deeper understanding of the substance of what is hidden within Jesus Christ.

    Although advocating atheistic existentialism is an absolute rejection of Christian values, it does not mean that there is no room for dialogue between Christians and existentialists.

    3. Autonomy

    First of all, existentialism is not a theory that proves the non-existence of God, it is only an attitude of life that emphasizes autonomy, an attitude of life that does not support [a given, passive] existence.

    The last sentence of his existentialist manifesto in Paris: The existentialist view is rather this, that in case there is a God, there is nothing to say. The trade-off between Christianity and existentialism is thus a value judgment similar to the conceptual beauty and ugliness", which does not involve the superconsciousness, the existence of God, or any other kind of discourse.

    In philosophy, the word autonomy has its roots in the Greek words self and rule or law, so the word autonomy means self-restraint or self-management. I. Berlin clearly explains the quality of autonomy: "I want my life to be determined by me, not by external factors.

    I want to be a subject, not an object ...... a doer, a decider, not a determined one; a self-director, not an external object, or an animal or slave playing the role of a human being ...... I want to be conscious, thinking, intentional and active. I want to be a conscious, thinking, intentional and active person who can take responsibility for my own choices and explain my decisions with my own ideas and purposes.

    It is clear that autonomy implies a resistance to being decided. And as Imm. Kant pointed out, freedom is the ability to resist being determined. The relationship between autonomy and freedom can be seen.

    It is true that the Bible, from the Old Testament to the New Testament, consistently states that God has absolute sovereignty over man. Man can only be a servant of God in front of his eyes, and he can only be pleasing to God by wagging his tail and begging for mercy as a man who is at the beck and call of man.

    Indeed, the Bible says that man is honored in the eyes of God, but man has no dignity before God, he is only an honored servant of God! Thus, in the eyes of existentialists, Christians are like camels at the end of their tether, poor and ridiculous.

    But on the other hand, the Virgin Mary was born in Ameira, Spain, in 115, the most beloved of her father's twelve children. Her personality is cheerful and outgoing, very adaptable to her environment. She was a bright and fanciful woman, skilled in women's work, domesticity and writing.

    She has a strong intuitive nature and is good at deep psychological analysis. At the age of 20, she joined the Carmelite Sisters of Avera. After making her vows, she was unable to pray for 18 years, which led to a crisis of vocation. At the age of 39, she felt the light of God and decided that the only way to solve her vocation problem was to step out of herself and entrust herself to the Lord.

    Later, she received confessions from Jesuit priests and received instruction in divine discipline, which led to an amazing progress in her prayer life. Her writings specialize in the mysterious phenomenon of the celestial encounter, and are pure and accessible, without any academic difficulties.

    In order to guide the beginners of spirituality, she wrote a book called The Way of All Virtues, which discusses the purpose, role and attitude of the spiritual life, the conditions of prayer, etc., and also discusses her inner spiritual life and the external reformation of the Order.

    According to the saint's own spiritual experience, she divides the prayer life into seven stages and discusses the transformation of the soul in each stage. She says that the first step in the spiritual life is to learn to know God who dwells within you and the spiritual gifts He has given you.

    Prayer is the pearl in the spiritual life that is worth selling everything for. It will lead people to the closest unity with Christ and produce incomparable spiritual fruit. Later she was involved in the reformation of the Carmelite Sisters.

    She also influenced St. John of the Cross to work on the reformation of the Carmelite religious order for men. She died in 1582. She was canonized in 162, and in 1970, together with the Virgin Mary Galina, she was beatified by Pope Paul VI.

    The courage and faith shown by many Christians in the face of national persecution in the Roman Empire during the time of Nero and Tumisan, and the selflessness and self-sacrifice of countless believers like Mother Teresa, are reminiscent of the quality of life in Greece.

    All these qualities of life are reminiscent of the sentiments of life expressed in the myth of Hiero. In the medieval Church, there were countless leaders who sinned against the Pope and died because of their fidelity to the Scriptures. These men, who willingly gave their lives as a price for their faith, clearly interpreted the meaning of strength and dignity.

    Thus, in the Christian faith, man's strength and dignity come from absolute obedience and dependence on God, while in the eyes of the existentialist, everything comes from absolute belief in oneself.

    Many people struggling for survival or glory can tell why one should rely and trust in oneself alone, and in fact, they have no other choice.

    But what is absolute obedience and dependence on God? As Fromm says, it is in man's nature to run away from freedom, so some Christians have turned absolute obedience to God into absolute obedience to the Church or the Pope

    (All Christians should submit to the leadership and pastoral care of the church, but not more to the pastor of the church than to God. In short, Christianity and existence are not the same.

    In short, the contradiction between Christianity and existentialism may be rooted in a different understanding of original sin. In fact, if the original sin in the Christian faith is

    In fact, if original sin in the Christian faith is contracted as a general legal or moral sin, grace, mercy, salvation, and even Christianity itself, will immediately evaporate. On the contrary, in complete obedience to God, we believe that one can still live with courage and dignity.

    In summary, autonomy encompasses both freedom and self. The content and mode of autonomy will also vary according to the degree of freedom that the self possesses.

    The main spirit of autonomy is to affirm the rational and authentic self. In developmental psychology, autonomy, also known as autonomy and self-regulation, refers to an individual's ability to make independent decisions based on his or her own principles or priorities.

    In social situations, individuals are subject to external group pressure, social norms, internal personal beliefs, or uncontrollable desires, and are unable to coordinate.

    The ability of an individual to think independently and decide what to do or not to do, based on his or her own understanding and without relying on the guidance of others, is called autonomy. Schart also points out that existence precedes nature, that is, the person constructs his or her nature as he or she develops and realizes himself or herself, rather than living in a predetermined nature or blueprint.

    Especially when faced with the ultimate situation of suffering, sin, and death in life, one has to care and re-examine one's situation.

    The being of a person is the ability of the self to make free decisions, and since there is no limit to what the self can form, by acting freely, the self is not limited by external phenomena or ignorant of the truth.

    Existentialists do not try to establish a unified and definite objective law and idea of truth based on experimental and logical reasoning, using a certain object as the scope of study.

    Roughly speaking, they emphasize the development of self-disciplined personality traits such as honesty, decisiveness, fidelity, creativity, and a sense of responsibility, so that each person can be a free agent, a chooser, and a responsible person.

    Therefore, it is important to understand the individuality of human beings, rather than treating them as if they existed in heaven and earth, and to involve them substantially in activities that help them to get out of trouble through actions, or to lead them to act collectively toward a certain goal, through actions that help them to get out of trouble.

    The arrangement according to the guiding outline and practical needs should help the individual to know his own existence, the basic difference between the self and things, the relationship between the self and others, and the situation and the final situation of the person.

    To exist is to choose oneself, and since man is what he makes of himself and nothing else, men have the responsibility and must choose, and must choose the principles by which they choose.

    Moral action, therefore, must be a matter of independent judgment, free choice, and practice, and not an appeal to any external authority. In moral education, existentialism thus emphasizes that individuals must choose or create moral laws for themselves, i.e., moral self-discipline.

    (1) The origin of existentialism

    01. The shock of the Industrial Revolution

    There is always a pattern to everything, let alone a trend of thought gathered from people's hearts. The thought spiral of a thinker's life, the essence of wisdom learned through life experience, must come from being in history.

    The spiral of thought in a thinker's life, the essence of wisdom learned through life experience, must come from the constraints and refinement of the historical context and social atmosphere in which they are placed. This means that the vast majority of religious philosophical trends are the product of the context in which the thinkers live, and that they all have a generous and intolerant heart, attempting to interpret the reflections of the general public in the face of the lamentations of the times.

    We can even say, with great emphasis, that an era is not defined by what it possesses, but by what it lacks in life, or by the lack of meaning it faces.

    From the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 18th century, when cities emerged, artisans, in order to resist the encroachment of the feudal power, to avoid competition from new runaway serfs, and to protect the common interests of the industry, established their own industry-based peer groups - Guilds - to create cottage industries.

    A community or a town could be a productive economic unit, where workers were traditionally skilled in a single skill and could support themselves with their labor by bartering, and could affirm the value and meaning of their own lives.

    But mechanical inventions, the result of rapid changes in industrialization, people are just a single repetitive production equipment in giant factories, installed a screw, do not have to and can not know their own value, even for the sake of increasing marginal benefits, sickness and quit, for the operation of the entire social matrix, this spiral will not change anything.

    In other words, the uniqueness of a problem is the same as the uniqueness of the torrent of the times. Therefore, to understand the core of existentialism, it is necessary to understand the context of its time and the problems it faces.

    In post-World War II Europe, the intellectual community was eager to rediscover, in the midst of the ruins, the promise that mankind had made in the Age of Enlightenment, namely, that mankind's struggle to survive through its own bare existence, rather than through God's direct access to the true, the good, and the beautiful.

    Under the brutal reality of World War II, Europeans found that a philosophical idea that did not fully subscribe to reason could best heal the wounds that filled their hearts and minds: existentialism.

    Existentialism is a wave of philosophical irrationalism that holds that the meaning of human existence cannot be answered by rational thought, emphasizing the individual, independence, and subjective experience.

    Nietzsche and Kierkegaard can be seen as its forerunners. It was very widespread in the 20th century and its philosophical ideas continued into the humanism that emerged in the 1960s. Jaspers and Heidegger, Paul Schart and Camus are its representatives.

    Its most prominent proposition is that the world has no ultimate goal; that people find themselves in a hidden, hostile world.

    that the world makes people miserable; that people choose, and cannot avoid choosing, their character, goals, and perspectives; that to give up not wanting to choose, or not wanting to choose at all, was a choice of the nihilists of the time, that is, to choose not to choose.

    The truth of the world and of our situation is most clearly reflected in the psychological unease of total ignorance or overwhelm, or in the momentary confusion of fear.

    These propositions have influenced literature (e.g., Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Camus), psychoanalysis (e.g., Binswanger and Rollo May), and theology (e.g., Paul Tendrils).

    Therefore, in order to explore the topic of existentialism, it is necessary to make a preliminary exploration of the historical origins of existentialism. Existentialism, as it is called, does not have a unifying banner. Its origin can be traced back to the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who first elevated the uniqueness of human existence to a higher level of rational recognition than "universal values.

    Before Kierkegaard, that is, in the era of G.W.F. Hegel's hegemony, trust in universal reason reached an unprecedented peak in the intellectual world, even to the point of believing that human beings had found the inevitable logic of history.

    However, if all human history and existence have a certain inevitability, which means that everything is predetermined, and even all individual actions are only a part and instrument of the historical process, then there is no longer any freedom for human beings, because whatever you want to do is already predetermined by history or a certain logic.

    02. Hegel's bankruptcy of historical perspective

    The Platonic idealism of the past two millennia has provoked scholars and thinkers to break out of the nest of this religious philosophy and replace abstract thinking with concrete life, fantasy with real life, and universal law with their own feelings.

    The emergence of Hegel and his theories brought Western philosophy to a new height. He created the largest system of objective idealism in the history of Western philosophy, and systematically expounded dialectic. His theories and doctrines have had a profound influence on modern philosophy and are known as Hegelianism.

    He started from Kant's concept of the rationality of the mind and its active role in experience, but opposed Kant's world beyond the world of experience and the world of 'things in themselves', and argued that the mind has the same basic rational structure as the world.

    The universals he considers are not abstract universals divorced from the particular, but universals that include the particular, i.e., concrete universals; nor are they abstract universals divorced from contradictions and oppositions, but universals that include them, i.e., oppositional universals.

    Together, this is his theory: the most real all-inclusive whole, which is the absolute spirit, is also the unity of opposites.

    Now we come back to the background of the emergence of Existentialism. Looking at the recent history, the cruelty of war destroyed human beings and swallowed everything, and the fate of human beings disappeared in an instant in the rain of smoke and bullets.

    Therefore, the 1850s and 1860s, when existentialism was at its peak, was a time when humanity was lost and confused, because it had just experienced the most brutal war in human history, the Second World War.

    The concentration camps were characterized by inhumane genocide, the separation of flesh and blood, the destruction of weapons of mass destruction, the frenzy of collective paranoia, arrogance and aggression, and the formation of an extreme nationalist regime or ideology.

    The insanity of those who practice this doctrine, who believe that governments should demand absolute submission to their authority and restrict individual freedom of thought, speech, and action, and concentrate power in a single leader or a small group, i.e., authority, in an age of absolute belief in Enlightenment reason, leads one to question.

    "Is all this really predestined? If history has its own logical trajectory, then this irrational logic is unacceptably cruel.

    (2) The Concept of Existentialism

    Originally, the term existentialism was often regarded as a historical and convenient name, as it refers back to many philosophers who have long since passed away. In fact, although the meaning of existentialism is generally thought to have originated with Kierkegaard, the first famous existentialist philosopher to adopt the term was Scharthe.

    As the famous scholar Frederic Copleston explains, Schartre asserts that the basic principle common to all 'existentialists' is that existence precedes essence. Philosopher Steven Crowell, on the other hand, finds it difficult to define existentialism because instead of saying existentialism, it is more difficult to say existentialism".

    Rather than being a complete philosophical system in itself, existentialism should be understood as a way to reject other systematic philosophies. Scharthe himself, in his 1945 lecture, described existentialism as "an attempt to depict all consequences from the position of faithful atheism.

    Although most people outside of Scandinavia, who believe that the name existentialism should have originated with Kierkegaard himself, it is more likely that Kierkegaard took inspiration (at least in describing his philosophy in terms of beingness) from the Norwegian poet and literary critic John Sebastian Verhoeven.

    One of the two sources of this theory is the Norwegian philosopher Erik Lundestad, who suggested that the Danish philosopher Fredrik Christian Sibbern had two dialogues with the Norwegian poet Verhoeven and Kierkegaard in 1841.

    In the first dialogue, the Norwegian poet Verhoeven, according to the data, is convinced that he came up with a term to cover a closely positive attitude to life, a thought he called 'existential'. This nominal term" was then relayed to Kierkegaard by the Danish philosopher Sibon.

    The second basis comes from the Norwegian historian Juni Slegstad, who very sincerely claims to be able to confirm that it was Kierkegaard himself who said that being was borrowed from Verhoeven.

    He strongly believes that Kierkegaard himself said: "The Hegelian method is not a study of the universe, of

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1