existential :: essays research papers

      existential philosophy is non a method but a vision, a perceptual resolving of the human world into raw essentials. Against this we have an opposing tendency " tender kind cannot bear very much reality."      I want to saying at existentialism under two categories though it belongs with neither of them. It belongs properly, maybe, in the field of religion, but it is to be met with in philosophy and psychology. Existentialism is both philosophy in a special sense and a valency. This doesnt sooner coincide with theory and practice but it may be a helpful division into two parts.      Wittgenstein remarked that the purpose of philosophy was to show "the vaporize the way out of the fly-bottle." pacegh not a fashionable comment this should satisfy the existentialist that we deal with problems upon whose issue much depends. Totally unfashionable would be the definition given by Marcus Aurelius To be a philosopher is to occur unsullied and unscathed the divine spirit within him. This serves to reposeore a balance, in favour of the historic concerns of the search for wisdom, after the twentieth centurys find of linguistic criticism.      Those who know Bertrand Russells History of Western Philosophy, or the shorter Wisdom of the West, entrust remember his great difficulty in focusing on (French) Existentialism as a form of philosophy at all.      Existentialism is not in itself any kind of goal of thought, or final end point it is more like a station on the way, or perhaps a station waiting room. It does not seem to be a position on which one takes a stand, affording a basis for genius with others of like persuasion. It is no vehicle for agreement. On the contrary, one may be locked in opposition, as for example the Christian existentialist with the Marxist existentialist. permit us say that existentialism is a set of answers to certa in philosophic problems when these are understood as the problems you must live with whether you are a philosopher or not. These are not conceptual problems but problems of living.      It takes me perhaps fractional of my life to reach the conclusion I am alive. Most of the rest of my life passes before I recognize I shall die. There is similarly the problem of reaching a basis for a relationship to "Thou" - to the other person. Such questions do not elicit answers from people. The answers lie in what the questions do to people.