Essay: Existentialism

Jean-Paul Sartre and Soren Kierkegaard are two widely known existentialists who agree on many of the main principles of existentialism, but also disagree on several of the finer details. For example, they both agree that what matters most is action. What a person actually does is what defines the person, and the process of defining one’s self never ceases. By comparing and contrasting how they portray the emotion of anguish – specifically, in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and Sartre’s The Humanism of Existentialism ‘ we see another example of the two agreeing on some principles while disagreeing on others.
First, I will examine what Sartre means by anguish. It is important to understand that Sartre believes man is ‘condemned to be free.’ We are abandoned into this world, meaning we are not here by choice, and once in this world, we have a level of freedom that impossible to escape. Having this absolute freedom means that every action we take is the result of a conscious choice from many possibilities. We are free to choose whatever we want, and any situation that involves making a choice has countless options. We cannot deny this fact, as doing so would be in ‘bad faith’. The next critical point to understand is that since our actions define who we are, man is responsible for himself. But, as Sartre explains, we are not only fully responsible for ourselves, but we are also responsible for every other human being and for mankind as a whole. In his own words: ‘Therefore, I am responsible for myself and for everyone else. I am creating a certain image of man of my own choosing. In choosing myself, I choose man.’ (EE, p. 37) All of this information is tied together to fashion Sartre’s concept of anguish. That we have total freedom to act in any way we choose, knowing that there are no constraints or pre-defined values that we must adhere to, paired with the enormous responsibility of knowing our choice impacts all humanity is what causes one to be in anguish. Man is in anguish because he ‘can not help escape the feeling of his total and deep responsibility.’ (EE, p. 38) He goes on describe how anguish is not an emotion that separates man from action like a curtain, but rather it is part of action itself. The example of the military leader consciously choosing a course of action knowing that he is responsible for the death of his own men, the death of his enemies, and for other forms of destruction. In this example, anguish is defined by the direct responsibility to the other men that the action involves. If one attempts to deny his total freedom or responsibility to all men (in order to avoid the emotion of anguish), he is acting in bad faith. Thus, anguish is a direct result of acknowledging that we are condemned to be free, accepting the implications of such, knowing that we cannot escape our obligation to choose, and taking full responsibility for our actions and their consequences. While anguish is thought of by most as a negative emotion worth avoiding, Sartre believes that being in anguish is being in good faith. This emotion reveals positives to the person who is feeling it. For example, those in anguish are only in anguish because they’ve risen to a new level of self-awareness. They have realized and now understand how entirely free they are in this world. It also reveals that there are no pre-existing values or moral codes, and what you freely choose reflects what you value. In short, anguish discloses to man that he is the sole authority of his life. This is a reflection on one’s own consciousness during which he discovers himself.
In response to the second part of the prompt, I believe that Sartre and Kierkegaard (for simplicity, I’ll use Kierkegaard in place of the pseudonym Silentio) use the concept of anguish in very similar ways, but there are some key differences. For instance, Kierkegaard’s basic concept of anguish is the same as Sartre’s in that man feels anguish when acting because there are countless possibilities but he is obligated to choose just one. At the same time, he must take full responsibility for the outcome of the action he chooses. However, Kierkegaard’s concept of anguish does have a few major differences. He was a Christian existentialist, so he incorporated the idea of God into man’s absolute freedom. Anguish in this sense involves acting in the face of total uncertainty and placing complete, unwavering faith in God. Kierkegaard describes this as making a ‘leap of faith’, or ‘believing on the strength of the absurd.’ (FT, p. 49) In Fear and Trembling, Abraham finds himself in a situation where (he believes) God ordered him to kill his son Isaac. In one sense, he feels anguish because he cannot be certain that it was actually God or a messenger that spoke to him. He is struck by anguish because he realizes that he is totally free, and with this awesome freedom he has the ability to do horrendous evil, such as murdering his own son. Again, we see the correlation between liberating freedom and horrifying uncertainty, as they work in hand-in-hand to create anguish. Despite the anguish, Abraham had total faith in God, which Kierkegaard described as a teleological suspension of the ethical. He truly had faith that this utterly unethical act of murdering Isaac would have a positive outcome. However, he has no way of knowing what the outcome will actually be – only God knows what will happen in the end. So Abraham proceeds with the genuine intent of murdering his son, but at the same time he believes that God will keep Isaac alive. By such strong faith in the face of extreme anguish and anxiety, Abraham received rather than lost: ‘But it takes a paradoxical and humble courage to grasp the whole realm by virtue of the absurd, and this is the courage by faith. By faith Abraham did not renounce Isaac, but by faith Abraham received Isaac.’ (FT, p. 49) This quote shows that, like Sartre, Kierkegaard believed that the feeling of anguish is more of a positive than a negative. Placing such concrete faith in God in an extreme situation filled with anguish seems to solidify one’s ‘absolute relation to the absolute.’ If one feels anguish, that means he is trying to perfect his relationship with God, which is the ultimate goal of a Christian. Also, similar to Sartre’s philosophy, anguish reveals to a person that he is totally free and in control of his own life, with the power to define himself through his actions. Being in anguish elevates man to a higher level of self-conscious reflection, and this leads him to understand his ‘self’ as being separate from this world in the sense that he is not an object, but something higher.
I will conclude by making clear how the two philosophers differed in terms of defining anguish. Sartre claims that anguish is a result of our realization that we are obligated to choose from limitless possibilities without any knowledge of what the consequences will be. Yet, we must take full responsibility for the consequences knowing that whatever we choose impacts not just ourselves individually, but all of humanity. For Kierkegaard, anguish results from freely choosing in the face of uncertainty, accepting the risk and responsibilities of our actions, and having faith in God that things will work out for the better.