Existentialism

Question 1

‘god was as good as dead’ (2)

Answer 1

• Friedrich Nietzsche

- “god is dead”

Question 2

dreivative ‘god was dead’ (2)

Answer 2

• Jean-Paul Satre

- Albert Camus

Question 3

J-P (6)

Answer 3

• Atheist
• Humanity feels alien in a world that has no meaning
• creates Despair, futility, boredom and absurdity
• man is responsible for everything he does
• to deny freedom is deny reality
• we have labelled immoral actions
• authenticity (an individual constructs his or her reality and must accept the consequences thereof)

Question 4

J-P Philosophy (3)

Answer 4

• is optimistic if understood properly
• practical and ontological freedom
• freedom to do and freedom to think

Question 5

J-P famous saying

Answer 5

• existence precedes essence

- small truths and small fictions that create temporary meaning

Question 6

J-P existentialism (3)

Answer 6

• socialist and democratic
• during European Fascism
• we are all equal (bad faith was created to empower some and subjugate others)

Question 7

Albert (4)

Answer 7

• french writer, dramatist and philosopher
• absurd (expresses the gulf between one’s aspirations and the meaningless existence)
• modern world is absurd and makes no sense (post-World War 2 and atomic bomb)
• you can be happy even when there is no meaning

Question 8

Albert’s Book (2)

Answer 8

• The Myth of Sisyphus

- he did not have practical freedom (pushing the boulder) he however had ontological freedom and could still be happy.

Question 9

Theatre of the absurd (5)

Answer 9

• Absurdist playwrights aims were to show the lack of higher meaning in life (attempting to disrupt complacency)
• no fixed meaning, no fixed rules.
• Sartre and Camus had a political agenda of disrupting the middle-classes
• can be at times ‘hyper-realism’ because it can present situations that are absolutely trivial.
• the laughter come about as a defence mechanism because of seeing themselves ‘lampooned’ on stage

Question 10

modernism

Answer 10

• tries to focus on the now
• tells exactly what is happening whether it is appropriate
• it is stripping away everything, and expresses it as exact in time
• expressionism (death of a salesman) breaks down the walls of realism