Existence Of The Human Being example essay topic

The philosophy of Naturalism is a world-view that is built on an unverifiable assumption. The philosophy of naturalism is the fundamental underpinning to the entire atheistic evolutionary world-view (Howard 109). This literary movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries visualized a type of fiction that examined human life with "objectivity and scientific inquiry". Naturalist typical views were either "biological determinism by hereditary instincts" or as "socioeconomic determinism by social and economic forces beyond their control".

The Naturalist normally ignored the higher levels in society but focused on the lower levels such as: poverty, alcoholism, prostitution, insanity, and disease. Naturalists believe that the entire "ontology" of all things exist in physical and material form (Howard 122). A naturalist applies all creative power necessary for complexity, apparent design, purposeful function, to physics alone (Pizer 56). So naturalists believe that nature created nature, matter created matter, and energy created energy.

And maybe some of these can be mixed and matched. So basically, everything that exists created itself in one way or another. Since naturalists believe in no reality outside of physicality, there was nothing or no one to assist or intervene in the creation of all things. It is upon this philosophical assumption that evolution was born, among many other pseudo-scientific theories (Howard 123). Naturalism is a philosophical doctrine that assumes the entire realm of nature to be a closed system of material causes and effects which cannot be influenced by anything from the "outside" (Pizer 58).

Naturalism does not deny the existence of God, but it does deny that a supernatural being could in influence natural events. Naturalists, or "materialists", have no way of scientifically or empirically disproving the existence of God, and therefore, they have no way of scientifically disproving that God may have been involved in the causes and effects of natural processes (Pizer 58). This belief that nature is a closed system that cannot be influenced from a supernatural being from the "outside", is simply a part of the naturalists' philosophical or religious creed (Pizer 59). The emergence of Naturalism does not mark a radical break with Realism, rather the new style is a logical extension of the old (Howard 110.) The term was invented by 'Emile Zola, partly because he was seeking for a striking platform from which to convince the reading public that it was getting something new and modern in his fiction. Zola has had an enormous impact on the American novel. Americans with their preference for action over thought and for realism were strong in his style of writing.

Realism was a nineteenth-century European literary movement that sought to portray familiar characters, situations, and settings in a realistic manner. This was done primarily by using an objective narrative point of view and through the buildup of accurate detail. The standard for success of any realistic work depends on how faithfully it transfers common experience into fictional forms. The realistic method may be altered or extended, as in stream of consciousness writing, to record highly subjective experience (McDowall, 98-99.) In music and art, Realism and Naturalism are both responses to Romanticism but are not really comparable to it in influence.

Realism is a recurrent theme in art which becomes a logical movement after 1850; and even then it struggles against the popularity of Romanticism. Impressionism can be seen as a development which grew out of Realism, but in its turn still had to battle the more popular Romanticism. Realism has never entirely changed the popular taste for Romantic art, as any number of hotel-room paintings, paperback book covers and calendars testify. It became just one more style among others. Realism had effects on fiction novels, settling them into a realistic mode, which is still dominant today. Aside from genre fiction such as fantasy and horror, we expect the ordinary novel today to be based in our own world, with recognizably familiar types of characters endowed with no supernatural powers, doing the sorts of things that ordinary people do every day.

It is easy to forget that this expectation is only a century and a half old, and that the great bulk of the world's fiction before departed in a wide variety of ways from this standard, which has been applied to film and television as well. Even comic strips now usually reflect daily life. Repeated revolts against this standard by various postmodernist and magical realist varieties of fiction have not dislodged the dominance of realism in fiction (McDowall 112). Romanticism, historians criticize, refers to a European intellectual and artistic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that sought greater freedom of personal expression than that allowed by the strict rules of literary form and logic of the eighteenth-century neoclassicists.

The Romantics preferred emotional and imaginative expression to rational analysis. They considered the individual to be at the center of all experience and so placed him or her at the center of their art. The Romantics believed that the creative imagination reveals nobler truths - unique feelings and attitudes - than those that could be discovered by logic or by scientific examination. Both the natural world and the state of childhood were important sources for revelations of "eternal truths."Romanticism" is also used as a general term to refer to a type of sensibility found in all periods of literary history and usually considered to be in opposition to the principles of classicism. In this sense, Romanticism signifies any work or philosophy in which the exotic or dreamlike figure strongly, or that is devoted to individualistic expression, self-analysis, or a pursuit of a higher realm of knowledge than can be discovered by human reason (Courthion 163-165).

Some of the earliest stirrings of the Romantic movement are conventionally traced back to the mid-18th-century interest in folklore which arose in Germany. These activities set the tone for one aspect of Romanticism: the belief that products of the uncultivated popular imagination could equal or even surpass those of the educated court poets and composers who had previously monopolized the attentions of scholars and connoisseurs. (Hepworth 76) Existentialism is the title of the set of philosophical ideals that emphasizes the existence of the human being, the lack of meaning and purpose in life, and the solitude of human existence. Existentialism maintains existence precedes essence: This implies that the human being has no essence, no essential self, and is no more that what he is.

He is only the sum of life is so far he has created and achieved for himself. Existentialism acquires its name from insisting that existence precedes essence (Warnock 189). There are two major strains of existentialist thought: atheistic and Christian. Followers of atheistic existentialism believe that the individual is alone in a godless universe and that the basic human condition is one of suffering and loneliness. Nevertheless, individuals can create their own characters through the exercise of free will.

The atheistic strain is popularly associated with the works of Jean-Paul Sartre. The Christian existentialists believe that only in God may people find freedom from life's suffering. The two strains hold certain beliefs in common: that existence cannot be fully understood or described through empirical effort; that anguish is a universal element of life; that individuals must bear responsibility for their actions; and that there is no common standard of behavior or perception for religious and ethical matters (Nickels). Existentialist thinkers are of the view that the metaphysical explanation of existence as given by the traditional schools of philosophy fails to produce satisfactory results (Copleston 100-101). They also believe that the problem ought to take precedence in all philosophical inquiries. Existentialist are opposed to the view laws explaining human freedom and activity therefore maintaining that existence is the first and central problem...

Existentialism as a contemporary philosophical trend reached the zenith of its popularity in the years following the war, the time when Europe was in a despairing mood, perhaps not without the hope of social reconstruction but pessimistic and morbid enough to accept the existentialist outlook of the lack of design and intention in the universe and the nausea of human existence and its frustration (Warnock 193). The most important philosopher of existentialist was the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), recognized as the most powerful "intellectual" force in France in the mid-20th century. The basic problem of existentialism is concerned with ontology, the study of being. The human being's existence is the first and basic fact; the human being has no essence that comes before his existence.

The human being as a being is nothing. This nothingness and the non-existence of an essence is the central source of the freedom the human being faces in each and every moment. The human being has liberty in view of his situation, in decisions which makes himself and sets himself to solves his problems and live in the world. Existentialism stresses the risk, the void ness of human reality and admits that the human being is thrown into the world, the world in which pain, frustration, sickness, contempt, malaise and death dominates. It was during the Second World War, when Europe found itself in a crisis and faced with death and destruction, the existentialist movement began to flourish (Warnock 192-193). Basically existence is of two types: authentic and inauthentic forms of existence.

Authentic existence is the being-for-itself, by which the human being moves away from the burden of responsibility. Existentialist thinkers begin from the human situation in the world; the condition of despair, the modes of existence, the human being's tendency to avoid authentic existence, his relation to things, his own body, and to other beings, with whom he cannot come into genuine communication, and the sufferings of life (Warnock 195). Starting from the study of being, each existentialist thinker originates their own doctrines, with their own emphasis on particular aspects. Very often their viewpoints are conflicting and sometimes contradictory; but this philosophical attitude can be described as the existentialist movement, which stresses upon the "being" of the human being (Nickels)... Existentialists seem to imply that the human beings are free to do whatever they please. This is surely not the case, he is the outcome of his own situation.

His being in the world is something he had no choice over (Warnock 195). Sartre argues that the freedom not to be free is not freedom. But only rarely in the world does the human being choose the negative course of non-being through suicide... The Surrealist movement was mainly a reaction to the massive destruction of World War I. The movement grew after World War I and lasted until late into the 60's, even today many of its effects can be felt.

The name for the movement really represented its intent, to create a state through art that mixes the real and the surreal until one can not distinguish between the two. The movement began with Andr'e Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism, where he officially broke with the Dadaists in defining Surrealism as, "SURREALISM n. Pure physical automatism, which has the aim of expressing, whether verbally, in writing, or in some other manner, the actual functioning of thought freed from any control of the reason and any aesthetic or moral preoccupation. (Copleston 168) " The Surrealist, especially Breton, were very influenced by Freud's theories and research in their quest to reveal the unconscious. For a work of art to be considered surrealist it must somehow confuse the states of dreaming and reality and place ordinary objects in an unusual circumstance in order to shock the observer. Throughout the forty year long life span of the Surrealist movement the understanding of the relationship between dream and reality was an essential philosophic goal of the Surrealists (Nickels)...

Surrealism derived its name from the fusion of the two states, dream and reality. Breton believed for Surrealism to take place there needs to a be a confusion about where the boarder between these states is. Imagination and inspiration become essential concepts of the Surrealist movement in a direct rejection of the logic and reason that was predominate during the nineteenth century (Nickels)... Freud's theory of phycoanalysis was based on the idea that imagination lead to the truth of repressed unconscious thoughts; the Surrealist were searching for a truth of one's internal desires and passions through their practice of automatic writing as an outlet for their unconscious (Nickels). This lead to a revolution in art. If art was the creative energy found in one's unconscious, then since everyone has an unconscious anyone could be an artist.

This was probably the first time that art became open to everyone and not just an elitist group of individuals. The Surrealists used different methods to heighten their awareness of the unconscious; they participated in seances, and researched unconscious dreams. The ideal in Surrealist methods was to reach a point where the line between dream and reality, imagination and truth was permanently erased, they searched indeed for a point where the two opposites ceased to be contradictory (Copleston 198). A state of such confusion is often reached by those society believes to be crazy, so inherent in Surrealism is an adoration of madness. If thought about in terms of the ideals of Surrealists this state of mind as an ideal makes sense. Madness brought a different perspective, real hallucinations, and poetic ideas: there is often a juxtaposition of obscure objects that a sane person would never think of.

There is much question of the sanity of many Surrealist artists, not because of their work but due to their obsessions with suicide and bouts of depression. This perspective could also be applied to the later philosophy of Existentialism. Madness became a central theme for the Surrealists in their attempt to reach a combination of reality and imagination (Copleston 190-191). The idea of imagery was used very powerfully in all Surrealist forms of art. Time became an important theme of the Surrealists in order to create the desired image. An essential component to understanding Surrealist work is the idea that the mind makes subtle connections between unrelated objects (Nickels).

The use of imagery for this objective was necessary to evoke the sentiment the artists desired. The use of imagery to create a feeling in the observer was a main aspect of Surrealism. It was difficult for the Surrealists to find that point where reality fades into imagination, but they managed to capture it in many forms; painting, writing, and others. The influence of Freud is seen predominately in the Surrealist philosophy and objectives during the beginning of the Surrealist movement. An additional impression Freud helped to create on the Surrealist movement is the understanding of the benefits of insanity and madness for arts creation (Nickels).

Theater of the Absurd was a post-World War II dramatic trend characterized by radical theatrical innovations. In works influenced by the Theater of the absurd, nontraditional, sometimes grotesque characterizations, plots, and stage sets reveal a meaningless universe in which human values are irrelevant (Lagasse 78) Existentialist themes of estrangement, absurdity, and futility link many of the works of this movement... Absurdism, is a term applied to a particular type of realistic drama which has absorbed theater audiences and critics for the past three decades. One specific area, appropriately labeled "Theatre of the Absurd" by the American critic Martin Esslin in the 1960's, offers its audience an existentialist point of view of the outside world and forces them to consider the meaning of their existence in a world where there appears to be no true order or meaning (Lagasse 79)... Before discussing the ways in which the Theatre of the Absurd has evolved, it is beneficial to understand where and how it developed. Its rules are fairly simple: 1.) There is often no real story line; instead there is a series of "free floating images" which influence the way in which an audience interprets a play.

2.) There is a focus on the incomprehensibility of the world, or an attempt to rationalize an irrational, disorderly world. 3.) Language acts as a barrier to communication, which in turn isolates the individual even more, thus making speech almost futile (Lagasse 80). In other words, absurdist drama creates an environment where people are isolated, clown-like characters blundering their way through life because they don't know what else to do. Oftentimes, characters stay together simply because they are afraid to be alone in such an incomprehensible world (Lagasse 82)... The moment we realize that we may have to live without any final truths the situation changes; we may have to readjust ourselves to living with less exulted aims and by doing so become more humble, more receptive, less exposed to violent disappointments and crises of conscious - and therefore in the last resort happier and better adjusted people, simply because we then live in closer accord with reality (Nickels). Therefore, the goal of absurdist drama is not solely to depress audiences with negativity, but an attempt to bring them closer to reality and help them understand their own "meaning" in life, whatever that may be.

Samuel Beckett's understanding of this philosophy best characterizes how we should perceive our existence as he says, "Nothing is more real than Nothing" (Lagasse 82). Building on these components of absurdism, we can now proceed to analyze the way in which absurdist drama has evolved. The two dramatists who best reveal this process of evolution are Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard. Using Beckett as a starting point and Stoppard as an ending point, one gets a small sense of the ways in which absurdist theater has changed and keeps changing. In comparing and contrasting these two dramatists' works, specifically changes in structure and metaphorical intent, the evolution of absurdism ventures beyond its original borders into a new and distinct realistic theater. All of these plays metaphorically address the issue of "ending" or "dying" and through such a focus offer us a clear example of one way in which absurdism has evolved (Lagasse 81)...

The underpinnings of the Theatre of the Absurd are derived from these existentialist ideas that led to Absurdism. Absurdism teaches, that which cannot be justified in a rational manner is absurd. Since religion requires a "leap of faith" it is absurd, just as life itself is absurd (Lagasse 89) The Theater of the Absurd refers to tendencies in dramatic literature that emerged in Paris during the late 1940's and early '50's. A term coined by the critic Martin Esslin, 'The Theatre of the Absurd' refers to the work of a number of playwrights, mostly written in the 1950's and 1960's (Nickels). Its roots lie in an essay by the French philosopher Albert Camus. He first defined the human situation as basically meaningless and absurd.

Its meaning is indecipherable and his place within it is without purpose. He is bewildered, troubled and obscurely threatened. Absurdism is more than just a movement it is an idea, which is commonly associated with existentialism. Beginning in the 19th century, mainly through the influence of Soren Kierkegaard, religion was often described as absurd because it could not be justified on rational principles; rather, it was considered as based on what Kierkegaard called "a leap of faith" (Nickels). No doubt that the term 'theater of the absurd' derives from the philosophical use of the word absurd by such existentialist thinkers as Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, but far from concerning itself with the rather nerve straining philosophical studies of abstractions it encompasses in its domain hard and concrete entities of life such as pain, misery, tears, fears, and the never ending desire of man to seek the answers to all the questions; Camus, particularly, argued that humanity had to resign itself to recognizing that a fully satisfying rational explanation of the universe was beyond its reach; in that sense, the world must ultimately be seen as absurd (Nickels).

The Theatre of the Absurd diverted human interest from nature and directed it at man and his thinking. This interest in a subject, individual human thinking, and the individual's situation relates with the philosophy of existentialism, which is focused on the subjective, individual's experience in a concrete fatal situation (Lagasse 83). While the philosophers deal with the absurdity of human existence rationally, using philosophical language; the absurd dramatists express it in concrete dramatic pictures. They offer us the opportunity to not only think about absurdity, but to feel it and experience it simultaneously with the actors and the author, who transforms his mind into a symbolic dramatic language (Lagasse 84). Existentialism Oxford New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Questia Media America, Inc. web Publication Information: Publication Title: Existentialism.

Contributors: Mary A. Warnock - author. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: Oxford, England. Page Number: . Publication Year: 1970. CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY -i- Questia Media America, Inc. web Publication Information: Publication Title: Contemporary Philosophy: Studies of Logical Positivism and Existentialism.

Contributors: Frederick Copleston - author. Publisher: Burns and Oates. Place of Publication: London. Page Number: i. Publication Year: 1956.

REALISM A STUDY IN ART AND THOUGHT BY ARTHUR McDOWALL FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE LONDON CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD 1918 - - Questia Media America, Inc. web Publication Information: Publication Title: Realism: A Study in Art and Thought. Contributors: Arthur McDowall - author. Publisher: Constable and Company Ltd... Page Number: . Publication Year: 1918.

THE RISE OF ROMANTICISM -i- Questia Media America, Inc. web Publication Information: Publication Title: The Rise of Romanticism: Essential Texts. Contributors: Brian Hepworth - author. Publisher: Carcanet New Press. Place of Publication: Manchester. Page Number: i. Publication Year: 1978.

Romanticism SKIRA -3- Questia Media America, Inc. web Publication Information: Publication Title: Romanticism. Contributors: Pierre Courthion - author. Publisher: Skira. Place of Publication: Geneva. Page Number: 3. Publication Year: 1961.

Help Form and History in American Literary Naturalism The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill and London - - Questia Media America, Inc. web Publication Information: Publication Title: Form and History in American Literary Naturalism. Contributors: June Howard - author. Publisher: University of North Carolina Press. Place of Publication: Chapel Hill, NC. Page Number: . Publication Year: 1985.