Quotes/Ideas of Existentialism Flashcards
In Albert Camus’ The Stranger, what does Meursault hope he is met with at the guillotine?
I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate
What are the three metaphysical stages of life according to Kierkegaard?
Aesthetic, ethical, religious
According to Kierkegaard, what is required to reach the final stage of existence? (The religious stage)
Teleological suspension of the ethical
In Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, what notion does Ivan present that fits with his early nihilism?
Everything is permissible in the absence of god
In Dostoevsky’s novel The Brother’s Karamazov, the grand inquisitor is angry at Jesus for turning down the three things offered to him in the desert by the devil. What are these three things?
Jesus could have had every stone turned to bread, ending hunger, if he had forsaken god.
Jesus could have lead everyone to god with certainty if Jesus would have jumped off the tower and survived.
Jesus could have united all people if he accepted the invitation of the devil to rule all of humanity under one empire.
In Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, what does Ivan’s grand inquisitor believe Jesus foolishly gave humanity?
Free will
In Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, what proves to Ivan that this world created by God is no good and compelled him “to return his ticket”?
The suffering of children. This leads Ivan to ask Alyosha whether the suffering of one child is worth eternal harmony, to which Alyosha replies no.
In the Myth of Sisyphus, what does Camus assert about the world’s irrationality and absurdity?
The world is only irrational, it requires the human “wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart” for the absurd to appear. The absurd depends just as much on man as on the world
How does Camus define the absurd in the Myth of Sisyphus?
From the simplest to the most complex, the magnitude of the absurdity will be in direct ratio to the distance between the two terms of my comparison
As stated in the Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, what dichotomy presents itself when one is lucidly aware of the absurd?
Suicide and Philosophical Suicide
According to Sartre, what is the base, core tenant of existentialism?
That existence preceded essence
What is the base belief of Atheistic Existentialism?
“…man first exists: he materializes in the world, encounters himself, and only afterwards defines himself. If man as existentialists conceive of him cannot be defined, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself…man is nothing other than what he makes of himself.”
