Christianity, Nietzsche, and Existentialism: Key Concepts
Christian Conception of Human Beings
Christianity introduces a new way of understanding the world and human life. Central to this understanding is the idea that all individuals are equal and possess the same dignity. Furthermore, Christianity posits that humans are created as rational and free beings. A third key idea is that human life has a transcendent meaning. According to Christianity, humans are beings in need of salvation, which is defined as eternal life and belonging to a church community.
Nietzsche
It is vital for any philosophical theory that life is irreducible to any category external to itself. This doctrine found success in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Vitalist currents differ in their concept of life. Understanding life in the biological sense emphasizes the role of the body, instincts, the irrational, nature, strength, and the struggle for survival. Nietzsche’s vitalism falls into this group. Meanwhile, life in the biographical and historical sense sees life as a holistic view of human experience over time, both in its personal or biographical dimension and in its social or historical context. Vitalism is a doctrine contrary to rationalism, and its most important concepts are: temporality, history, experience, instinct, irrationality, embodiment, subjectivity, perspective, the value of the individual, change, illness, death, and finitude. Nietzsche’s philosophy, in its totality, can be understood as the most radical attempt to make life the Absolute. Life is a foundation outside itself, has value in itself, and is essentially understood in its biological, instinctive, and irrational aspects. Life is seen as both creation and destruction, a field of joy and pain. For this reason, Nietzsche believed he could measure the value of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics based on their denial or affirmation of life.
Existentialism
Existentialism incorporates personal experience into philosophical reflection. In contrast to the tradition that the philosopher must establish some distance between themselves as a thinking subject and the object of their thought, the existentialist passionately immerses themselves in what they observe, to the point that their philosophy can largely be considered autobiographical.
Perhaps the most prominent theme in existentialist philosophy is choice. According to most existentialists, the primary characteristic of human beings is the freedom to choose. They maintain that humans do not possess an immutable nature or essence, as do other animals or plants. Instead, each human being makes choices that shape their own nature. Existentialists argue that, as individuals are free to choose their own path, they must accept the risk and responsibility of following their commitment wherever it leads.
The Fundamental Themes of Existentialism
- Definition of existence as a mode of being proper to man.
- Individualism and particularism.
- Things do not exist, “are”. Human existence is the starting point for establishing the value and meaning of all reality.
- Using phenomenology as a method.
- To exist is to be in the world.
- Chance and choice. Man is open to possibility, with the freedom to become this or that.