Existentialism: Exploring the Ideas of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus

This essay provides an overview of existentialism, exploring the philosophical viewpoints of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Hannah Arendt. It examines Sartre's perspective on the meaninglessness of life and the significance of death, Beauvoir's critique of patriarchal structures and the importance of women's emancipation, and Camus's concept of the absurd human life. The essay also delves into Arendt's ideas about human action, the dangers of irrational fear, and the banality of evil. The essay references key works and provides context for understanding the core tenets of existentialist thought.

Running head: EXISTENTIALISM
EXISTENTIALISM
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EXISTENTIALISM
1.) According to Satre existentialism denotes that life has no meaning and death is the
ultimate truth. Life and death is a matter of chance rather than a matter of choice. Human
life exemplifies misery and therefore, human existence is absurd (Booker 2015).
According to Beauvoir, there is no true human nature and human freedom is a farce idea.
She makes a distinction between biological gender and culturally constructed gender
roles. She is highly critical of the laws, rules, regulations and customs that construct
women as inferior and juxtaposes them to men in terms of their abilities. Her feminist
principles are woven around the criticism of patriarchy and the structures that impede the
lives of women. She is strongly of the view that women should enjoy freedom in
equivalence to men. She reveals the conspiracy of patriarchal structure that have denied
women equal opportunities, curbed their mobility, denied them access to health;
legitimized violence committed on women and robbed them of their agency. She
espoused that needs to be the promotion of women’s emancipation rather than the
acceptance of violence and discrimination by women. Camus’s existentialist philosophy
ensues that the human life is absurd and this absurd human life is a consequence of
conflict. He argues that there is a conflict between the desires of human beings and the
rationality that is imparted through the various social institutions. In other words, there is
a conflict between our expectation and reality.
2.) According to German philosopher, Arendt human action is promising as it has the
potential to create something new. It is human action that defines human nature. Violence
according to Arendt is irrational and fear is irrational. It is this irrational fear that
provokes a person to perpetrate mass violence that can wipe out a population. The
ideologies of racism and imperialism leads to a totalitarian society. The key feature of the
totalitarian regime is the spread of terror among the people. The term banality of evil as
defined by Arendt refers to the human and bestial qualities that present in human beings
(Shafritz and Borick 2015). According to this, normal human beings who perform
violence with bureaucratic diligence commit brutal crimes.

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Reference
Booker, M.K., 2015. Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the key French intellectual figures of the 20th
century. Associated primarily with existentialism but also with phenomenology and later with
Marxism, Sartre’s brilliance is evident not only in his philosophical writings but also in his
novels, drama, political essays, literary criticism, biographies, and autobiography. Major literary
works include the novel Nausea (La Nausée, 1938). Literature and Politics Today, p.282.
Shafritz, J.M. and Borick, C.P., 2015. The Gas Chamber of Philadelphia: How a 1977 Incident at
Independence Mall Illustrates the “Banality of Evil” Concept First Applied to Adolf Eichmann,
the Nazi Holocaust Administrator. In Cases in Public Policy and Administration (pp. 105-114).
Routledge.