Søren Kierkegaard probably was the first philosopher who identified the feeling of confusion when presented with the choice to act according to our will. According to him, the decision to choose something was a paradoxical situation in a sense because we always choose what we think we should not choose. However, Kierkegaard did not call himself an existentialist. Instead, he focused his attention on the subjectivity of human life and on the idea of choosing to exist instead of just existing. Later thinkers like Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponaty were influenced by Kierkegaard’s thinking. These thinkers argued that any attempt at finding answers to certain questions leads us to absurdity—where there is no answer, everything else becomes absurd. Therefore, according to them, philosophy should be understood as a form of living, not as an activity of searching for the meaning behind the universe. It was only after the second world war that the philosophy of existentialism became popular with the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.
Introduction
How do we really define Philosophy? The Greek word φιλοσοφία – Philosophia. Or as the term has been coined by modern Western language – Philosophy. The literal meaning of this word is relatively static. Derived from its Greek origin it comprises two separate words...
