The NFL stages its Week 4 on Sunday, while baseball concludes its regular-season schedule. This week’s NFL trends, free NFL expert pick and NFL betting odds are up.
Here’s a glimpse at the action in today’s edition of the Daily Sports Roundup.
The Gridiron Spotlight
The Titans, Broncos, Bills, and Cowboys will all be looking to run their records to 4-0 on Sunday when they take to the field. Tennessee and Dallas are both favored at home in their games; the Titans are favored by 3 points against the Vikings, while the Cowboys will be looking to cover an 11-point spread against the Redskins. The Broncos and Bills are both road favorites; it’s Denver (-10) at Kansas City, and Buffalo (-8) at St. Louis.
At the other end of the standings, the 0-3 Bengals will play host to the 0-3 Browns on Sunday afternoon. The loser of that AFC North matchup will be in a huge hole in the playoff race, and the oddsmakers have given the Bengals the 3.5-point edge to win.
Other Sunday afternoon matchups include San Francisco at New Orleans (-5), Arizona at the Jets (-1), Green Bay at Tampa Bay (-1), Atlanta at Carolina (-6.5), and Houston at Jacksonville (-7). As well, the 1-2 Chargers will be looking to get their record back to the .500 mark when they take on the 1-2 Raiders in Oakland as big 7.5-point road favorites.
Rounding out the Sunday NFL schedule will be Philadelphia at Chicago at 8:15pm ET. The Eagles are 2-1 in the tight NFC East, while the Bears have struggled to a 1-2 record on the season. And even though this game is being played at Soldier Field the Eagles have been pegged as the 3-point favorites, with the total listed at 40 points.
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California Vulcans Ready to Win PSAC
What’s this about? Just a cheap attempt of Grandmaster sports handicapper Joe Duffy to brag that his alma mater, the California Vulcans beat their chief rival, the Indiana PA Indians, expect the sissies they are, they don’t even call themselves Indians anymore.
Back to Division 1 or the FBS, whatever it’s called. Penn State football is back, but the USC Trojans, Georgia Bulldogs and Florida Gators await to see how far they’ve dropped in the college football polls. Regardless, the opening college football odds will be up later today and OffshoreInsiders.com will have them.
Other Notable Events
The drivers of the Sprint Cup Series will hit the track at Kansas Speedway on Sunday afternoon for the Camping World RV 400 presented by Coleman. Greg Biffle has won each of the first two Chase events, and he’ll be trying to make it three in a row on Sunday. Biffle and Johnson are tied for second place in the current driver standings, 10 points back of Carl Edwards. Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick are sitting fourth and fifth.
Biffle won the series’ event at Kansas last season, and he’s tied with Johnson, Edwards, and Kyle Busch as the 6/1 Vegas favorite to take the checkered flag on Sunday. Tony Stewart, who won the Banquet 400 at Kansas back in 2006, is pegged at 11/1 odds to visit victory lane. Two-time Kansas champion Jeff Gordon is listed at 15/1.
The Rest of the Schedule
The NL Wild Card berth is still in play, with the Mets and Brewers now tied in that race. Milwaukee will send CC Sabathia (10-2, 1.78 ERA in the NL) to the mound at home against the Cubs on Sunday afternoon, while Oliver Perez (10-7, 4.25 ERA) will try to pitch the Mets past the Marlins at home at the same time. If those teams are still tied at the end of the day on Sunday they’ll play a one-game playoff Monday in New York.
Also still to be decided is the AL Central title, with the White Sox and Mark Buehrle (14-12, 3.87 ERA) hosting Cleveland on Sunday, and the Twins and Scott Baker (10-4, 3.59 ERA) getting a visit from Kansas City. Minnesota has a half-game lead on Chicago in the division, and they can clinch top spot with a win Sunday combined with a White Sox loss. However, if Chicago is still a half-game back after Sunday they’ll play a makeup game with the Tigers on Monday. Should the Twins and White Sox be tied in the standings after that Monday contest they’ll play a one-game playoff on Tuesday.
As well, the Yankees will have Mike Mussina (19-9, 3.47 ERA) trying for his 20th win of the season when they play at Fenway Park in Boston on Sunday afternoon, so they’ll be pulling out all the stops to try and get him to that mark for the first time in his career. New York and Boston will actually play twice on Sunday thanks to Saturday’s rainout.
The WNBA playoffs will continue on Sunday afternoon, with New York at Detroit in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals, and Los Angeles at San Antonio in Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals. New York holds a 1-0 lead in their three-game set, while San Antonio pulled out a victory on Saturday afternoon to tie up that series at 1-1.
Finally, the CFL concludes its week on Sunday with Saskatchewan at Montreal (-6.5), while the PGA Tour wraps up its playoffs on the final day of THE TOUR Championship.
News from the Wire
Notable players listed as OUT for Sunday’s NFL games heading into the weekend: Arizona DE Bert Berry (groin), Browns S Sean Jones (knee), Dallas S Roy Williams (forearm), Chiefs QB Brodie Croyle (right shoulder), Saints WR Marques Colston (thumb) and TE Jeremy Shockey (hernia), Jets K Mike Nugent (right thigh), Raiders RB Justin Fargas (groin), Rams WR Drew Bennett (foot), Buccaneers WR Joey Galloway (foot), Titans QB Vince Young (knee/hamstring), and Redskins DE Jason Taylor (calf).
A Peek at the Future
A slow Monday in sports will be highlighted by the matchup of the Ravens and Steelers in Pittsburgh. The Steelers opened as 7-point home favorites in that contest, but that line has since fallen to just 5 points (with the total pegged at 34 points) . . . as well, there will be a Game 3 in the WNBA’s Eastern Conference Finals in Detroit on Monday night if the Shock manage to knock off the Liberty in their Sunday afternoon matchup.
Entertainment Betting
What will Tina Fey and Saturday Night Live do next in mocking Sarah Palin? We expect BetUs Sportsbook will have more and more SNL proposition bets.
The lipstick of Rachel McAdams and death of Paul Newman are grabbing the headlines, but Dancing With the Stars dominates the Hollywood and entertainment betting odds.
Brooke Burke at +200 is the favorite to win Dancing With the Stars, but she’s followed closely by Toni Braxton, Cody Linley, Susan Lucci, Misty May-Treanor all at +400.
Not far behind at +500 is Warren Sapp and Lance Bass. The aforesaid Hollywood and entertainment betting odds have prop bets as well on Tom DeLay, Dan Rather, George Clooney, Wheel of Fortune, Heath Ledger and other actors in Batman-The Dark Knight.
Presidential Tracking
All political aficionados visit the political betting odds on a daily basis for the most accurate McCain-Obama tracking indicators.
FLCL (フリクリ, Furi Kuri?, also Fooly Cooly) is an original video animation series written by Yōji Enokido, directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki and produced by the FLCL Production Committee, which included Gainax, Production I.G, and Starchild Records.
Furi Kuri follows Naota Nandaba, a twelve-year-old boy living in the fictional Japanese suburb of Mabase, and his interactions with Haruko Haruhara, who arrives in the quiet suburb, drawn by the industrial town houses and the Medical Mechanica building.
The English adaptation of the series is licensed by Synch-Point and Geneon Entertainment, which released the DVDs and soundtrack respectively.
Plot
Naota’s life is confined to going to school and living with his father and grandfather. The usually boring life in Mabase is rudely interrupted by the arrival of Haruhara Haruko, who bursts on the scene by running Naota over with her Vespa scooter and hitting him on the head with a guitar. Later, Naota is shocked to find Haruko working in his house as a live-in maid.
Haruko’s search for the alien being Atomsk puts her at odds with Medical Mechanica. At the same time, Naota is being watched by Commander Amarao. The Commander believes Haruko is in love with Atomsk and Medical Meccanica is out to conquer the galaxy. The fortuitous circumstances get Naota involved in a three-way battle between Haruko, Amarao and Medical Meccanica.
Characters
Naota Nandaba is the protagonist of the series, obsessed with appearing mature and attempts to act nonchalant. He idolizes his older brother Tasuku, who represents for Naota what it means to be an “adult”. Tasuku lives in the United States and plays professional baseball — he is never shown in the anime, except for in a flashback (however only his silhouette is shown) and a picture in which Tasuku is holding his “American girlfriend”.
Haruko Haruhara is Mabase’s newest resident, an extraterrestrial investigator for the Galactic Space Police Brotherhood. She becomes the Nandaba household maid while working to find Atomsk, the most powerful space pirate in the galaxy. She uses her guitar to create an N.O. portal in Naota’s head and once on Amarao in the episode Brittle Bullet, through which comes several Medical Meccanica robots.
Canti is a Medical Meccanica robot. He was manufactured by Medical Meccanica and was used by MM to capture Atomsk. It is later revealed that Atomsk can manifest through Canti, with Naota being the catalyst.
Mamimi Samejima is a high school truant. She is lonely and depressed, adopting several pets and naming them all “Takkun” as a replacement for Naota’s brother, and develops arsonistic tendencies. She thinks of Naota as a replacement for Tasuku, befriending him, but later grows disinterested when Naota begins to show independence.
Eri Ninamori is the daughter of the mayor of Mabase and the president of Naota’s sixth grade class. Ninamori is a complex character- like Naota she is obsessed with acting grown-up but she often loses her composure in anger or excitement. Ninamori is so concerned with her public image that she hides her frustrations over her parents’ divorce and the fact that she wears glasses.
Production
FLCL is directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki and produced by the FLCL Production Committee, which included Gainax, Production I.G, and Starchild Records.
Six pieces of theme music are used for the episodes; five opening themes and one closing theme. All the theme songs are by the Japanese rock band The Pillows, whose music is featured in the series. The battle theme is “Little Busters”. The opening themes are: “One Life”, used in episode one, “Instant Music” in episode two and three, “Happy Bivouac” for episode four, “Runners High”, utilized in episode five, and “Carnival” in episode six. The closing theme is “Ride on Shooting Star”, used for all of the episodes. Geneon Entertainment has released three original soundtracks encompassing the aforementioned songs, with the soundtracks titled Addict, released on January 20, 2004, King of Pirates, released on September 7, 2004, and FLCL No. 3, released on June 7, 2005.
Design
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FLCL’s odd style, hyperactive pace, convoluted, esoteric plot, and tendency to break the fourth wall sets it apart from other contemporary anime. It can be categorized as a work of comedy, drama, science fiction, romance, philosophy, and a parody of contemporary culture in general. It has an abstractly designed storyline about growing up and losing the childish viewpoint of life that all people once had, and seeing the true reality of the world.
Style
Although most of the series is done in a standard “anime” style, the animation frequently veers off into other realms, including bullet time, black and white, stills, two elaborate sequences drawn as semi-animated manga and a couple of shots in episode five that recreate the look of South Park, or mosaic.
Cultural references
Haruko flying on her Guitar in a bunny outfit and wearing earrings is a reference to the promotional video of Daicon IV (an anime convention that took place in Osaka in the 80’s). Haruko announces, “Daicon Five!” as she rides in, in a satirical reference to the show. This animation, along with the promo video for Daicon III, were some of Gainax’s very first works.
The series also references such pop culture icons as Anna Nicole Smith, John Woo and South Park, not to mention Neon Genesis Evangelion (Gainax’s most famous production), Pepsi, Lupin III, Initial D, Gundam, Tank Girl, Doraemon, and Ashita No Joe. As well as showing reference to popular Japanese anime shows such as in Haruko’s eyeless smiles (a subtle nod to the way the titular character of the anime Crayon Shin-chan smiles), the English-dubbed FLCL also shows references to The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, Filter, Slash, Naked Lunch, Paul McCartney, Van Halen, Richard Cheese, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Hitler, the USSR, Hamtaro, and Tom & Jerry.
Language
There are some places where dialogue of the English translation is different from the Japanese version, an attempt to make the dialogue easier to understand in the English translation. (Example: Haruko uses the term “mouth to mouth” repeatedly throughout the series, though the “Th” sound does not exist in Japanese, making it sound like “mouse to mouse”. This is used in a pun in “Full Swing,” when she crawls out of the Kamon puppet’s mouth wearing a mouse suit.).
Further comments in the booklets discuss the severe loss in translation of the plays made in Japanese via homonyms, synonyms, and so on. One example of trying to preserve this in English is the “empty”, “MTV” and various homonyms in English during the Kamon/Haruko manga sequence.
Meaning of “Furi Kuri”
A common mistake by English-speaking fans is to say that the meaning of “Furi Kuri” in Japanese is “Breast Fondling.” This mistake arises from the fact that “kuri kuri” is occasionally used by manga artists as a sound effect for breast fondling. In the anime itself, they make references to “kuri kuri” during the first manga scene, when Shigekuni describes kneading bread by making hand gestures that unmistakably resemble groping motions. Due to incredibly fast pacing of the scene, many fans mistake his statement as referring to “furi kuri” instead of “kuri kuri.” Much Japanese onomatopoeia follows a pattern of being four kana long and having a sound repeated. “Furi furi” is also used as a sound effect in a later episode when Haruko is petting Naota’s cat ears. FLCL’s direct Japanese to English translation is: A Pretend Chestnut. Kuri or chestnut can also mean to twist. It would seem the best translation might be pretend twisted (distort, pervert) or pretend disarrangement (disturb the operation or functions [as in twisting]; also to make insane).
Regarding the Japanese that is left in and often misunderstood, the above case is further clarified by referring to the translation notes for episode one from the 25 page book with DVD one released by Synch-Point:
9. Chi-chi o kuri-kuri – Chi-chi means “breasts” or “boobs” in Japanese. Kuri-kuri is a twisting noise. Chi-chi also means “father.”
12. Kuri – A homonym for a twisting noise and “chestnut”. Kamon says “Like twisting…” Haruko hears, “like chestnuts”.
Another theory is from Episode One, when Haruko diagnosed Naota with FLlctonic KLlpple Waver Syndrome, which the first two letters from the first two words would be the Japanese term Furi Kuri, which the first four letters of the first word to English would be Furi Curi.
Adaptations
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FLCL has been released as a two-volume manga by artist Hajime Ueda, and a three-volume novel serialization by screenwriter Yoji Enokido.
Manga
The manga interprets the series with all of the key elements intact, but loses some details and changes the dialogue (One being that Canti is Atomsk). It is a much darker and more graphic take on the story, highlighting the sex and violence (Naota intentionally kills his father with the baseball bat in a rather grisly scene because he thought Haruko and his father were sleeping together; Shinguki and an unnamed war buddy later suicide-bomb the Medical Mechanica building).
The manga has also been mildly controversial for its unique art style, especially the uses of ink to roughly outline objects and shade areas. Volume 1 is more like the first two episodes while Volume 2 is more like episodes 3 through 6. One major change to a character is Ninamori, as her robot becomes an ally and is not destroyed. Its design is also different, being a large octopus like robot attached to her head that enables her to fly. The ending is also quite different from the anime; unlike the anime where Naota goes on to bigger and better things, the manga ending leaves much more uncertainty as to Naota’s fate after Haruko leaves Earth.
The English language edition of the manga was released by TOKYOPOP in two volumes (ISBN 1-59182-396-X and ISBN 1-59182-397-8)
Novels
The first of the three novels was released in America on March 11, 2008. All were released in Japan starting in 2000, and in 2008 in the United States.
Distribution
Six DVD compilations, each containing one episode, have been released in Japan by Gainax.In addition, a DVD collection box, containing all six DVD compilations, was released in Japan on August 13, 2005. Three DVD compilations were released by Synch-Point in North America. A DVD collection box, containing all the DVD compilations of the English episodes, was released on January 23, 2007, but have since gone out of print with plans for a re-release of the series at a future date, to be determined.
Reception
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The American reception for the series, although not widespread, has been enthusiastic following its release on Adult Swim in the summer of 2003. Anime.com also gave the series an enthusiastic review in October of that year, although there was also a minor reference to it in the September “issue”. In 2003, it also went on to win third place for Best Animation Film at the Fantasia Festival.
FLCL has garnered both positive and negative reception among reviewers, sometimes diverging to extremes in both directions. Adult Swim occasionally refers to FLCL as “The greatest show we have ever aired”. Christopher McDonald of Anime News Network called it “downright hilarious” and “visually superb” with great music, citing the packaging of 2 episodes per DVD as the only weakness of Synch-Point’s original release.
It was also a success from a corporate standpoint. A Time Warner press release from August 12, 2003 lauds the success of Cartoon Network, and mentions FLCL:
Animé [sic] series FLCL (Monday-Thursday, 12 a.m.) premiered with impressive numbers. [...] The Monday, Aug. 4 telecast of FLCL ranked #42 among all shows on ad-supported cable among adults 18-34.
On February 24, 2007, FLCL was nominated for “Best Cast”, and won “Best Comedy Series” and “Best Short Series” at the first American Anime Awards show.
In the November 2007 issue of Anime Insider, FLCL was ranked 4th in their list of the best English-licensed anime of all time.
The directors of Avatar: The Last Airbender, an American animated television series, claim inspiration from FLCL.Avatar director Giancarlo Volpe says the staff “were all ordered to buy FLCL and watch every single episode of it.”
Existentialism is a philosophical movement which posits that individuals create the meaning and essence of their lives, as opposed to it being created for them by deities or authorities or defined for them by philosophical or theological doctrines. It emerged as a movement in twentieth-century literature and philosophy, foreshadowed most notably by nineteenth-century philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, though it had forerunners in earlier centuries. Fyodor Dostoevsky and Franz Kafka also described existential themes in their literary works.
It took explicit form as a philosophical current in Continental philosophy, first in the work of Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers in the 1930s in Germany, and then in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir in the 1940s and 1950s in France. Their work focused on such themes as “dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom, commitment, and nothingness” as fundamental to human existence.Walter Kaufmann described existentialism as “The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life”.
Although there are some common tendencies amongst “existentialist” thinkers, there are major differences and disagreements among them (most notably the divide between atheistic existentialists like Sartre and theistic existentialists like Tillich); not all of them accept the validity of the term.
Major concepts
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Existence precedes essence
A central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence. This amounts to the assertion that the outer manifestation (existence) of an entity is more determinative than its inner being (essence). Asserting that “existence precedes essence” is a rebellion against the Platonic Ideas, the Forms, which in Plato’s philosophy are the true reality behind appearances of things in the world.
When it is said that man defines himself, it is often perceived as stating that man can “wish” to be something – anything, a bird, for instance – and then be it. According to Sartre’s own account, however, this would rather be a kind of bad faith. What is meant by the statement is that man is (1) defined only insofar as he acts and (2) that he is responsible for his actions. To clarify, it can be said that a man who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, defined as a cruel man and in that same instance, he (as opposed to his genes, for instance) is defined as being responsible for being this cruel man. Of course, the more positive therapeutic aspect of this is also implied: You can choose to act in a different way, and to be a good person instead of a cruel person. Here it is also clear that since man can choose to be either cruel or good, he is, in fact, neither of these things essentially.
To claim, then, that existence precedes essence is to assert that there is no such predetermined essence to be found in man. Instead, what one finds if one searches, is the concrete lived life of each individual. As Sartre puts it in his Existentialism is a Humanism: “man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards.” Existentialism tends to focus on the question of human existence and the conditions of this existence. What is meant by existence is the concrete life of each individual, and his concrete ways of being in the world. Even though this concrete individual existence must be the primary source of information in the study of man, certain conditions are commonly held to be “endemic” to human existence. These conditions are usually in some way related to the inherent meaninglessness or absurdity of the earth and its apparent contrast with our pre-reflexive lived lives which normally present themselves to us as meaningful.
A central theme is that since the world “in-itself” is absurd, that is, “not fair,” then a meaningful life can at any point suddenly lose all its meaning. The reasons why this happens are many, ranging from a tragedy that “tears a person’s world apart,” to the results of an honest inquiry into one’s own existence. Such an encounter can make a person mentally unstable, and avoiding such instability by making people aware of their condition and ready to handle it is one of the central themes of existentialism. Albert Camus, for instance, claimed that “there is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Aside from these “psychological” issues, it is also claimed that these encounters with the absurd are where we are most in touch with our condition as humans. Such an encounter cannot be without philosophical significance, and existentialist philosophers derive many metaphysical theories from these encounters. These are often related to the self, consciousness and freedom as well as the nature of meaning.
Dread
Dread, sometimes called angst, anxiety or even anguish is a term that is common to many existentialist thinkers. Although its concrete properties may vary slightly, it is generally held to be the experience of our freedom and responsibility. The archetypal example is the example of the experience one has when standing on a cliff where one not only fears falling off it, but also dreads the possibility of throwing oneself off. In this experience that “nothing is holding me back,” one senses the lack of anything that predetermines you to either throw yourself off or to stand still, and one experiences one’s own freedom.
It is also claimed, most famously by Sartre, that dread is the fear of nothing (no thing). This relates both to the inherent insecurity about the consequences of one’s actions (related to the absurdity of the world), and to the fact that, in experiencing one’s freedom, one also realises that one will be fully responsible for these consequences; there is no thing in you (your genes, for instance) that acts and that you can “blame” if something goes wrong. Of course, most of us only have short and shallow encounters with this kind of dread, as not every choice is perceived as having dreadful possible consequences (and, it can be claimed, our lives would be unbearable if every choice facilitated dread), but that doesn’t change the fact that freedom remains a condition of every action. Søren Kierkegaard, in his The Concept of Dread, maintains that dread, when experienced by the young child in facing the possibility of responsibility for his actions, is one of the main forces in the child’s individuation. As such, the very condition of freedom can be said to be a part of any individual’s self.
Bad faith
Bad faith is seen as any denial of free will by lying to oneself about one’s self and freedom. This can take many forms, from convincing oneself that some form of determinism is true, to a sort of “mimicry” where one acts as “one should.” How “one” should act is often determined by an image one has of how one such as oneself (say, a bank manager) acts. This image usually corresponds to some sort of social norm. This does not mean that all acting in accordance with social norms is bad faith: The main point is the attitude one takes to one’s own freedom, and the extent to which one acts in accordance with this freedom. A sign of bad faith can be something like the denial of responsibility for something one has done on the grounds that one just did “as one does” or that one’s genes determined one to do as one did. Exactly how one lies to oneself is hard to get a hold of. Sartre denies the subconscious the power to do this, and he claims that the person who is lying to him/herself has to be aware that he/she is lying – that he/she isn’t determined, or this “thing” he/she makes him/herself out to be.
Freedom
The existentialist concept of freedom is often misunderstood as a sort of liberum arbitrium where almost anything is possible and where values are inconsequential to choice and action. This interpretation of the concept is often related to the insistence on the absurdity of the world and that there are no relevant or absolutely “good” or “bad” values. However, that there are no values to be found in the world in-itself doesn’t mean that there are no values: Each of us usually already has his values before a consideration of their validity is carried through, and it is, after all, upon these values we act. In Kierkegaard’s Judge Vilhelm’s account in Either/Or, making “choices” without allowing one’s values to confer differing values to the alternatives, is, in fact, choosing not to make a choice – to “flip a coin,” as it were, and to leave everything to chance. This is considered to be a refusal to live in the consequence of one’s freedom, meaning it quickly becomes a sort of bad faith. As such, existentialist freedom isn’t situated in some kind of abstract space where everything is possible: Since man is free, and since he already exists in this world, it is implied that his freedom is only in this world, and that it, too, is restricted by it.
What isn’t implied in this account of existential freedom, however, is that one’s values are immutable; a consideration of one’s values may cause one to reconsider and change them (though this rarely happens). A consequence of this fact is that one is not only responsible for one’s actions, but also for the values one holds. This entails that a reference to “common values” doesn’t “excuse” the individual’s actions, because, even though these are the values of the society he is part of, they are also his own in the sense that he could choose them to be different at any time. Thus, the focus on freedom in existentialism is related to the limits of the responsibility one bears as a result of one’s freedom: The relationship between freedom and responsibility is one of interdependency, and a clarification of freedom also clarifies what one is responsible for.
The Other and The Look
The Other (when written with a capitalised “o”) is a concept more properly belonging to phenomenology and its account of intersubjectivity. However, the concept has seen widespread use in existentialist writings, and the conclusions drawn from it differ slightly from the phenomenological accounts. The experience of the Other is the experience of another free subject who inhabits the same world as you do. In its most basic form, it is this experience of the Other that constitutes intersubjectivity and objectivity. To clarify, when one experiences someone else, and that this Other person experiences the world (the same world that you experience), only from “over there,” the world itself is constituted as objective in that it is something that is “there” as identical for both of the subjects; you experience the other person as experiencing the same as you. This experience of the Other’s look is what is termed the Look (sometimes The Gaze).
While this experience, in its basic phenomenological sense, constitutes the world as objective, and yourself as objectively existing subjectivity (you experience yourself as seen in the Other’s Look in precisely the same way that you experience the Other as seen by you, as subjectivity), in existentialism, it also acts as a kind of limitation of your freedom. This is because the Look tends to objectify what it sees. As such, when one experiences oneself in the Look, one doesn’t experience oneself as nothing (no thing), but as something. Sartre’s own example of a man peeping at someone through a keyhole can help clarify this: At first, this man is entirely caught up in the situation he is in; he is in a pre-reflexive state where his entire consciousness is directed at what goes on in the room. Suddenly, he hears a creaking floorboard behind him, and he becomes aware of himself as seen by the Other. He is thus filled with shame for he perceives himself as he would perceive someone else doing what he was doing, as a Peeping Tom.
Another characteristic feature of the Look is that no Other really needs to have been there: It is quite possible that the creaking floorboard was nothing but the movement of an old house; the Look isn’t some kind of mystical telepathic experience of the actual way the other sees you (there may also have been someone there, but he could have not noticed that you were there, or he could be another Peeping Tom who just wants to join you).
Reason
Emphasizing action, freedom, and decision as fundamental, existentialists oppose themselves to rationalism and positivism. That is, they argue against definitions of human beings as primarily rational. Rather, existentialists look at where people find meaning. Existentialism asserts that people actually make decisions based on what has meaning to them rather than what is rational. The rejection of reason as the source of meaning is a common theme of existentialist thought, as is the focus on the feelings of anxiety and dread that we feel in the face of our own radical freedom and our awareness of death. Kierkegaard saw rationality as a mechanism humans use to counter their existential anxiety, their fear of being in the world: “If I can believe that I am rational and everyone else is rational then I have nothing to fear and no reason to feel anxious about being free.”
Like Kierkegaard, Sartre saw problems with rationality, calling it a form of “bad faith”, an attempt by the self to impose structure on a world of phenomena — “the other” — that is fundamentally irrational and random. According to Sartre, rationality and other forms of bad faith hinder us from finding meaning in freedom. To try to suppress our feelings of anxiety and dread, we confine ourselves within everyday experience, Sartre asserts, thereby relinquishing our freedom and acquiescing to being possessed in one form or another by “the look” of “the other” (i.e. possessed by another person – or at least our idea of that other person). In a similar vein, Camus believed that society and religion falsely teach humans that “the other” has order and structure.For Camus, when an individual’s “consciousness”, longing for order, collides with “the other’s” lack of order, a third element is born: “absurdity”.
The Absurd
The notion of the Absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning to be found in the world beyond what meaning we give to it. This meaninglessness also encompasses the amorality or “unfairness” of the world. This contrasts with “karmic” ways of thinking in which “bad things don’t happen to good people”; to the world, metaphorically speaking, there is no such thing as a good person or a bad thing; what happens happens, and it may just as well happen to a good person as to a bad person. This contrasts our daily experience where most things appear to us as meaningful, and where good people do indeed, on occasion, receive some sort of “reward” for their goodness. Most existentialist thinkers, however, will maintain that this is not a necessary feature of the world, and that it definitely isn’t a property of the world in-itself. Because of the world’s absurdity, at any point in time, anything can happen to anyone, and a tragic event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the Absurd. The notion of the absurd has been prominent in literature throughout history. Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoevsky and many of the literary works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus contain descriptions of people who encounter the absurdity of the world. Albert Camus studied the issue of “the absurd” in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus.
Types
Atheistic
Atheistic existentialism is the form of existentialism most commonly encountered in today’s society. What sets it apart from theistic existentialism is that it rejects the notion of a god and his transcendent will that should in some way dictate how we should live. It rejects the notion that there is any “created” meaning to life and the world, and that a leap of faith is required of man in order for him to live an authentic life. In this kind of existentialism, belief in god is often considered a form of Bad Faith.
Theistic
Theistic existentialism is, for the most part, Christian in its outlook, but there have been existentialists of other theological persuasions, like Islam (see Transcendent theosophy) and Judaism. The main thing that sets them apart from atheistic existentialists is that they posit the existence of God, and that He is the source of our being. It is generally held that God has designed the world in such a way that we must define our own lives, and each individual is held accountable for his or her own self-definition.
Nihilism
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Though nihilism isn’t existentialism, and existentialism isn’t nihilism, these two philosophies are often confused. While a sort of nihilistic existentialism does indeed exist, it isn’t as radical as pure nihilism. Another reason why these philosophies are often confused is that Friedrich Nietzsche is a central philosopher in both. What sets existential nihilists apart from pure nihilists is the fact that, while nihilists don’t believe in any meaning at all, existential nihilists only believe this in relation to any sort of meaning to life (though this position is implied in “regular” nihilism, and existential nihilists may also subscribe to the full nihilistic view, existential nihilism is a separate view). While other existentialists will allow for meaning in people’s lives (that meaning they themselves inject into it), existential nihilists will deny that this meaning is anything but self-deception. Existential nihilists could thus seem to be more pessimistic than the other existentialists, but even here, conclusions vary. Some will claim that the best thing to do is to commit suicide while others will claim that the lack of objective meaning to life means you should just do as you wish – a hedonism of sorts. There also are those who hold that nihilism is both a necessary burden of the authentic thinker and a source of dread, pushing them to hold in suspension his or her tendency to accept the reality of values while maintaining the unfulfilled desire for their discovery.
Historical background
Generally
Existential themes have been hinted at throughout history. Examples include the Buddha’s teachings, the Bible in the Book of Ecclesiastes and Book of Job, Saint Augustine in his Confessions, Averroes’ school of philosophy, Saint Thomas Aquinas’ writings, and Mulla Sadra’s transcendent theosophy. Individualist political theories, such as those advanced by John Locke, advocated individual autonomy and self-determination rather than state rule over the individual. This kind of political philosophy, although not existential per se, provided a welcoming climate for existentialism. In 1670, Blaise Pascal’s unfinished notes were published under the title of Pensées (”Thoughts”). He described many fundamental themes common to what would be known as existentialism two and three centuries later. Pascal argued that without a God, life would be meaningless and miserable. People would only be able to create obstacles and overcome them in an attempt to escape boredom. These token-victories would ultimately become meaningless, since people would eventually die. This was good enough reason not to choose to become an atheist, according to Pascal.
Existentialism, in its currently recognizable 20th century form, was inspired by Søren Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky and the German philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger. It became popular in the mid-20th century through the works of the French writer-philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, whose versions of it were set out in a popular form in Sartre’s 1946 Existentialism is a Humanism and Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity. Gabriel Marcel pursued theological versions of existentialism, most notably Christian existentialism. Other theological existentialists include Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, Miguel de Unamuno, Thomas Hora and Martin Buber. Moreover, one-time Marxist Nikolai Berdyaev developed a philosophy of Christian existentialism in his native Russia, and later in France, in the decades preceding World War II. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer are also important influences on the development of existentialism (although not precursors), because the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were written in response or opposition to Hegel and Schopenhauer, respectively.
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
The first philosophers considered fundamental to the existentialist movement were Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, though neither used the term “existentialism” and it is unclear whether they would have supported the existentialism of the 20th century. Their focus was on human experience, rather than the objective truths of math and science that are too detached or observational to truly get at human experience. Like Pascal, they were interested in people’s quiet struggle with the apparent meaninglessness of life and the use of diversion to escape from boredom. But Pascal did not consider the role of making free choices, particularly regarding fundamental values and beliefs: such choices change the nature and identity of the chooser, in the view of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.Kierkegaard’s knight of faith and Nietzsche’s Übermensch are examples of those who define the nature of their own existence. Great individuals invent their own values and create the very terms under which they excel. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were also precursors to other intellectual movements, including postmodernism, nihilism, and various strands of psychology.
Heidegger and the German existentialists
One of the first German existentialists was Karl Jaspers, who recognized the importance of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and attempted to build an “Existenz” philosophy around the two. Heidegger, who was influenced by Jaspers and the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, wrote his most influential work Being and Time which postulates Dasein (dah-zine), translated as, all at once, “being here”, “being there”, and “being-in-the-world”—a being that is constituted by its temporality, illuminates and interprets the meaning of being in time. Dasein is sometimes considered the human subject, but Heidegger denied the Cartesian dualism of subject-object/mind-body. [paragraph needs citations and clarifications] Although existentialists view Heidegger to be an important philosopher in the movement, he vehemently denied being an existentialist in the Sartrean sense, in his “Letter on Humanism”.
Sartre, Camus, and the French existentialists
Jean-Paul Sartre is perhaps the most well-known existentialist and is one of the few to have accepted being called an “existentialist”. Sartre developed his version of existentialist philosophy under the influence of Husserl and German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Being and Nothingness is perhaps his most important work about existentialism. Sartre was also talented in his ability to espouse his ideas in different media, including philosophical essays, lectures, novels, plays, and the theater. No Exit and Nausea are two of his celebrated works. In the 1960s, he attempted to reconcile existentialism and Marxism in his work Critique of Dialectical Reason. A major theme throughout his writings was freedom and responsibility.
Albert Camus was a friend of Sartre, until their falling-out, and wrote several works with existential themes including The Rebel, The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, and Summer in Algiers. Camus, like many others, rejected the existentialist label, and considered his works to be concerned with people facing the absurd. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus uses the analogy of the Greek myth to demonstrate the futility of existence. In the myth, Sisyphus is condemned for eternity to roll a rock up a hill, but when he reaches the summit, the rock will roll to the bottom again. Camus believes that this existence is pointless but that Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning and purpose in his task, simply by continually applying himself to it.
Critic Martin Esslin in his book Theatre of the Absurd pointed out how many contemporary playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov wove into their plays the existential belief that we are absurd beings loose in a universe empty of real meaning. Esslin noted that many of these playwrights demonstrated the philosophy better than did the plays by Sartre and Camus. Though most of such playwrights, subsequently labeled “Absurdist” (based on Esslin’s book), denied affiliations with existentialism and were often staunchly anti-philosophical (for example Ionesco often claimed he identified more with ‘Pataphysics or with Surrealism than with existentialism), the playwrights are often linked to existentialism based on Esslin’s observation.
Simone de Beauvoir, an important existentialist who spent much of her life alongside Sartre, wrote about feminist and existential ethics in her works, including The Second Sex and The Ethics of Ambiguity. Although often overlooked due to her relationship with Sartre, de Beauvoir integrated existentialism with other forms of thinking such as feminism, unheard of at the time, resulting in alienation from fellow writers such as Camus. Frantz Fanon, a Martiniquan-born critic of colonialism, has been considered an important existentialist.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, an often overlooked existentialist, was for a time a companion of Sartre. His understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology was far greater than that of Merleau-Ponty’s fellow existentialists. It has been said that his work, Humanism and Terror, greatly influenced Sartre. However, in later years they were to disagree irreparably, dividing many existentialists such as de Beauvoir, who sided with Sartre. Michel Foucault would also be considered an existentialist through his use of history to reveal the constant alterations of created meaning, thus proving history’s failure to produce a cohesive version of reality.
Dostoevsky, Kafka, and the literary existentialists
Many writers who are not usually considered philosophers have also had a major influence on existentialism. Among them, Czech author Franz Kafka and Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky are most prominent. Kafka created often surreal and alienated characters who struggle with hopelessness and absurdity, notably in his most famous novella, The Metamorphosis, or in his master novel, The Trial. Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground details the story of a man who is unable to fit into society and unhappy with the identities he creates for himself. [paragraph needs citations and clarification.] Many of Dostoevsky’s novels, such as Crime and Punishment, covered issues pertinent to existential philosophy while offering story lines divergent from secular existentialism: for example in Crime and Punishment one sees the protagonist, Raskolnikov, experience existential crises and move toward a worldview similar to Christian Existentialism, which Dostoevsky had come to advocate.
In the 20th century, existentialism experienced a resurgence in popular art forms. In fiction, Hermann Hesse’s 1928 novel Steppenwolf, based on an idea in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or (1843),[specify] sold well in the West. Jack Kerouac and the Beat poets adopted existentialist themes. “Arthouse” films began quoting and alluding to existentialist thought and thinkers. Existentialist novelists were generally seen as a mid-1950s phenomenon that continued until the mid- to late 1970s. Most of the major writers were either French or from French African colonies. Small circles of other Europeans were seen as literary precursors by the existentialists, but literary history increasingly has questioned the accuracy of this perception.
Criticism
Herbert Marcuse criticised Existentialism, especially Being and Nothingness (1943), by Jean-Paul Sartre, for projecting anxiety and meaninglessness (features of modern society) onto the nature of existence itself: “Insofar as Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine, it remains an idealistic doctrine: it hypostatizes specific historical conditions of human existence into ontological and metaphysical characteristics. Existentialism thus becomes part of the very ideology which it attacks, and its radicalism is illusory”. In 1946, Sartre already had replied to Marxist criticism of Existentialism in the lecture Existentialism is a humanism.In Jargon of Authenticity, Theodor Adorno criticised Heidegger’s philosophy, especially his use of language, as a mystifying ideology of advanced, industrial society, and its power structure.[citation needed]
In Letters on Humanism, Heidegger criticized Sartre’s existentialism:
Existentialism says existence precedes essence. In this statement he is taking existentia and essentia according to their metaphysical meaning, which, from Plato’s time on, has said that essentia precedes existentia. Sartre reverses this statement. But the reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement. With it, he stays with metaphysics, in oblivion of the truth of Being.
In From Descartes to Wittgenstein, Roger Scruton says that Heidegger’s concept of inauthenticity and Sartre’s concept of bad faith were self-inconsistent; both deny any universal moral creed, yet speak of these concepts as if everyone were bound to abide them. In chapter 18, he says: “In what sense Sartre is able to ‘recommend’ the authenticity, which consists in the purely self-made morality, is unclear. He does recommend it, but, by his own argument, his recommendation can have no objective force.”
Logical positivists, such as Carnap and Ayer, say Existentialists frequently are confused about the verb “to be” in their analyses of “being”.They argue that the verb is transitive, and pre-fixed to a predicate (e.g., an apple is red): without a predicate, the word is meaningless. Another confusion, in existentialist metaphysical literature, is that existentialists try to understand the meaning of the word “nothing” (the negation of existence) by presuming it must refer to something. Borrowing Kant’s argument against the ontological argument for the existence of God, logical positivists argue that existence is not a property.[citation needed]
Influence outside philosophy
Cultural movement and influence
The term existentialism was first adopted as a self-reference in the 1940s and 1950s by Jean-Paul Sartre, and the widespread use of literature as a means of disseminating their ideas by Sartre and his associates (notably novelist Albert Camus) meant existentialism “was as much a literary phenomenon as a philosophical one.” Among existentialist writers were Parisians Jean Genet, André Gide, André Malraux, and playwright Samuel Beckett, the Norwegian Knut Hamsun, and the Romanian friends Eugene Ionesco and Emil Cioran. Prominent artists such as the Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning have been understood in existentialist terms, as have filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and Ingmar Bergman.Individual films such as the 1952 western High Noon and Fight Club (1999) have also been cited as existentialist.Also, existential theological influence is apparent in the Angel’s Egg.
Literature
Since 1970, much cultural activity in art, cinema, and literature contains postmodernist and existential elements. Books such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) (now republished as Blade Runner) by Philip K. Dick, Toilet: The Novel by Michael Szymczyk and Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk all distort the line between reality and appearance while simultaneously espousing strong existential themes. Ideas from such thinkers as Dostoevsky, Foucault, Kafka, Nietzsche, Herbert Marcuse, Gilles Deleuze, and Eduard von Hartmann permeate the works of artists such as Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Szymczyk, David Lynch, Crispin Glover, and Charles Bukowski, and one often finds in their works a delicate balance between distastefulness and beauty.
Film
Existential themes have been evident throughout 20th century cinema. Many films portray characters going through the “existential dilemma” or existential problems. Just as there is much controversy about the definition of existentialism, there is a fine line between existential and non-existential films. One might ask how certain movies can be considered existential, while others are not, and the judgment is purely subjective. However, for the sake of discussion, it is beneficial to provide a clear definition of existential movies. The most accurate definition says that existential movies are those which have strong plots that deal with subjects such as dread, boredom, nothingness, anxiety, alienation and the absurd. Furthermore, the definition states that movies which deal with the themes of existential literature seriously are also considered as being existential.
A number of 1940s and 1950s-era films explored existential themes, including the US film noir genre, which explored the ambiguous moral dilemmas of people drawn into the gangster underworld. Film noirs tend to revolve around heroes who are more flawed and morally questionable than the norm, often fall guys of one sort or another. The characteristic heroes of noir are described by many critics as “alienated” and “filled with existential bitterness.” Film noir is often described as essentially pessimistic. The noir stories that are regarded as most characteristic tell of people trapped in unwanted situations (which, in general, they did not cause but are responsible for exacerbating), striving against random, uncaring fate, and frequently doomed. The movies are seen as depicting a world that is inherently corrupt. Classic film noir has been associated by many critics with the American social landscape of the era—in particular, with a sense of heightened anxiety and alienation that is said to have followed World War II.
Existentialist themes were also present in other genres. The French director Jean Genet’s 1950 fantasy-erotic film Un chant d’amour shows two inmates in solitary cells whose only contact is through a hole in their cell wall, who are spied on by the prison warden. Reviewer James Travers calls the film a “…visual poem evoking homosexual desire and existentialist suffering” which “… conveys the bleakness of a existence in a godless universe with painful believability”; he calls it “… probably the most effective fusion of existentialist philosophy and cinema.”
Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 anti-war film Paths of Glory “illustrates, and even illuminates…existentialism” by examining the “necessary absurdity of the human condition” and the “horror of war” . The film tells the story of a fictional WWI French army regiment which is ordered to attack an impregnable German stronghold; when the attack fails, three soldiers are chosen at random, court-martialed by a “kangaroo court”, and executed by firing squad. The film examines existential ethics, such as the issue of whether objectivity is possible and the “problem of authenticity”.
Some contemporary films dealing with existential issues include Fight Club, Waking Life, and Ordinary People. Likewise, films throughout the 20th century such as Taxi Driver, High Noon, Easy Rider, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, A Clockwork Orange, Apocalypse Now, The Seventh Seal, Ikiru, I Heart Huckabees and Blade Runner also have existential qualities.Notable directors known for their existentialist films include Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Woody Allen.
Theatre
Jean-Paul Sartre wrote No Exit in 1944, an existentialist play originally published in French as Huis Clos (meaning In Camera or “behind closed doors”) which is the source of the popular quote, “Hell is other people.” (In French, “l’enfer, c’est les autres”). The play begins with a Valet leading a man into a room that the audience soon realizes is in hell. Eventually he is joined by two women. After their entry, the Valet leaves and the door is shut and locked. All three expect to be tortured, but no torturer arrives. Instead, they realize they are there to torture each other, which they do effectively, by probing each other’s sins, desires, and unpleasant memories.
Existentialist themes have also influenced the Theatre of the Absurd, notably in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, in which two men divert themselves while they wait expectantly for someone named Godot who never arrives. They claim Godot to be an acquaintance but in fact hardly know him, admitting they would not recognize him if they saw him. To occupy themselves they eat, sleep, talk, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide—anything “to hold the terrible silence at bay”.[24] The play “exploits several archetypal forms and situations, all of which lend themselves to both comedy and pathos.”The play also illustrates an attitude toward man’s experience on earth: the poignancy, oppression, camaraderie, hope, corruption, and bewilderment of human experience that can only be reconciled in mind and art of the absurdist. The play examines questions such as death, the meaning of human existence and the place of God in human existence.
Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966.The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Comparisons have also been drawn to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, for the presence of two central characters who almost appear to be two halves of a single character. Many plot features are similar as well: the characters pass time by playing Questions, impersonating other characters, and interrupting each other or remaining silent for long periods of time. The two characters are portrayed as two clowns or fools in a world that is beyond their understanding. They stumble through philosophical arguments while not realizing the implications, and muse on the irrationality and randomness of the world.
Jean Anouilh’s Antigone also presents arguments founded on existentialist ideas.It is a tragedy inspired by Greek mythology and the play of the same name (Antigone, by Sophocles) from the fifth century B.C. In English, it is often distinguished from its antecedent by being pronounced in its original French form, approximately “Ante-GŌN.” The play was first performed in Paris on 6 February 1944, during the Nazi occupation of France. Produced under Nazi censorship, the play is purposefully ambiguous with regards to the rejection of authority (represented by Antigone) and the acceptance of it (represented by Creon). The parallels to the French Resistance and the Nazi occupation have been drawn. Antigone rejects life as desperately meaningless but without affirmatively choosing a noble death. The crux of the play is the lengthy dialogue concerning the nature of power, fate, and choice, during which Antigone says that she is “… disgusted with [the]…promise of a humdrum happiness”; she states that she would rather die than live a mediocre existence.
Theology
Christ’s teachings had an indirect style, in which his point is often left unsaid for the purpose of letting the single individual confront the truth on their own.[28] This is evident in his parables, which are a response to a question he is asked. After he tells the parable, he returns the question to the individual. An existential reading of the Bible demands that the reader recognize that he is an existing subject studying the words God communicates to him personally. This is in contrast to looking at a collection of “truths” which are outside and unrelated to the reader.Such a reader is not obligated to follow the commandments as if an external agent is forcing them upon him, but as though they are inside him and guiding him from inside. This is the task Kierkegaard takes up when he asks: “Who has the more difficult task: the teacher who lectures on earnest things a meteor’s distance from everyday life-or the learner who should put it to use?”Existentially speaking, the Bible doesn’t become an authority in a person’s life until they authorize the Bible to be their personal authority. Existentialism has had a significant influence on theology, notably on postmodern Christianity and on theologians and religious thinkers such as Nikolai Berdyaev, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and John Macquarrie. It has also surfaced in theologically-themed media, such as the Angel’s Egg.
Existential psychoanalysis and psychotherapy
One of the major offshoots of existentialism as a philosophy is existential psychology and psychoanalysis, which first crystallized in the work of Ludwig Binswanger, a clinician who was influenced by both Freud and Heidegger, and Sartre, who was not a clinician but wrote theoretical material about existential psychoanalysis. A later figure was Viktor Frankl, who had studied with Freud and Jung as a young man[citation needed]. His logotherapy can be regarded as a form of existential therapy. An early contributor to existential psychology in the United States was Rollo May, who was influenced by Kierkegaard. One of the most prolific writers on techniques and theory of existential psychology in the USA is Irvin D. Yalom. The person who has contributed most to the development of a European version of existential psychotherapy is the British-based Emmy van Deurzen.
With complete freedom to decide, and complete responsibility for the outcome of decisions, comes anxiety (angst). Anxiety’s importance in existentialism makes it a popular topic in psychotherapy. Therapists often use existential philosophy to explain the patient’s anxiety. Psychotherapists using an existential approach believe that a patient can harness his anxiety and use it constructively. Instead of suppressing anxiety, patients are advised to use it as grounds for change. By embracing anxiety as inevitable, a person can use it to achieve his or her full potential in life. Humanistic psychology also had major impetus from existential psychology and shares many of the fundamental tenets. Terror management theory is a developing area of study within the academic study of psychology. It looks at what researchers claim to be the implicit emotional reactions of people that occur when they are confronted with the knowledge they will eventually die.
Scott Greenstein (born in 1959) is President of Entertainment and Sports at SIRIUS Satellite Radio, overseeing all of the satellite radio broadcaster’s programming, marketing and corporate marketing activities. He reports to Mel Karmazin, CEO of SIRIUS.