Existentialism

C. Explain Sartre’s famous quotation ‘’ Existence precedes essence”

Sartre expressed nature in the formula “man's existence precedes essence.” By this he means that you have no fixed nature and have not been created for any particular purpose. Things like paper cutters and hammers have set natures, since they have been created to fulfill a set purpose. But mankind is not created by God or evolution or anything else. At first, man is nothing, he simply finds himself by deciding what to make of himself. Truth is outside of you, and your job is to use reason to discover it. Each person must create his own essence. This emphasis on our freedom to choose what we are. Through our experience and reject any appeal to eternal essence, human beings are forced to create and define ourselves.

D. Discuss the differences of how Daru of ‘The Guest’ and Jean-Baptiste of ‘The Fall’ deal with the burden of their existential freedom.

Freedom lies at the core of The Guest, and is connected with the human right to choose a course of action. Daru's choice to live in the plateau region is a choice motivated out of what Camus would call an understanding of the ‘absurd’. Any human needs to belong to a place, and the cruel plateau region embodies a type of home for him despite its desolate climate. Just so, Camus feels, we all need to make a home for ourselves within an essentially uncaring universe. The way we make this home is through individual choice. However, the freedom to choose is also paradoxically an obligation when Daru attempts to pass along his obligation to choose to the Arab. Instead, he finds himself in a state of desperate moral ambiguity.
Daru faces a moral dilemma when he is ordered to turn in the Arab. Like all the themes in the narrative, morality is treated with ambiguity. Daru does not know whether the Arab deserves to be punished or let go, and he allows this uncertainty to overwhelm him. He fails to choose at all, instead allowing the Arab to choose either freedom or trial. Camus believed that once a decision was reached, it should be stuck to, and that the freedom to choose one's action gives meaning to human life. The Fall features a man steeped in isolation, in part because he finds all relationships to be confining. The problem is one of responsibility: if you interact with others, you’re confined not only by their expectations of you, but by the reputation you publically build. And yet, this very same man preaches a philosophy of slavery. Give up freedom, he says – it is too much of a burden. The burden comes in having to prove over and over your innocence in order to continue to remain free. Having to prove as much means getting judged, which the narrator seeks to avoid at all costs. Admit guilt, give up freedom, and submit to a life of slavery that is his solution.
E. Choose 3 existential themes to use in support of a thesis regarding existentialism. Use specific, concrete example from life, movies, or literature.

To existentialists existence is freedom. people are