Continetial Philosophy Essay
Continental Philosophy Essay
Patricia Ellison
Axia College of University of Phoenix
Hegel’s many thoughts on idealism were not accepted by everyone even though Hegel had many strong points to support his theory. Many created their own thoughts just to argue with Hegel about his theories. Hegel’s beliefs where so strong that it caused many anti-idealism philosophers therefore, leading to disagreements which created the path to existentialism and phenomenology in continental philosophy
Existentialism’s main themes are as followed:
1. Traditional academic philosophy is sterile and remote from the concerns of real life.
2. Philosophy must focus on the individual in her or his confrontation with the world.
3. The world is irrational (or, in any event, beyond total comprehending or accurate conceptualizing through philosophy).
4. The world is absurd, in the sense that no ultimate explanation can be given for why it is the way it is.
5. Senselessness, emptiness, triviality, separation, and inability to communicate pervade the human existence, giving birth to anxiety, dread, self-doubt, and despair.
6. The individual confronts, as the most important fact of human existence, the necessity to choose how he or she is to live within this absurd and irrational world. (Existentialism Chapter 8 p 160)
Still existentialists do not guarantee that these issues can be solved but to have any meaning in life an individual must confront their existence throughout their lives or they will have no value to their lives.
Many of these themes of course had already been introduced in part by Arthur Schopenhauer, Soren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) differs from Hegel in that Hegel believed a person “dissolves into an abstract reality” (chapter 8, p161). Whereas Kierkegaard was more concerned with the will and need to make “important” choices. Hegel was extremely abstract to the point mostly seen...
View Full Essay