(1) First, there is the basic existentialist standpoint, that existence precedes essence, has primacy over essence. Man is a conscious subject, rather than a thing  to be predicted or manipulated; he exists as a conscious being, and not in  accordance with any definition, essence, generalization, or system. Existentialism \par says I am nothing else but my own conscious existence.

(2) A second existentialist theme is that of anxiety, or the sense of anguish, a   generalized uneasiness, a fear or dread which is not directed to any specific  object. Anguish is the dread of the nothingness of human existence. This theme is  as old as Kierkegaard within existentialism; it is the claim that anguish is the  underlying, all-pervasive, universal condition of human existence. Existentialism  agrees with certain streams of thought in Judaism and Christianity which see  human existence as fallen, and human life as lived in suffering and sin, guilt and  anxiety. This dark and forboding picture of human life leads existentialists to  reject ideas such as happiness, enlightenment optimism, a sense of well-being, the  serenity of Stoicism, since these can only reflect a superficial understanding of  life, or a naive and foolish way of denying the despairing, tragic aspect of human  existence.

(3) A third existentialist theme is that of absurdity. Granted, says the  existentialist, I am my own existence, but this existence is absurd. To exist as a  human being is inexplicable, and wholly absurd. Each of us is simply here, thrown  into this time and place---but why now? Why here? Kierkegaard asked. For no  reason, without necessary connection, only contingently, and so my life is an  absurd contingent fact. Expressive of absurdity are these words by Blaise Pascal,  a French mathematician and philosopher of Descarte's time, who was also an early  forerunner of existentialism. Pascal says:  "When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the  eternity before and after, and the little space I fill, and even can  see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished  at being here rather than there, why now rather than then."

(4) The fourth theme which pervades existentialism is that of nothingness or the  void. If no essences define me, and if, then, as an existentialist, I reject all of the  philosophies, sciences, political theories, and religions which fail to reflect my  existence as conscious being and attempt to impose a specific essentialist structure  upon me and my world, then there is nothing that structures my world. I have followed Kierkegaard's lead. I have stripped myself of all unacceptable structure,  the structures of knowledge, moral value, and human relationship, and I stand in  anguish at the edge of the abyss. I am my own existence, but my existence is a  nothingness. I live then without anything to structure my being and my world, and I  am looking into emptiness and the void, hovering over the abyss in fear and  trembling and living the life of dread.

(5) Related to the theme of nothingness is the existentialist theme of death.  Nothingness, in the form of death, which is my final nothingness, hangs over me like a sword of Damocles at each moment of my life. I am filled with anxiety at  times when I permit myself to be aware of this. At those moments, says Martin  Heidegger, the most influential of the German existentialist philosophers, the  whole of my being seems to drift away into nothing. The unaware person tries to  live as if death is not actual, he tries to escape its reality. But Heidegger says that  my death is my most authentic, significant moment, my personal potentiality, which  I alone must suffer. And if I take death into my llife, acknowledge it, and face it  squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life--  and only then will I be free to become myself. But here the French existentialist  Jean-Paul Sartre begs to differ. What is death, he asks? Death is my total  nonexistence. Death is as absurd as birth-- it is no ultimate, authentic moment of  my life, it is nothing but the wiping out of my existence as conscious being. Death  is only another witness to the absurdity of human existence.

(6)Alienation or estrangement is a sixth theme which characterizes existentialism.  Alienation is a theme which Hegel opened up for the modern world on many levels and in many subtle forms. Thus the Absolute is estranged from itself as it exists  only in the development of finite spirit in historical time. But finite spirit also lives  in alienation from its true consciousness of its own freedom, which it gains only  slowly in the dialectic of history.

There is also the alienation that exists in society:  the alienation of individual human beings who pursue their own desires in  estrangement from the actual institutional workings of their society, which are  controlled by the Cunning of Reason. Alienated from the social system, they do not  know that their desires are system-determined and system-determining. And there is the alienation of those who do not identify with the institutions of their own  society, who find their society empty and meaningless. And there is also for Hegel  the alienation which develops in civil society between the small class of the  wealthy and the growing discontent of the large class of impoverished workers.

The most profound alienation of all in Hegel's thought is the alienation or  estrangement between my consciousness and its objects, in which I am aware of  the otherness of the object and seek in a variety of ways to overcome its alienation by mastering it, by bringing it back into myself in some way.

As for Marx, we have seen that in the split between the two Marxisms, the young  Marx is focused upon the concept of economic alienation. As a worker I am  alienated from myself, from the product of my labor, from the money-worshipping  society, from all those social institutions-- family, morality, law, government--  which coerce me into the service of the money-God and keep me from realizing my  human creative potentiality. In mature Marxism, alienation is expressed through the  division of labor and its many ramifications.

How, then, do existentialists use the concept of alienation? Apart from my own  conscious being, all else, they say, is otherness, from which I am estranged. We are hemmed in by a world of things which are opaque to us and which we cannot  understand. Moreover, science itself has alienated us from nature, by its  outpouring of highly specialized and mathematicized concepts, laws, theories, and technologies which are unintelligible to the nonspecialist and layman; these  products of science now stand between us and nature.

And the Industrial  Revolution has alienated the worker from the product of his own labor, and has  made him into a mechanical component in the productive system, as Marx has taught  us.
We are also estranged, say the existentialists, from human institutions--  bureaucratized government on the federal, state, and local levels, national political parties, giant business corporations, national religious organizations -- all of these  appear to be vast, impersonal sources of power which have a life of their own. As  individuals we neither feel that we are part of them nor can we understand their  workings. We live in alienation from our own institutions. Moreover, say the  existentialists, we are shut out of history. We no longer have a sense of having  roots in a meaningful past nor do we see ourselves as moving toward a meaningful  future. As a result, we do not belong to the past, to the present, or to the future.

And lastly, and perhaps most painfully, the existentialists point out that all of our  personal human relationships are poisoned by feelings of alienation from any "other." Alienation and hostility arise within the family between parents and  children, between the husband and the wife, between the children. Alienation affects all social and work relations, and most cruelly, alienation dominates the relationship of love.  These are the disturbing, provocative themes which can be found in contemporary  existentialism. But now we must ask: If this is indeed the human condition, if this is a true picture of the world in which the human subject absurdly finds himself, how  is it possible to go on living in it? Is there no exit from this anxiety and despair, this nothingness and absurdity, this fixation upon alienation, this hovering on the edge of the abyss? Is there any existentialist who can tell us how to live in such an  absurd and hopeless world? Is there an existentialist ethics, a moral philosophy to \par tell us what is good, what can be said to be right or wrong, in such a meaningless  world?
 

                                                                            -- T. Z. Lavine