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British Drama

Notes down. Certain themes are common to almost all existential writing, which helps mark the writing
as such. The term itself suggests one major theme, the stress on concrete, individual existence, and
on subjectivity, individual freedom and choice.

The idea of the highest ethical good can be found in philosophy since the days of
Socrates and Plato. It was generally held that this good was the same for everybody; as a
person approached this moral perfection, she/he became morally like the next person
approaching this moral perfection.

Example: Kierkegaard wrote that it was up to the individual to find his or her own moral
perfection and his or her own way there. “I must find the truth that is the truth for me. . .the idea for
which I can live or die.”. It means one must choose one’s own way, make their own individual
paths without the aid of universal ideas or guidance.
Subjectivity is also important to Existentialism. Passionate choices and actions are important. Personal
experience and acting on one’s own convictions are essential to arriving at personal truths. A better
understanding of a situation is gained when one is in the middle then watching from the sidelines
with a detached view.

Systematic reasoning and acting is avoided at all costs in Existential thought.
Choice is also very important. One learns from making choices and committing to those choices.
According to Existentialists, humanity’s primary distinction is its freedom to choose. There is no
fixed instinct that drives humanity to do what it does. Choice is inescapable; not making choices is
choosing to not choose.

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are noted for their random, unsystematic way of exploring
their ideas, using many different literary styles to express themselves.

Existentialism is the term applied to the work of a number of philosophers since the 19th century
who, despite large differences in their positions, generally focused on the condition of human
existence, and an individual’s emotions, actions, responsibilities, and thoughts, or the meaning or
purpose of life. Existential philosophers often focused more on what they believed was subjective,
such as beliefs and religion, or human states, feelings, and emotions, such as freedom, pain, guilt,
and regret, as opposed to analyzing objective knowledge, language, or science.

Definition of Existentialism
Existentialism, a difficult term to define and an odd movement. Odd because most thinkers whom
the intellectual world categorizes as existentialists are people who deny they are that. And, two of
the people whom nearly everyone points to as important to the movement,

Soren Kierkegaard and Fredrich Nietzsche, are both too early in time to be in the
group of existentialists, thus are usually called “precursorers,” but studied and treated as
members of the group.

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