Existentialism and Finitude - Why existentialists prefer to speak of finitude rather than death - Essay Example

We come into existence without prior definition; we merely come to be. It is when we gain an awareness of self that we come to define ourselves. Man becomes what he makes of himself; if he does not attribute any useful purpose to his life, then his existence remains to be inconsequential (Aquila, 1977). “’Finitude’ has a particular meaning within Existential thought, of which death is only part. By ‘finitude’ is understood that out lives are finite, they have an end in death.” (Earnshaw, 2006, p. 18). Physical death is of little consequence in life; it is in the realization that we will someday day, that we are constrained to make choices in life.

Earnshaw points to an example in the movie Groundhog Day (1993). The hero of this story, faced with a day that recurs without end, lives each repeated day in a different way, and finds out that whatever he does, does not matter because he has eternity to live his life anyway, and he may choose to live well and virtuously in some days, and even live the life of a criminal in other days. He even commits suicide repeatedly, only to awake the next day and discover he is still alive. If life is eternal, then there will always be enough time to experience infinite possibilities.

However, when everything becomes possible, life loses its meaning and therefore its preciousness. It is only in the context of finitude that there is any meaning to the consequence of choices. Theories on finitude predated existentialism as an area of discourse. Karl Solger (1780-1819), German romantic philosopher, believed that in man’s finitude, he could only grasp fragments of reality. His desire to return to infinity requires therefore his sacrifice of his finitude. Solger and other similar thinkers have laid the groundwork for a discussion of man as both finite and infinite, a course of inquiry that led to what became known as the field of existentialism.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the Danish philosopher generally acknowledged to be the first existentialist, regarded our common sense regard for human finitude as grounded on our limited understanding of things; however, because of our awareness that infinite possibilities exist (mainly in our concept of God) that in some way we ourselves were infinite. In Kierkegaard’s mind, the two conflicting concepts could only be reconciled by a belief in a Divine Being. Absent this reconciliation with the existence of God, man would find himself in a quandary as to how he may conceive of himself as being both finite and infinite (Moore, 2001; Wang, 2006).

Kierkegaard differs with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), in that the latter was convinced that humans would be finite even though they were immortal (Moore, 2001). For Sartre, finitude was rooted in the “brute contingency of human existence,” and the fact that the exercise of freedoms consequently excluded certain possibilities precluded by that which was opted. Sartre reasoned that it was due to our finitude that we are aware of things that appeared inexhaustible; their very objectivity makes us aware of the infinite points of view such objects may be regarded, not all of which we may occupy because of our finitude (Due, 1995; Jones, 1980).

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was directly opposed to Kierkegaard and Kant and reacted emphatically against the