Existentialism is a philosophy that tries to look at life as it really is, the good side and the bad side, joy and sorrows, the beautiful and the ugly. It is simply the philosophy of existence. Existentialist philosophers include; J. P. Satre, Martin Buber, Albert Camus and a contemporary educator, Maxine Greene.
Existentialists believe, as pragmatists and realists do, that the things in this world which we can touch, see and feel, are real and do exist. Some of the basic ideas of existentialists are;
that man is free and decides things for himself. He is free to choose what he wants to become. Jean Paul Sartre, a prominent existentialist says "Man is nothing else but what he makes himself." This means that everybody's future lies in his own hands.
in making any choice, man must be fully responsible for the consequences of his choice. This means that whether the choice is good or bad, nobody else is to be blamed but the individual who made the choice.
As far as the existentialists are concerned, three things are important for one to gain true knowledge that can lead to action. These are: personal experience, reasoning and emotion or feeling. They regard personnel experience as true knowledge which cannot be duplicated, imitated or adequately described to another person.
Therefore, knowledge is whatever a person interpretes it to be. It is the person .who is poor who knows what it really means to be poor. However, not all experiences are subjective. Hence, existentialists recommend the use of reasoning (that is, weighing the points in favour and against an idea, to arrive at true knowledge). Again, feeling or emotion is as important as reason in man's life. This is so because one may know what is right but he may not have a strong feeling to do it. In this case, his feeling determines hiw action or what he considers proper at that time.
More so, existentialists believe that man is the judge of what is value to him. This means that value is also subjective. Nobody willingly and knowingly chooses what is bad. One makes a choice after considering all possible factors including the consequences of choosing. Therefore, one should not be compelled to follow the crowd, the majority opinion or the society's traditions in one's action. To allow the majority opinion to decide for one is to sell one's freedom of choice.
