Existentialism In The Early 19th Century

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argued that no objective, rational basis can be found for moral
decisions. The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche further
contended that the individual must decide which situations are to count
asmoral situations.

Subjectivity

All existentialists have followed Kierkegaard in stressing the importance
of passionate individual action in deciding questions of both morality and
truth. They have insisted, accordingly, that personal experience and acting
on one's own convictions are essential in arriving at the truth. Thus, the
understanding of a situation by someone involved in that situation is
superior to that of a detached, objective observer. This emphasis on the
perspective of the individual agent has also made existentialists
suspicious of systematic reasoning. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and other
existentialist writers have been deliberately unsystematic in the
exposition of their philosophies, preferring to express themselves in
aphorisms, dialogues, parables, and ...

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must accept the
risk and responsibility of following their commitment wherever it leads.

Dread and Anxiety

Kierkegaard held that it is spiritually crucial to recognize that one
experiences not only a fear of specific objects but also a feeling of
general apprehension, which he called dread. He interpreted it as God's way
of calling each individual to make a commitment to a personally valid way
of life. The word anxiety (German Angst) has a similarly crucial role in
the work of the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger; anxiety
leads to the individual's confrontation with nothingness and with the
impossibility of finding ultimate justification for the choices he or she
must ...

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