Summary
Gerald Gutek in his article titled, "Existentialism and Education", indirectly hinted that the Existentialist philosophical perspective is relatively new in a sense that it's influence is yet to take its toll and on account of the premise that it was only after the Second World War that its reach and impact flourished in Europe and elsewhere.
Gutek recognized that Existentialism is not a boxed up 'system of thought". It is according to him, more of an inclination labeled as such in an attempt at convenience to ascribe a nomenclature to a range of "differing revolts against Traditional Philosophy".
Gutek, in this article, presented two of the pioneering and more renowned Existentialist philosophers: Soren Kierkegaard, a Christian, and Jean-Paul Sartre, an atheist.
Gutek, in his presentation of Kierkegaard and Sartre, provided sufficient background of them to contextualize the Existentialist thoughts that they championed either as a means with which they deconstructed the authoritarian status-quo prevalent during their times or simply as an academic tussle against philosophical Idealism and the "absolutes" that were elemental to it.
On one hand, he characterized Kierkegaard as a free-thinker who refused any and all forms of subjugation to and by the pantheistic inflexibilities of the Danish Lutheran Church of his time. He also noted the commentary Kierkegaard used to counter Hegel's 'Philosophical Idealism". It centralized on the "architectonic philosophical system" purported by Hegel which, according to Kierkegaard, finds realization only in the state. He noted the impersonal and detached tendencies of Christians in the professions of their faith. Here is when Kierkegaard emphasized the term, "leap of faith". An act that engages one into a personal relationship with God on the basis of having the freedom to define one's "being-in-the-world" with meaning that, and as Kierkegaard suggested, will lead to "authenticity".
On the other hand, Gutek introduced Jean-Paul Sartre beginning with a detailed account of the Nazi setting that defined in more ways than one, the shaping of his Existentialist mind-set and extending to the irrationality and savagery of Hitler that rendered senseless any attempt at living life amidst a backdrop of wanton atavism and dehumanizing barbarism. Such are the conditions that Sartre has personally experienced in the prison camp.
With reference to this background, Gutek figures Sartre's Existentialism as embodied in a phrase the latter himself coined, "existence precedes essence". This neologized existential maxim refutes the existing traditional mind-set popularized in the early part of the Twentieth Century that presupposes an antecendent - not in the Aristotelian sense, that directs human nature.
Of particular interest in this article is the characterization with which Gutek painted a vivid portrait of a "lost" generation that saw the crisis of mass society. Such crisis provided for a fertile philosophical landscape that invited man to re-examine his Existential purpose and relationship of such purpose to existence and essence.
Here, he noted how humans became a mere extension of machines. Gutek cited for instance the factory workers who worked alongside contrivances or gadgets that did most of the work and that needed very little complementary assistance from the human workforce. Assembly lines were built to jack up the mass production of goods. Hardly has man (the masses) coped with the technological advancement characteristic of the time defined by a world at war.
Educationally, Existentialism is critical of the systematically standardized and neatly packaged curriculums that are targeted at students, invariably classified according to age, academic preparation, and scholastic orientation. Existentialism in this regard purports the reduction of "impersonalization that has affected schooling", and the introduction of the "I-Thou" relationship between the mentor and the learner. Gutek also noted the "rejection of systems" in the Existentialist perspective. Needless to say, Existentialism has practically detached itself to any traditional philosophical belief-systems. This however, is just half of the Existentialist equation. The other half enmeshes an attack on Pragmatism's employment of the scientific method through experimentalism. The Existentialist sees in this situation the individual being"overwhelmed" in his/her interaction with "like-minded" persons that forces him/her to decide, mindful of the collective will of the group.
Implications For Education
On Existentialism's implications for education, Gutek took on the US educational tradition. Here, he emphasized the public school conception that is supposed to be receptive and accommodative of the diversity characteristic of the American Society. It is on account of this premise that a need for an institutionalization of cultural pluralism is recognized.
But Gutek noted that the Existentialist perspective is critical of the group-oriented mode of learning based on Dewey's Pragmatist Experimentalism.
Existentialism posits that mentors have to be very wary about infringing too much into the educative hemispheres of the learner. Gutek maintains that the "I-Thou" relationship still serves as ground upon which Existential philosophizing in education is anchored.
Educationally, Existentialism holds that the school, being one that is situated in the material world has to provide a realistic atmosphere that invites optimization of the learner's potential to make choices that help him/her achieve authenticity in the context of individuality. But such an atmosphere has to equally provide situations where recognition of consequences comes in tandem with the Existential pursuit for freedom within the educative framework.
Evaluation
Existentialism is a mind-set that accords premium to man's freedom to make choices that he deems instrumental in his pursuit for authenticity. For this, Existentialism provided a perspective that is alternative to Hegel's Idealism that heralded the virtues of absolute and universalizable truths about the material cosmos. It has to be noted though that authenticity in education is adumbrated with value-creation without reference to any external antecedent. Man is presumed to have the facility to choose from among options that he regards as contributory to the definition of his own person and the unraveling of the essence of his existence. Hence, unlike that of Plato's claim that man is antecendently good until he immerses himself in society, Existentialism following Sartre's claim, is consistent with the making of a man by him and for himself with nothing else to boot but himself and the environment that he is in contact with.
Following Kierkegaard's claim however, a twist gets into the picture with Existentialism being equated to Christianism. A "leap of faith" is what Kierkegaard considered as elemental in the realization of man's Christian life.
Jostein Gaarder, author of Sophie's World, in a chapter on Kierkegaard as told in the same aforementioned book, started with a philosophical inebriation. Sophie was handed over with two bottles, one red and the other blue, by a young girl named Alice. The bottles were very inviting in their labels that read, "Drink me" and "Drink me too". Sophie at first hesitated aas they "might be poisonous". The red bottle altered Sophie's world into one that caused everything to proceed into a grand fusion. This was associational to Hegel's Pantheism or Idealism. The blue bottle is Kierkegaard's virtual world-design for Sophie where everything is and has a world of its own.
Kierkegaard's Existentialist perspective purports a dangerously tempting proposition that puts premium on claims that are hanging loose on thin air like love, forgiveness, and the like. As there exists no measure with which the validity of such claims is gauged, Kierkegaard offered that this very uncertainty adds up to his assertion that claims of this species are more meaningful. "Meaning" in this regard emanates from one's faith in the person making the claim and from one's personal valuation of the claim made. For himj, subjective truth is more important than its objective counterpart. To firm this claim up, he posited that the truth value of the claim that you've been forgiven is more important than the truth value of the geometric claim that the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. Here is when Sophie has every reason to be worried about getting poisoned or intoxicated. Unfortunately, for Kierkegaard, he did not live long enough to witness the retrogression of his "leap of faith" down to "leap of extremism". Blind faith yielded to the ubiquity of "holier than thou's" whose minds are devoid of any form of reason other than that which they hold dear in their hearts for warranting them salvation. But that's another story. It is now a matter of conjectural interest to learn how he would have leapt out of faith after September the 11th.
Sartre reasoned from the pulpits of prison. To refute his Existentialist perspective that "existence precedes essence" is historicism to say the least. And while he ran short of advocating "live and let live", does it make the assertion less of a rule of common justice? To this end, Existentialism is better captured by Sartre than by Kierkegaard. But Kierkegaard lived his life happier perhaps. But then again, perhaps not.
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