Is there an “essence” to our “existence” or we merely exist? Let us explore the existentialism vs essentialism by understanding it’s meaning and how it affects our life.
Existentialism: It is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. Basically, it’s the view that humans define their own meaning in life and try to make a rational decisions despite of living in an irrational life. According to existentialism philosophy, Existentialism is always particular and individual. It’s always about my existence, your existence, her existence, his existence.
“Existentialism is being a saint without God, being your own hero without a sanction and support of religion or society”
Essentialism: Contrary to the existentialism, essentialist believes in approach which assumes that people and things have natural and essential common characteristics. And these characteristics are inherent, innate and unchanging. Essentialism holds the view that every category of people have an underlying reality or true nature that one cannot observe directly.
“Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies then execution of those things effortless”
Existentialism vs essentialism: There’s a long debate going on between existentialism and essentialism from hundreds of years. Do you believe every being has an inherent purpose or we each have the freedom and responsibility to determine our own fate? This is the crux of the debate between existentialist and essentialist worldview.
The existentialist view proposes that life has no predefined purpose, we just exist and we can mould ourselves in whatever way we want. It tells us that we have freewill to determine not only our fate but personality, values and view at looking at the world. Opposite to this essentialist claims that there is an essence to our being , a particular aspect that precedes our birth and this plays a huge role in determining our future. Existentialism asserts that “existence precedes essence”, which is in opposition the classical doctrine that “essence precedes existence”. The conflict between existentialism and essentialism forms a part of branch of philosophy called ‘metaphysics’ (first philosophy as it deals with first principles and causes).
At a first glance it seems like essentialism can only applied to the domain of spiritual and religion. However, a scientific minded person who believes that DNA passed down to us by our parents play a significant role in determining our future is also called an essentialist. Classical essentialists believe that things are wrong in absolute sense. For example , a murder breaks a universal objective and natural moral law. But the same is not true from existentialist’s perspective. It all cares about freedom and with freedom comes responsibility, meaning — you are solely responsible for your actions and you and only you have to face consequences; no one else is responsible for you. Essentialists claims that there is essence of everything around you and you are given the duty of doing the essential things. A basic example of this is men and women are differently categorized and they have different essence in their life. Existentialists contradicts this by saying every being has a freewill and has choice to do whatever he/she wants.
But from existentialist’s view it seems like existentialism is the investigation of the meaning of being. Jean-Paul Sartre (French philosopher) believed in essential freedom of individuals. In one of the lectures of “Burden of responsibility” — he says that “man first of all exists, encounter himself, surges up in the world and defines himself afterwards”. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He also claims that “man is condemned to be free “— Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. Each self aware individual understands his own existence in terms of his experience and situation. Existentialists reject the idea that there is fundamentally true nature of human. In-fact it says that human can define it’s own life and defy so called nature.
Now, you can decide what you want to be; existentialist or essentialist. But again you are responsible for your actions and its you who have to face consequences.