COMM 2273 Lecture Notes - Lecture 67: Existence Precedes Essence, Existentialism, Genetic Fallacy

• School: University of Arkansas-Monticello
• Department: Communication
• Course: COMM 2273
• Professor: Key

Document Summary

First, existentialism can"t make claims as to the nature of human beings i. e. them being free-willed or rational etcetera without claiming an essence of human beings, so it is thus self-defeating. It claims that we are the definers of ourselves and our values. Thus, if we claim existentialism is true, it doesn"t mean existentialism is true. It simply means you arbitrarily defined yourself and truth in accordance with existentialism. Third, existence is not contingent on essence, making the argument a non-sequitor. For example, the essence of my great grandfather can exist, even if he is no longer alive. Since the two things are inextricably separate, we cannot define one by the other. Fourth, existentialism begs the question of whether human beings can create value at all. Since it doesn"t make sense to claim human beings evaluate without reference to evaluation in terms of some norm or standard, existentialism is false and externalism is true.