Extracts from: ‘How Should We Then Live?’ by Francis A.
Schaeffer
A good
explanation of Existentialism:
“… Kierkegaardianism did bring to full tide the notion that
reason will always lead to pessimism.
That is, one must try to find optimistic answers in regard to meaning
and values on an “upper level” outside of reason. Through a “leap of faith” one must try to
find meaning without reason.
You
will remember that in the High Renaissance, humanistic man, starting only from
himself, had problems concerning the meaning or value of things and of
absolutes for morals. With Rousseau it
became an AUTONOMOUS FREEDOM / AUTONOMOUS NATURE problem. With Kant it was NOUMENAL WORLD / PHENOMENAL WORLD. With Kierkegaardianism it went a step further
and now became:
NON-REASON = FAITH – OPTIMISM
REASON = PESSIMISM
So optimism will now always be in the area of
non-reason.” Pg 163
“This (dichotomy) is the mark of modern man.” Parenthesis
mine, Pg 164
Other Existentialists:
Jean-Paul
Sartre (reason absurd, act of the will is “authenticating”)
Albert Camus
Martin
Heidegger (answers separate from reason; Angst)
Karl Jaspers
(German based in Basel Switzerland; final
experience convinces us there is meaning to life)
Aldous
Huxley (English; drugs the solution – Soma.
Brave New World; soma: substance
in Eastern Hindu myths which was the drug keeping the gods contented)
Karl Barth
(theological existentialism, “viewed the Bible as having many mistakes…” yet “…taught
that a religious “word” breaks through from it.)
Paul Tillich
(correlation; philosophy provides
questions and theology provides answers; “Many criticisms of Tillich’s
methodology revolve around this issue of whether the integrity of the Christian
message is really maintained when its form is conditioned by philosophy”
McKelway, The Systematic Theology of Paul
Tillich, pg 47. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology “At best Tillich was a
pantheist, but his thought borders on Atheism.”)
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