How Did Nietzsche Use The Metaphor Of Existentialism

However, Nietzsche believed there could be positive possibilities for humans without God. Relinquishing the belief in God opens the way for human creative abilities to fully develop. The Christian God, he wrote, would no longer stand in the way, so human beings might stop turning their eyes toward a supernatural realm and begin to acknowledge the value of this world.Nietzsche uses the metaphor of an open sea, which can be both exhilarating and terrifying. The people who eventually learn to create their lives anew will represent a new stage in human existence, the Übermensch — the personal archetype who, through the conquest of their own nihilism, themselves become a sort of mythical hero. Like Kierkegaard’s works, Nietzsche's works would go

Following the Second World War, existentialism became a well-known and significant philosophical and cultural movement, mainly through the public prominence of two French writers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, who wrote best-selling novels, plays and widely read journalism as well as theoretical texts.Sartre had been imprisoned in Germany in 1940 but managed to escape, and become one of the leaders of the Existential movement. Camus, was a spokesman for the French Underground when he wrote his famous essay, “Le Mythe de Sisyphe” or “The Myth of Sisyphus” Born on June 21, 1905, Sartre is arguably the best known philosopher of the twentieth century. pursuit of philosophical reflection, literary creativity and, in the second half of his life, active political commitment gained him worldwide renown, if not admiration. Sartre writings set the tone for intellectual life in the decade immediately following the Second World War. Sartre described existentialism as “the least scandalous and the most austere” of teachings, and one only really intended for technicians and

Sartre was an ardent atheist and so believed that there could be no God in whose mind our essential properties had been conceived. Nor did he believe there to be any other external source of values: unlike for example, Aristotle, Sartre did not believe in a common human nature which could be the source of morality. The basic given of the human predicament is that we are forced to choose what we will become, to define ourselves by our choice of action: all that is given is that we are, not what we are. While a penknife’s essence is pre-defined (it isn’t really a penknife if it hasn’t got a blade and won’t cut); human beings have no essence to begin with: “… man first of all exists, encounters 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 will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself.” So for the penknife