What is Existentialism?
• If a tree falls in the forest and no one is
there to hear it, does it make a sound?
• Are you touching the floor if you are
sitting cross-legged in a chair?
• What if our whole life is a dream, and
when we die we wake up?
Existentialism…Continued
• Rose to prominence in Germany in 1800’s
•
Life sucked and there were lots of wars
• Technology & Industrialization was getting started
• Doesn’t cross “the pond” for 20 years
• Important Existentialist Thinkers:
•
Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard
Why is it important?
• They created our modern world.
Why does cancer happen?
• What is communication? How can we better receive sound?
• What is music?
• What is noise?
• What is energy?
• What is light?
•
• We’ve advanced technologically in the last 100 years because of those
who dare ask the questions to which we feel we don’t have answers.
God is Dead: A Parable
• What is a parable?
•
•
A simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson
Many examples are told by Jesus in the Gospels
• There is A LOT of controversy with this piece.
Lots of people misinterpret/misquote it.
Fitzgerald (the author of Gatsby) makes multiple references to this piece,
which is why we are reading it.
• Hi-lights some thoughts that Nietzsche has concerning religion and faith
•
•
***YOU DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE IT, YOU JUST HAVE
TO UNDERSTAND IT***
God is Dead: A Parable
• A madman with a lantern
Who are the bringers of light? What are they actually offering?
• What happened to the prisoner in the Allegory of the Cave? To Clarisse in
Fahrenheit 451?
•
• Doubting believers
What did it show about the Widow that she told Huck not to smoke but
used snuff herself?
• What did it show about the Sheperdsons and Grangerfords that they
listened to sermons about brotherly love but fought each other?
• Why might they be the ones to mock the madman?
•
God is Dead: A Parable
• “unchained the earth from its sun”
•
Galileo & Copernicus, Marco Polo &Columbus
• “Whither are we moving now?”
•
If everything you thought you knew was called into question, how might
you feel?
• “Must we not ourselves become gods”
Why are the people who believe they’ve discovered everything
responsible for killing God?
• What was missing from religion without science?
• What might be missing from science without religion?
•
God is Dead: A Parable
• “it broke and went out…my time has not come yet”
What does it mean that the light goes out?
• Why did Clarisse die? Why was the prisoner doubted?
•
• “something beyond themselves”
Emerson = Over-Soul
• What does Nietzsche seem to be suggesting at the end?
•