Hey Veeky Forums recently I've been getting interested in existentialism and I know a little bit but still need to read...

How do they not believe this?

>Existentialists believe that we have a radical individuality/aloneness that we must take responsibility for despite the fact that the proper way to do so remains opaque.
This match his view of the relationship between man and nature (romantic way to say the world).

>nature (romantic way to say the world)
I suppose. I prefer to think of the world as a context sphere, and nature as one massive context within (and outside) the sphere.

So what's the difference between them?

Not him, but I think you're categorizing them as existentialists solely on the ontological basis they share (that of existence preceding essence). Nietzsche and Stirner are certainly not good representatives of what is colloquially referred to as "existentialism", both stylistically and philosophically. A common understanding of the existentialists hinges on the conception of the individual along with the alienation, angst, the modernist absurdity.

I'm not nearly familiar enough with Stirner or even Heidegger, but Nietzsche and Camus, while certainly not Existentialists, do have close ties to them, with Nietzsche's work being a main influence on Atheïst existentialism.

DONT BACK DOWN, YOU WERE RIGHT!! Nietzsche is positively an Existentialist! He believed subjectivity ruled, and that we had the capacity to create our own values. I love how the guy whom you were arguing with said you probably just got your info. from wiki, yet explains himself as though that is exactly what he did. Bruh, get good!

not the other guy, but
so what about that passage in the beyond good and evil where neitzsche lampoons the idea of ~ creating one's own meaning, or something like that, as if he knew exactly what future existentialists where going to assert and was pre-emptively refuting them?
I think what's maybe important is that by Nietzsche's thinking we really don't have that much radical freedom to create meaning for ourselves. The strong were always to be the strong, the weak the weak etc etc. It's not so much a question of creating meaning or creating value as embodying it

Stirner: I am
Kierkegaard: in search of a purpose
Nietzsche: if I can't find it I will create it
Heidegger: investigating my past and exploring the many possibilities
Camus: and I'll keep trying even though it is futile

Can you tell me more about Heidegger? I'm interested

>It's not so much a question of creating meaning or creating value as embodying it

Well said. There's not much "Existence precedes essence" going on with Nietzsche and Heidegger. Plus, the creation (embodiment) of values for N. is primarily directed toward an aristocratic elite, another major difference he has compared to the other thinkers associated with existentialism.

>Can you tell me more about Heidegger?
Heidegger begins as a busy man that involves himself in a far larger philosophical project than an existentialist's angst, namely to look for the answer to the question "What does 'to be' mean?", which needs to be clear before one can even tell you "Just be yourself" (authenticity) or how. He's remaking Western ontology, to accomplish this he uses existential phenomenology, basically first-person philosophy.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/

And why does he say "Investigate your past"?

Because you're thrown into this world, not because of your choice, and you cannot escape your past.

Social conventions or ties of kinship and duty are imposed upon you, but they're also part of who you are and it is a form of pre-understanding of it and your relationship with what's around you - of course what's immediately around you is embedded in much of the same historical process.

If you want to be yourself, you should try to understand who is They.

He was writing existentialist entries in his Zibaldone in the 1820s
When Kierkegaard was an undergraduate Leopardi had already tackled all of the great themes of existentialism with no outside point of reference.
He IS the first existentialist.

Cool, thanks

Heidegger explicitly states 'existence precedes essence' in the first chapter of Sein und Zeit.

By "past," Heidegger means everything that is "always already" available to your understanding. When you let yourself simply "go with the flow" and simply "do what everybody does, what is normal to do," your sense of the flow, of what IS normal, is your past. Your past is the sum total of your understanding of the world, what things are in the world, and and how you ought to react to them, interact with them, etc. Your "past" makes up your reactions to everything you encounter.

Humans are natural interpreters. To be able to function, we have to do bewilderingly complex shit constantly, without thinking about it. You learn almost everything you do by muscle memory, as a baby just by watching adults do it, and still as an adult by absorbing it without even thinking, from your environment.

What Heidegger wants you to do, to some extent, is just to understand that you are this interpreter. Any perspective you try to take on something, whether it's an object or a moral impulse or your own basic urges, is a perspective - a view - from "somewhere." It's contextualised by the knowledge you've gained by continually engaging with the knowledge, the interpretations, of other humans making their own way in the world. What Heidegger wants you to do is REALISE this, realise how easy it is for us to merely act out, enact, "what is normal to do," "what one does," "what I've gathered most people would do in this situation," and ask yourself: Why do that? What do *I* actually want? What does this mean about *me* if I do it? What am I, *overall*, what is the point of my life, what am I aiming for in life, and how does my response to this situation form a part of that, how does it move me toward the person I want to be? Etc.

You can't escape your past - you can't escape that your conceptual resources for interpreting any given situation are built on the interpretations and implementations of others. But you can be mindful that each new interpretation you make is a fresh one, that you have choices, that you can say "no," that you can do something different.

The basic complaint underlying this is that most people simply do go with the flow. Most people are simply Doing What One Does. They spend their whole lives living out, acting out, the pre-made interpretations of a mass of others they don't even know.

Pic related thinkers are very diverse and differs fundamentally from each other in many ways. What unites them is the common theme of placing higher emphasize on existence (the mere facticity of being) over essence or substantiality. This presents a problem for the human that is characterized by the fact that it relates to its own being and has to face the unfolding of itself as uncertain and open. It is problematic to lump these thinkers together under an -ism, and existentialism as a term really emerges with Sartre and his followers and denotes his specific approach. Existentialism denotes no commonality in goal or project between these thinkers, merely a certain emphasize in the foundational starting point for unfolding their respective thinking.

Although if you want to trace the theme of existence in modern philosophy, these thinkers are great to explore, but remember that they cannot be separated from their individual contexts. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are the obvious place to start since they are some of the early thinkers in this tendency and both explicitly link it to the problem of modernity. Now Heidegger draws on both Nietzsche and Kierk in crucial ways in his project of reorienting metaphysics, but also on hermeneutics, phenomenology and the entire tradition of western ontology and his project is in many ways wholly unique (he is my favourite). Sartre's Existentialism with a hyphenated E is grounded in his (mis-)reading of Heidegger and naturally follows from there, as does Camus, who was part of the intellectual milieau around Sartre.

Personally I find the sartrean branch of post-Heideggerian continental philosophy not very fruitful. After Heidegger I would encourage to look into modern hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricæur) and phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty) or maybe deconstruction.

Schopenhauer's world as will remains true to this day.