Does the Crowd Extinguish Individuality?Jeremy Irwin

Existentialism

● Webster's- “a chiefly 20th century philosophical movement embracing diverse doctrines but centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad”

Existentialism cont.

● “What makes this current of inquiry distinct is not its concern with “existence” in general, but rather its claim that thinking about human existence requires new categories not found in the conceptual repertoire of ancient or modern thought; human beings can be understood neither as substances with fixed properties, nor as subjects interacting with a world of objects.”

Soren Kierkegaard

● “A thinker who founded his philosophy on a passionate though highly personal belief in God.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

●“An equally passionate Atheist who announced that “God is dead.””

This is Possible because...

It is a focus on “individual existence in an unfathomable universe.”

Kierkegaard agreed that crowds steal identities.

● He claimed that the world was “wretched.”● He was convinced that everyone lived in sin.● “...they think that even if the Lord keeps ever

so careful a set of books, they may still cheat him a little.”

● He was convinced society had become lax as a whole, the views of society have overthrown the personal belief of the individual.

Arguments for...● “Where the crowd is, the truth is also, that is a

need in truth itself, that it must have the croud on its side.”

● Individual identity is still lost in the opposite scenario; “where ever the crowd is, so is the untruth.”

● The crowd's identity and values quickly throw the individual's to the side, whether right or wrong.

● “...even if the individual posses the truth, the crowd overrules that which is private.”

Biblical Reasoning...

● St. Paul, in the letter to the Corinthians, states that “only one receives the prize,” [I Cor. 9:24]

● “The worldly, temporal, busy, socially-friendly person says this: “how unreasonable, that only one should receive a prize, it is far more probable that several combined receive the prize; and if we become many, then it becomes more certain and also easier for each individuality””

-Kierkgaard [“On the Dedication to 'That Single Individual'”]

Arguments against...

● A Crowd is a collection of individuals with a similar cause, but with their own beliefs on how to approach the cause.

● Example: if you see a group of protesters, protesting a government policy or action, the group is composed of many different degrees of belief in the cause. Complete anarchist are protesting next to people who support their government with the exception of this certain policy

●Chaffee, John. The Philosophers Way. New Jersey: Pearson Education. Print

●"Existentialism." (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Stanford University, 23

Aug. 2004. Web. 08 Apr. 2013.