I When was younger, I always thought about what I was doing with my life. I always wondered what was the point of doing everything I did, of doing anything at all. Why are we here? We live, we die. Life is like a game. The game begins, and then it ends. It's a revolving circle where we will end up where we started: nonexistent. I questioned what the point of living was and I didn't see any clear answer show up in the near future. I was obsessively thinking about the purpose of anything every minute I was awake. It could have been typical teenage angst that was finally hitting me or it was just me complaining about my everyday procedure and why I was doing what I was doing, but I needed to find an answer before I went crazy. I was thirsting for knowledge, so I decided to hit the books to satiate myself. After spending countless hours at the bookstore, the answer came to me. There is no known purpose in this world; each and every human being has the full responsibility to make meaning in his or her own life. The meaning of my life was to be determined by me. The idea of finding meaning in an absurd world through the individual is something that must be reckoned by each and every person by him or herself. No one else can help you find purpose in this life, except for you. This is the main idea of existential philosophy. Existentialism was first coined by Jean Paul Sartre during the 1950's but has really been a movement in society since the 19th century during the time of Soren Kierkegaard. Some say Kierkegaard is the father of existentialism because of his ideas and doctrines. His philosophy focused on the truth in subjectivity over objectivity. That is, the feelings that a human feels is how life is defined, not by the things a human does in his or her life. Living is not through facts, but through emotions. He also formulated ideas on universal dread and angst. The freedom of choice that each and every human has makes us responsible for all of our actions. The dread and angst comes from the mere fact that we have this possibility to be able to choose to do whatever we want, which can result in nothing or to some of the most terrifying of possibilities. All of this potential leads to the universal feeling of dread. Kierkegaard may not have coined the term existentialism, but his ideas helped set the tone for the philosophy for the years to come. Another philosopher that would go on to influence existential thought is Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher who lived during the mid to late 19 th century. Two of his more important ideas were about master-slave moralities and eternal recurrence. Master morality was based on a scale of good or bad and slave morality was based on a scale of good or evil. Nietzsche, in his writing On the Geneology of Morals, describes master morality as a morality for the strong-willed. The good in master morality is "the noble, strong, and powerful," whilst the bad in master morality is developed in opposition to good morality. Slave morality on the other hand, is a morality for the weak, oppressed, and those unsure of themselves. The good in slave morality are the qualities that allow the sufferers to improve their condition. The evil that is in slave morality is based on the qualities that what their masters would value good, therefore the good in master morality would equate to the evil in slave morality. Master morality is essentially the individual trying to exceed above themselves while slave morality is the individual trying to get to the level of their superiors. Eternal recurrence, which originated in ancient Egypt, but fell into a decline as Christianity spread, is the concept that the universe has been recurring and will continue to recur in the exact same way for eternity. Nietzsche was a supporter of this theory because he wanted to emphasize that each and every individual should live every minute of their life as if it was going to recur for the rest of eternity. This meant
that everyone should live their life to the fullest and always imagine that everything you did would happen over and over again for the rest of eternity. Nietzsche, along with Kierkegaard, were two of the forefathers to the existential movement that would soon be occurring in Europe and the Americas in the 20th century. The late 19th to 20th century was considered the beautiful era of European culture; La Belle Epoque was a period of artistic endeavors, technological advancements, and the resurgence of beauty. La Belle Epoque, had a strong underlying existential theme that is evident in the works that come from the period. The Masterpiece by Emile Zola, is story about an untraditional artist that makes art he has a passion for, even though no one else appreciates what he does. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka describes a man who deals with suddenly being transformed into a cockroach which symbolizes mankind dealing with the absurdity of the world. Expressionism, an art movement that was predominant in Germany during the La Belle Epoque, was described as an art movement that tended to distort reality for an emotional effect, an effect that showed that the expressionist artists were trying to show their feelings through their art. Throughout all these works and movements, along with many other works during La Belle Epoque, it is apparent that this young philosophical idea, an idea that wasn't even coined until nearly fifty years after the beautiful era, was beginning to grow throughout La Belle Epoque and become shaped into the idea that it is in today's society. In The Masterpiece by Zola, Claude Lantier is the story's protagonist and an artist who must deal with the pressures of appeasement brought on by society and his own satisfaction in making art the way he wants to make it. Claude has a creative and innovative style of painting that is far beyond his time. His unconventional style of painting doesn't go well within bourgeois Parisian society and the Salon, which were the tastemakers of art in Paris at that time. The Salon holds an annual Parisian exhibition that Claude enters year after year only to be rejected again and again. Claude is agitated that he isn't getting the recognition he thinks he deserves but he is also not willing to sell out to society and change his style of art to get approval. He creates art the way he enjoys it and he finds meaning in his own life through his art. Even though his work is not appreciated by others, Claude still does it because he loves it; he aims to perfect his artwork and one day make a true masterpiece. He represents someone with a master morality, where the good is determined by his self-worth and the bad is only the opposition to that. Public opinion did not play a role into how he created his art. Claude finds a purpose for living and that purpose is to make art he enjoys. At this point it seems as if Claude could truly be considered to have lived an existential life, a life where he was happy with what he was doing and he followed a master morality instead of the inferior slave morality, but his downfall was his strong desire to gain social and financial success. He suffers greatly because of the public's critique of his art, even though he should be living happily because he is doing what he loves. What made him even more infuriated was that he had a close friend, Fagerolles, who was making money and receiving public praise for his commercial art, while Claude was living off a supporter, in a small apartment with tiny rations of food. He felt inferior to his friend and wanted to do anything to be at the level that Fagerolles was at in terms of monetary gains and societal stature. Claude was so obsessed with receiving public respect that he abandoned his friends and family to try to attain societal success. As every year went by and he was getting rejected by the Salon on an annual basis, Claude was
slowly sinking into isolation and was becoming more detached from his surroundings to try to make art that would be accepted by the Salon. It is now apparent that Claude has gone from an independent individual to a slave of society. His mentality now resembles what Nietzsche would describe as slave morality, where Claude was determining a good quality as whenever he improved his condition instead of what he should try to be attaining for, a good morality where he striving for self-satisfaction. He was comparing himself to his peer, Fagerolles, which ended up looking like Fagerolles was the master while Claude was the slave. Zola displayed this very well in the novel between the two differing characters, where Fagerolles was succeeding doing what he was doing best, and the Claude who was trying to do anything to perfect his unorthodox artistic style to attain the success that his opposite was receiving. It clearly showed a sharp contrast to the two moralities that Nietzsche was talking about, a master and a slave morality. Fagerolles was achieving self-satisfaction where Claude was just comparing himself to Fagerolles and trying to achieve the societal success that Fagerolles had. By using the Salon to symbolize society, Zola showed how Claude would do anything to be approved by the Salon, even if it meant sacrificing self-happiness to try to achieve that. Zola's construction of the underlying existential theme of the Masterpiece shows La how Belle Epoque had an overall existential element to it. Expressionist art is a movement that refers to artists during the 20th century, especially during La Belle Epoque, who emphasized the emotional aspects of a piece of work instead of its realistic characteristics. As with many other artistic movements, there wasn't an actual group of artists that distinctly referred to themselves as expressionist artists and it wasn't really recognized as an art movement until near the end of La Belle Epoque. Friedrich Nietzsche is thought to have played a key role in the birth of expressionist art with his theory in the dualism of the aesthetic experiences, Apollonian and Dionysian. The Apollonian aesthetic represented the rationality of mind and order while the Dionysian aesthetic was based on emotional subconscious feeling and irrational thought. Nietzsche claimed that all works of art contained this dualist nature between the rational and irrational. The irrational part of a piece of work was the emotion that the artist was trying to portray while the Apollonian, rational, side was portrayed through the realistic nature of the art. This is apparent in the Death in Venice, when Gustav von Aschenbach moves from an Apollonian dominant art style to a Dionysian dominant art style. Expressionism tended to emphasize the irrationality of human nature and portray the emotional aspect of a work of art. This subjective tone relates to Kierkegaard's idea of subjective truth over objective truth. Expressionist art is essentially about living life through one's feelings, which is what Kierkegaard said was how a person should really live, through their subjective emotions. The most well known piece of Expressionist art is probably Edvard Munch's The Scream. Munch was born and raised in Norway and lived through all of La Belle Epoque. Painted in 1893, the piece symbolized mankind going through the existential angst that Kierkegaard had talked about. The person in the picture is believed to have been Munch himself. The person which symbolizes humanity is screaming and dealing with the angst that comes with the realization that life is full of many choices that has many different possibilities and the results of each and every choice is not known but has a multitude of consequences. This thought alone is what essentially leads to the angst that mankind goes
through. Edvard Munch's The Scream is a quintessential example of expressionist art in regards to existentialism as it not only portrays human angst, a topic that is referred to often in existentialism, but it also shows the highly emotional aspect art, which is according to existential thought, how a life is truly defined. Besides Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka is another person who is considered to have laid the foundation for existentialism. He considered is to be one of the first literary existentialists with his writings dealing with absurdity and boredom. Sadly, Kafka's works didn't receive public praise until after his death when his friend, disobeying Kafka's orders to destroy all the writings, decided to publish many of Kafka's works. Kafka grew up and lived in Prague throughout all of La Belle Epoque. There have been many different efforts to interpret Kafka's writing, but there doesn't seem to be a concrete answer to the themes he proposes. The hopelessness and absurdity of his works make them considered to be existential writings. In Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, the main character Gregor Samsa suddenly turns into a cockroach and has to deal with the ludicrousness of living life as a humansized rodent. The absurdity of what happens in the story is what Kafka uses to get his point across. Surely, it is unlikely that one day someone will wake up and turn into a cockroach, the fact that Samsa has to live life as a bug allows Kafka to communicate many different themes into the story. When Samsa first wakes up and realizes that he can't get out of bed properly, he doesn't panic because he has been turned into a bug, but he panics because he is afraid of being late to work. "But that would be extremely embarrassing and suspect, for throughout his five years with the firm he had never been sick even once," thought Gregor as he was lying in bed thinking about the consequences of missing work for the first time ever. In this scene, Kafka brilliantly shows how society has put so much pressure on the individual to perform for the rest of the community, that the individual no longer has a chance to live for him or herself. He tries to make the point that we, as a society have no more time to enjoy our self-being and are too caught up in the web of society to truly enjoy life anymore. He was essentially saying that we should live life and enjoy it for what it's worth; there shouldn't be any obligations a person must live up to, every person has the freedom to do whatever he or she wants and that should be the only angst a person goes through. Gregor prioritizes his job security over his own being as he tries to think of a way to get to work and this epitomizes what Kafka was trying to say about how mankind takes life too seriously and everyone should relax a little more. The idea of Gregor turning into a cockroach may seem like an impossible event, but that seemed like what Kafka was trying to do, portray an event that was not likely to happen. He shows how in everyone's life, there will be things that one wouldn't ever have considered happening that will happen. It may seem absurd, it may seem irrational, but the only thing we could do is deal with it. We must try to make the best of every situation no matter how crazy the situation is. A true hero is able to deal with the absurdity of the world. We must accept our fate, whether it'd be a good or a bad fate, there is nothing we could do but try to make the best of every situation. Kafka uses many different themes and there are many different interpretations of The Metamorphosis. The beauty of this novella and a lot of Kafka's other writings are the ambiguities of all the stories. There are many different ways to interpret what Kafka was trying to say. The vagueness of the way Kafka writes may not have a definite style, but there is a clear existential theme is a lot of his writings. Living in Europe at the time of La Belle Epoque,
Kafka captures the essence of the period with his ideas on the absurd world and emphasis on the individual's freedom to live over societal obligations in The Metamorphosis. Even though the existential movement wasn't clearly defined until after World War II by Sartre, there were clearly strong existential ideas that started a century earlier with Kierkegaard spanning to Nietzsche and flowing through to the La Belle Epoque then onwards until after World War II until where it is today. The subliminal existential undercurrent during La Belle Epoque is apparent in many of the works that come from the period. Taking on influences from past thinkers such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, the literary writers of La Belle Epoque such as Zola and Kafka portray a world with no meaning where each and every individual must find his or her own purpose. Claude Lantier in the Masterpiece is shown as an artist who isn't willing to change his artistic style to appease society but he does his art to satisfy himself but eventually succumbs to public pressure to the point where he has to commit suicide. Claude couldn't stand the harsh reality of this world and he had to tragically end his life to deal with it. Gregory Samsa turns into a cockroach and tries to deal with the absurdity with living life as a large vermin, but is no longer loved by his family that his life too ends in tragedy, as he is killed by his father. Death is a strong theme in existentialism because it is a natural occurrence, an absurd idea that we must deal with no matter what. Expressionist art, which was an art movement that started during the time of La Belle Epoque shows the emphasis of the irrational in contrast to the rational in its works of art which symbolizes existential emotion in disparity with rationality. To this day, I still question the purpose of my existence. What is the purpose of this game we are all playing called life? Existential philosophy and philosophy in general has given me a better understanding of other people's point of views on life. We should all live life to the fullest extent, because all we know is what we feel. Our feelings and memories are what our lives are made of. The meaning of each person's life is determined by the individual. You can make what you want out of your life. After taking this class, I have a better understanding of the existential movement that was occurring between Kierkegaard and Sartre's time. La Belle Epoque had authors and artists who helped shaped the birth of this new movement into what it is today. The beautiful era was a time where existential thought grew with the different views of the people of the period from Zola to Kafka. What I learned about this game of life is that there are no winners and there are no losers, the game is what I make of it; I have the opportunity to do whatever I want in this game and the game consists of many different choices I make that can lead to many different possibilities which will, in the end, be my life.