Existentialism School of Philosophy

Existentialism is the most recent school of philosophy of education. It is also known as realism. It originated from the atrocities witnessed by mankind during the world war II.

It was proposed by realists like Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche. The final developments of this philosophy are yet to be made.

Salient Features:

·        Existentialists oppose calling existentialism as a school of philosophy per se.

·        It has certain concepts and is is not based on metaphysics, epistemology, logic and axiology.

·        Its philosophy is that life is not a puzzle to be solved but a reality to be lived and experienced.

·        It is a philosophy of crisis and emerges from the problems of life.

·        As philosophy is a counselor in the crisis, it helps in making hard choices regarding the further course of actions for existence.  

·        Life according to existentialism is between birth and death and comprises of grief, horror, uncertainty and solitude.

·        Though classical Indian philosophy draws parallels with this thought, it counsels us to move ahead and passes these elements of life instead of living with them in a lifetime itself.

·        Existentialism also believes that man has to first discover himself and then make himself worthy.

·        There is complete choice in what the man intends to make of himself.

·        Individual attention in education is emphasized along with freedom and hence home education is given a priority over school education.

·        Though is no prescribed curriculum, students must be taught reading, writing, history, arithmetic, science and humanity.

·        A method of teaching which can promote creativity in children is proposed.

·        Also, question answer method and inductive-deductive method are also adopted.

·        The student teacher relationship can be more informal and more interactive rather than being formal and rigid.

Demerits:

·        There are aims of education, curriculum or specific methods of teaching in this school of philosophy yet.

·        However, self discovery and realization of potentials are vital to the meaning of education in existentialism.

·        Affective domain learning takes precedence over cognitive and psychomotor domains of learnings.

Educational Implications:

·        According to existentialism, education should be a matter of choice. It should be humanistic and promote individuality and liberty.