Existentialism | AustraliaEssayWriters

• Discuss how you will use the lessons learned in your BBA program to be more productive in your current (or future) career. Provide specific examples to support your response.

• Identify your top three takeaways from the course and how you’ll leverage them to make good decisions.
• Start your discussion by responding to these questions as you reflect on your learning in this course:
o What did you learn that will help you make better decisions?
o What will you do differently at work or in your personal life as a result of being able to apply economic principles to your decision-making?
o What advice would you give to someone who is just starting to learn about the principles of economics?

• Reflect on what you learned during the course.
• What were you most surprised about?

Over the last 11 weeks, you’ve learned about multiple schools of thought in philosophy, and you’ve seen how these are alive today in the personal and professional lives of others.

Out of the following schools of thought we covered in this course (listed below), which philosophy did you relate to the most, and why? How can you use that school of thought to help you become a better problem solver?
• Existentialism (Week 2)
• Epistemology (Week 3)
• Rationalism (Week 4)
• Ethics (Week 6)
• The Socratic Method (Week 7)
• Scholasticism (Week 8)

In existentialism, the ethical ideal is to live “authentically”–a notoriously slippery concept—celebrating individual freedom and responsibility. According to Sartre, we are here by blind chance, and nothing more. There is no objective reason for our existence, and this hard truth imposes a responsibility on each of us to live “authentically” by creating our own meaning and purpose. For Sartre, too often, we allow others to dictate the choices we make and the values by which we live, instead of being authentically who we are.

Sartre’s distinctive ethical approach marks a significant departure from traditional moral theories, which focus on the duties we have to others rather than to ourselves. Indeed, many have criticized existentialism on this basis as an ethically bankrupt philosophy justifying selfish indulgence at the expense of others. As demonstrated in the biographical film you watched, Sartre—who infamously proclaimed at one point that “hell is other people”– struggled throughout his life to balance his individualist philosophy with social responsibilities.

What do you make of the existentialist ideal of authenticity? Is it morally beneficial or harmful? Can we live authentically with others?