Macquarrie and Existentialism

Why does Macquarrie argue that existentialism is a style of philosophising?

Although not the first scholar to coin the term, ‘existentialism’, Soren Kierkegaard is unequivocally the founding father of the philosophical movement. Kierkegaard first suggests that philosophical thinking starts with the individual as a subject, and thus, each individual is responsible for providing meaning to life as well as living it “authentically” (Watts, 2003). Later renditions by 19th century scholars such as Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche and Sartre still maintain that existentialism is a systematic philosophy. Many modern philosophers however, argue against this claim made for existentialism; John Macquarrie is one of such philosophers. Macquarrie, a renowned existentialist, regards existentialism not as a systematic philosophy, but rather as a style of philosophising and argues as to why this is the case in his book, Existentialism (1972). Hence the purpose of this essay is to demonstrate, by using other styles of philosophising in comparison, why Macquarrie argues this claim.

As mentioned, to better understand Macquarrie’s argument against the claim, other styles of philosophising must be assessed. For this, the philosophical movement, Logical Positivism, will be used as an example. Much like existentialists, Logical Positivists share common themes which, according to A.J. Ayer leads one to ultimately accept that ‘a proposition is significant in meaning if it can be either verified or falsified through sense-observation’ (Ayer, 1959). This is that knowledge can only be attained only through empiricism. Any discussion which pertains the idea of gaining knowledge undoubtedly belongs as a style of philosophising to the philosophy of epistemology. It can also be inferred with the assertion of empiricism that all Logical Positivists stay clear from the metaphysical and theism. It is through this indifference in Logical Positivism that we can objectively state that it is philosophising...