This study will focus on the question, To what extent does existentialist thought allow for ethical relationship and the possibility of community? The basic argument of the study will be that the tenets of existentialism tend to make very difficult a sense of community, and, to a lesser degree, also tend to make difficult meaningful or ethical relationships. Existentialism, says Sartre, is most purely an atheistic philosophy:
Atheistic existentialism . . . states that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and that being is man. . . .
Existence precedes essence . . . means that . . . man . . . appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. (Sartre 1965, 36).
Ideally, however, the individual acts as if he is the representative of all mankind, so that he behaves with care and ethics. This would suggest relationship and community are indeed possible. In reality, however, the tremendous weight existentialism puts on the individual isolates him rather than bringing him nearer relationship and community. He experiences "anguish, forlornness, despair" (Sartre 1965, 38). Sartre and other atheistic existentialists simply put too much responsibility on the individual in a meaningless universe without God. Most actual human beings cannot live effectively as individuals in such an existential universe, much less engage in ethical relationship or community.
Before existentialism, philosophy had focused primarily on the technical aspects of the theory of knowledge and dealt with ethics in general and abstract terms. The approach was objective, rather than subjective. Such earlier philosophy did not concern itself with the more personal concerns of the individual human being or with his individual destiny. Also, the growing size and threat of wars and the complexity and dominance of technology and the modern state red...