Michael Asciak

Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and a pro-choice philosophy and that existence precedes essence. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing

Essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. In more simple terms, a person who is an essentialist is one who believes that man has an objective nature and looks at problems in an objective manner, taking others in society into consideration, while an existentialist is essentially one who looks at life from a subjective manner, that is placing oneself at the centre of the solution to the problem with ethical fallouts which tend to neglect others around oneself.

This teaching harks back to ancient Greek philosophy. There were those philosophers called sophists who believed that the truth surrounding us changed according to the culture which formed us. Therefore truth changed with culture, it was not absolute and was therefore of a subjective nature. These philosophers were essentially challenged by the three philosophers (circa 400BC) who believed that truth was objective and absolute. Truth did not change with culture. These three were of course Socrates, his disciple Plato and Plato’s disciple Aristotle.

Aristotle in particular wrote his Metaphysics, which dealt with the philosophy of essence or being. Man has an essence and an existence. Substance, essence and form are the same concept for the predetermined entity in a human existent or being, the universality of the species. The other entity in the being, is the matter, which determines the particular human being from the other human being (the particular), but the essence determines the species or universal features of man, his nature therefore essence precedes existence. For Aristotle, man is made of form and matter to bring about the composite or particular existent being. That is why before man