Karen Schomaker- Reflection on Existentialism

When I was writing my paper for this class on Easy Rider and existentialism, I kept coming across new definitions and explanations for existentialism. This made it difficult for me to come up with a solid idea on what it means to be an existentialist and what it entails. Eventually I settled on exploring two philosophers- Soren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre, both of whom are well-versed in this ideal, making it easy to find information.

However, what I found interesting about these two was that despite the fact that they were talking essentially about the same thing, there were large differences. Kierkegaard looks at existentialism in the ideas of the "leap of faith" and individual subjectivity, specifically looking at how this ties in with religion, God, and true faith. Sartre is an atheist who disagrees with Kierkegaard's philosophy regarding it's religious contexts, but takes the philosophy to a more social and political level- looking specifically at the individual and the idea that man is free to create his own essence. As a scene in Easy Rider highlights briefly with a sign in the brothel, "Death only closes a mans reputation and determines it good or bad" which is a reflection on Sartre's argument that it is impossible to define a man until he no longer exists because man is always changing with the context in which he leaves, and arguably the subjectivity he has within his life.