University of California, Berkeley Existentialism is a Humanism Paper Format: Each essay should have an expository and an evaluative component. The essay t

University of California, Berkeley Existentialism is a Humanism Paper Format: Each essay should have an expository and an evaluative component. The essay topics provide fairly narrow constraints on what’s required of your exposition, but they leave the evaluation fairly wide open. You can evaluate whether some philosopher’s view or some philosophical claim is coherent or compelling. You can weigh opposing views and claims. You can argue for an interpretation. Do a mixture of these. Etc. The last question of each topic is placed within [ ]. These are recommended, but not mandatory, directions. Each opens up a compelling evaluative avenue. But the other questions/directions of the prompt might suggest to you another compelling avenue worth pursuing. That’s fine. What’s important is that your evaluation is stated with clarity and precision.

Topics:

How can Heidegger coherently maintain that there is a possibility of an “authentic self,” given he says that the “they” is an “existentiale” (i.e., an ontological feature) of Dasein? In answering this question, explain Heidegger’s account of the “they,” and how it makes up the “Self of everyday Dasein.” Also explain how Heidegger thinks we can adopt an authentic comportment towards life. [How, if it at all, does Heidegger’s conception of an authentic life differ from Kierkegaard’s?]
In “Existentialism is a Humanism,” how does Sartre defend existentialism against the following criticisms:
Existentialism robs value of its weight or seriousness
Existentialism is incapable of passing judgment (p.305)