Justifying our existence

by Graeme Nicholson

"In his magnum opus Being and Time (1927), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) argued that individuals have assumed that their existence is 'a given, ' when in fact they simply have the ability to be. Justifying Our Existence examines the ways in which human beings attempt to create meaning in their lives, often by magnifying and proving their existence through phenomena such as self-righteousness, careerism, nationalism, and religion." "In this study, Graeme Nicholson analyses Heidegger's methods to indicate how his work has a practical application for existential concerns. Nicholson shows how phenomenology, as defined by Heidegger, can be used to explore fundamental questions of human existence, while shedding new light on important aspects of human behaviour and the motivation behind many of our social systems. Justifying Our Existence touches on many realms of everyday human experience - both political and personal while offering fresh insights on one of the twentieth century's most impor