Existentialist Approach of Moral Decision

EXISTENTIALIST

Members:

Benjie Salvacion

Luca Vinati

Fidel Opulencia

Philip James Baided

Ritchie Fortus

I. Definition

Generally, it focuses on the condition of human existence, and an individual's emotions, actions, responsibilities, and thoughts, or the meaning or purpose of life. Existential philosophers often focused more on what is subjective, such as beliefs and religion, or human states, feelings, and emotions, such as freedom, pain, guilt, and regret, as opposed to analyzing objective knowledge, language, or science. Applying it in the vantage point of morality, it consists in being responsible, i.e., in responding to life situations in one’s own way and then accepting the consequences without blaming anyone else. It denies the existence of Divine Law, Positive Law and the power of human reason to legislate for itself in advance of the unique situations which every individual must confront.

II. Context

The woman is confronted in a situation with two choices: go back to the Philippines since her visa has expired or look for a man with U.S. citizenship whom she will marry and after acquiring legal status will divorce him eventually. If she will choose the second, she has to divorce her husband in the Philippines in order to marry.

III. Application of Existentialism

According to the principle of existentialism, the woman in the letter can choose to marry a U.S. citizen for her to acquire a legal status. After this, she will eventually divorce him. She has to enter into an arranged marriage and pay a certain amount in order to realize her goal. After much consideration, she knows that she is doing this for her family’s sake, with out discussing its implication to anybody. On this moment of her decision making, she might not considering abstract theories that seek to disguise the untidiness of her actual life and emphasizes her subjective realities of individual existence, individual freedom, and individual choice.

Moreover, her “plans” is just a manifestation that she is finding her own way in life, on making choices, (including, in particular, all her serious and her momentous life-choices: her family’s future life), for herself as she sees fit without reliance on external standards or practice. Her tendency to effectively deny that there is an acceptable basis for her moral decision making diverges markedly from an earlier, and often largely unquestioned faith-related, emphasis that there could be, and indeed were, moral standards to which all might beneficially conform.

Whereas an acceptance of moral standards could provide her an objective basis for making choices. She might have the tendency to deny the existence of moral standards. This means that the primary basis of her choices making has to be subjective. She is actively engaged in a situation that invites her to make choices that are subjectively valid in terms of themselves, there and then, but which might seem questionable to others.

She has the tendency for a full acceptance of her own path and an associated declaration that she must accept the risk and responsibility of following her commitment wherever it leads. Choices made tend to establish the subsequent pattern of her life and also profoundly influence the ensuing nature and aspect of her life that constitutes them. Even choosing not to make a choice is a form of choice bringing with it consequences. She is inevitably faced with choice in very many contexts or what we call dilemma.