A brief intellectual tour in the existentialists’ environment will reveal that, it was Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) that first picked up the intellectual relay- race in the German phenomenology. Thrilled by the Cartesian cogito, he plans to establish from a phenomenological background, the self, from the focal point of action as the existing agent. The undeniable influence he asserted on his successors, thinkers like Martin Heidegger, Merleau-ponty and Jean Paul Sartre carried along the phenomenological relay race. Due to the fact that existentialism owes its definitive emergence to phenomenology, invariably most existentialists are phenomenologist though the reverse may not be the case, notwithstanding, there is an undeniable fact of close tie that developed between the two styles of philosophy. The fact is obvious; “Phenomenology seems to offer existentialism the kind of methodology necessary to pursue the investigations into human existence.”12 Fascinated by Cartesian methodic doubt, Husserl radicalized its tenets with a certain degree of consequence. The transcendental consciousness could no longer be characterized in   terms of a thinking matter, a ‘res cogitans’ but an acting matter. In his argument, he stresses that if consciousness only exists as consciousness of something, then, Husserl’s interpretation of the methodic doubt implies that the ‘physical ‘I’ would perish along the line, “because the ‘I’ presents the character of an object.”13 The existentialists developed   phenomenology to suit their own purpose. The point of divergence between Husserl and the existential phenomenologists is not very difficult to pinpoint. Whereas the former places emphasis on essence and approaches phenomenology as an apodictic science, the latter stresses on existence. The existentialists’ allegiance to existence could be seen in Sartre’s assertion ‘existence precedes essence’. In this regard, they refuted Kantian dualism that supposed some hidden ‘noumena’ of which the ‘phenomena’ is merely the appearance.

In his book ‘L’Action’, Maurice Blondel (1861-1949) argues, “the starting point of philosophy should be sought not in abstract ‘I’ think but in the concrete ‘I’ act.”14 To buttress this fact, the existentialists insist on action, for according to them, only in action does existence attains correctness and fullness. Where thought, passion and inward decision are lacking, there will be nothing worthy of the name action. Despite the premium existentialists place upon action, it does not seem to connote they are pragmatists. A proper juxtaposition of the differences and similarities of both the former and latter leads us into the next sub-heading. The pragmatists and the existentialists without doubts place a greater percentage on man as a deciding agent. But as the former views man as a functional man the later approaches him from the point of ‘Homo Viator’. The former to a greater extent highlights optimism from the utilitarian standpoint. They occupy themselves with issues of success in every undertaking, with a little or no attention to the tragic and frustrating sides of life as expressed in most existentialists’ writings.

Berdyaev clearly remarks the difference between the duo in his words, however close the latter could be at some points with the former:

They are distinguished from them by the fact that their interest

is in the intensity of life even its tragic intensity rather than its

outward expansion and success.”15

The existentialists acknowledge the obvious situations of man’s existence as a fact of life. This I plan to unmask in the preceding sub-heading.

1.3 Facticity of Existence

A simple look at this phrase elicits the two contending concepts: Fact and Existence. In philosophy of science, facts are said to be the ultimate tribunal. As such without facts, there would not be any result. The issue is not different in the field of law and other disciplines.

‘To exist’ from its Latin etymology ‘ex-sistere’ means, ‘to stand out’, ‘to emerge’. To ‘lie around’ seem to highlight the clearer meaning of existence in recent times- ontological location. Here, to exist implies to be located somewhere in the world, to have a place in the real world. In passing the message of what it means to exist, Martin Heidegger made allusion to the idea of ‘Dasein’. Jean Paul Sartre explores the content of the ‘Pour-soi’ for-itself. The question above all is, what the facts of existence are in the existential mind? Existentialists use the word ‘Facticity’ to designate the limiting factor in existence. From etymology the word had been coined to translate the German ‘Faktizitat’ and French ‘Facticite’. It is as opposed to the background of the word factuality that has to do with objective state of affairs observable in the world. It is an inward existential awareness of one’s own being. No one has chosen to be. As Augustine Farrer voices out “The loneliness of personality in the universe weighs heavily upon us, it seems terribly improbable that we should exist.”16 Man from time immemorial has formed some beliefs or even revelations about his origin and destiny. How truthful or valid such assumptions are, may not be our concern here. The only fact we know beyond doubt is that ‘we are’. Where we came from and where we are going remains under the confines of mystery. Existence never escapes from the tension between possibility and facticity. Facticity opens for us the radical finitude of human existence.

Robert Cumming gave a clearer insight to facticity as portrayed in Sartre’s ideology. The “for-itself” is, insofar as it appears in a condition which it has not chosen, it is, in so far as it is thrown into the world and abandoned in a situation.”17 In the thought of Heidegger, facticity means that man finds himself in situation where he is bound to be. ‘Throwness’, ‘Geworfenheit’ in Heideggerian thought underlines to a greater extent the intrinsic meaning of facticity. “Being thrown into existence, without his prior knowledge the ‘Dasein’ finds himself in a circumstance that is not his own making.”18 Facticity is an outright revelation of the limitations of the ‘Dasein’. In a case, the ‘Dasein’ realizes some givens beyond his control, things he cannot alter even if he wants to.

Some factors project certain unavoidable existential situations. Death, Temporality, Guilt and Alienation tend to summarize those inescapable conditions of life. As Heidegger rightly puts, death is the possibility of the impossibility of existence. Heidegger is one of the existentialists that never approached the issue of death with reservation. At death alone could the ‘Dasein’ be correctly defined. He sees death as the last possibility of all, that which makes impossible any further possibility. In temporality, man’s nature as being time-bound is re-defined. Man as creature of time must pass away in time. The transience of human life is one of the most poignant aspects of finitude. No matter, whatever may be the case; man must be a client to the tribunal of birth and death.

Pessimistic though the existentialists may seem to be, as some thinkers argue as opposed to pragmatists, they have always not failed to recognize the obvious fact of disorder in human existence. Thus, man experiences guilt and sometimes feels alienated from what he encounters around him.

Karl Marx pointed the fact of alienation in the revolutionary changes in man’s material condition. From the existential angle, alienation implies that one is mortgaged in inauthentic existence. Without facticity, Robert Cumming, avows “Consciousness would choose its attachment to the world in the same way as souls in Plato’s republic choose their condition.”19