Abandonment (existentialism)

Abandonment, in philosophy, refers to the infinite freedom of humanity without the existence of a condemning or omnipotent higher power. Original existentialism explores the liminal experiences of anxiety, death, "the nothing" and nihilism; the rejection of science (and above all, causal explanation) as an adequate framework for understanding human being; and the introduction of "authenticity" as the norm of self-identity, tied to the project of self-definition through freedom, choice, and commitment. Existential thought bases itself fundamentally in the idea that one's identity is constituted neither by nature nor by culture, since to "exist" is precisely to constitute such an identity. It is from this foundation that one can begin to understand abandonment and forlornness.

Søren Kierkegaard and Frederich Nietzsche, the supposed originators of the existentialist school of thought, constrained their theories to theological systems. Both were concerned with the "singularity of existence" and the fact that "existence comes before essence"; but neither of them approach the belief that God never existed and therefore never controlled individual will. The first to do so were Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger.

According to Sartre, there are three schools of philosophical thought that influence the freedom of the individual:

The absence of God in the conceptualization of life came to be known as “abandonment because of Sartre’s 1946 lecture L'Existentialisme est un humanisme in which he says:

…when we speak of “abandonment” – a favorite word of Heidegger – we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism, which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense.

Abandonment is, in essence, the derivative of atheism. In the Supreme Court case Murray v. Curlett, the case that removed reverential Bible reading and oral unison recitation of the Lord's Prayer in the public schools, the petitioners (atheists, all) defined their beliefs thus:

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