2. God
Descartes's desire for God to exist drove him to embrace the circularity of his ontological arguments despite the rigorous manner he wielded his skepticism against the smallest uncertainty.
God, the single point of the pinhead on which the philosophy of the ancient mankind balanced, holding on with desperate belief, swaying in the gale of pure godless logic. God justify creation, God endow existence with essence, God draws the line that divides right from wrong, God bestows freewill without evil, God joins the physical to the mental...
God is the answer, closest at hand, easiest to reach. God, is the very desire of Man.
The ancient Existentialists refused God, choosing to carve out their path among brambles, alone, in search of meaning that is lost with the passing of God. They are no longer here too, their words side by side with texts of religion slowly turning to dust in the high vaults, sealed from the world.
The burden carried out of free will is always lighter. God is always there, waiting with forgiveness, the moment one can walk no further.
What is there to do then, when God turned his back to the world and walks away?
What can one see but not despair and horror, for the very foundation of existence is now lost?
more footnotes...
1. The God I'm referring to here refer to a generalised monotheistic God. And example is the Christian God, another is Allah. I'm not in any way making reference to any particular religion if you're interested to know, and I'm atheist by the way...
2. Refer to Descartes's ontological argument... it's pretty circular. Basically Descartes realised that he can't get to anywhere by holding that he refuse anything that isn't 100 certain and that the only thing he's certain is that he exists. So he makes another argument that God exists, which no.1 solves the 'Does God exist' problem, and no.2 gives Descartes an existing world to work around with.
3. Existentialism is basically dealing with finding the point of existence, or whatever depending on interpretation, since existentialism itself is quite complicated. Generally, the idea is that with a God, God created beings with intention in mind, so essence precedes existence in the case of these beings. But since existentialists don't think there's a God, existence precedes essence for them, so they need to find the 'essence'... I've not properly read this chapter when I was supposed to do it... so point out the errors if you spot any