It seems that the meaning of existentialism varies among existentialist philosophers. As a whole, however, existentialism can be characterized as a philosophy that searches for the essential self, or the essential human condition. According to existentialists, human beings, having become alienated from this essential self in existing society, find themselves caught in a state of despair and dread. These thinkers have seriously considered how human beings may be delivered from that despair and dread. In this section, the views of five existentialists will be briefly discussed and compared with the Unification Thought view of human nature. Through this comparative analysis, it is hoped the readers' understanding of the Unification Theory of the Original Nature will be deepened.

1. Kierkegaard's Analysis of Human Existence

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) asked himself the question, "What is the human being?" His answer was, "a human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates to itself. ⁹ Then, who is it that establishes such a relation? It must be a third party, a reality other than one's own self-and that reality is none other than God Himself according to Kierkegaard. Therefore, the original self is the self that stands before God, Kierkegaard concluded.

Yet, human beings, who should thus live in a relationship with God, have become separated from God. Kierkegaard explained the nature of that separation in his analysis of Genesis proposed in his book The Concept of Dread, as follows: In the beginning, Adam was in a state of peace and comfort, but at the same time, he was in it state of dread (or Angst). When God told Adam, "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat" (Gen. 2:17, Rsv), the possibility of freedom was awakened within Adam. This possibility of freedom threw Adam into extreme dread. As Adam looked into the abyss of freedom, he became dizzy and clung to his own self. That was the precise moment when original sin came into being.

As a result, a division rose in our relationship to our own selves, and we fell into despair (Verzweifielung). People tried to remove this despair, regarding it as something that has come from the outside. But they can never remove it that way. Only by faith, by rediscovering our relationship to God, can we restore our original relationship to ourselves and escape from despair.

Kierkegaard criticized crowds for their irresponsibility and their lack of conscience, saying, "A public is everything and nothing, the most dangerous of all powers and the most insignificant." ¹⁰ He asserted that, in order for people to actualize their true human nature, they must depart from the world of the public and stand before God all by themselves -- each as an individual. He explained the stages through which people return to their original selves in terms of three stages of existence.

The first stage is the stage of "aesthetic existence." Persons in this stage simply follow their sensual desires exactly as they are and live just as they please. The purpose of this kind of life is pleasure. The position of someone in the aesthetic existence is that of a seducer, a pursuer of erotic love. But since the moment of pleasure is not something that can be maintained continuously, persons in the aesthetic stage are trapped by fatigue and dread. They become frustrated and fall into despair-but through making a decision, they can proceed to the next stage.

The second stage is that of "ethical existence." Persons of this stage seek to live according to their conscience, with good and evil as standards of judgment. They seek to live as good citizens with a sense of responsibility and duty. Yet, no matter how hard they may try, they cannot live totally in accordance with their conscience. So, they become frustrated and fall into despair. Again, through making a decision, they can proceed to the next stage.

The third stage is that of "religious existence." Here, each pet-son stands alone with faith in the presence of God; only by doing so can someone become a true existential being. In order to enter this stage, a leap is required. Such a leap is possible if one believes in a paradox that cannot be understood with the intellect. One can believe, for example, such an irrational statement as that the eternal God incarnated in the finite time spectrum to become a man. Only by such a leap can people truly recover their relationship to God. Abraham's obedience to God's commandment to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, which was contrary to human ethics, was held to be the model for this kind of religious life.

This being so, when individuals who have become true existences centered on God-in other words, who have become original selves-come to love one another through the mediation of God by following Jesus' words to "love your neighbor as yourself," only then, through such 'works of love," will society be established.

According to Kierkegaard, as people separated from God, a division rose in the relationship that relates someone to one's own self, causing people to fall into despair. From the perspective of Unification Thought, this relationship can be regarded as either the relationship between mind and body or the relationship between spirit mind and physical mind. This means that, as people separated from God, mind and body became divided. This implied that mind and body are united in the original self. This corresponds to the "being of united Sungsang and Hyungsang" referred to in the Theory of the Original Human Nature of Unification Thought. Kierkegaard said that "when someone stands before God as an individual," that person stands in an absolute relationship to the Absolute Being (or God). This corresponds to "a being with individuality" referred to in Unification Thought's Theory of the Original Human Nature. Still, why is this individual considered to be absolute? From the Unification Thought perspective, God is a being of Heart, and He seeks to obtain an irreplaceable joy from each individual being. From this, the absoluteness of a being with individuality can be established.

In this way, Kierkegaard perceived some aspects of the original nature as a being of united Sungsang and Hyungsang and as a being with individuality. Nevertheless, this is not all there is to the original human nature. The most essential aspect of the original human nature is that of a being with Heart. Moreover, a person standing before God merely as an individual would be imperfect. Only when standing before God as husband and wife can human beings become perfect. That is to say, the human being is a being of harmonious yang and yin. They are also beings with Logos and creativity. Moreover, they are beings with position, endowed with both the nature of a subject and the nature of an object. Kierkegaard's view of human beings as standing before God as individuals is a sincere but solitary and lonely view.

Why have people become separated from God? Unless the cause of this separation is clarified, it will be impossible to return to the original self, that is, to the person of the original ideal of God. Kierkegaard said that Adam fell into sin through the dread that arose from the possibility of freedom. Can that be true? According to the Unification Principle, neither freedom nor dread was the cause of the human fall. The first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, did not observe God's word, but instead, followed the temptation of the Archangel, misdirecting their love. The force of the non-principled love that arose as a result, made them fall away from God. When Adam and Eve were about to deviate from the right path, in violation of the Word of God, the freedom of their original mind gave rise to their dread. Thus, freedom and dread worked, instead, in the direction of preventing them from deviating. Furthermore, as a result of the fall, humankind became separated from God, and dread and despair came into being in humans. Therefore, unless the problem of the fall is correctly solved, people's dread and despair cannot be solved.

Kierkegaard said that, in order for us to recover our authentic state we must fight against the falsity of the crowd and return to God. This reflects Kierkegaard's own path in seeking to encounter God, which he did while enduring persecution and ridicule from his contemporaries.

As the age of twenty-seven, Kierkegaard fell in love with, and became engaged to, Regina Olsen. Later, however, out of fear that he might plunge her into unhappiness through marriage, he unilaterally broke off the engagement and began looking for love of a higher level than romantic love. Because of that, he was criticized by society, but we can see that his desire was to realize true love between man and woman centered on God. The original image of the human being pursued by Kierkegaard, in terms of direction, largely in accord with the position of Unification Though. Nevertheless, the image of the human being he proposed has more than a few ambiguities.

1. Nietzsche's View of the Human Being

Contrary to Kierkegaard-who said that only by standing before God can people become original selves-Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) claimed that it is only when people free themselves from faith in God that they can then become original selves.

Nietzsche deplored what he saw as the leveling and demeaning of people in the European society of his time, and he attributed that to the Christian view of human nature. Christianity denied life by preaching asceticism, and placed people's value in the next world. Moreover, it preached that all people are equal before God. For Nietzsche, such views deprived human beings of their vitality, dragged strong human beings down, and leveled them.

In response, Nietzsche proclaimed the "death of God" and attacked Christianity. He felt that Christian morality oppressed human life and the physical body by means of such concepts as 'God' and 'soul', and through a negative view of the reality of life, blocked the way to the development of stronger people. He felt that Christian morality supported only the weak and the suffering, and he called it a form of slave morality. He also rejected the Christian life of love and spirituality, wholeheartedly affirming, instead, a life based on instinct, or a way of life as desired by life itself.

For Nietzsche, life is the force to grow, or the force to develop. He argued that, behind every human act, there exists a "will to power" (wille zur Macht), which seeks to increase the individual's strength. In his words, "where I found the living, there I found will to power; and even in the will of those who serve, I found the will to be masters." ¹¹ He thus rejected Christianity's "slave morality" and promulgated instead "master morality," which made power its standard of value. Nietzsche described the standard of good and evil as follows:

What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? Everything that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.... The weak and the failures shall perish: first principle of our love of man. And in their perishing they shall be given every possible assistance. What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity for all the failures and all the weak: Christianity. ¹²

The ideal of human being, according to master morality, is the "superman" (Obennensch). The superman is a being that has realized the human potentiality to the widest limits, and the embodiment of the will to power. The possibility of the superman lies in the endurance of any kind of pain in life and in the absolute affirmation of life itself. The absolute affirmation of life comes about through the acceptance of the idea of "eternal recurrence," which Nietzsche expresses as, "everything goes, everything come back; eternally rolls the wheel of being." ¹³ This is the idea that the world repeats itself forever, without any purpose or meaning. The absolute affirmation of life means the endurance of any kind of fate. He said that this becomes possible through "regarding the inevitable its beautiful" and through "loving one's fate"; thus, he preached the "love of fate" (amorfati).

Nietzsche considered that Christianity's extreme emphasis on life after death made people unable to value actual life and weakened them. Nietzsche's sincere effort in endeavoring to restore the original human nature merits high esteem. His views were a critique of, and a warning to, Christianity, which he regarded as having deviated from its original spirit. Nietzsche saw the God of Christianity as a judgmental and otherworldly being, sitting on the high throne of heaven, promising resurrection after death to those who did good, and meting out punishment to those who did evil. What Nietzsche was denouncing, however, was not the teachings of Jesus himself, but rather the teachings of Paul, who had changed Jesus' teaching into a kind of teaching that placed too much emphasis on life after death. ¹⁴

From the perspective of Unification Thought, God is not an otherworldly being that denies reality, standing on a high place somewhere in heaven. God's purpose of creation is not only the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven in the world after death, but also the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. When the Kingdom of Heaven is established on earth, those who have experienced life in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth will build the Kingdom of Heaven in the spirit world. Jesus' mission, originally, was the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Therefore, Nietzsche's assertion is reasonable in that Jesus' teaching was changed by Paul into a kind of teaching that places too much emphasis on life after death. Nevertheless, it is also true that, since Jesus was crucified, as a result of the chosen people's disbelief in him, the salvation that he was able to bring became spiritual salvation, while in the real world people continue to live under the invasion of Satan, the subject of evil. Because of this, it is quite proper for Christianity to place greater emphasis on spiritual life. Therefore, it was a grave mistake for Nietzsche, beyond criticizing Paul, to go as far as denying Christianity itself, even declaring the death of God.

The next point is an examination of Nietzsche's assertion that all living beings have "will to power." According to Genesis, God blessed people to "have dominion over all things" (Gen. 1:28). In other words, God gave human beings the ability to have dominion. This implies that the desire to rule is one of the characteristics of original human nature endowed by God. It corresponds to the .subject position" among the characteristics of the original human nature, according to Unification Thought. With regard to the subject position, however-as mentioned earlier-true dominion is based on love rather than power. The condition for people's ability to exercise dominion is that they must first perfect their personality, centering on God's Heart, and practice the ethics of love in family life. Upon that basis, true dominion can be expressed. Nietzsche, however, ignored that basis and stressed the "will to power." This is precisely where his error lies. Nietzsche asserted that Christian morality is the morality of the weak, which denies the strong-but this view is false. Christianity taught true love in order for people to come to exercise true dominion. People must first fight against the evil forces coming through the instinctive desires of the physical body. The instinctive desires of the body are not evil in themselves, but if fallen people, whose spiritual level of Heart is yet imperfect, live according to the instinctive desires of their body, they tend to be dominated by evil forces. Only when the level of Heart of the spirit person is raised, whereby die spirit mind comes to have dominion over the physical mind, can the activity of the body be considered good in the true sense.

Emphasizing only the values of the body, instinct, and life, Nietzsche neglected the aspects of spirit and love. In other words, he disregarded the human spirit person. If the spirit person is disregarded, what will remain of the human being? What will remain is nothing but the animal-like physical person. This would bring people down to the position of animals. Therefore, even though Nietzsche may be calling on people to become strong, in reality he is calling on them to become beasts. That is not really the state for which God created human beings. Nietzsche's effort to try to guide people to their original image should be highly esteemed, but the method he proposed was utterly wrong. A human being is a being of united Sungsang and Hyungsang, with the Sungsang as the subject and the Hyungsang as the object. Nietzsche, however, emphasized only the Hyungsang aspect.

1. Jaspers' View of the Human Being

For Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), existence is the state of being truly awakened to oneself as an individual. He says, "Existence is never objectified source of my thoughts and actions. ...It is what relates to itself, and thus to its transcendence." ¹⁵ This way of thinking is basically the same as Kierkegaard's.

An existence that is in the process of attaining the original existence, having not yet encountered Transcendence, or the Comprehensive (das Umgtwifende), is called a "possible existence." Usually, human beings are potential existences that live in various circumstances; but by acting upon the given circumstances, they can live positively. Jaspers points out however that "certain situations exist that we cannot go over or change," such as death, suffering, struggle, and guilt. These are called "boundary situations." ¹⁶ Though people may wish to live eternally, yet not a single person can escape death. For Jaspers, death is the denial of one's own existence. Also, human life involves various kinds of suffering, such as physical pains, diseases, senility, and starvation. As long as people live, struggles cannot be avoided. Moreover, people live with the unavoidable guilt that their own existence cannot but exploit others.

Under such boundary situations, people cannot but despair and become frustrated, becoming aware of their own limitations. At that moment, the way people experience that frustration will determine what will become of them. If they face their frustration head-on and endure it silently, honestly, and without trying to escape from the situation, they will come to experience the reality that "originally exists, transcending the world of existence. ¹⁷ In other words, they will come to realize that, behind nature, behind history, behind philosophy, and behind art-all of which seemed meaningless until then-there is Transcendence, or God, who embraces us and speaks to us. On that occasion, Transcendence will appear to us-not directly, but by means of coded messages. In the form of codes, Transcendence reaches out to us through nature, history, philosophy, art, and so on. Those who have experienced frustration in boundary situations will be able to read those coded messages. This is called "the reading of ciphers" (Chiffredeulung). By reading the coded messages, people come face to face with Transcendence, each one by oneself. This is what is meant by peoples "awakening to their true selves."

After encountering God in this way, people engage in the practice of love in the communication with others. The original way of life for human beings is to stand in an equal position with one another, loving one another, while recognizing one another's independence. Through fellowship with others, existence is perfected. Jaspers said, "the purpose of philosophy that gives a final ground to the meaning of all purposes, that is to say, the purpose of perceiving purpose internally, elucidating love, and perfecting comfort, is only attained in communication." ¹⁸ The communication of existence is the relationship of tension and the struggle of love. ¹⁹

Jaspers said that human beings normally are potential beings that are unable to perceive Transcendence, but that when they pass through boundary situations, they can become an existence that relates to Transcendence, that is, an original self. But why do human beings normally remain as potential beings separated from Transcendence? And why do they become connected with Transcendence when they go through a boundary? Jaspers said nothing concerning these questions. Yet, unless these questions are answered, we cannot understand what the original self is or how to go about restoring it.

According to the Unification Principle, human beings were created to fulfill the purpose of creation. The fulfillment of the purpose of creation refers to the fulfillment of the Three Great Blessings (Gen. 1:28), that is, the perfection of personality, perfection of the family, and perfection of dominion. As it turned out, however, Adam and Eve, the first human ancestors, failed to keep the Word of God during their own growth period, and while their personalities were still imperfect, they became husband and wife centered on non-principled love and gave birth to sinful children. As a result, all of humankind came to be separated from God. Therefore, the true path for recovering the original self is for people to separate themselves from non-principled love and then to fulfill the purpose of creation centering on God's love.

The original human nature is meant to manifest itself fully when people fulfill their purpose of creation. Like Kierkegaard, Jaspers said that existence is to become a being that relates to Transcendence, while at the same time relating to oneself. In saying that, Jaspers was referring to the perfection of personality, which is only one of the Three Great Blessings. This corresponds to a 'being of united Sungsang and Hyungsang" among the original human characteristics in Unification Thought. Jaspers says that we must practice love in our communication with others, but just as in Kierkegaard, his concept of love is vague. True love is God's love manifested divisionally in the love for three objects (or children's love, conjugal love, and parental love). When this basic love for three objects is expanded, it is manifested as love expressed in the communication with others. Jaspers said that the communication among existences is a relationship of tension and a struggle of love. This contrasts with the Unification Thought viewpoint, according to which the essence of love is joy. Therefore, the original love is not Something that can be described as tension or struggle.

The next question is why human beings become connected with Transcendence by passing through boundary situations. Jaspers said that people encounter God by facing the frustration of a boundary situation head-on and by honestly accepting it. Yet, among those who indeed have faced the frustration of the boundary situation head-on and indeed have honestly accepted it, there are some who, like Nietzsche, became further separated from God and some who, like Kierkegaard, became even closer to God. Why such different results? The reason for the difference is not clarified in Jaspers' philosophy.

In contrast, Unification Thought provides a clear explanation of these different results. By failing to observe God's word, people became separated from God and fell under the dominion of Satan, the subject of evil. Because of that, they cannot go back to God unconditionally. Only by establishing some condition of compensation -- that is, some condition of indemnity -- will people be able to go back to God. Accordingly, what Jaspers described as the despair and frustration of boundary situations corresponds to a condition of indemnity. When that condition is fulfilled, people come to be closer to God. For this, one must, while enduring the pains of the boundary situations, become humble and maintain an attitude of object consciousness by seeking the absolute subject, as is taught in the Bible, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find, knock, and it will be opened to you" (Mt. 7:7 RSV). Those who maintain an attitude of a self-centered subject consciousness, or who continue to harbor a spirit of grudge or revenge, will never encounter God, even though they may pass through such boundary situations.

Jaspers said that we can meet Transcendence by reading the cipher of mistration; but the God known through cipher-reading is merely a God of symbols. We cannot understand the true image of God through such means alone. We must learn about the human fall and God's purpose of creation, and must endeavor to realize the Three Great Blessings through a life of faith. If we do those things, we will be able to experience the Heart of God and to become a true existence.

1. Heidegger 's View of the Human Being

For Martin Heidegger (1899-1976), a human being is a "Dasein," but he did not regard the human being as a self facing the world in the same way as modern philosophy regarded. "Being" lives in the world, relates to other beings, attends to the environment surrounding itself, and cares for other people. This is Being's fundamental way of existence, which Heidegger described as "Being-in-the-world." Being-in-the-world means that human beings have been cast upon the world without being informed as to the origin from which they came or the destination to which they are going. This situation is called the "throwness," or "facticity."

Normally, people lose their subjectivity (or independence) when they try too hard in their daily lives to adjust themselves to external circumstances and to other people's opinions. This is the situation of the "they" (das Man), who has lost the original self, according to I Heidegger. ²⁰ Each "they," according to Heidegger, spends its daily life indulging in idle talk, distracted by curiosity, and living in peaceful ambiguity. This is called the "falling" of Dasein.

This "Dasein," which has been thrown into the world without any reason, is also in anxiety (Angsi). If we inquire deeply into this anxiety, we will reach the anxiety of death. When, however, a person does not wait around, in anxiety, for a vague future, but positively accepts the fact that the human being is a "being-towards-death" and lives with a serious determination toward the future, that person can proceed toward the original self. In that way, human beings project themselves toward the future. This is called "projection". The nature of this Being is called "existentiality."

At that time, based on what do people project themselves? They do so based on the "call of conscience." The call of conscience is the inner voice that calls people to abandon their fallen selves and go back to their original selves. Heidegger speaks of the call of conscience as follows: "The call undoubtedly does not come from someone else who is within me in the world. The call comes from me and yet from beyond me."

Heidegger also said that the meaning of the existence of Being is temporality. When Being is seen from the aspect of casting itself, it can be grasped as "ahead-of-itself", and when seen from the aspect of having already been cast, it can be grasped as "Being-already-in"; and when seen from the aspect of tending the environment and caring for others, it can be grasped as "Being-alongside." If these aspects are seen in the light of temporality, they correspond, respectively, to the future, the past, and the present.

Human beings do not proceed toward a solitary self, separate from the world. They proceed toward the future potentiality by listening to the call of conscience, in order to save the self from present falling, while taking on the burdens of the past. This is Heidegger 's view of human nature seen from temporality.

Heidegger said that the human being is a being-in-the-world, as well as someone who has lost the original self; he also said that the characteristic feature of that situation is anxiety. He did not, however, clarify why human beings have lost their original selves, or what the original self is like. He spoke of projecting oneself toward the original self, but if the image of the self to be attained is not clear, there is no way we can verify that we are indeed proceeding toward the original self. Heidegger said that the call of conscience guides people to go back to their original self, but this is not a true solution to the problem. Actually, this is nothing more than a philosophical expression of the common knowledge that people should live in obedience to their conscience. In a world that does not recognize God, there can be only one of two ways of living-namely, living according to instinctive life, as Nietzsche proposed, or according to the conscience, as Heidegger proposed.

From the perspective of Unification Thought, however, it is not enough merely to live in accordance with one's conscience. Instead, people should live in accordance with their "original mind." Conscience is oriented toward what each person regards as good, and therefore, the standard of goodness varies according to each individual. Thus, when people live according to their conscience, there is no guarantee that they are indeed moving toward their original selves. Only when people live in accordance with their original mind, which possesses God as its standard, will they indeed be moving toward their original selves.

Heidegger said that human beings can be saved from anxiety when they become seriously determined to accept the future, instead of absentmindedly waiting for the future to come by. Still, how can we be saved from anxiety when the original image of the self is not clearly defined? Seen from the viewpoint of Unification Thought, the cause of anxiety lies in the separation from God's love. Therefore, when people go back to God, experience the Heart of God, whereby they themselves become beings of Heart, only then will they be delivered from anxiety and will be filled with peace and joy. 

Heidegger also argued that the way for human beings to transcend the anxiety of death is for them to accept even death as part of their destiny. This, however, is not really a true Solution to the problem of the anxiety of death. Unification Thought sees human beings as a being of united spirit person and physical Person-in other words, a being of united Sungsang and Hyungsang in such a way that the maturation of the spirit person is based on the physical person. When people fulfill the purpose for which they were created, through their physical lives on earth, their perfected spirit persons, after the death of their physical person, will go on to the spirit world, where they will live eternally. Therefore, a human being is not a "being-towards-creating," but rather a "being-towards-eternal-life." Therefore, the death of the physical person corresponds merely to the phenomenon of ecdysis of insects. The anxiety of death originates from the ignorance of the significance of death as well as from the feeling, either conscious or unconscious, that one is not yet perfect.

Heidegger further stated that we human beings have temporality. But why must we take on the past, must separate ourselves from the present failing, and must project ourselves toward the future? In Heidegger we will not find the reason for all this. According to the Unification Principle, ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, human beings, in addition to inheriting in their blood the original sin, have also inherited hereditary sins committed by their ancestors and collective sins for which the nation or humankind as a whole bears responsibility, as well as committing their own personal sins. Therefore, fallen people have been given the mission to restore their original selves and the original world through establishing conditions of indemnity to pay for all those sins. Such a task is not accomplished in one generation; it is accomplished by being passed on from generation to generation. Specifically, in the present generation, we are entrusted with those conditions of indemnity that were not completed by our ancestors. We then attempt to establish those conditions in our own generation, bearing responsibility for the future of our descendents. This is the true meaning of the fact that human beings have temporality.

Dostoevski once said, "If God didn't exist, everything would be possible." The denial of the existence of God is the very starting point of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80). In contrast to Heidegger, who asserted his existentialism without any reference to God, Sartre went further to advocate an existentialism that altogether denied God's existence. He explained that, in human beings, "existence precedes essence," as follows:

What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. ²²

The use or purpose of a tool, that is, the essence of that tool, is already determined by its maker even before it is produced. In this case, essence precedes existence. In the same way, if God exists, and He has created human beings based on His idea, then it can be said that, in the case of human beings, essence precedes existence as well. But Sartre denied the existence of God; therefore, for him, the essence of the human being is not determined from the very beginning. People appeared not from essence, but rather from nothing, according to him.

Moreover, Sartre says that "existence is subjectivity." Human beings are accidental beings that appeared from nothing are not defined by anyone. Therefore, people themselves plan what they will be like. They choose themselves. This is what Sartre meant by 'Subjectivity." In other words, people choose what they will become whether they will be Communists or Christians; whether they will choose to marry or remain single.

The fundamental feature of such an existence is "anguish," according to Sartre. People choose themselves, which means, at the same time, that "in making this choice, he also chooses all men." ²³ Therefore, to choose oneself means to take the responsibility for the whole of humankind-a responsibility that incorporates anguish, according to Sartre. Anguish, however, does not keep them from acting; on the contrary, it is the very condition of their action, and it is a part of action itself.

In Sartre's view, human beings are "free" beings. Since existence precedes essence, people are not determined by anything and are allowed to do anything. Being free, however, implies that the entire responsibility for their deeds lies with themselves. In that sense, being free is a kind of burden for people, and the human being is a "being condemned to be free." ²⁴ In other words, human beings are in anguish because they are free. Sartre explained it this way:

Man is free, man is freedom. On the other hand, if God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So, in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us. We are alone, with no excuses. That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free. ²⁵

When we say that human being is subjectivity, then, in order for human beings to exercise subjectivity, there must exist an object that can receive dominion from them. Among the types of beings, there are the "being-in-itself," that is, all things; and the being-for-itself, or the being which is conscious of itself, that is, the human being. When people have a being-in-itself for their object there is no problem, but when they face another human being (i.e., a being-for-itself), problems arise. The reason is that, in such a relationship, both human beings will assert their subjectivity.

When a person faces another, human existence becomes a "being-for-others." That is, a being that is opposite to another being, according to Sartre. The fundamental structure of the being-for-another is the relationship in which one is either a "being-looking-at" or a "being-looked-at" that is, a relationship in which "the other is an object for me" or "I myself an object-for-the-other." ²⁶ This means that human relationships are a constant conflict. As Sartre explained it, "It is therefore useless for human-reality to seek to get out of this dilemma: one must either transcend the Other or allow oneself to be transcended by him. The essence of the relationship between consciousness is not the Mitsein [co-existence]; it is conflict. ²⁷

Sartre said that "existence precedes essence," and that human beings create themselves. Heidegger said, in the same way, that people must project themselves toward the future-but for Heidegger, the "call of conscience," though vague, guides people toward the original self. For Sartre, however, the original self is totally denied. According to Unification Thought, the absence of the original self is a natural consequence of the fact that human beings have become totally separated from God. If, however, we were to accept Sartre's views, we would be left without any standard at all to judge between good and evil. In that situation, no matter what people did, they would always be able to rationalize it simply by saying that they had done it on their own responsibility. That necessarily would create a society without ethics.

Sartre also said that the human being is subjectivity. In contradistinction to that, Unification Thought asserts that the human being is both subjectivity and objectivity, at the same time-that is to say, a person of original nature is both in the "subject position" and in the "object position." What Sartre calls "subjectivity" refers to the fact that human beings are free to choose themselves and to objectify themselves; in contrast, what Unification Thought calls "subjectivity" refers to the fact that human beings have dominion over the object through love. In order to exercise true subjectivity, people must first establish their own objectivity. Objectivity is the state where one feels the joy of being loved by a subject, and has it heart of gratitude toward the subject. Only when people have grown in objectivity will they be able, as subjects, to have dominion over the object through love.

Furthermore, according to Sartre, the characteristic of a mutual relationship between human beings is that of a conflict between subjectivity and subjectivity, or a conflict between freedom and freedom. This is similar to Hobbes' concept of "war of all against all." Unless such mistaken views regarding subjectivity and freedom can be overcome, the confusion now existing in democratic society cannot be resolved. Only when people establish both the aspect of subjectivity and the aspect of objectivity, whereby harmonious give-and-receive action between subject and object takes place in every sphere, can the world of love and peace be actualized.

Moreover, Sartre says that human beings are "sentenced to be free." From the viewpoint of Unification Thought, however, freedom is not a sentence. Freedom cannot exist apart from the Principle, and the Principle is the norm for actualizing true love. True Freedom is freedom for actualizing true love. Therefore, freedom, in its original meaning, is filled with joy and hope.

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