Abstract

This is for an edited volume on the philosophy of martial arts - forthcoming: Feeling self-conscious about what you are attempting to do can be a problem for athletes; they either fail to perform or perform badly. Actors, dancers, teachers, or anyone else who is performing in front of others may become self-conscious. In this essay I want to focus on the martial arts teacher and illuminate the problem through some existentialist insights from the German poet and dramatist Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) and the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980). Key words: martial arts; existentialism; Jean Paul Sartre; Heinrich von Kleist; being-in-itself; being-for-itself