An evaluation of Ismet Özel's thought in the context of existentialist arguments

This study aims to determine how İsmet Özel's philosophical texts express a reconciliation between Islamic belief and existential thought on the subjects of will, anxiety, responsibility, determinism, and the social reflections of existence. The scope of the thesis includes addressing the place and form of use of existential arguments in Özel's works, and this analysis was conducted using qualitative research methods such as documentary screening and document analysis, along with comparative philosophy methodologies. The philosophy of existence is a subjective and radical philosophy that adopts the grounding of human existence in philosophy. The inclusion of vastly different philosophers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus under this title is not because they reached the same conclusions, but because they adopted the same principles of philosophizing. These principles can be listed as: existence preceding essence, centering the human not objectively but subjectively on an individual basis, the subjectivity of truth, practicing philosophy from an actor's perspective in the present, being worldly and temporal, accepting the anxiety that arises from the awareness of these as a starting point and limitation, and grounding in the human's subject-object contradiction. It is possible to trace the philosophical journey of Özel in his prose texts and his earlier poems after he declared he was a Muslim. He lays out the process of anguish, which began with an existential anxiety, through his poems and later writings on the process, and he philosophically analyzes this change himself. His philosophy on existence presents a distinct example of the synthesis of Islamic belief and existential philosophy. The findings of the study show the place and impact of existential themes and arguments in Özel's thought. Within this framework, a general outline of the concept presented by Özel, 'Existence Stamped by Islam,' is determined, and the influences of Kierkegaard and Heidegger on Özel are examined. The interaction of Özel's existentialist approach with Islamic arguments is analyzed according to the principles of existential philosophy identified in the first part of the study.