Reviews for Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction

The average rating for Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-05-30 00:00:00 Bertie Noland During my high school and college days, existentialism was all the rage in Kerala. In my mind, it conjures up an image of a youth with unkempt hair and three days' growth of a scraggly beard, wearing large spectacles with a dark frame and a shapeless upper body garment we called a "jubba". He would be mostly jobless, smoke a locally rolled cigarette called a "beedi" (very often filled with ganja) and frequent coffee shops where he will engage in endless debates with similarly attired youths. I knew he was sad for some reason - existential angst, or in Malayalam, "Asthitwa Dukham" - and also that he was a leftist, even though official card-carrying communists hated him. For some reason, I though he and the Hippie were synonymous (I couldn't have been more mistaken!). I beheld this mysterious creature with awe and not a little fear. If you started discussing anything with him (be it the weather or the day's fish price) he would somehow find a way of bringing in Kafka and Camus. If he was in a really good mood, he may even start reciting avant-garde poetry or talk about the films of Bunuel and Goddard. Ever since those days, I had wanted to learn what "Existentialism" was. Once in a bookshop, I picked up Sartre's Being and Nothingness, read the first page, put the book reverently back on the shelf, and walked away - my will had been broken. I did not return to it until I saw this book. My experience of the previous two titles I had read in the series emboldened me to try it - maybe they had succeeded in breaking this impressive philosophy into words of two syllables? Well, it was not easy going: but I must confess I now know at least something about existentialism. I am looking for an "Existentialism for Dummies" book - I'm sure that one has been published. -------------------------------------------------- I will not do a deep analysis of the book here. I still feel I have not understood enough. I will first summarise the five essential themes of existentialism as laid out by the author: Five themes of existentialism There are five basic themes that the existentialist appropriates each in his or her own way. Rather than constituting a strict definition of 'existentialist', they depict more of a family resemblance (a criss-crossing and overlapping of the themes) among these philosophers. 1. Existence precedes essence. What you are (your essence)is the result of your choices (your existence) rather than the reverse. Essence is not destiny. You are what you make yourself to be. 2. Time is of the essence. We are fundamentally time-bound beings. Unlike measurable, 'clock' time, lived time is qualitative: the 'not yet', the 'already', and the 'present' differ among themselves in meaning and value. 3. Humanism. Existentialism is a person-centred philosophy. Though not anti-science, its focus is on the human individual's pursuit of identity and meaning amidst the social and economic pressures of mass society for superficiality and conformism. 4. Freedom/responsibility. Existentialism is a philosophy of freedom. Its basis is the fact that we can stand back from our lives and reflect on what we have been doing. In this sense, we are always 'more' than ourselves. But we are as responsible as we are free. 5. Ethical considerations are paramount. Though each existentialist understands the ethical, as with 'freedom', in his or her own way, the underlying concern is to invite us to examine the authenticity of our personal lives and of our society. As I understand, the existentialist considers the human being a tabula rasa. There is nothing in you that is "written": the essence of you is what you make yourself out to be. In fact, you are condemned to choose and to be totally free. This puts a tremendous responsibility on the individual. He is like a trapeze artist who has lost the safety net. There is no subconscious, no genetics, no god or fate to come to his rescue. Anything and everything in the world depends on him, is centred on him and his choices. No wonder the existentialist is full of angst. Such a responsibility would drive me to suicide! Do I agree? Well, partly. Ethical and moral values, I feel, are mostly a matter of choice; however, I do not think that the human being is a blank slate. We are only a miniscule part of a huge universe. So considering oneself as the agent of choice in everything is rather unrealistic, IMO. To use computer parlance, the software is ours, but we have little choice over the hardware or firmware. -------------------------------------------------- I would have given this four stars, but the last chapter sort of lost me. I mean, this is supposed to be an introduction, right? So you have to assume that the person who is reading it is not a hard-core philosopher. For example, consider the following: But this abstract-concrete relation is historicized in Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason (1958). Now praxis (human activity in its sociohistorical context) has replaced being-for-itself or consciousness, and the practico-inert (the sedimented prior praxes that both limit and facilitate present praxes the way natural language limits and facilitates speech acts) has assumed the functions of being-in-itself or the nonconscious from Being and Nothingness. Unlike being-in-itself, the practico-inert is the site of counter-finality, the unintended consequences of our practical decisions. The practice of deforestation to increase arable land, for example, can produce the opposite effect by causing floods. Sartre cites this as a function of the practico-inert; that is, as an example of our prior praxes coming back to undermine our present projects. As before, the relation between language and the specific acts of speaking is one of abstract versus concrete. But the objective possibilities and the counter-finalities of language as practico-inert significantly refine the rather vague contrast of abstract/concrete in Sartre's earlier position. Great weight is now assigned to the power of language insofar as it exercises what structuralist Marxist Louis Althusser called a kind of 'structural causality' on our speech acts. With his concept of the practico-inert, Sartre, in fact, is recognizing the validity of Saussurian linguistics as Merleau-Ponty interpreted it, while continuing to insist on the existentialist primacy of individual praxis in his understanding of linguistic phenomena. Like Bertie Wooster says in Carry On, Jeeves, "all very good stuff, but not suitable to spring on a boy with a morning head."

Review # 2 was written on 2014-09-22 00:00:00 James Hoy Notes: I. Five Themes of Existentialism: 1. Existence precedes essence. What you are (your essence) is the result of your choices (your existence) rather than the reverse. Essence is not destiny. You are what you make yourself to be. 2. Time is of the essence. We are fundamentally time-bound beings. Unlike measurable, 'clock' time, lived time is qualitative: the 'not yet', the 'already', and the 'present' differ among themselves in meaning and value. 3. Humanism. Existentialism is a person-centered philosophy. Though not anti-science, its focus is on the human individual's pursuit of identity and meaning amidst the social and economic pressures of mass society for superficiality and conformism. 4. Freedom/responsibility. Existentialism is a philosophy of freedom. Its basis is the fact that we can stand back from our lives and reflect on what we have been doing. In this sense, we are always 'more' than ourselves. But we are as responsible as we are free. 5. Ethical considerations are paramount. Though each existentialist understands the ethical, as with 'freedom', in his or her own way, the underlying concern is to invite us to examine the authenticity of our personal lives and of our society. II. Kierkegaard's Three stages : Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious - the last being a 'leap of faith' to go beyond ethics. (Scary.) Represented BY: Don Juan, Socrates & Abraham respectively. I will pick Socrates any day. III. Nietzschean Limited Freedom: (only for those who can bear a doctrine of fatalism - of eternal recurrence) IV. Ontology (the approach to Being) Vs. Metaphysics (the study of the ultimate categories by which to order our thoughts) V. Bad Faith: 'knowledge that is ignorant and ignorance that knows better.' VI. Being-in-situation: Situational Ethics. Way to reconcile individual freedom with need for ethical exercise of the same. VII. Pre-reflective Awareness: Sartre's answer to Freud. VIII. "Hell is other people" to "Existentialism is a Humanism": The Social evolution of an individualistic philosophy. The growing of ethical concerns and social concerns in the aftermath of the war. the best study of how a school of thought can be influenced by history? (keeps the principles of non-conformity alive despite the expansion!) IX. Structuralism and poststructuralism: The next century's challenge. Not so much individual freedom after all? How do we reconcile responsibility and rigid social structures? - the thorny problem of the meaning of agency and responsibility in a structuralist world. X. An Existential Freud: who will confer more freedom to the consciousness and its freedom over the unconscious... Still awaited.