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Fri 7 Mar, 2008 03:07 pm
You do not really hear about existentialism much.
It is a big movement in philosophy but its never acknowledged much by people.
Are there any current existentialist philosophers in the lime light at the moment, as opposed to the likes of Dawkins and Dennet, who you hear about regularly?
" Is existentialism dead? "
R u asking whether existentialism exists ?
It seems to me that existentialism, like pragmatism, has been "absorbed" into the general intellectual giest. It has neither disappeared nor continued as a distinct doctrine (it was always an internally varied mode of thought and feelling).
Is existentialism dead?
One can only hope so.
It is dead when I say it is dead.
I am glad that no one says that Gus is dead.
Re: Is existentialism dead?
Gilbey wrote:You do not really hear about existentialism much.
Shud we hear
MORE about it ?
Why don't we hear more about it?
Or is "life" an existential kind of death?
Did I just blow your mind? Yeah, I did.
gustavratzenhofer wrote:It is dead when I say it is dead.
Shit. I JUST got that one.
Well played, sir.
I still don't get it, but then, again, I only get about half of what Gus says. But oh that half!
Except for an episode in the beat era existentialism has not be an American perspective any more than pragmatism has been a european one. On the Continent there have been two broad branches of existentialism: German (Hiedigger and Jaspers) and French (Sartre and Camus)--in addition to many other thinkers, both theists and atheists.
The emphases have been on Being and Freedom.
I haven't bothered to understand the concept. Just never really cared.
Edgar, there are things about existentialism that you might like. After all, it is far more concerned about the concrete experience of life than about the metaphysical niceties of much philosophy. Abstraction is put in its place, as it were. The same thing applies to pragmatism with its concern with the concrete benefits, or "payoff" value, of valid ideas. Pragmatism, as I understant it, ts concerned manly with ideas not for their own sake but for the difference they make in our lives.
JLNobody wrote:Edgar, there are things about existentialism that you might like. After all, it is far more concerned about the concrete experience of life than about the metaphysical niceties of much philosophy. Abstraction is put in its place, as it were. The same thing applies to pragmatism with its concern with the concrete benefits, or "payoff" value, of valid ideas. Pragmatism, as I understant it, ts concerned manly with ideas not for their own sake but for the difference they make in our lives.
I've never been one for allowing philosophers to influence me overmuch. I have read at least some of many of them, but never really wanted to get that deeply into it. I don't care for labels and mazes.
'Labels and Mazes'
Thats a nice quote.
I don't know. Some of the greatest fiction writers were philosophers.
Existentialism is the only thing that really makes any sense. In fact before I am anything else I am an existentialist. As what we thought made sense in the world becomes absurd existentialism will come to light. Alot of people are existentialist without even knowing it.
i don't really understand what existentialism is, even after reading the definition, but i would say that if existentialsim is a philosophy that is not concrete, abstract, or less concrete and abstract than most things in life, then by definition it is dead, since it doesn't exist in a physical form
When I say dead, I mean it in a way that you do not really hear anything new coming from an existentialist point of view.
no one seems to talk about it.
For me existentialism makes alot of sense. Kierkegaard, in terms of what I have read about his philosophy so far, is a philosopher that you almost instantly understand, and I have not as of yet in my philosophical tracks, been more drawn to a philosopher, as much as I have been drawn to Kierkegaard.
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