Critique of Existentialism

no

Yea I can. :wink: As soon as I get what you mean... Existentialism sounds like a dog chasing its tail. A homo too wrapped up in being sapiens?

Oh man, I'm too tired of climbing that reverse bell curve...please turn it over.

Still..................................

I do wonder about the following:

"Humans are those beings who are capable of becoming guilty and are capable of illuminating that guilt" and "All living is meeting."

That's from Martin Buber--The I-It; I-thou man

Using that one simple statement, I would say that Buber himself needs to explain how it is that conscience is more of a touch stone than guilt, and how he would explain Emily Dickinson, who seldom met anyone. It doesn't matter that she was a recluse; she produced and her legacy is still as profound and as deep as Sartre.

I could give a great critique refuting existentialism, but what's the point?

We are all going to die anyway.

"I could give a great critique refuting existentialism, but what's the point? We are all going to die anyway."

Quite the nihilist I see.

Sure - stress from the nearly unbearable burden of living, living with the thought that every act is extremely important, coupled with uncertainty about everything.

To tell you the truth, I'm not quite sure what existentialism actually is. All I understand about it is that in life we choose, the only thing we're sure of in life is death, and our life has no meaning, finding subjective truth, etc.

I've read something about not all existentialists agree with each other's take on the philosophy. I mean how is Sartre and Nietzche in the same camp?

In its simplest form existenialism says "existence precedes essense"

If I'm not mistaken, (which could be) epicures are related to that school of thought...eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. I'm doing this from memory, and it may be faulty

um Letty, I think you are refering to gastroenteritis.

Life is pain, although sometimes you get to choose the kind of pain you live.

Dys, you are soooooo funny. Acid reflux, maybe.

Ahem. Meanwhile we continue to critique.

I Kant critique but I can continue to Camus you.

"Life is useless passion."
--Jean-Paul Sartre

(smothers giggles at Dys' remark)

I had forgotten the powerful poem by Matthew Arnold who is representative of the genre of existentialism:




"Dover Beach"
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;--on the French coast, the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the ebb meets the moon-blanch'd sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

By Matthew Arnold (1822-88).

How often things do come back to be true; be true; be true.

Ray, in fact there are many existencialisms - Jaspers, Marcel, Sartre, Camus, Merleau-Ponty.
I know better the works of Sartre and Camus. So, speaking of their existencialism, I would say the weakness if the theory is in it's force.
As you know, Sartre said: "L'enfer c'est l'autre" - "Hell is the other". As I pointed in another topic about dominance, Sartre saw the problem of rejecting the others identity. How hard is for all of us to accept that, how hard is to me to accept that you are an "I" like I am an "I".
This said, I think Sartre took that problem too far. Most of his works - "L'être et le néant", "Le mur" - and most of Camus works - "L'étranger" - show a world of several "I", people unable to comunicate (comunication means acceptance that "others" are "others") people closed is the dispair and irony of a chaotic universe. Sartre and Camus forget language as a supra-individual factor, like History, human experience, interaction.
Later, Sartre changed to a marxist position, not quite understandable.
It's my opinion that today, Sartre and Camus existencialism is dead.But we must not forget some aspects they brought to light and are still important.

This was too funny to pass up posting:

"At the L'École normale, the relationship between Sartre and Beaver blossomed, and their mere intellectual companionship later turned to a relationship between lovers."

Philosophy on the 'net....what a concept.