Dear Marsha --
Hello Ham,
I was reacting to the question about technological superiority.
There is so much I don't know, and I am afraid I never paid much
attention to Sartre and existentialism, except for Nietzsche who
I gobbled up compulsively:
Ecco Homo
Yes, I know from where I came,
Ever hungry like a flame;
I consume myself and glow.
Light is all that I conceive,
Ashes everywhere I leave.
Flame I am assuredly.
(Nietzsche, The Gay Science)
Is it one, or many? All of the above! Being, it is what it is...
Or maybe it is easier to discover what it isn't.
Maybe you can suggest a good modern-day primer on existentialism.
Existentialism is pretty much the philosophy of natural evolution as
investigated by Science and historians (and supported by Pirsig's "Quality
moving to betterness" theme). With certain exceptions (mainly Soren
Kierkegaard and Karl Jaspers whose Christian views borrowed from it),
existentialism is atheistic and non-spiritual. What distinguishes
existentialism from idealistic philosophies is the principle that the
"essence" of reality follows from existence, as opposed to the platonic
concept of a Primary Essence.
Marjorie Grene, who studied with Heidegger and Jaspers in Germany, wrote an
extended essay titled "Introduction to Existentialism" in 1959 which was
published as a thin paperback by the University of Chicago Press. If it's
still available and "modern" enough for you, I can recommend it as a
readable guide that relates this philosophy to psychology, religion, and
social morality.
Here's a relevant quote from the first chapter to give you a sense of her
style:
"Existentialism is the philosophy which declares as its first principle that
existence is prior to essence. This is, presumably, a technically accurate
principle, yest as simple and intelligible as '2 and 2 are 4.' Why, then,
all the bewilderment about the phioosophy that follows from it? "'Existence
is prior to essence.' It is as easy as that. Of course, to understand the
principle and apply it properly. one must make at least one very important
qualification. Taking literally the simple assertion, 'Existence is prior to
essence,' one might find existentialists in very unexpected quarters. For
instance, in the thirteenth-century controversy about proofs of the
existence of God, the Augustiians believed n the priority of exxence to
existence--in the possibility of moving from the idea of God, the intuitive
apprehension of His essence (insofar as such apprehension of the infinite is
possible to finite minds) to the assertion of His existence. Their
opponents, the Christian Aristotelians, on the contrary, believed in the
priority, at least for the genesis of human knowledge, of existence to
essence--in the necessity of starting with the givens of our sensuous
experience and proceeding by induction and abstraction to the ultimate
intuitive awareness of essences and eternal truths. Yet, if there is anyone
in the whole of Western philosophy who has never been accused of being an
existentialist, surely it is St. Thomas!"
Another book you might want to check out is Karl Jaspers' "Reason and
Existenz" [Noonday Press, 1955].
Reinhold Niebuhr called Jaspers "one of the foremost philosophers of
existence", and this softback is a collection of six lectures delivered at
the University of Groningen, translated for the English-speaking world.
'Existenz' is Jaspers' term for the "acts of thought which formally
represent the various modes of Being." He also speaks of 'The
Encompassing', which is either "our selves in which every mode of Being
appears to us" or "Being itself, in and through what we are." Jaspers
discusses not only existence but freedom, history, death, suffering, and sin
from the existential perspective. .
Thanks for your interest, Marsha. I hope you can locate at least one of
these sources.
Ham
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