As per the topic of my degree thesis, Why does existentialism promote/necessitate/encourage such varied forms and modes of exploration compared to other forms of philosophy. I’m not saying that existentialism is the only area of philosophy to be discussed and talked of through plays, novels etc but in the western cannon it is certainly one of the few and I am curious to see why people think that this may be the case. Does existentialism require these uncommon forms of expression in order to be fully explored or does it simply have fertile ground for such alternate modes of philosophy.
I think that it is perhaps because existentialism is so flexible and broad in its definition. It is that ‘other’ area of philosophy in a way, the more encompassing ‘left over’ bulk.
It is easier to shape a story around an existential theme instead of say, for discussion’s sake… an empiracist, because existentialism is about the introspective problem sure, but just as importantly it’s about people, interactions, and decisons based on these events.
Thats somewhat where I’m heading with my thesis. I feel that its because drama and literature are so heavily concerned with interactions of a social nature as well as ones own internal states that it appeals to existrentialist writers. Where as discussing, say, theories of perception lends itself more naturally to the form of a scientific treatise as it is, in itself, very similar in nature.
Yeah, existentialism is something that is perhaps better observed in action, over a period of time, rather than say reading a particular Platonic book and saying ‘Ohh… ok’.
I think for the most part people outgrow existentialism, but I would be wary to say that anyone fully understands it.
then again… I guess that goes for most things.
Man, I wish I had that as my thesis.
The Existentialist perspective is one of the most prominent philosophical systems in Literature/Theatre/Fine Arts because like Gobbo said, its heavy focus on the subjective physical, psychological and spiritual states of human nature and how one being’s internal struggle with existence is heavily correlated with the interpersonal and interrelational factors that shape that being’s views, lifestyle, behavior and interests.
Existentialism is also a prevalent basis for the fine arts because of how comedic and tragic it can tend to be, and of course, Comedy and Tragedy form a good deal of the foundation behind such creative outlets.
Anyhow, Have Fun and Good Luck.
(Highly Recommended Reading for this, if you haven’t read it already: Sartre’s No Exit and Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment)
What do you mean by people ‘out growing’ existentialism? Thought it best to ask you to explain and clarify a little rather than respond off-hand.
I’ve read those and (naturally) a huge stack of other books and articles as well. My thesis is actually limited to the writings of Sartre as I only have 15,000 words. Still, its a huge and fascinating area to study and I’m lucky enough to study under Professor David Cooper (Author of ‘Existentialism: A Reconstruction’) at Durham University. It just struck me that an ‘outside’ analysis of things simply isn’t enough to describe the things that really concern the phenomenologists and later the existentialists and that only more metaphoric, non-literal forms such as drama could really turn the spotlight on to what they are trying to talk about.
Yes, People do tend to ‘out-grow’ it, though that’s not exactly the most accurate way to put it. The reason this tends to happen is because Existentialism is seemingly quite vague, and a little depressing as it takes the very personal, subjective human and casts him into a universe of chaos, disorder and misery. Yet, he seeks out to find Truth within himself, in that internal core of him that he becomes aware is the only thing he can truly know exists in his favor. Another reason is probably stemming from the fact its only been a good 2 centuries since it started becoming structured into its own system ( whereas pre-Kierkegaardian articles relating to the existentialist perspective played minor or dual parts in other systems of thought), whereas a good majority of some of the other ‘schools of thought’, as the Hellenists would say, have been around for quite some time.
Rieux,
By outgrowing existentialism I mean that it tends to be a cool fad for people around 17-25 or something like that, where seemingly anti-social or exploratory behavior is taken from existential literature and into existential practices.
I would hate to call it an excuse persay, but it gives a reason for all us students to sit around in our basements getting hammered.
Ow! My liver!
That’s Incredible, Rieux, to be able to study under someone that distinguished in contemporary philosophy. David E. Cooper shows how many of the popular views on existentialism are actually misconceptions about the philosophy - this book is very helpful in dispelling the dictionary definition of existentialism. The idea that Existentialism is irrational or an anti-rational form of philosophy is shown to be an incorrect interpretation of what existential thought is about. Cooper shows that the existentialists where not against reason or rational thought but where really against a narrow form of rationalism -also empiricism- which attempted, through non-involvement in the human world, to gain a god-like perspective; a detached and impersonal view from nowhere within the world. Against this the existentialists wanted to show that we are all participants in human affairs and not mere spectators. Well, got a little carried away there, but anyway, cheers! 
Thats ok, he is a fantastic person to study under!
I think that those people who ‘grow out’ of existentialism are those who don’t really understand what it’s about. It’s so often tacked on to political extremism OR political apathy, social rebellion etc. Whereas the core of existential though has little or nothing to say about these issues, it is only as a secondary effect that it impacts upon those. Anyone who can adopt and grow out of existentialism, I feel, never really understood it. Although I do accept that as a school it is very uncoherent although I do imagine that at the time Hellenistic thought was much the same and its a kind of intellectual survivial of the fittest that leaves us with what we have today. Whereas today we still have to deal with having everything still buzzing around. I think the core of existnetialism is to be found in sartre but as influenced by Nietzsche and Kierkergaard. I also think Camus is very much an underrated writer and philosopher. David Cooper plots brilliantly the range and variance of existential thinking by dealing with it all in terms of ideas rather than people and I think this is a much fairer and more cohesive approach to take.
Yeah… Kierkegaard is the last of those you listed that I’ve yet to really tackle. My existentialism course here didn’t seem to include him for some reason. I think we stayed on dostoyevski for too long.
But yeah, you’re right about outgrowing it. It’s frusterating where I go to school (Halifax, Canada) because we get a lot of students who need to take a philosophy course out of necessity as a prerequisite for some other program. They all seem to flock to existentialism and, after reading Dostoyevski, think they can come to class hammered and fuck around. Then next semester its back to marketing.
People getting a half-arsed conception of things and then thinking they’ve got the whole picture sorted really gets to me! 
Take Nietzsche and the Nazis. Poor man branded as anti-semitic nutter when in fact he was… well… just a nutter (towards the end at least)
Yeah, seriously eh.
Welcome to the site btw. 
Rieux,
Terrific, another opportunity for me to slag off Sartre…
Existentialism (a catchall term that includes both Nietzsche and Sartre despite the fact that they disagree on every point) was the first movement in the western tradition to explicitly adopt literature as a valid philosophical form of writing. This was in part due to phenomenology in general rejecting the various forms of rationalism that dominated the Englightenment but in general 19th century philosophy puts reason under scrutiny and finds it lacking. Literature (see Plato) has for a long time been derided by philosophers, just as scientists deride religion these days. The fact that neither usually admit is that science is built on foundations of faith and that philosophy is literary. Hume demonstrates the former, Derrida the latter (taking a lead from Wittgenstein).
French Existentialism (the only kind that is properly acknowledged in British universities from my experience) is a populist movement. Sartre sought celebrity status first and great intellectual work second, and he achieved it. Camus less so, but essentially he had the same attitude. Don’t believe the line about Existentialism taking root because of widespread depression following the slaughter that was WW2 because it is a lie propagated by people who want to appear knowledgeable. For one Sartre’s work was built on Heidegger’s, which was an implicit recipe for Nazism i.e. what led to the war, not what came after it. Secondly most French Existentialists were Marxists of one sort or other and therefore sought to reach the ‘common man’ from a position of being payed to deliver nonsense lectures on phenomenology and living out of hotels. This led, directly, to them adopting more popular and accessible forms of presentation.
Personally I’d say that you cannot answer any question about the crossover between Literature and Philosophy without reading poststructuralism, though French Existentialism is a fine historical example of this. I’d advise you to at least look at ‘this strange institution called literature’ in Acts of Literature by Derrida/Attridge. I also recommend rereading Thus Spoke Zarathustra reading it strictly as a literary text. I can give you any amount of information about Existentialism and poststructuralism (I’m a poststructuralist of sorts) but you’d do better to read it for yourself. This sounds like a fascinating thesis I must say, I study literary theory (formally at the moment but informally for about 3 years) so this is right in my playpen.
Not hardly. Phenomenology has little to do with the birth of existentialism. Existentialism is a point on a line.
History can be viewed as primarily a movement from despotism to real democracy, taking thousands of years to develop. Nietzsche merely decides to call this movement tragic…Sartre decides to call it INEVITABLE, following Marx and his historical account of the development of civilization and economy.
What Marx saw from one thousand feet in the sky…Nietzsche and Sartre barely caught a glimpse of. Having only a partial view, they both reacted emotionally and philosophically, as did Kierkegaard. Existentialism was born.
Nonetheless what Marx speaks of is to that tiny era as existentialism is to the entire library. And contrary to your claim that reason was under scrutiny where existentialism was born, Marx was heavily influenced by Hegel, the founder of phenomenology and the champion of the Rational. So ironically it was a theory based from phenomenology that explained existentialism as a result of a social revolution where you suppose it was the cause. I am simply reordering your assertions into there proper causal relationship. The existential reaction was a phenomenological event. Perhaps I can explain briefly with a history of social organization and how “philosophy” and “politics” evolve.
Despotism. The first natural consequence of hierarchy and art combined-- which is the origins of the metaphor and the mythical (the first real metaphysics).
The despotic movement begins historically in the crude period of the first social organizations and the art that it produced: first animal religion, turns into polytheism, then into propheticism (where individual human subjects are revered as “representative” of “God”), finally into atheism where “moral” values becomed grounded once again in a material economy and there is no more propagandic ruling power.
Here you have the normal social order of ranks and a “moral” system which supports it. The morals begin as aesthetic and become ethical-- where culture and tradition is invented and mediated through art. Language moves this and makes memes. The despotism remains as a combination of “philosophy” and “politics.” This means that “philosophy” is inherently a “religious” activity. Conclusion: lauguage culture is centered around metaphysical remnants of religious doctrine. “Morals” are then propagandas which preserve custom, in this case the despotism. This progression is contantly flexing and shifting as the existence of several particular forms of this happen in the world. Still it is despotic and in its embryonic stage.
When real democracy happens there is a single existing class with no exaltation of religious order, and therefore no religious doctrine, and therefore no more political art and propoganda, and therefore no more metaphysics. “Philsophy” becomes strictly aesthetic…it devolves back to its first stages of art while science converges with economy and politics. There are no more classes. The communists assert that all philosophy is a reaction to politics, that “Philosophy” does not exist, but “philosophies” exists. The “philosophies” are forms of class-conspiracy and create alienations between individuals, and this is a result of “politics.”
This is why you might hear Marx say “I am not a communist.”
The context of this polical shedding of skins “process” is materially based and psychology/philosophy, which I join together because both are mediated through language and science, ALL OF IT, is derived from the process that happens during the movement from elitism to altruism. This is a rational expression of logic and ethics. NOT because “logic” and “ethics” are moral objectives…but because the moral objective of civilization is a logical and rational process.
And this is crucial. “Religion” is no a dualistic concept and it didn’t have its origns in Plato’s “realm” or any other conceptual “transcendent” entity-- it is a tradition that is founded on the exaltation of human leaders and “rights” and the natural hierarchy of social order.
“Literature” is simply the means to pass the meme.
“We still have faith in language”- Fritz
“My pen is my grip on the world”- Sartre
I only mention this to show you where both Sartre and Nietzsche meet, as you make the nonsensical claim that they have nothing in common.
Both understand how history works but Nietzsche works backwards toward primitivism and retains the notion that politics will always be grounded in art and power-- his concept of elitism is essentially despotism-- “Will Powers”–…and Sartre moves forwards to inevitable Marxism where in the absence of metaphysics, romanticism, dualism, religion, and class, civilization steadies itself and becomes homogenous. The utopia is not an ideology or romance. It is a prediction based on historical patterns and nothing more. It is the “philosophy” that is ideological and romantic…intellectually barbaric.
This “existentialism” and “literature” you speak of is by no means the birth of the expression of social dissagreement and alienation. The “psychology” of the existential movement is none other than the reaction to the slow dissolution of religion and despotism. Marx already put all this shit down, cuz.
So to recap: there is no way to “reject” rationalism where such a rejection is justified as a “rational” result of an evolving socio-political organism.
The rest of your hooplah is as usual just a desperate attempt to pretend as if you are some kind of journalist who can pop off a paperback of clumsy critiques and be thought of as a “writer.”
Existentialsm Exishmenshalism. Deconstructionism Deconshmuctionism
Of course you can. It was art/symbology and language. Neither started economical/material politics.
Wow, it’s nice to see i’ve kicked off such a great discussion in my first ever posting! I knew you guys (from reading through other threads before posting) would give a great response to this topic.
In response to saying that I should be looking at postructuralism and derrida in particular, my first intention was simply to look at the role of literature in existential philosopy in general (nietzsche, kierkergaard, camus, sartre etc) but my tutor (quite rightly) advised me to limit it. I would also like to bring in a lot from derrida, fourcault, and others of their kind and will be bringing in a certain element of their work into my thesis but obviously I have to draw a line somewhere and can’t look at everything that might be relevant. I do think then, that Sartre is as good a place to look as any if you want to think about why literature might play a significant role in certain areas of philosophy and not in others. Though, naturally, there is lots of other things you could bring in.
P.S Thanks for making me feel so welcome here guys!
Start bangin, suddenly life was meant to reproduce.
Become a holy-preist in a certain religion, suddenly life was meant to be clean, pure and holy.
Become an active person and spend allot of time exersizing, suddenly life was meant to be active and vital.
Spend all day on your ass, life was meant to be more dosile and reflect upon itself?
Or what is this?
…it’s a failure when we try to sort it all out and label this or that, because it is and always will be both and more.
I’ve seen people contradict and opposte eachother when they were both right, and I’ve seen this very often, and now I see it in my own words…
So,
I can’t say anybody is wrong or critisize a single philosophy much anymore… I’m still tryin to read about existentialism, to see what it’s history is like.
Bye.
deartrop,
Glad to see you back here, albeit just to try to blow cocaine up my anus with a biro tube…
French Existentialism is based on phenomenology but I suppose no, in general Existentialism has no continuous connection with phenomenology.
Aye, it’s called the ‘Narrative of Emancipation’ by Lyotard. It’s just another narrative, just another myth subscribed to by hopefuls and wannabes, Marx and Sartre included.
Marx was a bourgeois fool who sat around smoking cigars talking about the alienation of workers from the product of their work and therefore from their work per se when he’d never done a days work in his life. That you resort to a crappy metaphor ‘one thousand feet in the sky’ only demonstrates how weak your argument is. You are reacting personally against me, I don’t know why. Well, I do and I don’t, but we needn’t do this here. If you want to teach me a lesson then let’s find our own private space to do so and not interrupt these fine people’s conversation…
Here we see the leap. Hegel was Rationalist, he influenced Marx, Marx influenced the Existentialists (or presided over the birth of Existentialism) therefore existentialism was born because of, rather than contrary to, rationalism. Even though Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre all reject reason in one way or another. Indeed Sartre is often described as ‘Kant with the reason part taken out’. Now that’s a false reading but we can argue about it as though I take it to be true.
Not quite, I said that French existentialism was Marxist. I never said that it succeeded in its aspirations. It tried to be the cause, it failed.
Metaphysics originates in presocratic philosophy, the social conditions were oligarchic rather than despotic. Who was the despot?
Thereby conveniently granting the atheist Sartre ‘evolved’ status. Even though he recanted and believed in God by the time of his death…
I reject your fetal metaphor as hypocritical given that you’ve structured your description so as to make metaphor a primitive tool. If you rely on what you are criticising then the argument is contradictory…
…As though ‘real democracy’ weren’t predicated on the metaphysical mistake that is the notion of individual freedom
If all philosophy is the result of the class struggle that created it then how can ANY philosophy be revolutionary, including that of Marx or Sartre? In criticising the tools that you are using you are become contradictory. Now maybe you are perfectly happy in contradiction and if so then I’ll happily leave it because I’m not going to insist on a Platonic law of debate that is itself flawed.
By which he meant that he would send his children to steal food from local shops because if he was seen outside of the house those to whom he owed money would have killed him. Bourgeois coward…
Reason is a metaphor. You’d do well to remember that.
Of course, in the case of religion the structure (the elitism) comes first and the metaphysical dogma is subsidiary. But (see my Marxism and Criticism thread) the dogma can always be taken into a new context an used in a different way with relation to different structures and as such even elitist dogma can become revolutionary, if used in the right way. This runs contrary to your evolutionary description of history.
I think that I said that they disagreed on every point…
Says the philosopher…
Durkheim described it a million times more accurately and didn’t rely on a spurious determinism to do so. I pays me money, I takes me choice. I chose Durkheim.
i.e. one cannot rationally reject rationalism, which is tautological and circular…
Wow. No, like, really wow. You’ve like, so shatterd my heart and all my self belief because you, a total hypocrite, have told me that you don’t agree with my post. Yeah, let’s all just give up and let some higher process of rational motion guide us and forget all about resistance, imagination, revolution, the struggle. The philosophy of historical materialism is a philosophy of political apathy. Your pessimism is symtomatic of that. You are welcome to it, I’ve got other games to play.
Marx schmarx. Hegel Schmegel. Detrop deschmop…
Read the whole sentence, I said that you cannot answer any question (about…) without reading poststructuralism.