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Robyn S

Existentialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) - 1 views

plato.stanford.edu/...existentialism

shared by Robyn S on 25 Jan 10 - Cached
    • Robyn S
      Robyn S on 25 Jan 10
       
      Existentialism was as much a literary phenomenon as a philosophical one
  • elpfully identifies a relatively distinct current of twentieth- and now twenty-first century philosophical inquiry,
  • suggested, therefore, that existentialism just is this bygone cultural movement rather than an identifiable philosophical position; or, alternatively, that the term should be restricted to Sartre's philosophy alone.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • What makes this current of inquiry distinct is not its concern with “existence” in general, but rather its claim that thinking about human existence requires new categories not found in the conceptual repertoire of ancient or modern thought; human beings can be understood neither as substances with fixed properties, nor as subjects interacting with a world of objects.
    • Robyn S
      Robyn S on 25 Jan 10
       
      What makes this current of inquiry distinct is not its concern with "existence" in general, but rather its claim that thinking about human existence requires new categories not found in the conceptual repertoire of ancient or modern thought; human beings can be understood neither as substances with fixed properties, nor as subjects interacting with a world of objects. So the ideas of existentialism have changed from Sarte's original philosophy and come to define the kind of thinking that takes place in this twentieth century questioning of human existence.
  • Existentialism does not deny the validity of the basic categories of physics, biology, psychology, and the other sciences (categories such as matter, causality, force, function, organism, development, motivation, and so on). It claims only that human beings cannot be fully understood in terms of them. Nor can such an understanding be gained by supplementing our scientific picture with a moral one.
    • Robyn S
      Robyn S on 25 Jan 10
       
      Categories of moral theory such as intention, blame, responsibility, character, duty, virtue, and the like do capture important aspects of the human condition, but neither moral thinking (governed by the norms of the good and the right) nor scientific thinking (governed by the norm of truth) suffices. Existntialism does not try to substitute it's ideas for the things that have been discovered, but it makes people realize the different aspects of the conditions of existence. Basically, Biology and Physics, and Psychology can tell us so much about humans, but there is still a gap in the theories that existntialists try to fill.
  • “Existentialism”, therefore, may be defined as the philosophical theory which holds that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to grasp human existence
  • it is equally true that all the themes popularly associated with existentialism—dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom, commitment, nothingness, and so on—find their philosophical significance in the context of the search for a new categorial framework, together with its governing norm.
  • philosophical problem in the struggle to think the paradoxical presence of God; for Nietzsche it is found in the reverberations of the phrase “God is dead,” in the challenge of nihilism.
  • Nietzsche sought to draw the consequences of the death of God, the collapse of any theistic support for morality
  • Nietzsche's overriding concern is to find a way to take the measure of human life in the modern world
  • Nietzsche's idea that behind moral prescriptions lies nothing but “will to power” undermined that authority
  • “the crowd is untruth”: the so-called autonomous, self-legislating individual is nothing but a herd animal that has trained itself to docility and unfreedom by conforming to the “universal” standards of morality. The normative is nothing but the normal.
  • the individual nevertheless has the potential to become something else, the sick animal is “pregnant with a future.”
  • For instance, the Christian value of truth-telling, institutionalized in the form of science, had undermined the belief in God, disenchanting the world and excluding from it any pre-given moral meaning
  • On the one hand, if he is weakly constituted he may fall victim to despair in the face of nihilism, the recognition that life has no instrinsic meaning.
  • On the other hand, for a “strong” or creative individual nihilism presents a liberating opportunity to take responsibility for meaning, to exercise creativity by “transvaluing” her values, establishing a new “order of rank
  • He has understood that nihilism is the ultimate meaning of the moral point of view, its life-denying essence, and he reconfigures the moral idea of autonomy so as to release the life-affirming potential within it.
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