Existentialism - A Very Short Introduction.pdf

Existentialism is commonly associated with Left-Bank Parisian
cafes and the ‘family’ of philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone
de Beauvoir who gathered there in the years immediately following
the liberation of Paris at the end of World War II. One imagines off-
beat, avant-garde intellectuals, attached to their cigarettes, listening
to jazz as they hotly debate the implications of their new-found
political and artistic liberty. The mood is one of enthusiasm,
creativity, anguished self-analysis, and freedom – always freedom.
Though this reflects the image projected by the media of the day
and doubtless captures the spirit of the time, it glosses over the
philosophical significance of existentialist thought, packaging it as a
cultural phenomenon of a certain historical period. That is perhaps
the price paid by a manner of thinking so bent on doing philosophy
concretely rather than in some abstract and timeless manner. The
existentialists’ urge for contemporary relevance fired their social
and political commitment. But it also linked them with the
problems of their day and invited subsequent generations to view
them as having the currency of yesterday’s news.
Such is the misreading of existentialist thought that I hope to
correct in this short volume. If it bears the marks of its post-war
appearance, existentialism as a manner of doing philosophy and a
way of addressing the issues that matter in people’s lives is at least
as old as philosophy itself. It is as current as the human condition
which it examines. To ensure at the outset that this point is not lost,
I begin my initial chapter with a discussion of philosophy, not as a
doctrine or a system of thought but as a way of life. The title of
Chapter 1 comes from Classical scholar Pierre Hadot’s study of the
return to the Stoics as an example of how ‘Ancient’ philosophy can
offer meaning to people’s lives even in our day. Though his
preference is for the Greeks and Romans, Hadot finds a similar
concern in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich
Nietzsche, the so-called 19th-century ‘fathers’ of the existentialist
movement, and among their 20th-century progeny.
It is commonly acknowledged that existentialism is a philosophy
about the concrete individual. This is both its glory and its shame.
In an age of mass communication and mass destruction, it is to its
credit that existentialism defends the intrinsic value of what its
main proponent Sartre calls the ‘free organic individual’, that is, the
flesh-and-blood agent. Because of the almost irresistible pull
toward conformity in modern society, what we shall call ‘existential
individuality’ is an achievement, and not a permanent one at that.
We are born biological beings but we must become existential
individuals by accepting responsibility for our actions. This is an
application of Nietzsche’s advice to ‘become what you are’. Many
people never do acknowledge such responsibility but rather flee
their existential individuality into the comfort of the faceless crowd.
As an object lesson in becoming an individual, in the following
chapter, I trace what Kierkegaard calls ‘spheres’ of existence or
‘stages on life’s way’ and conclude with some observations about
how Nietzsche would view this project of becoming an existential
individual.
Shortly after the end of the war, Sartre delivered a public lecture
entitled ‘Is Existentialism a Humanism?’ that rocked the
intellectual life of Paris and served as a quasi-manifesto for the
movement. From then on, existentialism was associated with a
certain kind of humanistic philosophy that gives human beings and
human values pride of place, and with critiques of alternative
versions of humanism accepted at that time. In Chapter 3, I discuss
the implications of that problematic lecture, the only one Sartre
ever regretted publishing, as well as his contemporary Martin
Heidegger’s ‘response’ in his famous Letter on Humanism.
While the supreme value of existentialist thought is commonly
acknowledged to be freedom, its primary virtue is authenticity.
Chapter 4 is devoted to this topic as well as to the nature and forms
of self-deception, or bad faith, that function as its contrary. I relate
authenticity to existential individuality and consider the possibility
of an ethics of authenticity based on existential responsibility.
In order to counter the criticism, widespread immediately after the
war, that existentialism is simply another form of bourgeois
individualism, bereft of collective consciousness and indifferent to
the need to address the social issues of the day, I devote Chapter 5 to
the issue of a ‘chastened individualism’, as the existentialists try to
conceive of social solidarity in a manner that will enhance rather
than compromise individual freedom and responsibility, which
remain non-negotiable.
In the last chapter, I draw on the foregoing as well as on other
aspects of existentialist thought to consider the continued relevance
of existentialist philosophy in our day. It is necessary to separate the
philosophical significance of the movement, its powerful insights,
and its attention to the concrete, from the arresting but now dated
trappings of its Left-Bank adolescence. From many likely
candidates, I choose four topics of current interest to which the
existentialists have something of philosophical import to say.
Two features of this brief volume may perhaps strike the reader as
limitations even in a short introduction: the number of commonly
recognized ‘existentialist’ names that are absent and, at the other
extreme, the possibly excessive presence of Jean-Paul Sartre
throughout the work. Regarding the first, though I could have
mentioned, for example, Dostoevsky or Kafka, Giacometti or
Picasso, Ionesco or Beckett, all powerful exemplars of existentialist
themes in the arts, my concern is to treat existentialism as a
philosophical movement with artistic implications rather than as
(just) a literary movement with philosophical pretensions – which
is a common though misguided conception. The reason for not
discussing Buber or Berdaiev, Ortega y Gasset or Unamuno, and
many other philosophers deserving of mention here, is that this is a
‘very’ short introduction, after all. Those interested in pursuing the
topics discussed here will find suggestions of useful sources at the
end of the book.
As for the prominence of Sartre, he and de Beauvoir are the only
philosophers in this group who admitted to being existentialists. To
the extent that it is a 20th-century movement, existentialism
certainly centred on his work. And no one better exemplifies the
union of and tension between philosophy and literature, the
conceptual and the imaginary, the critical and the committed,
philosophy as reflection and philosophy as way of life, that defines
the existentialist mode of philosophizing than does Jean-Paul
Sartre.