Jean Paul Sartre Albert Camus Popular Books

Jean Paul Sartre Albert Camus Biography & Facts

Existentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence. Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. Common concepts in existentialist thought include existential crisis, dread, and anxiety in the face of an absurd world and free will, as well as authenticity, courage, and virtue.Existentialism is associated with several 19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who shared an emphasis on the human subject, despite often profound differences in thought. Among the earliest figures associated with existentialism are philosophers Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, all of whom critiqued rationalism and concerned themselves with the problem of meaning. In the 20th century, prominent existentialist thinkers included Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, and Paul Tillich. Many existentialists considered traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in style and content, to be too abstract and removed from concrete human experience. A primary virtue in existentialist thought is authenticity. Existentialism would influence many disciplines outside of philosophy, including theology, drama, art, literature, and psychology.Existentialist philosophy encompasses a range of perspectives, but it shares certain underlying concepts. Among these, a central tenet of existentialism is that personal freedom, individual responsibility, and deliberate choice are essential to the pursuit of self-discovery and the determination of life's meaning. Etymology The term existentialism (French: L'existentialisme) was coined by the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel in the mid-1940s. When Marcel first applied the term to Jean-Paul Sartre, at a colloquium in 1945, Sartre rejected it. Sartre subsequently changed his mind and, on October 29, 1945, publicly adopted the existentialist label in a lecture to the Club Maintenant in Paris, published as L'existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism Is a Humanism), a short book that helped popularize existentialist thought. Marcel later came to reject the label himself in favour of Neo-Socratic, in honor of Kierkegaard's essay "On the Concept of Irony". Some scholars argue that the term should be used to refer only to the cultural movement in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s associated with the works of the philosophers Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus. Others extend the term to Kierkegaard, and yet others extend it as far back as Socrates. However, it is often identified with the philosophical views of Sartre. Definitional issues and background The labels existentialism and existentialist are often seen as historical conveniences in as much as they were first applied to many philosophers long after they had died. While existentialism is generally considered to have originated with Kierkegaard, the first prominent existentialist philosopher to adopt the term as a self-description was Sartre. Sartre posits the idea that "what all existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence", as the philosopher Frederick Copleston explains. According to philosopher Steven Crowell, defining existentialism has been relatively difficult, and he argues that it is better understood as a general approach used to reject certain systematic philosophies rather than as a systematic philosophy itself. In a lecture delivered in 1945, Sartre described existentialism as "the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism". For others, existentialism need not involve the rejection of God, but rather "examines mortal man's search for meaning in a meaningless universe", considering less "What is the good life?" (to feel, be, or do, good), instead asking "What is life good for?".Although many outside Scandinavia consider the term existentialism to have originated from Kierkegaard, it is more likely that Kierkegaard adopted this term (or at least the term "existential" as a description of his philosophy) from the Norwegian poet and literary critic Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven. This assertion comes from two sources: The Norwegian philosopher Erik Lundestad refers to the Danish philosopher Fredrik Christian Sibbern. Sibbern is supposed to have had two conversations in 1841, the first with Welhaven and the second with Kierkegaard. It is in the first conversation that it is believed that Welhaven came up with "a word that he said covered a certain thinking, which had a close and positive attitude to life, a relationship he described as existential". This was then brought to Kierkegaard by Sibbern. The second claim comes from the Norwegian historian Rune Slagstad, who claimed to prove that Kierkegaard himself said the term existential was borrowed from the poet. He strongly believes that it was Kierkegaard himself who said that "Hegelians do not study philosophy 'existentially;' to use a phrase by Welhaven from one time when I spoke with him about philosophy."Concepts Existence precedes essence Sartre argued that a central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which is to say that individuals shape themselves by existing and cannot be perceived through preconceived and a priori categories, an "essence". The actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called their "true essence" instead of an arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them. Human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life. This view is in contradiction to Aristotle and Aquinas, who taught that essence precedes individual existence. Although it was Sartre who explicitly coined the phrase, similar notions can be found in the thought of existentialist philosophers such as Heidegger, and Kierkegaard: The subjective thinker's form, the form of his communication, is his style. His form must be just as manifold as are the opposites that he holds together. The systematic eins, zwei, drei is an abstract form that also must inevitably run into trouble whenever it is to be applied to the concrete. To the same degree as the subjective thinker is concrete, to that same degree his form must also be concretely dialectical. But just as he himself is not a poet, not an ethicist, not a dialectician, so also his form is none of these directly. His form must first and last be related to existence, and in this regard he must have at his disposal the poetic, the ethical, the dialectical, the religious. Subordinate character, setting, etc., which belong to the well-balanced character of the esthetic production, are in themselves breadth; the subjective thinker has only one setting—existence—and has nothing to do with localities and such things. The setting is not the fairyland of the imagination, where poetry p.... Discover the Jean Paul Sartre Albert Camus popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jean Paul Sartre Albert Camus books.

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  • La metamorfosis synopsis, comments

    La metamorfosis

    Franz Kafka

    Este ebook presenta "La metamorfosis", con un índice dinámico y detallado. Se trata de un relato de Franz Kafka, publicado en 1916 y que narra la historia de Gregor Samsa, ...

  • La metamorfosis synopsis, comments

    La metamorfosis

    Franz Kafka

    Este ebook presenta "La metamorfosis", con un índice dinámico y detallado. Se trata de un relato de Franz Kafka, publicado en 1916 y que narra la historia de Gregor Samsa, ...

  • La metamorfosis synopsis, comments

    La metamorfosis

    Franz Kafka

    Este ebook presenta "La metamorfosis", con un índice dinámico y detallado. Se trata de un relato de Franz Kafka, publicado en 1916 y que narra la historia de Gregor Samsa, ...

  • Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Frantz Fanon on the topic of decolonization and the French occupation of Algeria. synopsis, comments

    Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Frantz Fanon on the topic of decolonization and the French occupation of Algeria.

    Sophie Duhnkrack

    Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Frantz Fanon are three wellknown intellectuals who extensively dealt with decolonization. All three were involved in a heated debate about the F...

  • Brave Genius synopsis, comments

    Brave Genius

    Sean B. Carroll

    The neverbeforetold account of the intersection of some of the most insightful minds of the 20th century, and a fascinating look at how war, resistance, and friendship can cat...

  • Existentialism synopsis, comments

    Existentialism

    Thomas E. Wartenberg

    A lively introduction to this celebrated philosophical tradition.Existentialism pervades modern culture, yet if you ask most people what it means, they won’t be able to tell you. I...

  • Germinal synopsis, comments

    Germinal

    Roger Pearson & Émile Zola

    Considered by André Gide to be one of the ten greatest novels in the French language, Émile Zola's Germinal is a brutal depiction of the poverty of a mining community in northern F...

  • The Need for Roots synopsis, comments

    The Need for Roots

    Simone Weil & Ros Schwartz

    A new translation of Simone Weil's bestknown work: a political, philosophical and spiritual treatise on what human life could beWhat do humans require to be truly nourished? Simone...