Category: Existentialism
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Hartmann on Kierkegaard
Top o' the Stack.
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A Quasi-Kierkegaardian Poke at Paglia, Catholic Pagan
This Stack leader has her stuck at the aesthetic stage. I'm on a Kierkegaard jag again. I've been reading him all my philosophical life ever since my undergraduate teacher, Ronda Chervin, introduced him to me. For an easy introduction to the Danish Socrates, I recommend Clare Carlisle, Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of…
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Remembering Albert Camus . . .
. . . and one whose hero he was. Substack latest.
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Berdyaev on the Moral Source of Atheism
Substack latest.
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Berdyaev on the Moral Source of Atheism
There are respectable forms of atheism. The atheist needn't be a rebellious punk stuck in intellectual adolescence, swamped by sensuality, and given to self-idolatry. Nicholas Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man (Harper Torchbooks, 1960, tr. Natalie Duddington, p. 24): It is precisely the traditional theology that leads good men, inspired by moral motives, to atheism. The…
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Shestov on the Fool
Lev Shestov (1866-1938), Job's Balances: "The fool said in his heart: There is no God." Sometimes this is a sign of the end and of death. Sometimes of the beginning and of life. As soon as man feels that God is not, he suddenly comprehends the frightful horror and the wild folly of human temporal existence,…
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Camus, Virtue, and its Exhortation
Albert Camus died on this date in 1960. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, tr. Ryan Bloom, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010, p. 72: Virtue is not hateful. But speeches on virtue are. Without a doubt, no mouth in the world, much less mine, can utter them. Likewise, every time somebody interjects to speak of my honesty…
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The Strange Thought of Absolute Nothingness
I had the giddy thought of absolute nothingness as a boy; the old man I've become can't quite recapture in full its eldritch quality. But he can rigorously think what the boy could mainly only feel. The boy reasoned that if God hadn't created anything, then only God would exist. But suppose no God either!…
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Nicolai Hartmann on Søren Kierkegaard and Competing Attitudes Toward Individuality
Although existentialist themes can be traced all the way back to Socrates and then forward through St. Augustine and Blaise Pascal, to mention only three pre-Kierkegaardian luminaries, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is rightly regarded as the father of existentialism. His worked proved to be seminal for that of Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, and Jean-Paul Sartre, to…
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Is Life a Predicament?
My old friend Joe sent me a vitriolic statement in denunciation of David Benatar, both the man and his ideas. I will quote only a relatively benign portion of Joe's rant: I do not experience life as a predicament but as a great gift. I am surrounded by love and beauty, and even have been able…
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Existential/ist Threat
Mark Spahn sent this great cartoon:
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Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959
This is one of the books I am reading at the moment. Tr. Ryan Bloom. First appeared in French in 1989 by Editions Gallimard, Paris, English translation 2008, first paperback edition 2010 (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago). Some good stuff here, but some nonsense as well, for example: A priest who regrets having to leave his…
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The View from Mount Zapffe: The Absurdity of Life and Intellectual Honesty
Gisle Tangenes describes the life and ideas of a cheerfully pessimistic, mountain-climbing Norwegian existentialist, pessimist, and anti-natalist, Peter Wessel Zapffe: Thus the ‘thousand consolatory fictions’ that deny our captivity in dying beasts, afloat on a speck of dust in the eternal void. And after all, if a godly creator is waiting in the wings, it…
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Remembering Albert Camus
Albert Camus, one of the luminaries of French existentialism, died on this day in 1960, in a car crash. Not tragically, straining hubristically against limits, but absurdly, a passenger in a recklessly-piloted vehicle. "In his coat pocket was an unused train ticket. He had planned to travel by train with his wife and children, but…