Sartre - Pros and Cons - Existentialism Part I

[Hoobifta]

So you talk about existentialism as a question of why you were here, which you have to find out for yourself, that is, you're here in this world, but how did you get there? Yeh, and you say it's humanism. So let me get this straight: you speak of a very complicated philosophy in an 800 page book and you can't read it because you don't get it, then you were an academic student in existentialism and you know how a lot of it operates, but you find it somewhat confusing and don't know some of it.

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

@Hoobifta I'm not masquerading as an expert. I welcome any criticism or discussion. If I were masquerading as an expert, I would have omitted the fact that I haven't read "Being and Nothingness." If anything, I consider myself an amateur student. Any expert finding a flaw with my thoughts I would welcome to post a response. That's what youtube is for: You. Nowhere in my video do I claim to be an authority. Youtube can be used for discussion too.

[ILikeTheRain123]

Towards the end of the video when you were discussing the effect ww2 had on culture very much reminded me of the theory of modernism. That coupled with the fact that Nietzche was (in my opinion) a pre-cursor or father of both modernism and existentialism, makes me wonder are the two theories connected? And to what extent?

If anyone could answer this for me, I'd be really grateful.

:)

[gims333]

by "free willist" do you mean libertarian

[AbdielAbiram]

Not just Kierkegaard. Marcel, Buber, Dostovoesky, Tilich, and Jaspers are prominent existentialist thinkers, all of which are religionists.

[roborat91]

Massive Attack for the win

[natedaug1]

Nice video. Your right, Sartre said existentialism precedes essence, which basically means you have total freedom to create yourself. You have a radical, radical freedom, nothing restricts you from creating yourself. Also Nietzsche died before WWI.

[DJSeasho]

I think you're searching for more meaning from life, seeing as you feel life being meaningless is incomprehensible? Whatever allows you to sleep at night I spose.

[reclusivesage]

Piano, guitar, philosophy, science, Mezzanine...you're too much like me. Stop it.

[SynerJetics]

In some of its elements existentialism has some philosophical similarities with Jainism.

[buildingm]

This is true. There is a virtually equivalent sub-premise of the two; that the world within itself is meaningless.

[collins1188]

Doesn't anyone know how to pronounce Sartre? It's pronounced like "SART".... come on...

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

You're wrong, bro. Check around on the internet. The phonemes in the French pronunciation don't exist in English. The closest approximation is "Sar-truh" in English. Look around on the internet with the keywords Sartre and pronounce.

[natedaug1]

@PianoIsTheRemedy Your pronouncing it correctly.

[koikila]

@PianoIsTheRemedy The first guy is right... And it wouldn't hurt trying to pronounce another language's words and names, even if its phonemes aren't like english ones , the rest of the world do it with english words :)

[purlbeauty]

@collins1188 u dont pronounce the "re"?

[collins1188]

@purlbeauty All 3 of my college philosophy professors pronounced Sartre's name like... "sart"... like dart, fart, cart except replace the first consonant with an "s"

[purlbeauty]

@collins1188 thx for clearin that up for me..

[wgaule]

I was interested in this until you said you hadn't read Being and Nothingness. After that I felt there was nothing to learn from this video. You have to read it before doing any more of these videos. You could easily get through it in a couple of months. Reading it will give you more credibility, even if you don't reveal that you read it, you will know what you know you know, if you know what I mean ...

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

Well, I probably won't read it, but thanks for the recommendation. I view Youtube as a forum for discussion. I apologize if you believe I intended my video to be a college level class. Was there anything specific you disagreed with in the video? Seems hypocritical to tell me I should read Being and Nothingness and then you comment without watching my video.

[jaredmstein]

@wgaule I don't think reading "Being and Nothingness" is critical either to a strong perspective on the topic, to a clear understanding of existentialism, and certainly not for "credibility". It certainly gives some useful tools and perspectives, but your claim that someone has to read it before discussion existentialism is simply pompous. Indeed, many of our greatest philosophers rejected reading the works of their "colleagues" in order to obtain a more pure and individualistic worldview.

[lourak]

@wgaule Your critique of the young man's clip is unduly harsh. He seems earnest and modest enough in his attempt to make his way into this difficult to digest philosophy.

[bardic88]

I agree with wgaule, Being and Nothingness is an essential book to understanding the phenomenology behind his existentialism. Further, "Transcendence of the Ego" was a prelude to Being and Nothingness, and certainly a rebuttal to Husserl's miraculous find of the ego, although he agreed with Hume in the beginning. Also, "The Humanism of Existentialism" is a public address, a sort of manifesto, shortly after WWII. Although brilliant, one can't learn enough from the mentioned essays

[orbis2009]

Sartre's early existentialism wherein existence precedes essence ---where man authenticates himself through the acts of freedom---was contradicted by both his conformist Marxism---a universal which substituted for religion for him, though its hardly distinguishable as a contradicting essence / idealism--- and denial about Marxism's horrors; also by his return to moralism in condemning the war in Vietnam. He collapsed into essence over existence in all this,

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

Agreed on Marxism. I cannot forgive his militant Marxist radicalism.

[MacoutesGabber]

He wasn't militant about it. He always refused to officially join the Communist Party, and abhorred the Stalinist genocide.

[koikila]

@orbis2009 When you talke about "marxism's horrors" , what do you mean exactly?..(which ones?)

[orbis2009]

@koikila For the most Marxism in actual time-and-space history involves direct and often blood assaults on human creativity, freedom, dissent and ends in the Gulag or body pits. Only when disincarnated, as it were, does Marxism live as a kind of Platonic ideal in the minds of its proponents. Capitalism is likewise loathsomely violent. The old economic theory of Distributism avoids the pitfalls of Marxism and Capitalism (which provoke each other into existence) as well as anarchism.

[koikila]

@orbis2009 But there's never been such thing as a Communist country yet. Stalinism and Maoism are not representative of Marxism .There different ways of understanding it and each party has its own strategy...or technique (i dont know the english word).I don't thik Marx's theory(on economics, sociology, history, as a dialectic method etc)is not at all bloody..I think that if some took it to justify their fascism then that's up to them, not the whole theory itself. Marx was Marx,not his folowers.

[orbis2009]

@koikila You write "There's never been such thing as a Communist country yet. Stalinism and Maoism are not representative of Marxism" Yes, that is the usual Talking Point reply; but it is only convincing to neo-marxist true believers. It is like saying capitalism has never existed yet.

[sharperguy]

Haw haw haw "the gay science" *chucle*

It's so funny the meaning of a word has changed over the passed decades!

[lostm0ments]

I love this!

[IntellectualConcepts]

wouldn't you consider yourself more agnostic than atheist?

[RobsStudio]

This is great!

[courtabeth]

Sartre for me is not so much about not being programed than taking responsibility for one's own freedom;one's existence is not so much unprogrammed as absurd,individual,and meaningliss,and we are free(in the prison of life)to make decisions which make us,though we must take responsibility for those decisions as they define our essence.

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

I can't argue with that. I think that's well put and insightful.

[riv3rrun]

Nietzsche died before WWI, in 1900. The Nazi's didn't need to distort his views, his own sister (an extreme anti-Semite), "edited" his works to lend them a more anti-Semitic tone. More accurately anti-Jewish, or anti-Zionist, as Palestinians are obviously Semites too. Gos is far from dead here in the US, the influence of religion here is off the scale compared to other modern industrial countries, and has been steadily increasing over the past 10-20 years.

[riv3rrun]

You said "you don't think the sole purpose for your existence is to reproduce...". Natural selection works at the genetic level, the "genes eye view", to quote Dawkins. It's important to not confuse differential selection at the genetic level with ontological claims about your purpose. To do so is to give away to much to natural selection and to confuse ultimate causation (mutations going back 4+ billion years) with proximate causation (us here and now).There is no toolmaker. we have no essence.

[Israe5l]

Good question:"do you think Existentialism is the default philosophy for atheist?" Reading about Sartre, one may jump to the conclusion that Sartre doesn't have any metaphysics. Does this come from the he's statment "existence preceeds essence"? But this does not mean "there is only existence". I think its safe to say, atheist are mainly empiricists (if not logical positivist type). But even empiricist have their metaphysics. Or else, they are left with naked language and experience.

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

This is a multi-part series, so I can see how the pros and cons title would be confusing. On existentialism and atheism: I think there are many different "philosophies of life" for atheists, and existentialism is just one. I am still undergoing a radical development as I'm struggling through the 1960s... I can tell you this: Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens are rudimentary philosophers. There is so much more out there!

[cinemanerd]

The term " Existence precedes essence " was first coined and formulated by not Kierkegaard or Sartre but a muslim philosopher in the 17th century. Google Mulla Sadra. He was the first to mada the move from essentialisn to existentialism, but isn't a well known name for some reason..

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

Thank you much!

[sonata1992]

I just started philosophy, and my surrogate teacer has ordered me to start reading Being and Nothingness immediately...*sighs*

[neopl666]

You just helped me start my English paper on existentialism. Thank you.

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

I'm a hack just trying to figure things out myself, you're welcome for any help I was able to give.

[damienmdk]

Hey I've read Nausea and I would like to ask you a question about the meaning of the word contingency? Sartre said in the book that to exist is not nessescity, i.e. existence is contingent.

[Herrunus]

sartre has a cartesian misreading of heidegger whose arguments are countered by the book of heidegger's sartre misread.

sartre makes authenticity into an ethical imperative, which is ungrounded.

sartre said that the crimes of the soviet union ought to be ignored because the rich elite in the world were worse than the mass murderers.

[Herrunus]

ah! the hammer!

the idea of the hammer didn't exist prior to the act of hammering. How did you learn about hammers? did you think them into being: their essences in your mind "projecting" a picture of hammerness on base material which turns into a created hammer, or did you engage in the act of hammering first?

our familiarity in the existential world gives rise to the possibilities for essences of things such as hammers.

[Herrunus]

kierkegaard isn't trying to prove a god. His work is focused on living life as if there were no god, whether or not their is.

the "knight of faith" is faith in the sense of being all you can be. Heidegger draws on largely from kierkegaard and nietzsche. Some would say these three are the core of existential thought, and that later thinkers like sartre tend to give political interpretations of real existential insight.

[Herrunus]

there are no atheist-existentialists, that doesn't make sense.

on Nietzsche, god is a historically conditioned concept whose grown out of his usefulness and livelinesss. Nietzsche died before world war one. Nietzsche in many letters talks harshly to his sister cause she was marrying an anti-semite. Nietzsche made clear he thought racism and nationalism were follies.

[Herrunus]

nietzsche's sister and her husband used nietzsche's writings on the overman as suggesting of a racial supremist doctrine.

this is not part of nietzsche's thought on the overman. I forget the professors name, but one of nietzsche's colleagues tried to teach nietzsche's sister what nietzsche was writing about, but the professor gave up because she couldn't understand any of it.

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

My understanding of the overman has more to do with personal freedom from the illusions everyone has about their limitations.  I might argue that much of his philosophy was about exposing these baseless limitations we place on ourselves unconsciously. Would you agree to a certain extent?

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

Thank you for the insight on Nietzsche. Further, I heard that Nietzsche's sister was actually responsible for linking his ideas with the Nazi party. Shame on her!

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

On Kierkegaard: I openly admit my ignorance, as I do on Heidegger, who has been mostly impenetrable and opaque to my understanding to this point. I have met many thinkers on the internet who have progressed my understanding on this topics, of which I am gracious.  The trouble with independent study on my part is that I need a lot of correction.

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

Your comment on the essence of the hammer is quite profound. Thank you. It's purpose, of course, exists only in the human mind. It might be reduced to a collection of metal and wood.

[lokifluf]

by focusing on the hammer as we know it herrunus manages to miss the point once again - take for example the piece of wood you mentioned above - it is a piece of wood, however it can also be a hammer. the argument is that it needs to be a wooden hammer in itself before it can be a hammer for us.

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

First off: Even if Sartre misread Heidegger, is it Heidegger who should be preserved because he is correct, or could Sartre's "misreading" be more accurate to reality? Second: I am not "Sartrian", merely trying to interpret his ideas "correctly". Could my misinterpretations be more attuned to reality? Your arguments against Sartre may be well grounded. Third: Sartre's political involvement is one of the major "issues" I have with him that I will soon address.

[Herrunus]

oh, no the misreading of heidegger by sartre shows that sartre didn't understand heidegger. I wasn't clear...heidegger's arguments in "being and time" are against what sartre wrote in "being and nothingness."

[Herrunus]

sartre's "being and nothingness" has many holes and dogmas in it that heidegger's work revealed in husserl and descartes. Sartre continued the cartesian tradition from those two thinkers; even after sartre read heidegger, he mades the same mistakes because he didn't understand heidegger.

[Herrunus]

i think nietzsche dedicates his "human, all too human" book to "free spirits." I think the overman is a continuation of that line of thought.

[lokifluf]

would disagree - heidegger only managed to escape cartesianism by excluding the body and constructing the abstract dasein. sartre attempted to overcome this, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully.

[savagemike90]

I'm not 100% a "determinist" or "freewillist" in the way I see them used. When people say that determinism is so they seem to presuppose that "God" has something to do with it all of the time. (As if something if God is controlling everything and we have no choices because he knows the "choices" we make before we've made them.) I don't use it in the same way. I use it in a sort of "cause and effect" sense. (continued)

[savagemike90]

Wait. Take that back, sort of. Do you think chaos theory works with determinism? Haha. I typed out a lot but I thought I would ask that before continuing.

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

1. I share some of your sentiment. I for one, think that the determinism issue is one of those Wittgensteinian language issues... the problem dissolves when you analyze the language...

[sonata1992]

I am of a similiar opinion :)

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

2. Chaos Theory: Very interesting stuff, read several books on chaos theory, and certainly SMALL stimuli can cause big effects and change the world... When it boils down to humans... I think that there are lots of factors that influence behavior, but that we are ultimately free in MANY respects. Chaos theory doesn't work with human volition.

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

3. I'm now toying with a strange idea: SOME humans are automatons who act deterministically... while others have "realized" their freedom and behave Less deterministically... In other words, perhaps free will is something to attain just like knowledge or "inner peace". Something to work for. More to come on this.

[savagemike90]

"More to come on this." I would really like to hear more. Sounds interesting and I, relatively, accept that over other ideas. It sounds a lot like enlightenment. Makes me go back to the first passage in book 2 of The Gay Science for some reason. o_0

[TrystanCJ]

Sartre's theory of freedom just doesn't work . . . we're not free, we're determined. Phenomenology proves nothing.

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

Fair enough. I've debated free will and determinism to death. I respectfully disagree with you. But like I said, I stop short of Sartre's absolute free will. I believe many acts are determined... But I believe there are some truly volitional acts. The concept of facticity takes some of the determinism into account. Make a video to explicate your statement?

[TrystanCJ]

I'm meant to be purchasing a webcam. I'm tempted to respond. I'm not totally 100% convinced by determinism either btw, I just think Sartre's method was a poor way to go about investigating it.

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

And I certainly don't grant humans 100% absolute free will quite like Sartre does. I fear I will have to make a vid to discuss my own personal thoughts on free will, as these videos are merely to illustrate and understand Sartre's views. Something I am toying with: Overgeneralization. Some humans behave deterministically, and some don't. Why must we all have the same "level" of deterministic automation?

[musicisthegateway]

haha So how many pieces of "flair" does Sartre have on his suspenders?

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

I don't think he wears suspenders, but he has a lazy eye. Does that count? NOTE: Ate at Applebee's several weeks ago, and all the miscellaneous memorabilia on the walls gave me a sensory overload that put me in a coma for a few days. I love Office Space.

[musicisthegateway]

I ordered my margarita with no salt.. no salt.

[mistawulf]

Would you say animals have a purpose innate to them (to procreate or something like that). If so, what separates us from other animals?

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

Good question. Let me ponder that a bit.

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

This might require a video to respond to. I think this question would require some discussion of consciousness which cannot be fit into 300 or whatever characters. In sum, I would say that fuzzy logic must be employed... Consciousness / innate purpose would not be black or white, but a gray scale with humans at the top and plants at the bottom.

[mistawulf]

I can agree to that with some degree, however I feel there is a catastrophic leap of consciousness/free will when it comes to humanity. Look forward to conversing with you.

[mistawulf]

YES! Existentialism. I hope to get around to some theistic existentialism vids which is paradoxical since in entails creation of purpose and a God who hasn't created a purpose. But through God we can create this purpose.... so says Kierkegaard (my fave philosopher). But I have to look into Wittgenstein and Nietzche before this.

[thinkmorepink]

I'm going to watch this again tomorrow morning, when my mind is fresh, but from what I've seen, great job jeremy. It's good to know you're switching it up every now and then! : )