Understanding Existentialism (Understanding Movements in Modern Thought) PDF
Preview Understanding Existentialism (Understanding Movements in Modern Thought)
understanding existentialism Understanding Movements in Modern Thought Series Editor: Jack Reynolds Th is series provides short, accessible and lively introductions to the major schools, movements and traditions in philosophy and the history of ideas since the beginning of the Enlightenment. All books in the series are written for undergraduates meeting the subject for the fi rst time. Published Understanding Existentialism Understanding Virtue Ethics Jack Reynolds Stan van Hooft Understanding Poststructuralism James Williams Forthcoming titles include Understanding Empiricism Understanding Hermeneutics Robert Meyers Lawrence Schmidt Understanding Ethics Understanding Naturalism Tim Chappell Jack Ritchie Understanding Feminism Understanding Phenomenology Peta Bowden and Jane Mummery David Cerbone Understanding German Idealism Understanding Rationalism Will Dudley Charlie Heunemann Understanding Hegelianism Understanding Utilitarianism Robert Sinnerbrink Tim Mulgan understanding existentialism Jack Reynolds © Jack Reynolds, 2006 Th is book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. First published in 2006 by Acumen Acumen Publishing Limited 15a Lewins Yard East Street Chesham Bucks HP5 1HQ www.acumenpublishing.co.uk ISBN 1-84465-042-1 (hardcover) ISBN 1-84465-043-X (paperback) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Designed and typeset by Kate Williams, Swansea. Printed and bound in Malta by Gutenberg Press. Contents Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations ix 1 Existentialism and its heritage 1 2 Heidegger and the existential analytic 19 3 Condemned to freedom: Sartre’s phenomenological 51 ontology 4 Sartre: hell is other people 89 5 Merleau-Ponty and the body 110 6 De Beauvoir: feminism and existential ethics 137 7 Th e legacy of existentialism: deconstruction, 163 responsibility and the time of the decision Questions for discussion and revision 177 Further reading and references 181 Chronology 187 Index 190 contents v Acknowledgements Above all, for this book I am indebted to my parents, Laurel and Angus. I have been remiss enough to have never thanked them in such an author’s note before, and I hope that they have been aware of their ongoing importance to my life and work. More academically, Marion Tapper and Penny Deutscher have been vital to this book. Having been involved in their courses on existentialism over a period of several years, and in many diff erent capacities, they were instrumental in fostering my enjoyment and appreciation of existentialism. Without doubt there are aspects of this book that are indebted to their teachings, although as always the faults remain mine alone. Bernadette Pierce also gave me some of my fi rst opportunities to discuss existentialism in a public forum and for that, as well as her intellectual encouragement, I am grateful. More recently, I would like to acknowledge and thank the follow- ing people who have read draft s of this book and whose suggestions have contributed to its improvement, both in terms of content and sty- listically: Kim Atkins, Craig Barrie, David Cerbone, Stan van Hooft , Jonathan Roff e, Tessa Saunders, Robert Sinnerbrink, Ashley Woodward and the anonymous Acumen referees. Somewhat more idiosyncratically, I should also like to thank Ryan and May Johnston, Pein and Anh Lee, Andrew McUtchen, Steve Orr and Joanne Shiells. All of you have helped and inspired me in many diff erent ways. On an institutional level, I am indebted to the University of Tasmania and my colleagues there. With- out their support, and particularly that of my Heads of School, Robyn Ferrell and Jeff Malpas, this book might have taken much longer. vi understanding existentialism On the publishing front, I must also thank Ohio University Press for allowing me to use and reconfi gure a few pages of my exegesis of Mer- leau-Ponty from my monograph Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwin- ing Embodiment and Alterity (2004). Finally, thanks are due to Tristan Palmer, Steven Gerrard and Kate Williams at Acumen, who have been of great help, both with this book and the series of which it is a part. Jack Reynolds acknowledgements vii Abbreviations BN J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenologi- cal Ontology (1994 [1943]) BT M. Heidegger, Being and Time (2004 [1927]) BW M. Heidegger, Basic Writings (1996) EA S. de Beauvoir, Th e Ethics of Ambiguity (1976 [1947]) EH J.-P. Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism (2001 [1946]) M R. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (1986 [1641]) MS A. Camus, Th e Myth of Sisyphus (1942) OT M. Foucault, Th e Order of Th ings (1970) PC S. de Beauvoir, Pyrrhus et Cinéas (2005 [1943]) PP M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1996 [1945]) PrP M. Merleau-Ponty, Th e Primacy of Perception (1964) S M. Merleau-Ponty, Signs (1964) SB M. Merleau-Ponty, Th e Structure of Behaviour (1965 [1938]) SIT J.-P. Sartre, Situations (1965) SNS M. Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense (1964) SS S. de Beauvoir, Th e Second Sex (1972 [1949]) VI M. Merleau-Ponty, Th e Visible and the Invisible (1968 [1964]) viii understanding existentialism one Existentialism and its heritage Existentialism, perhaps to an extent unprecedented in the history of philosophy, has managed to capture the attention of the general public. Estimates of the number of people at Jean-Paul Sartre’s funeral in 1980 vary from 50,000 to 100,000, and this was well aft er his cultural and intellectual heyday. Simone de Beauvoir’s famous treatise on the situation of women, Th e Second Sex, has been one of the most widely read non-fi ction books of the twentieth century. Existential plays and novels – in particular Sartre’s Nausea and Albert Camus’s Th e Outsider – have been read voraciously and critically acclaimed. Sartre and his more academically inclined colleague Maurice Merleau-Ponty were the co-editors of the infl uential magazine Les Temps modernes, which considered all things philosophical, political and aesthetic, providing an intellectual point of reference for much of France. Without quite the same mainstream accessibility, or the literary bent (notwithstanding his preoccupation with poetry), Martin Heidegger has been enormously infl uential on generations of philosophers, as well as people working in cognitive science and artifi cial intelligence, and his work has helped to spawn at least two very signifi cant contemporary philosophical move- ments: hermeneutics and deconstruction. Th ere are obviously many reasons for this primarily philosophi- cal phenomenon capturing the attention of the public in the way that existentialism did, not least the Second World War and the German occu- pation of France, which intensifi ed existential concerns with freedom, responsibility and death. Th e literary manifestations of existentialism also allowed a greater proportion of people to possess at least a tentative existentialism and its heritage 1
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