Skye Cleary > Quotes

“The existentialists' view of love is not romantic, because they do not believe in love as an abstract force or amorous sunset walks along the beach. However, Cox also said, "if your idea of romance is somewhat more gothic and stormy, full of heartache, yearning and the thwarted desire to possess breaking up, making up and breaking up again, tears before bedtime and tears in the rain, then maybe it is romantic".”
― Skye Cleary, Existentialism and Romantic Love

“Peter Koestenbaum also elaborated on the importance of others, particularly romantic lovers, in the existential context. Love is the choice to create and reflect each other mutually, verifying and illuminating each other's uniqueness because this is how we learn that we exist and who we are. A key theme of authentic love is resistance between, but welcoming of, two independent consciousness acting like positive and negative magnets within a single magnetic field.”
― Skye Cleary, Existentialism and Romantic Love

“According to Bela Szabados, it can be dangerous to ignore philosophers' personalities because philosophizing is a personal interpretation of truth.”
― Skye Cleary, Existentialism and Romantic Love

“Philosophy does not have to be only an intellectual exercise but can be used to understand everyday living.”
― Skye Cleary, Existentialism and Romantic Love

“While we can’t choose whether other people will cast us as Other, we can choose how we treat other people.”
― Skye C. Cleary, How to Be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment

“Awareness of freedom and responsibility creates anxiety, which is also referred to as anguish or angst. Aspects of romantic attachments can relieve anxieties. For example, Mario Mikulincer et al. argue that loving relationships can act as a "death-anxiety buffering mechanism", since the sense of security, protection, comfort, self-esteem, and social validation that close relationships provide may serve as defensive devices with respect to existential anxiety about the threat of mortality.”
― Skye Cleary, The Fictions of Anita Brookner: Illusions of Romance

“One of the central themes underpinning Beauvoir’s philosophy is that we are thrown into the world and create our being through our choices. If we’re prevented from choosing, then that’s oppression; if we choose to give up our freedom, then that’s a moral failure.”
― Skye Cleary, How to Be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment