William Barrett’s Followers (83)

William Barrett

Born

in New York, The United States

May 25, 1913

Died

October 08, 1992

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Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

William Christopher Barrett (1913 – 1992) was a professor of philosophy at New York University from 1950 to 1979. Precociously, he began post-secondary studies at the City College of New York when 15 years old. He received his PhD at Columbia University. He was an editor of Partisan Review and later the literary critic of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. He was well-known for writing philosophical works for nonexperts. Perhaps the best known among these were Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy and The Illusion of Technique , which remain in print.

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Average rating: 4.13 · 5,185 ratings · 297 reviews · 183 distinct works • Similar authors

	Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy 4.10 avg rating — 2,649 ratings — published 1958 — 42 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Death of the Soul 3.85 avg rating — 119 ratings — published 1986 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization 4.41 avg rating — 75 ratings — published 1978 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	What Is Existentialism? 3.62 avg rating — 39 ratings — published 1947 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Truants: Adventures Among the Intellectuals 3.92 avg rating — 24 ratings — published 1982 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: An Anthology (4 Volumes) by William Barrett (editor), Henry D. Aiken (editor), Josiah Royce (Contributor) 4.21 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 1962 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Time of Need: Forms of Imagination in the Twentieth Century 4.70 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1972 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Mongoose liked it 3.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Visiones en el momento de la muerte really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Genealogy of some of the descendants of Thomas Barrett, sen., of Braintree, Mass., 1635 1888 [Leather Bound] liked it 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by William Barrett (?)

“Man's feeling of homelessness, of alienation has been intensified in the midst of a bureaucratized, impersonal mass society. He has come to feel himself an outsider even within his own human society. He is trebly alienated: a stranger to God, to nature, and to the gigantic social apparatus that supplies his material wants.

But the worst and final form of alienation, toward which indeed the others tend, is man's alienation from his own self. In a society that requires of man only that he perform competently his own particular social function, man becomes identified with this function, and the rest of his being is allowed to subsist as best it can - usually to be dropped below the surface of consciousness and forgotten.”
― William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

tags: alienation, bureaucratization, homelessness, impersonal-world, mass-society, self-forgetting, social-role-vs-self

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“If a man has learned to think, no matter what he may think about, he is always thinking of his own death. All philosophers were like that. And what truth can there be, if there is death?”
― William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

13 likes

“If science could comprehend all phenomena so that eventually in a thoroughly rational society human beings became as predictable as cogs in a machine, then man, driven by this need to know and assert his freedom, would rise up and smash the machine.

What the reformers of the Enlightenment, dreaming of a perfect organization of society, had overlooked, Dostoevski saw all too plainly with the novelist's eye: namely, that as modern society becomes more organized and hence more bureaucratized it piles up at its joints petty figures like that of the Underground Man, who beneath their nondescript surface are monsters of frustration and resentment.”
― William Barrett

tags: bureaucracy, existentialism, freedom, frustration, pedantry, predictability, resentment, science

11 likes

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William Barrett’s Followers (83)

William Barrett

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William Barrett’s books