شش متفکر اگزیستانسیالیست

by H.J. Blackham, محسن حکیمی (Translator)

درباره‌ی نیچه، هایدگر، یاسپرس، مارسل، کیرکه‌گور، سارتر
و اندیشه‌های‌شان

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

282 pages

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Harold John Blackham (31 March 1903 – 23 January 2009) was a leading British humanist philosopher, writer and educationalist. He has been described as the "progenitor of modern humanism in Britain".

Blackham has been Chairman, Social Morality Council, Great Britain, and a former director of the British Humanist Association.

In 1977, he was elected an honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association. He is on the editorial board of The Humanist. In 1980, he signed the Secular Humanist Declaration.

He has written that “Unitarianism in England is negligible intellectually. Of course, the Hibbert survives and holds a place, but that is because it is open to all comers in its fairly broad field. The Unitarians here are hostile to humanism. They are diminishing and count for little.”

Blackham, Jaap van Praag, and Julian Huxley] were the key founders of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), an organization which in 1974 granted him a Humanist Award “for his long and creative service to humanism in England and in the world.” From 1944 to 1965, he had edited the Ethical Union’s Plain View. In 1978, Blackham received the group‘s special award “for 25 years of devoted service to IHEU.”

In the New Humanist (July 1993), he is interviewed by Jim Herrick and recalls his involvement with humanistic causes. At the age of ninety, his sharp mind recalled his early interest in religion, his meeting Stanton Coit, his teaching philosophy and current affairs, his becoming chairman of the Ethical Union, his being in the Auxiliary Fire Service during World War II, his involvement in the founding of the British Humanist Association, his involvement with the World Union of Freethinkers, his working with Julian Huxley, and the writing of his several books.

Stalin, he stated, “was not a Marxist-Leninist in his heart. He paid lip-service to the creed, but was a Russian Czar, an imperialist who used the dictatorship of the proletariat to extend the dominion of the Russian State. The KGB was a continuation of the surveillance of the Czarist police-state.

Asked if liberal humanism is dead, Blackham reacted by saying, “How can it be dead really? It may be outmoded, or not the vogue, but what is the implication of saying it’s dead. Sartre said that liberalism was a betrayal to the Nazis of civilisation. To the liberal everything is worth entertaining, all is a level ground, everyone can exchange views. You have to make choices, you can’t be liberal in the sense of entertaining all things. But liberal humanism can’s possibly be dead. It is not merely, nor mainly an attitude: it is a commitment to which one gives priority.”

In 1993, Blackham completed a history of Western Europe from a new, transforming perspective, part of which was published in New Humanist. The work is entitled The Upshot of History, and it focuses on three claims to universality, those of Hellas, Zion, and Romanitas. They have led, he states, to our awareness of One World with its evident disorders, which he names: “disproportion between the prosperity enjoyed by the few industrialised nations and the penury endured by thousands of millions in the so-called Third World; the aggravation of over-population; the ecological damage, entailing serious threats to the survival of many species, and even of life on the planet; the existence and availability without adequate controls of annihilating weapons that make international security a political priority.” By recognizing such problems, he asserts, man has the chance to go beyond Hellas, Zion, and Romanitas. . . to universality.

His book, Six Existentialist Thinkers, became a popular university textbook.

He died on 23 January 2009 at the age of 105.

More: http://blackhamfellowships.org.uk/who...

http://infidels.org/library/modern/h_...

http://philosopedia.org/index.php/H._...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._J._Bl...

Reviews

[David Gross · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought the writing was much more obscure than it needed to be. It was a struggle to make heads or tails of it, for the most part.

[امیرمحمد حیدری · Rating 1 out of 5]

کم و کسری‌های کتاب فراوان است؛ آن‌قدر که نمی‌توان چشم‌پوشی کرد. فلذا کتاب جامعی نیست. علی‌ایحال، مطالب تازه‌ای راجع به یاسپرس و مارسل آموختم.

[Baris Ozyurt · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Bu sarp ve tozlu yol, sahip olduğum bu kavurucu susuzluk, insanların bana içecek bir şey vermeyi reddetmesi; çünkü hiç param yok, ne de onların ülkesinden ve ırkındanım; bu benim, belki de kendim için kararlaştırmış olduğum amaca erişmemi engelleyecek olan bu bedensel yorgunlukla, düşmanca insanların ortasındaki terk edilmişliğim. Onu açık ve net bir şekilde formüle edinceye dek değil, ama orada, benimle ilgili her yerde olduğu ölçüde, bütün bu gerçeklikleri bir araya getirdiği ve açıkladığı ölçüde, onları karmaşık bir kabusa dönüştürmektense bir bütün olarak düzenleyen de, bu amaçtır." (s.138)

[Kattermerrang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blackham provides fairly short essays explaining the specific approaches of the six existentialists named on the cover, followed by a summary of existentialism.

Though it's a pretty short book, the language is very dense and the theory quite complex so it's not the easiest to understand and requires a lot of focus. As someone who has previously equated existentialism with Nietzsche and Sartre, it was enlightening to read about how diversely philosophers look at the issue of our ultimate freedom. I now sort of see how it's possible to be a religious existentialist! (If I understand it correctly, Kierkegaard thinks God's existence makes no rational sense but faith means knowing this and believing anyway.) I hadn't read much (that I remember) about Karl Jaspers before, but found my own personal brand of existentialism aligned quite nicely with his:

"This origin of self I cannot choose because it is given, but I can assume it, that is to say, adopt it as mine, as me. [...] I identify myself with myself and face and acknowledge the vital impulses of the body, the brute facts of nature, the obligations of duty, the limitations of my situation and of all chosen ends: these enter into my decisions, but I am not subdued to them, and not a resultant of their determinations; these are the conditions and resistances which maintain me in the flight of liberty, if I have the skill and the will."

Sartre also has some helpful things to say on the problem of freedom versus the predetermination of what we are born into and how we are raised etc. The example given is of how language has rules and structure, but it 'transcends itself' in how we use it, i.e. we are more than the sum of our parts.

Some very interesting things to dwell on, but not what I'd call a light read!

[Ceren S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eğitim için okuduğum 6. kitap.
Ben böyle kolektif eserleri çok sevemiyorum hani hepsini alalım karşılaştıralım zetleyelim derken ne bileyim, sonuçta yazanın gözünden aktarım olduğu için, çok fazla anlam yitimi oluyor, bir de sen okurken de yine yitiriyorsun, görmüyorsun anlamıyorsun derken işler karışıyor sanki.. Tek tek, kendi yazıları üzerinden tanısak düşünürleri, daha iyi değil mi?
Ama evet giriş bilgileri anlamında okunabilir..

[Steve]

H. J. Blackham, Martin Heidegger, Six Existential Thinkers, London, 1961

[منوچهر محور]

بگذریم که خواندن کتابهای خود این متفکرین ساده‌تر است و باز هم بگذریم که به نظرم آرای آنها چیزی نیست که نویسنده این کتاب می‌گوید؛ فقط به دو صفحه آخر کتاب می‌پردازم که نویسنده شمشیر به دست آماده تار و مار کردن کسانی شده که به اگزیستانسیالیسم چپ نگاه کنند. چشم برادر من، تو خوبی!۰

[Alex Csicsek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent selections from, as the title suggests, six existentialist thinkers. This isn't a beginners' guide, but rather an overview of contributions Blackham finds important. The concluding essay is a noble attempt to synthesise the often-overwhelming ideas presented by the great minds in the preceding chapters, and was probably the section from which I leart the most.

I'd recommend this to those already familiar with these French and Germanic writers, but others looking for an introduction to what is widely recongised as "existentialism" should start elsewhere.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not your beginner's book on existentialism. Which is why I understood very little of it. But I'm not going to let my ignorance on the subject influence my star rating.

[Johann van Schalkwyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent summary of these thinkers. Having them all in one volume makes cross referencing valuable and easy.