Jimmy’s Comments (group member since Jun 26, 2011)

Jimmy’s comments from the Existentialism group.

I'd be interested in reading your take on the question, Todd, since I haven't read Heidegger in a long time.

What you have to do, Nick, is make comments. If you build it, they will follow.

Here is a link to The Birth of Tragedy and other information:

http://nietzsche.holtof.com/Nietzsche...

I'd follow along.

I'm sure you have done this already, but if you google "existentialism and politics", you will find quite a bit. I think a key would be writing about Sartre and "freedom". The misuse of that word "freedom" would be an interesting topic. Sartre thought Communism meant "freedom", and "conservatives" and "libertarians" today want to let anyone do anything they want to do. Neither seems particularly appealing to me at this moment.

Procreation is the driving force of every plant and animal.

I'm afraid I haven't read it, Joseph, but you have piqued my interest. I want to look for it.

Are you sure you have the right link?

The group has a pulse from time to time. Why not start a read? Or suggest one?

I never viewed Albert Camus, for example, as depressed.

Could you give an example?

Enduring Love.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...

Michael and Feliks, you guys did a good job of explaining to me how a few people could be locked in a room and never get along.

For me, the value of the play is the idea that hell could be three people trapped in a room together forever. You'd think they could manage to work it out. But I have no disagreement with Michael's opinion of the play as a play; it's the idea of it that fascinates me.

What do you think that means, Nicolas?

An ironic statement when Estelle says, "Somehow I feel we've never been so much alive as now." This death is like life on steroids. No darkness, no blinking, no escape, no being alone. It does seem that they have occasional glimpses of what is still going on back on earth.

I just received No Exit.

There are no mirrors. Usually in a prison, this is to prevent an inmate from getting glass for suicide or whatever. In this case, I believe Sartre's intention was to have the characters be defined only by the look of others for all eternity. The whole "Being-for-Others" concept.

I really enjoyed that story. Thanks for posting.

And here are my notes from Sartre for Beginners for the same reason. We may be able to expand the conversation from just the play. I use these types of books for reviews rather than try to read the whole works again:

A nice review book.

Life Facts: His mother was a first cousin of Albert Schweitzer. His father died when he was a year old, so his mother lavished all her attention on him. But his grandfather and later stepfather were stern influences. He was only 5 feet 3 inches tall. He had a strabismus or wandering eye. He met Simon de Beauvoir, and they became companions until his death: they never married or lived together, had other lovers, and deeply each other's works. Ashes buried next to each other in Paris's Montparnasse Cemetery. He studied under Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. He took mescaline and thought a lobster chased him. Reading Kierkegaard led him to existentialism. He spent time with Camus and Picasso. For some stupid reason he was enchanted with the Soviet Union until the 1968 suppression of the Czech uprising. He finally in the late 70s said he was no longer a Marxist. He died in 1980, and 50,000 people honored him on his final journey to the cemetery.

Existentialism in a nutshell: existence precedes essence. As a determinist myself, I find it hard to give much credence to Sartre's belief in choices. But his philosophy helped to pick up the spirits of post WWII Europe.

Bad Faith: Self deception. A flight from freedom, responsibility, and anguish.

Being-for-Itself: Exclusive human existence. Open to the past, present, and future.

Being-for-Others: The transforming gaze of others affects my behavior.

Being-in-Itself: Non-human reality.

"In choosing myself, I choose man."

"Our responsibility is much greater than we have supposed, because it involves all mankind."

"Man is a useless passion."

"A vertigo of possibility."