Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Existentialism Is a Humanism has been "a popular starting-point in discussions of existentialist thought," [4] and in the philosopher Thomas Baldwin's words, "Seized the imagination of a generation." [5] However, Sartre himself later rejected some of the views he expressed in the work, and regretted its publication. [4]
The philosopher Jean Wahl criticized Sartre's arguments about the topic of "nothing". [17] The philosopher Frederick Copleston described Sartre's view that all human actions are the result of free choice as "highly implausible", though he noted that Sartre had ways of defending his position. [18]
In the wake of Being and Nothingness, Sartre became concerned with reconciling his concept of freedom with concrete social subjects and was strongly influenced in this regard by his friend and associate Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose writings in the late 1940s and early 1950s, including Sense and Non-Sense, were pioneering a path towards a synthesis of existentialism and Marxism. [9]
Martin Heidegger attacked Sartre's concept of existential humanism in his Letter on Humanism of 1946, accusing Sartre of elevating Reason above Being. [5]Michel Foucault followed Heidegger in attacking Sartre's humanism as a kind of theology of man, [6] though in his emphasis on the self-creation of the human being he has in fact been seen as very close to Sartre's existential humanism.
Such persons are themselves responsible for their new identity (cruel persons). This is opposed to their genes, or human nature, bearing the blame. As Sartre said in his lecture Existentialism is a Humanism: "Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards." The more positive, therapeutic ...
His existential phenomenology, which is articulated in his works such as Being and Nothingness (1943), is based on the distinction between being-in-itself and being-for-itself. [10] Beauvoir placed her discourse on existential phenomenology within her intertwining of literature and philosophy as a way to reflect concrete experience.
György Lukács argued that existentialism and Marxist materialism could not be compatible, Sartre responds with a passage from Engels showing that it is the dialectic resulting from economic conditions that drives history just as in Sartre's dialectically driven existentialism. Sartre concludes the chapter by citing Marx from Das Kapital: "The ...
Heidegger responds to Sartre's famous address, Existentialism is a Humanism, employing modes of being in an attempt to ground his concept of freedom ontologically by distinguishing between being-in-itself and being-for-itself. Sartre's existentialism is criticized in the letter: Existentialism says existence precedes essence.