Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Hereandnow]

I occasionally post an appeal to anyone willing to work through a difficult philosopher. Not so much the analytic ones; I much prefer reading Continental philosophy. If you have the time and have an interest existential thinking, phenomenology, that is, let me know and we can go through any of many works. The hard ones are the most enlightening, for they command you to learn new concepts, and this takes one on a unique journey. Paragraph by paragraph, even line by line, that's how it should go.

You can choose the text. Just consider, if you like reading philosophy, and I assume you do because you're here in a philosophy forum, this is the best way learn. Better than a classroom as classrooms are not nearly as give and take/one to one. Here, it is all writing, reading and discussion, at your pace. I don't like to rush at all with philosophy. One line can be very open to possibilities.

Let me know.

[psyreporter]

I noticed that the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) is one of your favorite philosophers. Did he manage to evolve beyond existentialism?

I've read that his book Totality and Infinity may have been a precursor to a much bigger work of which parts were completed. It is documented in a free ebook by the Dutch professor Adriaan Peperzak (University of Chicago) who is specialized in the history of Levinas:

To the Other: Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_ebooks/20/

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Philosoph ... 081011481X

[anonymous66]

I'm game. I spent some time reading and researching Gabriel Marcel. But I'm over him. I've also read some Tillich, Berdyaev, Shestov, Camus and Sartre.

I'd like to read Kierkegaard (I read most of Fear and Trembling) and Nietzsche.

[Hereandnow]

Levinas evolve beyond existentialism? Such a puzzling question, for to evolve beyond something, that something has to well established enough to be a suitable basis of departure, and I doubt the concept 'existentialism' is so well delimited. But: Levinas was a student of Husserl, the great phenomenologist who inspired Heidegger and Sartre, but did he go beyond these? Best I can say is that when Levinas talks about metaphysics, he looks to ethics, specifically and profoundly, but he considered metaphysics to be, in the philosophical tradition, too explicit, too presumptuous and filled with ideas that are not metaphysical at all. Thus, when Spinoza talks about substance, modes, and so forth, he is really talking about terms quite accessible to the to the understanding, and this is NOT metaphysics. This idea is really about the unspeakable beyond that is both in this world and "outside" it. Put it this way: eterniity (infinity) is apriori necessary, but when we confront eternity perceptually (or, apperceptually, bringing in our accumulated knowledge), stare down its actuality, if you will, our understanding goes crazy, cannot begin to fathom it spatially of temporally, OR EXISTENTIALLY!! And this is the point. This lamp on the table, the tree or this ethical nightmare (Levinas' "Other"), and indeed, all that is before us is, in our familiarity, quite accessible, but outside of this it is totally alien. This last sentence needs to be underscored, for the idea of alienation in the inquiring person standing on the precipice where knowledge ends, is the essence of existential thinking.

Anyway, he puts ethics first, and he is right and that is why he is my favorite. Levinas' Totality is wickedly hard to read, so say Levinas scholars; but he is also the most rewarding. The same is true for all these guys, Heidegger, Husserl, Kierkegaard, Jaspers: much of this is very hard, but this is because the issue of alienation possesses an element of the alogical, the mystical, even.

I have several Levinas texts. If you are interested in studying one, I have the PDF I can send along.

Of course, Peperzak. I read much of his Key and I have this in PDF as well. You know, if you would like to read Levinas together, it would be most interesting. I have Alterity and Transcendence, which I have not read at all, e.g.

[Hereandnow]

anonymous66
I'm game. I spent some time reading and researching Gabriel Marcel. But I'm over him. I've also read some Tillich, Berdyaev, Shestov, Camus and Sartre.

I'd like to read Kierkegaard (I read most of Fear and Trembling) and Nietzsche.

I'm reading Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety with Thumyum2. Still on the first chapter, really. It is NOT an easy text at all! But it contains the essential ideas of Sartre and Heidegger, even Husserl and others. Really. I never knew until I read it, and this is why they call him the father of existentialism (along with Nietzsche).
But I'm in for any of the above, much I haven't read. Tillich? I have read here and there, but he seems too orthodox. Shestov? Let me go look.....

I found his All things Are Possible online and have read through a bit. He takes a stand against Husserl who believed philosophy could be, if you will, made qualitifiable and rigorously scientific. Seems interesting. But how about Kierkegaard?

[anonymous66]

Hereandnow

I'd be up to starting with Kierkegaard. I've been led to believe his The Concept of Irony is a good place to start- and I already have a copy.

[Hereandnow]

The Concept of Irony is his doctoral thesis an it is not easy at all. It is a very scholarly study of Greek thought. May I recommend The Concept of Anxiety? This is not easy at all either; in fact, it's like he goes out of his way to make the matter hard. But then, one does struggle and in the struggle one actually pays attention and puts in the time, which is needed for difficult ideas. So, how about the Concept of Anxiety? A great book that, once understood, opens lots of doors to other things.
But if you are set on The Concept of Irony, i can try to do this. It will not be entirely doable, though, because one would have to read extensively about Socrates.

[anonymous66]

The Concept of Irony is his doctoral thesis an it is not easy at all. It is a very scholarly study of Greek thought. May I recommend The Concept of Anxiety? This is not easy at all either; in fact, it's like he goes out of his way to make the matter hard. But then, one does struggle and in the struggle one actually pays attention and puts in the time, which is needed for difficult ideas. So, how about the Concept of Anxiety? A great book that, once understood, opens lots of doors to other things.
But if you are set on The Concept of Irony, i can try to do this. It will not be entirely doable, though, because one would have to read extensively about Socrates.

You make a good case for the Concept of Anxiety. I'd be willing to start there. I'll order a copy.

[Hereandnow]

anonymous66

You make a good case for the Concept of Anxiety. I'd be willing to start there. I'll order a copy.

Very good. Remember that Kierkegaard is a "religious writer" but then, here, in his Concept of Anxiety, he only uses the Biblical story of Adam and Eve as a heuristic and has no regard at all for the myth. He looks at Adam as a prototype of original sin, which he calls hereditary sin in us, later, "quantitative" Christians. It is not really about Christianity at all, but an existential account of our alienation in the world, and this theme is picked up by others later on. It's not a Nietzschean perspective at all, though the two share a repugnance for mundane values and a conception of higher ground that leaves everydayness behind. It is radical! And it possess all, or nearly so, the themes yet to come in 20th existentialism. There is a good reason why they call him the father of existentialism.
Let me know when you have read some of this text and we can talk. Not easy, nor is he trying to be.

[anonymous66]

I ordered the book - it should be here on the 9th. In the meantime I do have access to a digital copy.

[Sculptor1]

I noticed that the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) is one of your favorite philosophers. Did he manage to evolve beyond existentialism?

He never even got TO existentialism since he was clouded by his own racism.
Until you can unpack that you can never have an authentic existence.

[Hereandnow]

Sculptor1
He never even got TO existentialism since he was clouded by his own racism.
Until you can unpack that you can never have an authentic existence.

Very good. Now, about his racism, what do you have in mind?

[Papus79]

So admittedly I haven't read nearly as much existentialism as I should, I've enjoyed what I've gotten of Leopardi and Nietzsche but I have to admit that I'm a sucker for application - ie. existentialism of the sort that helps give me a stronger frame to live off of whether it's shared experience and observation showing me that I'm not crazy for some of my observations (the weaker version) or which helps point to frames of mind and internal reference that weather a domain that's fundamentally absurd better than those frames whose weaknesses are simply missing a good clip by sheer dint of luck (the stronger version).

Not 100% sure if that's where anyone else's head is on this topic, if not I probably am better off picking at the periphery of the discussion. I will say, not philosophy but congruent literature, I did just grab Serotonin (Houellebecq) on Kindle along with Laszlo Kraznahorkai's latest Baron Wenknheim. Some of what Laszlo threw into 'The World Goes On' almost hit a mystic nerve in it's ambling in this respect, like the sublime can indeed be found occasionally in the seeming meaningless or the discarded/forgotten.

[Hereandnow]

Papus79

So admittedly I haven't read nearly as much existentialism as I should, I've enjoyed what I've gotten of Leopardi and Nietzsche but I have to admit that I'm a sucker for application - ie. existentialism of the sort that helps give me a stronger frame to live off of whether it's shared experience and observation showing me that I'm not crazy for some of my observations (the weaker version) or which helps point to frames of mind and internal reference that weather a domain that's fundamentally absurd better than those frames whose weaknesses are simply missing a good clip by sheer dint of luck (the stronger version).

Not 100% sure if that's where anyone else's head is on this topic, if not I probably am better off picking at the periphery of the discussion. I will say, not philosophy but congruent literature, I did just grab Serotonin (Houellebecq) on Kindle along with Laszlo Kraznahorkai's latest Baron Wenknheim. Some of what Laszlo threw into 'The World Goes On' almost hit a mystic nerve in it's ambling in this respect, like the sublime can indeed be found occasionally in the seeming meaningless or the discarded/forgotten.

It is unfortunate that the very thing that makes existentialism, like Heidegger's Being and Time, revelatory (rather than academic merely. Not to knock the dry academics--they are essential), also makes it abstruse and opaque. You have to read Kant first to be at all amenable.

It really comes down to how badly you want to understand AND how honest you want your thinking to be. Philosophy is always rigorous, and that keeps one honest, for in the rigor there is a demand for sound reasoning. Existentialism simply looks at what it means to be in the world phenomenologically rather than traditionally, which us why Kant is so important as he presents German idealism.

If you would like to read Kant or any of the existentialists, let me know; and I mean, choose a text from Husserl, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and so on and we read it together in a close analysis. Afterward, one genuinely understands, rather than the usual tit for tat ego driven foolishness so often evident in this forum by those why haven't read.

[Papus79]

If you could maybe, with the names you've mentioned - ie. Kant, Husserl, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, etc., if I were to weigh my consideration for choosing one over the other based on some combination of 1) the degree to which their insights haven't already been absorbed into mainstream culture (avoiding reiteration of things we already know) and 2) which of them delivers the most high-quality even if uncomfortable or unsettling insights about being, like if I'm willing to drink my coffee jet black with no cream and from a corpus well over 500 pages, which hill would I charge first?