Sartre and other lost Philosophers
When I were lad... (spoken in best Yorkshire brogue)
We all had a copy of Being and Nothingness on our shelf, and went to see No Exit every second month.
But he never gets a mention any more.
I was tempted to ask if anyone still reads Being and Nothingness. But of course no one ever actually read Being and Nothingness.
Does anyone else find his absence from the forums a bit odd? His star status was once far greater than any other philosopher, with the possible exception of Russell. Yet he never gets a mention now.
Odd, that someone of his status should be so forgotten.
Who else has so fallen from grace?
We all had a copy of Being and Nothingness on our shelf, and went to see No Exit every second month.
But he never gets a mention any more.
I was tempted to ask if anyone still reads Being and Nothingness. But of course no one ever actually read Being and Nothingness.
Does anyone else find his absence from the forums a bit odd? His star status was once far greater than any other philosopher, with the possible exception of Russell. Yet he never gets a mention now.
Odd, that someone of his status should be so forgotten.
Who else has so fallen from grace?
Comments (41)
I did, back in the late 1950s. Existentialism and the Look made an impression and influenced my attitude toward solo climbing. The simple presence of another living soul alters experience.
But yes, the Look remains the most penetrating dismissal of solipsism imaginable.
I read three quarters of Being and Nothingness in my twenties and pick it up again here and there. The most famous things he said and wrote are ugly things. Ugly is fun but lacks the staying power of the beautiful.
And it's often what goes in professional philosophy that trickles down to discussion elsewhere.
Not only have I recently re-read Being and Nothingness, but I'm reading the Critique of Dialectical Reason right now. I guess I am getting prematurely senile.
I'm sure senility would help.
Derrida's views on other philosophers seem irrelevant to me. I have only read half of Derrida's book about the gift and I found it insufferable pedantry. Post-moderns are usually like that.
As for Heidegger, he began by praising Sartre's intelligent insight on his philosophy, and moved to insults when he realized that Sartre was also criticizing him. He was an insufferable egomaniac. Sartre criticized him for defending a hidden theology that despised man. If you have read only some pages of Being and Time you will have realized that the first criticism is accurate. As for the second, Heidegger confirmed it to the letter when he began to exalt Hitler.
It seems to me that Sartre still has a lot to say for anyone who has the patience to read his writings, which are not always easy or, of course, entertaining.
By the way, two months BV (Before Virus) I attended a performance of Nekrassov in my town in a theater filled to overflowing and long minutes of applause. Sartre lives! I was surprised.
What makes Sartre the black beast of most philosophers of his time and of today is his defence of the revolutionary path to socialism and of violence against colonialism. His insistence on the responsibility of intellectuals is not to the liking of contemporary intellectuals who live very well on the heights.
What if we're ugly and we don't want to see it?
Thank you.
I was going to mention exactly this. Just as Freudian lingo is part and parcel of everyday vocabulary (unconscious, libido, ego, id, on the couch, etc), so too is Sartre's language part of the furniture, even though he's not studied all that much. The return of the repressed.
@unenlightened?
Henri Bergson.
A friend translated a book by Deleuze. It was a translation much appreciated by the critics and quoted by experts. Privately he admitted that he hadn't understood anything he was translating. The same thing happened to me with the original. It's just that we weren't true believers.
Quoting emancipate
Marcuse, Russel himself. It turns out that dirty old men don't make he greatest moral philosophers. Wittgenstein survives maybe because he was gay.
Just to add to the list here--maybe Levinas (sadly)?
Every philosopher who does not enter the Olympus of Anglo-Saxon philosophy. In the mid-20th century, there were channels of communication between Europe and the Anglo world. Today there is a wall higher than the Berlin Wall. The one who does not write in Anglo-Saxon journals does not exist. The one who is not quoted in Anglo-Saxon journals goes on into the world of Oblivion.
It is not a question of ideology ...only. It is a question of cultural domination mechanics.
I'd struggled all the way to the end of BnN 1.5x (on my own, not for a class) during my first year at university. The ordeal had left me respecting but hating that old wall-eyed, boujee-comrade. :sweat:
Quoting Banno
M. Merleau-Ponty
J. Dewey
M. Buber
T. Paine
P-HT, Baron d'Holbach
Nah man, M-P is everywhere.
Even some who found themselves on those peaks at the beginning of the 20th century ended up being thrown down the mountain. Something very sinister appears to have happened to so called analytic philosophy after WWII.
Quoting Banno
What is your answer? Why is he forgotten?
There's an old saying about beauty and seeing it.
Yes. There's even an academic journal devoted to him: : Sartre International Studies.
But I'm still not going to read Being and Nothingness. Eh.
I did read Transcendence of the Ego. I remember it was OK, but left no real impression on me, and I can't recall its specific contents well.
If you want to avoid Being and Nothingness entirely, I'd still recommend everyone reading The Imaginary.
You can get pills for that.
I have a copy of Being and Nothingness somewhere. I bought it many long years ago, and am reasonably certain I never read more than a few pages of it. I'm certain I will never read it, being that there is nothing less interesting to me than "Being" and/or "Nothingness." Hee hee.
I can think of at least one philosopher I wish never to be heard of again. Big John Dewey was lost for a time, but seems to be more and more found lately. G.E. Moore, perhaps? Comte?
Absent from the forums, yes, but still read by young people in crisis. When I was in high school, I had a friend who was obsessed with Sartre. So he still plays that role.
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/333
I saw Nausea, and the book is on my short(ish)list. I doubt I'll ever read any of his philosophical writings though, his is not the sort of philosophy that captures my interest.
Yeah, apparently during his lifetime he was far more influential than Einstein, then he quickly went out of favor and nowadays is mostly remembered by academics who make a career of him, and a few cult followers.