Posts Tagged existentialism
JPS, per BBC
Posted by Daniel Horne in Things to Watch on December 9, 2011
You’ll find precious little discussion of Transcendence of the Ego within the Sartre episode of Human, All Too Human, the BBC’s 1999 documentary on existentialist thinkers previously name-checked by Seth. However, you do get a capsule summary of Sartre’s thesis around the 10-minute mark. BBC provides some lucid illustrations of certain Sartrean arguments, particularly his entertaining (and somewhat telling) “pervert’s argument” against solipsism. The creepy, hyper-dramatic soundtrack is unfortunate — assigning existentialism such a morbid affect doesn’t help its cause, whatever the Gauloises-smoking set might think. Points also deducted for interviewing the inexplicably famous BHL, whose contribution is to summarize Sartre thusly, “He was freedom.” Just fast-forward through that part.
-Daniel Horne
Sebastian Gardner (via Philosophy Bites) on Sartre and Bad Faith
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts, PEL's Notes on December 8, 2011
This Philosophy Bites episode focuses on concisely focuses on a key practical implication of Sartre’s picture of the self as a fiction as described on our episode: bad faith, which is a matter of identifying one’s free consciousness as that fiction, or more precisely, denying that the self is a fiction, that we each have a fixed nature that constrains our future choices.
Sebastian Gardner gives some of the examples of bad faith from Being and Nothingness (which has a chapter toward its beginning called “Bad Faith”), leading up to Sartre’s claim that human nature is paradoxical: we both are and are not defined by our past behavior and characteristics.
Bob Solomon on Existentialism and Being and Nothingness
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Things to Watch, Web Detritus on December 7, 2011
We’ve often name-dropped our former U. of Texas professor Bob Solomon, perhaps best known for his great original work The Passions
One of his central philosophical concerns was Sartre’s view of freedom and responsibility, and his take on existentialism always seemed to climax at that point. Here he is introducing the major themes of existentialism.
Watch on YouTube.
The Tree of Life’s Contingent Universe
Posted by Daniel Horne in Reviewage, Things to Watch on October 20, 2011
I can write nothing on Heideggerian scholar*/(anti)Hollywood director Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life that hasn’t been better written elsewhere. Even so, the film has just come available on DVD and digital download, so I thought I’d recommend it to anyone who has been interested in PEL’s recent religion episodes. (Suggestion: try to watch the HD version of the clip.) If I had to try to connect the film’s theme to recent topics, I’d call attention to Malick’s ruminations on life’s utterly contingent nature, and whether it suggests the presence or absence of God.
While the film isn’t perfect (somebody please explain the ending!), a movie with existential dinosaurs beats a two-hour couch-warming session with another Transformers sequel. Trust me.
*I can’t find a decent link, but Malick translated Heidegger’s The Essence of Reasons for Northwestern University Press before he abandoned graduate study.
-Daniel Horne
Existential Star Wars
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Things to Watch on May 11, 2011
Passing on this bit of loveliness. Thanks to Paul, who posted this to our Facebook group.
-Mark Linsenmayer
Episode 29: Kierkegaard on the Self
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on November 21, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:56:32 — 106.8MB)
Discussing Soren Kierkegaard’s “The Sickness Unto Death” (1849).
What is the self? For K. we are a tension between opposites: necessity and possibility, the finite and the infinite, soul and body. He thinks we’re all in despair, whether we know it or not, because we wrongly think we’re something we’re not, or we reject what we are, or we just don’t pay attention to this dynamic at all: we just go along with the crowd. So we need to keep self-examining and (he thinks) ultimately embrace our subservience to God.
Joined by guest podcaster/Kiekegaard’s lawyer Daniel Horne, we consider K.’s 3-step self-help program and whether there’s anything to be gotten here if you don’t subscribe to K’s Christianity.
Read the text free online or buy the book.
End song: “John T. Flibber,” from Happy Songs Will Bring You Down by the MayTricks (1994).
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The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don't have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we're talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion. Discuss episodes and provide feedback here or via our Facebook group. You can also e-mail comments to mark@marklint.com or wesalwan@gmail.com.
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