| 2014 | Existentialism: an introduction |
| Pref 'What? | p.-8 | 20733 | Our 'existence' is how we create ourselves, unconstrained by any prior 'essence' |
| Full Idea: 'Existence precedes essence' means there is no pre-given 'essence' that determines who and what we are. We are self-making beings. | |||
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], Pref 'What?) | |||
| A reaction: This not a yes/no dilemma. Personally I believe (with Aristotle, and Steven Pinker) that there is a fairly comprehensive 'human nature' which we all share, and is the basis of ethics. On top of that, though, a fair bit of 'self-making' can go on. |
| Pref 'What? | p.-7 | 20734 | Anxiety, nausea, guilt and absurdity shake us up, revealing our freedom and limits |
| Full Idea: Some moods, such as 'anxiety' (Heidegger), 'nausea' (Sartre), 'guilt' (Kierkegaard), and 'absurdity' (Camus) are important because they have the capacity to shake us out of complacency and self-deception, disclosing our freedom and finitude. | |||
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], Pref 'What?) | |||
| A reaction: [bit compressed] Problem: if I fail to feel such things, and deliberately induce them in myself, am I being inauthentic? Making a huge and unnatural effort to be an existentialist seems all wrong. And who wants the permanent grip of such feelings? |
| 1 'Emergence' | p.5 | 20736 | Science has to abstract out the subjective attributes of things, focusing on what is objective |
| Full Idea: Crucial to the scientific method is the ability to abstract out the subjective qualities that we give to things - such as beauty, meaning, purpose, and value - and focus only on the objective qualities of things, which can be measured and quantified. | |||
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 1 'Emergence') | |||
| A reaction: This seems to me exactly right. People who deny the primary/secondary distinction, like Hume, are usually correspondingly pessimistic about science. And Hume was wrong about that. |
| 1 'Emergence' | p.6 | 20737 | Protestantism brought the modern emphasis on inner states of the soul |
| Full Idea: An important development in the formation of the modern worldview was the emergence of Protestantism, that reconfigured the self by privileging the inner states of the soul. Salvation concerns inner feelings, thoughts and desires, which can be genuine. | |||
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 1 'Emergence') | |||
| A reaction: [bit compressed] He is preparing the historical background for the existentialist concept of authenticity. We can link this Protestant idea with Descartes's Cogito, which grounds knowledge in the inner self. |
| 1 'Emergence' | p.7 | 20738 | Social contracts and markets have made society seem disconnected and artificial |
| Full Idea: Modern society has come to be viewed as something artificial, an aggregate of disconnected individuals that is held together by instrumental social contracts and monetary exchanges. | |||
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 1 'Emergence') | |||
| A reaction: This is all long of you, Thomas Hobbes! Aho is explaining the rebellion of existentialists against this - though existentialism strikes me as another variant of liberal individualism. |
| 2 'Phenomenology' | p.29 | 20744 | Phenomenologists say all experience is about something and is directed |
| Full Idea: Phenomenologists agree that all experience has an intentional structure, that is, my experience is always about or of something; it is always directed towards an object. | |||
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 2 'Phenomenology') | |||
| A reaction: I am just beginning to grasp that the analytic debates about perception are a re-enactment of the Kantian debates about the thing-in-itself. This is the sort of idea you find in McDowell. Presumably the idea denies the Given, and raw sense-data. |
| 4 'Self' | p.56 | 20753 | The self is constituted by its choices made within a social context |
| Full Idea: The [existential] self is constituted by the continuous, open-ended process of choosing and pulling together the social interpretations that we care about and that are made available by the situation we grow into. | |||
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 4 'Self') | |||
| A reaction: These kind of explanations always seem wrong. That the self is influenced and moulded strongly by the choices it makes sounds right. But that the choices 'constitute' the chooser sounds like a bit of a muddle. |
| 9 'dukkha' | p.154 | 20766 | Four Noble Truths: life is suffering, caused by attachment, it is avoidable, there is a path |
| Full Idea: The teachings of the Buddha are summarised in 'four noble truths': 1) life means suffering, 2) the origin of suffering is attachment, 3) the end of suffering is attainable, and 4) the path to the end of suffering. | |||
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 9 'dukkha') | |||
| A reaction: 1) and 2) summarise everything I dislike about most eastern philosophy. In the modern world life does not have to be suffering. To break off attachments in order to avoid suffering is a hideous injunction. |