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20752
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For man, being is not what he is, but what he is going to be [Ortega y Gassett]
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Full Idea:
Being consists not in what it is already, but in what it is not yet, a being that consists in not-yet-being. Everything else in the world is what it is….Man is the entity that makes himself….He has to determine what he is going to be.
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From:
José Ortega y Gassett (Toward a Philosophy of History [1941], p.112,201-2), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 4 'Problem'
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A reaction:
[p.112 and 201-2] This seems to be Ortega y Gasset's spin on Heidegger's concept, by adding a temporal dimension to it.
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7667
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There are two sides to men - the pleasantly social, and the violent and creative [Diderot, by Berlin]
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Full Idea:
Diderot is among the first to preach that there are two men: the artificial man, who belongs in society and seeks to please, and the violent, bold, criminal instinct of a man who wishes to break out (and, if controlled, is responsible for works of genius.
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From:
report of Denis Diderot (works [1769], Ch.3) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism
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A reaction:
This has an obvious ancestor in Plato's picture (esp. in 'Phaedrus') of the two conflicting sides to the psuché, which seem to be reason and emotion. In Diderot, though, the suppressed man has virtues, which Plato would deny.
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20756
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Instead of having a nature, man only has a history [Ortega y Gassett]
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Full Idea:
Man lives in view of the past. Man, in a word, has no nature; what he has is history. Expressed differently: what nature is to things, history is to man.
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From:
José Ortega y Gassett (Toward a Philosophy of History [1941], p.217), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 5 'Situated'
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A reaction:
Makes explicit the existentialist denial of human nature. The foundation of ethics can only be total freedom, to choose both yourself and your actions. What is inescapable is the social and culture contexts. What is the role of the 'history'?
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