It is such a pleasure to read your writings, Aurelien. I feel lucky to have found your blog and wish I had access to more of your writings. What a treat your musings are! Thank you.
I have another editorial comment. The paragraph starting "As it happened, Sartre was in Berlin during this period," suggests Sartre was in Berlin during "the defeat and the occupation". At this point I thought you were referring to defeat and occupation of Berlin. (Wat.) Maybe if you added a note about Sartre returns to France and where he spent the rest of the war?
When this sentence appears, "In our current age, when nobody is free, and nobody is responsible for their actions, this cold, austere, philosophy inevitably has much less appeal than it once did." I'm not sure what you're talking about.
At the risk of sounding the dilettante, I would push the roots of Existentialism back to circa 1820, circa Marx and Kierkegaard, both students of Hegel, who revolted, in different directions, against their teacher's absolutism even with regard to what in his teaching are "existentialist" sonorities. Beethoven's late string quartets anticipate Existentialism, IMO, pointing to Schoenberg and Berg, both "High Existentialist" composers. Kandinsky, of course, brings Existentialism right to the forefront of artistic-theological discourse in his paintings and writings. These were serious men doing serious work.
Among 20th Century Existentialists, I missed mention of Teilhard de Chardin and his "Phenomenon ..." and Paul Tillich and "Religious Socialism," which Paulus and some fellow German theologians and pastors worked out after WWI as an alternative to the atheism of Communists and Socialists -- aka Humanists -- which are Sartre, Heidegger, Frankfort School, Dewey, Marcuse, and the rest of the boys and girls.
I have always loved Heidegger's phrase to the effect that reality is "thrown into existence." In the phrase "And God said, 'Let there be light.'", the most important word is "said." A phrase in this essay alludes to this importance by way of recognizing linkage between politics and language. Language throws politics into existence.
It is such a pleasure to read your writings, Aurelien. I feel lucky to have found your blog and wish I had access to more of your writings. What a treat your musings are! Thank you.
I have another editorial comment. The paragraph starting "As it happened, Sartre was in Berlin during this period," suggests Sartre was in Berlin during "the defeat and the occupation". At this point I thought you were referring to defeat and occupation of Berlin. (Wat.) Maybe if you added a note about Sartre returns to France and where he spent the rest of the war?
When this sentence appears, "In our current age, when nobody is free, and nobody is responsible for their actions, this cold, austere, philosophy inevitably has much less appeal than it once did." I'm not sure what you're talking about.
"Now what?" Part II?
At the risk of sounding the dilettante, I would push the roots of Existentialism back to circa 1820, circa Marx and Kierkegaard, both students of Hegel, who revolted, in different directions, against their teacher's absolutism even with regard to what in his teaching are "existentialist" sonorities. Beethoven's late string quartets anticipate Existentialism, IMO, pointing to Schoenberg and Berg, both "High Existentialist" composers. Kandinsky, of course, brings Existentialism right to the forefront of artistic-theological discourse in his paintings and writings. These were serious men doing serious work.
Among 20th Century Existentialists, I missed mention of Teilhard de Chardin and his "Phenomenon ..." and Paul Tillich and "Religious Socialism," which Paulus and some fellow German theologians and pastors worked out after WWI as an alternative to the atheism of Communists and Socialists -- aka Humanists -- which are Sartre, Heidegger, Frankfort School, Dewey, Marcuse, and the rest of the boys and girls.
I have always loved Heidegger's phrase to the effect that reality is "thrown into existence." In the phrase "And God said, 'Let there be light.'", the most important word is "said." A phrase in this essay alludes to this importance by way of recognizing linkage between politics and language. Language throws politics into existence.