Sartre

[uncledote]

Neitsche garners a lot of attention on this sight but rarely a mention of Sartre. Any ideas as to why this may be?

[David Quinn]

Too French. That is to say, too posturing, too self-piteous, too dreamy, too shallow, too bland. No real insight into the Infinite.

Do you see something in him?

-

[jupiviv]

"Too French"...? I'd rather say - "too 20th century".

[DHodges]

I thought The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness was very good. I couldn't finish Nausea; it was making me sick to read it. (It was a long time ago.)

[Carmel]

No! I won't read it! All outside knowledge that doesn't strictly adhere to the religious philosophies of this forum, all science, philosophy and literature will be dismissed, demeaned and spat upon!

Nah, I'm kidding, I'll give it a looksie, thanks for the link. :)

[Bob Michael]

No real insight into the Infinite.

I much prefer men who have real insight into 'themselves'. As does the Infinite too.

[Ryan Rudolph]

What I didn't like about Satre, and many of the other European philosophers of that time period is that their language was often times too intentionally complicated, cryptic and lacking bluntness and insight. Although Sartre did have some original thoughts, I think he was trying too hard to fit into an academic philosophical movement of that the time, but his character had the deposition where he wanted to make everything so gloomy, aimless, dark and meaningless.

He was an atheist without scope or a heart for the infinite.

[Blair]

No real insight into the Infinite.

I much prefer men who have real insight into 'themselves'. As does the Infinite too.

A christian fag, that's original.

[Bob Michael]

A christian fag, that's original.

Whatever the label or name one may or may not give it, others, or anything for that matter, self-knowledge is the key to overcoming our parental and societal enculturation and attaining to new and fully-liberated being.

[DHodges]

What I didn't like about Satre, and many of the other European philosophers of that time period is that their language was often times too intentionally complicated, cryptic and lacking bluntness and insight.

Ha! Try reading Derrida!

[uncledote]

Ok, so is there anyone from the last fifty years that is worth reading? Apart from QRS obviously.

[uncledote]

For example:

Wittgenstein reads Weininger

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wittgenstein-Re ... 580&sr=8-8

[uncledote]

Never mind.

have just seen this:

http://www.theabsolute.net/ottow/wreadsw.html

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Ok, so is there anyone from the last fifty years that is worth reading?

Not really in my view. After the 19th century philosophical thought appears to fall in either of two camps: at one side technocrats, bean-counters and bookkeepers who are all merely fleshing out some of the mental foundations put there one or more centuries ago, at times adding up to debating the amount of angels dancing on some needle point, and at the other side there's a childish, sometimes even new age type of womb-complex, without much boundaries and grounding, conceiving some alternative competing vision to plug the hole - or more like it: to get hold of a niche.

Nietzsche summarized them already in his age: auxiliary thinkers, opposite thinkers and about-thinkers.

It's funny how some members have accused others to have been "stuck" in the 19th century modes of thought, thereby assuming it somehow all developed in a philosophical viable direction that was somehow missed and the stunning advances in science somehow would prove that. Anyway, I do like to read Baudrillard at times, his prose is hard to penetrate and his message is largely a description of how the modern discourse cannot be that viable or "real" anymore because of certain shifts in symbols and language, perhaps because some solid fundamentals have been more or less let go (the 'death' of god). Which leaves one reading or merely rephrasing the past, summarizing and practicing a sober, zennish type of communication and interpersonal challenging. The permaculture of philosophizing?

As for your first question: Sartre can be very interesting in terms of penetration of some of the human condition but grinds to a halt at notions of emptiness and consciousness, necessarily because his concept of causality is pretty warped and incomplete, too western perhaps. So many things become torn and twisted that way, giving rise to a really bad faith in notions of spontaneous uncaused consciousness, free will and authenticity, which seem more than anything else just further ways to deal with the angst for existence he so often describes. A weird warped reversal from my perspective. Perhaps this is why it attracted much attention, turning stuff on its head sometimes can have that effect, as if philosophy is easier digested that way? The point however is to choke on it or bite off its head!

[paco]

Dear novices,,,,,Don't cause blame to render (you)forgiveness.

Jesus

[uncledote]

Ok, so is there anyone from the last fifty years that is worth reading?

Not really in my view. After the 19th century philosophical thought appears to fall in either of two camps: at one side technocrats, bean-counters and bookkeepers who are all merely fleshing out some of the mental foundations put there one or more centuries ago, at times adding up to debating the amount of angels dancing on some needle point, and at the other side there's a childish, sometimes even new age type of womb-complex, without much boundaries and grounding, conceiving some alternative competing vision to plug the hole - or more like it: to get hold of a niche.

Nietzsche summarized them already in his age: auxiliary thinkers, opposite thinkers and about-thinkers.

What about Wittgenstein? or Foucault?

[Kelly Jones]

I think Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was badly named, because it isn't.

Foucault in "What is Enlightenment?" is typically postmodernist and French. Wordy, pompous, academic, lacking in self, cowardly, and unable to deconstruct what he is saying. His cowardice is the driving factor. He doesn't believe anyone has the authority to understand absolute truths, such that all people are wholly influenced by their culture into a constrained and limited worldview. This is immediately clearly false, since it is offered as an absolute that transcends culture. But anyway, he contradicts it with the even more revealing view that none have the right to take individual authority if it means the many are influenced deleteriously (but what he means by that, who knows). It's typical academic self-importance, that tries to utter gems but they come out as a dribble of drool from quivering, pale lips.

It's also cowardly in the way he turns the demand on the individual to grow up, and use reason uncompromisingly, ie. Enlightenment, into an historical event to be chattered about, like a famous party various celebrities went to, a long long time ago. It's exactly what Christians do when they turn the individual's own contemporary requirement to be a God-Man ("Be like your father in Heaven") into a historical event, over 2000 years ago, involving just one person who may or may not have existed. It distances everything into a fancy of the imagination, to dither over after dinner.

Totally uninspiring.

[Anders Schlander]

I couldn't actually read "What is Enlightenment?" it literally just gave me nothing, felt like I was just reading words, not sentences.

It's also cowardly in the way he turns the demand on the individual to grow up, and use reason uncompromisingly, ie. Enlightenment, into an historical event to be chattered about, like a famous party various celebrities went to, a long long time ago. It's exactly what Christians do when they turn the individual's own contemporary requirement to be a God-Man ("Be like your father in Heaven") into a historical event, over 2000 years ago, involving just one person who may or may not have existed. It distances everything into a fancy of the imagination, to dither over after dinner.

Yeah, true. It's funny how nobody takes Jesus serious perhaps partly because no Christian does either. No Christian takes Jesus serious because no Christian is concerned with enlightenment at all, they don't think it's possible either. If 'Christians' don't, why should normal people?

At best, I think Christianity works primarily to relief those people dying after a long life of pointlessness. People of old age probably aren't sure they'll be in an after-life, but since we love living the pointless lives that we do, we all silently go along with the idea of an afterlife to make it a bit more bearable. A kind of silly compromise. How many that are about to die truly believe it, and how many simple don't want to make others sad? I'm not sure.

Not to forget is marriage, the function of Christianity that makes our pointless lives more important than they really are.