Understanding Existentialism (Understanding Movements in Modern Thought)

201 Pages·2006·1.21 MB·English

by  Jack Reynolds

understanding existentialism
Understanding Movements in Modern Thought
Series Editor: Jack Reynolds
Th is series provides short, accessible and lively introductions to the
major schools, movements and traditions in philosophy and the history
of ideas since the beginning of the Enlightenment. All books in the
series are written for undergraduates meeting the subject for the fi rst
time.
Published
Understanding Existentialism Understanding Virtue Ethics
Jack Reynolds Stan van Hooft
Understanding Poststructuralism
James Williams
Forthcoming titles include
Understanding Empiricism Understanding Hermeneutics
Robert Meyers Lawrence Schmidt
Understanding Ethics Understanding Naturalism
Tim Chappell Jack Ritchie
Understanding Feminism Understanding Phenomenology
Peta Bowden and Jane Mummery David Cerbone
Understanding German Idealism Understanding Rationalism
Will Dudley Charlie Heunemann
Understanding Hegelianism Understanding Utilitarianism
Robert Sinnerbrink Tim Mulgan
understanding existentialism
Jack Reynolds
© Jack Reynolds, 2006
Th is book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2006 by Acumen
Acumen Publishing Limited
15a Lewins Yard
East Street
Chesham
Bucks HP5 1HQ
www.acumenpublishing.co.uk
ISBN 1-84465-042-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 1-84465-043-X (paperback)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Designed and typeset by Kate Williams, Swansea.
Printed and bound in Malta by Gutenberg Press.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations ix
1 Existentialism and its heritage 1
2 Heidegger and the existential analytic 19
3 Condemned to freedom: Sartre’s phenomenological 51
ontology
4 Sartre: hell is other people 89
5 Merleau-Ponty and the body 110
6 De Beauvoir: feminism and existential ethics 137
7 Th e legacy of existentialism: deconstruction, 163
responsibility and the time of the decision
Questions for discussion and revision 177
Further reading and references 181
Chronology 187
Index 190
contents v
Acknowledgements
Above all, for this book I am indebted to my parents, Laurel and Angus.
I have been remiss enough to have never thanked them in such an
author’s note before, and I hope that they have been aware of their
ongoing importance to my life and work. More academically, Marion
Tapper and Penny Deutscher have been vital to this book. Having been
involved in their courses on existentialism over a period of several years,
and in many diff erent capacities, they were instrumental in fostering
my enjoyment and appreciation of existentialism. Without doubt there
are aspects of this book that are indebted to their teachings, although
as always the faults remain mine alone. Bernadette Pierce also gave
me some of my fi rst opportunities to discuss existentialism in a public
forum and for that, as well as her intellectual encouragement, I am
grateful.
More recently, I would like to acknowledge and thank the follow-
ing people who have read draft s of this book and whose suggestions
have contributed to its improvement, both in terms of content and sty-
listically: Kim Atkins, Craig Barrie, David Cerbone, Stan van Hooft ,
Jonathan Roff e, Tessa Saunders, Robert Sinnerbrink, Ashley Woodward
and the anonymous Acumen referees. Somewhat more idiosyncratically,
I should also like to thank Ryan and May Johnston, Pein and Anh Lee,
Andrew McUtchen, Steve Orr and Joanne Shiells. All of you have helped
and inspired me in many diff erent ways. On an institutional level, I am
indebted to the University of Tasmania and my colleagues there. With-
out their support, and particularly that of my Heads of School, Robyn
Ferrell and Jeff Malpas, this book might have taken much longer.
vi understanding existentialism
On the publishing front, I must also thank Ohio University Press for
allowing me to use and reconfi gure a few pages of my exegesis of Mer-
leau-Ponty from my monograph Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwin-
ing Embodiment and Alterity (2004). Finally, thanks are due to Tristan
Palmer, Steven Gerrard and Kate Williams at Acumen, who have been
of great help, both with this book and the series of which it is a part.
Jack Reynolds
acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations
BN J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenologi-
cal Ontology (1994 [1943])
BT M. Heidegger, Being and Time (2004 [1927])
BW M. Heidegger, Basic Writings (1996)
EA S. de Beauvoir, Th e Ethics of Ambiguity (1976 [1947])
EH J.-P. Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism (2001 [1946])
M R. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (1986 [1641])
MS A. Camus, Th e Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
OT M. Foucault, Th e Order of Th ings (1970)
PC S. de Beauvoir, Pyrrhus et Cinéas (2005 [1943])
PP M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1996 [1945])
PrP M. Merleau-Ponty, Th e Primacy of Perception (1964)
S M. Merleau-Ponty, Signs (1964)
SB M. Merleau-Ponty, Th e Structure of Behaviour (1965 [1938])
SIT J.-P. Sartre, Situations (1965)
SNS M. Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense (1964)
SS S. de Beauvoir, Th e Second Sex (1972 [1949])
VI M. Merleau-Ponty, Th e Visible and the Invisible (1968 [1964])
viii understanding existentialism
one
Existentialism and its heritage
Existentialism, perhaps to an extent unprecedented in the history of
philosophy, has managed to capture the attention of the general public.
Estimates of the number of people at Jean-Paul Sartre’s funeral in
1980 vary from 50,000 to 100,000, and this was well aft er his cultural
and intellectual heyday. Simone de Beauvoir’s famous treatise on the
situation of women, Th e Second Sex, has been one of the most widely
read non-fi ction books of the twentieth century. Existential plays and
novels – in particular Sartre’s Nausea and Albert Camus’s Th e Outsider
– have been read voraciously and critically acclaimed. Sartre and his
more academically inclined colleague Maurice Merleau-Ponty were
the co-editors of the infl uential magazine Les Temps modernes, which
considered all things philosophical, political and aesthetic, providing
an intellectual point of reference for much of France. Without quite the
same mainstream accessibility, or the literary bent (notwithstanding his
preoccupation with poetry), Martin Heidegger has been enormously
infl uential on generations of philosophers, as well as people working in
cognitive science and artifi cial intelligence, and his work has helped to
spawn at least two very signifi cant contemporary philosophical move-
ments: hermeneutics and deconstruction.
Th ere are obviously many reasons for this primarily philosophi-
cal phenomenon capturing the attention of the public in the way that
existentialism did, not least the Second World War and the German occu-
pation of France, which intensifi ed existential concerns with freedom,
responsibility and death. Th e literary manifestations of existentialism
also allowed a greater proportion of people to possess at least a tentative
existentialism and its heritage 1