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Science Forum Index » Philosophy Forum » Existentialism Today...
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| turtoni... |
 Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 9:42 pm |
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"As a cultural movement, existentialism belongs to the past. As a
philosophical inquiry that introduced a new norm, authenticity, for
understanding what it means to be human - a norm tied to distinctive,
post-Cartesian concept of the self as practical, embodied,
being-in-the-world - existentialism has continued to play an important role
in contemporary thought, in both the continental and analytic traditions.
The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, as well as
societies devoted to Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Jaspers, Beauvoir,
and other existential philosophers, provide a forum for ongoing work - both
of a historical, scholarly nature and of more systematic focus - that
derives from classical existentialism, often bringing it into confrontation
with more recent movements such as structuralism, deconstruction,
hermeneutics, and feminism. In the area of gender studies Judith Butler
(1990) draws importantly on existential sources, as does Lewis Gordon (1995)
in the area of race theory. Interest in a narrative conception of
self-identity - for instance, in the work of Charles Taylor (1999), Paul
Ricoeur, David Carr (1986), or Charles Guignon - has its roots in the
existential revision of Hegelian notions of temporality and its critique of
rationalism. Hubert Dreyfus (1979) developed an influential criticism of the
Artificial Intelligence program drawing essentially upon the existentialist
idea, found especially in Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, that the human world,
the world of meaning, must be understood first of all as a function of our
embodied practices and cannot be represented as a logically structured
system of representations. Calling for a "new existentialism," John
Haugeland (1998) has explored the role of existential commitment in
scientific practices as truth-tracking practices. In a series of books,
Michael Gelven (1990, 1997) has reflected upon the distinctions between
existential, moral, and epistemological or logical dimensions of experience,
showing how the standards appropriate to each intertwine, without reducing
to any single one. A revival of interest in moral psychology finds many
writers who are taking up the question of self-identity and responsibility
in ways that recall the existential themes of self-making and choice - for
instance, Christine Korsgaard (1996) appeals crucially to notions of
"self-creation" and "practical identity"; Richard Moran (2001) emphasizes
the connection between self-avowal and the first-person perspective in a way
that derives in part from Sartre; and Thomas Nagel has followed the
existentialist line in connecting meaning to the consciousness of death.
Even if such writers tend to proceed with more confidence in the touchstone
of rationality than did the classical existentialists, their work operates
on the terrain opened up by the earlier thinkers. In addition, after years
of being out of fashion in France, existential motifs have once again become
prominent in the work of leading thinkers. Foucault's embrace of a certain
concept of freedom, and his exploration of the "care of the self," recall
debates within existentialism, as does Derrida's recent work on religion
without God and his reflections on the concepts of death, choice, and
responsibility. In very different ways, the books by Cooper (1999) and Alan
Schrift (1995) suggest that a re-appraisal of the legacy of existentialism
is an important agenda item of contemporary philosophy. In some sense,
existentialism's very notoriety as a cultural movement may have impeded its
serious philosophical reception. It may be that what we have most to learn
from existentialism still lies before us."
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/ |
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