It cannot be accepted for a second that authors such as Kierkegaard, Pascal and Dostoevsky have been lumped together with figures such as Heidegger and Sartre in this so-called existentialism. In fact, what is most surprising is that it was precisely Sartre who proposed such a bundling, as if he were part of a fictitious current and claiming to have absorbed them all, without being immediately challenged on the absurdity of imagining an evolution from Pascal to Sartre. One can see, for example, that Sartre uses arguments such as “l’existence précède l’essence” or “l’homme n’est rien d’autre que ce qu’il se fait” in order to paint a man isolated from his circumstances, created from nothing and independent from the start, something visibly antagonistic to Christian thought. And it is certainly similar disparities that separate Sartre from many others labeled “existentialists”. Imagining a “philosophical current” that unites them is something that only interests Sartre himself, and it should not convince anyone.
Tag: philosophy
Intelligence Begins With the Ability…
If, as has been said, intelligence begins with the ability to marvel, it also follows that the more the notion of normality spreads, the more difficult it is for intelligence to manifest itself. In other words: starting with the universe, passing through nature, through society and culminating in the details of everyday life, looking at all of this and seeing it as natural, ordinary, instead of being amazed at the extraordinary succession of factors necessary to generate it, is actually restraining the manifestation of intellect.
There Are Things That Can Only Be Learned…
There are things that can only be learned by giving in, and things that can only be learned by working in the interests of others, things whose value has increased enormously since they are so rare in modern times. Better than learning them, however, is remembering them through practice, overcoming the trap of understanding a poor reality by understanding it only in the part that is around the self.
Ortega y Gasset’s Approach to the Problem…
Ortega y Gasset’s approach to the problem of circumstance is one of the most lucid shots in modern philosophy. That is: the notion that there is no need to rebel against it, but rather to integrate it, or at least make a continuous effort to integrate it into the personality, something that can only be achieved by learning what it has to teach. This problem, in fact, has intensified as the turning of the eyes inwards has become popular, an act that, if radicalized, ends up repudiating external reality. It turns out that this repudiation never achieves the desired effects, resulting only in disturbances and conflicts with no solution other than the acceptance that circumstance is always an inalienable element of being.