Seriously, who have been the great thinkers of the past 40 years, after 1970? In popular reading, and in all honesty that's all which I've really done regarding modern philosophy, most of it seems to stop after Nietzsche, Sartre and Wittgenstein, if you're lucky. Chomsky, perhaps, but he's from 1928 and just doesn't stop.
Existential angst and reflection are fine, but best in meted dosages in this age, I'd say. Reading Sartre I find exhausting exactly because it keeps on questioning everything, every move one makes. In this age of consumerism and its horrendous bombardment of superfluous bric-a-brac, Sartre may well have lost his mind in the tsunami of indifference assailing his senses... The question I get: would people choose a more minimalist life when accepting Sartre's world view? Then again, I've been drawn towards Sartre, because a choice for humanism suits me well. So I may be plying my own fallacy.
Your comments how Sartre "fell" for fashion is interesting - how flagrant was his lifestyle compared to his musings? I know too little of these things...
Michael Dirda also argues against being too condemnatory: "So the verdict is clear: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were . . . human. They behaved badly sometimes, made mistakes and inadvertently harmed those they claimed to love. And yet I find it hard to judge them as harshly as I suspect some other readers will. A Frenchman who liked pretty girls, an intellectual woman who was lonely for physical love -- Just appalling! Utter depravity! Those existentialists always were in league with the devil. Sometimes even philosophers and moralists fail to live up to their own highest ideals. But does that negate the importance of their public example or the value of their writing? ... Fundamentally, Sartre pursued as pure an intellectual life as one could ask -- he worked like a demon, gave away his money faster than he earned it, helped and supported those he loved, and tirelessly contributed to, or contested with, the literature, politics and philosophy of his time. For 50 years, he and Beauvoir campaigned on every front to free the human spirit from its mind-forged manacles. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/13/AR2005101301640.html
Michael Dirda also argues against being too condemnatory:
"So the verdict is clear: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were . . . human. They behaved badly sometimes, made mistakes and inadvertently harmed those they claimed to love. And yet I find it hard to judge them as harshly as I suspect some other readers will. A Frenchman who liked pretty girls, an intellectual woman who was lonely for physical love -- Just appalling! Utter depravity! Those existentialists always were in league with the devil. Sometimes even philosophers and moralists fail to live up to their own highest ideals. But does that negate the importance of their public example or the value of their writing? ... Fundamentally, Sartre pursued as pure an intellectual life as one could ask -- he worked like a demon, gave away his money faster than he earned it, helped and supported those he loved, and tirelessly contributed to, or contested with, the literature, politics and philosophy of his time. For 50 years, he and Beauvoir campaigned on every front to free the human spirit from its mind-forged manacles.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/13/AR2005101301640.html
Underground newspapers are notoriously under-read, under-circulated and over-persecuted. But the case of La Cause du Peuple, the organ of France's outlawed Maoist proletarian movement, is extreme. It is not printed to be read, but to be seized by the authorities. Since it began two years ago, the bimonthly paper has had three editors. The first two are in jail for inciting public disorder. Their conviction last May touched off clashes reminiscent of the 1968 student uprisings in Paris. The third editor is Jean-Paul Sartre, 65. The father of existentialism and refuser of the Nobel Prize explains that he did not accept the editorship so much "to defend La Cause du Peuple as to defend the liberty of the press." He does not align himself with the rabid left-wing advice blazed in La Cause's headlines to "Enlist everybody in the Guerrillas." <...> Then the police arrest everyone giving away, selling or reading the paper. Everyone, that is, except prominent people and, of course, Sartre and De Beauvoir, who stay on to deliver diatribes about the rape of press freedom. The government's decision not to arrest him galls Sartre. "I am not convicted, nor am I interrogated," he says. "But the printer of the paper is apprehended." It was De Gaulle who once expressed the absurdity of arresting Sartre for his writings and actions. "One doesn't arrest Voltaire." "Print, and Be Seized" - Time (Monday, Nov. 16, 1970)
Since it began two years ago, the bimonthly paper has had three editors. The first two are in jail for inciting public disorder. Their conviction last May touched off clashes reminiscent of the 1968 student uprisings in Paris. The third editor is Jean-Paul Sartre, 65.
The father of existentialism and refuser of the Nobel Prize explains that he did not accept the editorship so much "to defend La Cause du Peuple as to defend the liberty of the press." He does not align himself with the rabid left-wing advice blazed in La Cause's headlines to "Enlist everybody in the Guerrillas."
<...> Then the police arrest everyone giving away, selling or reading the paper. Everyone, that is, except prominent people and, of course, Sartre and De Beauvoir, who stay on to deliver diatribes about the rape of press freedom.
The government's decision not to arrest him galls Sartre. "I am not convicted, nor am I interrogated," he says. "But the printer of the paper is apprehended." It was De Gaulle who once expressed the absurdity of arresting Sartre for his writings and actions. "One doesn't arrest Voltaire."
"Print, and Be Seized" - Time (Monday, Nov. 16, 1970)
Especially in its current form, mindless consumerism appeals to me as a mind-forged manacle. Where lies the balance between unconscious submission to it and human erring, that is, aware of its existence but giving into it for own pleasure?
European Tribune - Philosophy - "It's good for getting girlfriends."
But, precisely, if Nothingness is introduced into the world through man, anguish at Nothingness is simply anguish at freedom, or if you prefer, freedom's anguish at itself. If, for example, I experienced a slight anguish yesterday before the wine which I could but should not drink, it's because the "I shouldn't" was already in the past ... and nothing could prevent me from drinking. It was before that particular nothing I was so anguished; that nothingness of my past's means of acting on my present... . [N]othing allows me to foresee what I shall do and, even if I were able to foresee it, nothing could prevent me from doing it. So anguish is indeed the experience of Nothingness, hence it isn't a psychological phenomenon. It's an existential structure of human reality, it's simply freedom becoming conscious of itself as being its own nothingness.
Whatever. Drink or don't drink. Don't write books about it. (And why not stop talking adolescent rubbish and learn some real psychology?)
Meanwhile:
Bourdieu is insightful - not nearly as flamboyant, and not nearly as self-absorbed as the Foucault/Derrida axis, but always interesting.
Mary Midgley is under-rated and not nearly as well-known as she should be.
Robery Anton Wilson - oh so Californian and oh so likely to make academic heads explode. (Is there a downside to someone who does that?)
Chomsky, of course.
J K Galbraith - loathed by the free-marketeers, which is more than enough reason to read him.
So it's not quite a wasteland. But you have to look outside mainstream academia, which does rather seem to have hitched itself to a pink balloon of hot air and drifted far, far away.
An optimistic publisher sent me something by A C Grayling recently, and it was awful - one long scab of banality. Similarly with Polkinghorne, who gets trotted out by the religionists as an authority, but really isn't.
Supposedly these people are famous. Go figure.
He does not have a totally untroubled faith. Sometimes Christianity seems to him to be just too good to be true, but when this sort of doubt arises he says to himself, 'All right then, deny it' and he knows this is something he could never do.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHHHH!!! what madness is this!
Midgley is horribly underrated, and Wilson was a laugh when I met him. Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
Leary and I appeared at the Libertarian Party Convention in Chicago. Coming back on the plane we met Guns and Roses, who love him - everyone knows Leary. And Tim got drunker and drunker on his bottle of Scotch, and finally he says "Fuck it! I'm gonna have a cigarette!" You're not allowed to smoke on US airlines any more, so the whole of Guns and Roses gathered round to conceal him. At this point, one of the stewards sees Leary's smoking and comes over, and he says to Tim "I just want to tell you I think you're right about everything!" When we got off the plane. Leary spotted a wheelchair and got a Joyce scholar to push it for him through the airport. I was a bit drunk too by then, so as we raced through the crowd, I pointed to Leary and shouted "Chromsome damage, chromosome damage!" Wonderful night, wonderful . . .
I always thought Sartre was a pretentious nobody who was famous for being famous, for having a sexy girlfriend and for catching the mood of the 50s in a very timely but ephemeral way. True, he gets points for being a celebrity and a philosopher - a combination that's possibly less likely now. But if you're looking for depth and insight - not so much.
I took some philosophy classes but all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Sartre was a decent novellist in addition to being a lifestyle philosopher.
Patronising punk :-) As in the case of Dawkins, have you actually read any of Sartre's "lifestyle philosophy"? If so, any specific comments ? Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience
Anyway, if the history of philosophy class I took is to have any purpose at all, it must be to give some direction to the stuff I do and don't read! Can't read everyone's 900 page tomes!
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm
It's conclusion is a nice rebuke to Sarkozy and his (roughly) "France needs believers because it needs people who hope":
You can see from these few reflections that nothing could be more unjust than the objections people raise against us. Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means as the Christians do - any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.
Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience
Sloterdijk has been quite successful in popularising philosophy in Germany and the Netherlands. Don't know if his work is any good. I have this thick volume of Sferen (Sphären I und II auf niederländisch) in my bookcase but have yet to start reading it.
Anyway, you don't have to restrict yourself to philosophy for great thinkers.
