Existentialism: A Reconstruction

"This is a fabulous, clear introduction to existentialist thought. It’s also very philosophically rigorous. It tends to steer away from the literary side of existentialism, and it avoids some of the authors that proceed more through essays or novels like Camus. But it makes up for that by really putting existentialism within the philosophical tradition and looking at it as a system of philosophical thought. Cooper’s starting point is the human condition: we’re situated in the world but we’re alienated from it, we don’t feel that we quite belong, that we quite fit. That feeling is what drives existentialists. He works from that through other key ideas about self and others, about angst and anxiety — the anxiety we feel from being free — about absurdity, about freedom and he finishes up with ethics. So it’s a fantastic tour through the existentialist landscape. Yes, I think it’s a great way into it. There are lots of good books that introduce the ideas of existentialism, but this is one that gives a lot to think about and opens up interesting perspectives. That’s a good question. Some people have traced it right the way back, to the first time human beings in literature started feeling anxious or separated from the general state of being around them and began worrying about their lives and their existence. If you do that, you can find it in Job in the Bible, for example. Job has been cited as a proto-existentialist. Job definitely captures the spirit of existential questioning, but I think it becomes a bit too general: to say this is to make existentialism practically identical with the human condition. Existentialism is more specific. It’s a particular way of philosophizing about the human condition in terms of situation and freedom. “Most of the people we think of as existentialists denied being existentialists — it’s practically the only thing they have in common.” Certain key figures start to show an existentialist sensibility. Kierkegaard is often cited, but he’s very inward, he doesn’t look much at our position in the world. Nietzsche is another precursor: he almost goes the other way because he analyzes all the human condition in terms of forces, of power, of our physical being in the world. Another writer often mentioned is Dostoyevsky : a great way of getting into the real miserabilist side of existentialism is to read his Notes from the Underground . It absolutely captures the anguish of being an isolated individual and a misfit, wondering about your place in the world and being contrary, fighting against the normal human life that you’re supposed to fit into. But to say where existentialism really begins is not that easy. It’s when all of those things come together, so you’ve got this feeling of being alienated and not fitting into the world of the human individual combined with a reversal of the usual philosophical tendency to say, “Well there’s human consciousness on the one side, and there’s the physical world on the other, and the two are completely separate.” Existentialism begins when people start to look at human life in the world, the fact that we are physical, we are with others, we are embodied. We have to start from that, rather than Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am,” where you wonder if the entire physical world is an illusion and then build it up again from pure subjectivity."