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Existentialism And Human Emotions (A Philosophical Library Book)
by Jean-Paul Sartre
(18 reviews)
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Existentialism and Human Emotions Reviewed.
This book, I highly recommend to any aspiring student of Existentialism. Sartre takes the time to juxtapose Freudian psychoanalysis with his version of Existential psychoanalysis, which affords the reader an opportunity to feel the impact of Adler on Sartre. Sartre touches all the essential elements of Existentialism, Decisions, time and Existentialism as humanism. This is much better starting point for those interested in Sartre than Being and Nothingness
Existentialism
Yes, I was in fact groping in the darkness about the essence of the philosophy of 'existentialism'so long. I shuffled thru the pages of Satre's magnum opus - Being and nothingness ( I don't know whether I have quoted it correctly)! But yr reference to this edition of Satre's essential philosophy of existentialism has opened the door of my understanding. In fact yr quick despatch of the book has helped me a lot of quintessence of the philosophy. Whether I agree or don't agree with his viewpoint is a different issue. But I thank Amazon Booh Agency, for the prompt arrival of the edition. In fact I badly need a book like this.
Kalyan Kumar Guha
Good
Great translation of a popular writing. By far the most comprehensible of the translations I've found.
Existentialism Made Easy
If Sartre wanted to endear himself to the masses, he did himself no favors with the cover to Existentialism and Human Emotions, with his pipe-puffing professoriality conveying enough know-it-allness to give most anyone not assigned to read it a hearty guffaw. Which is a shame really, as this 96-page essay serves as an excellent primer for anyone who thinks of existentialism as a ponderous, do-nothing philosophy (If all I am to do is exist, why do anything else?), defining the terms, fielding common accusations from other religious and philosophical camps, and connecting existential philosophy to other critical traditions.
That said, the title is a bit misleading, or incomplete at least - it really just introduces and retorts the accusations Sartre wrote the essay in reaction to. It does this brilliantly though, especially on pp18-33 where he fairly systematically explains the philosophical reasoning behind the 3 quintessentially existential emotions of anguish, forlornness, and despair. Outside of this and a section from page 41-51 where he addresses 3 major emotional objections to existential philosophy, he is speaking on a more general plane - I almost think that it would be published today under the title Existentialism for Dummies.
What I found most engaging in the text (mostly the section simply entitled "Existentialism" that takes up the first 51 pages) was his connection of the notion of subjectivity in religious, philosophical, and practical discourse, summed up in this passage from pp22-23: "If existence really does precedes essence, there is no explaining things away by reference to a fixed and given human nature. In other words, there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom. On the other hand, if God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So, in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us. We are alone, with no excuses."
In context of a modern world of jihad, know-nothing consumerism, religious fundamentalism, and a creeping sense of dislocation in both the family and the workplace, Sartre's words are scathingly prophetic, as each of these elements of the modern world has one thing in common: each subjective way of looking at the world is equally right - or equally wrong - and we are without recourse when things don't go as we hoped ("To be sure, this may seem a harsh thought to someone whose life hasn't been a success").
But the wondrous thing about the text is that, despite the focus on words like anguish and despair, Sartre ends up coming off as fairly optimistic. This achieved at least partially by his following the notion of subjectivity with the notion of intersubjectivity - "this is the world in which man decides what he is and what others are." I would describe this as almost a fusion of the classically opposite Civil Society and State of Nature - every person is dependent on other people insomuch as those people influence our own "projects," as Sartre calls them; in other words, when they impose their wills enough that their world, their projects become part of ours.
He follows this up in the short section entitled "The Hole," stating, "A good part of our life [and it may simply be the translator's choice, but I found it encouraging that he said "life," not "lives"] is passed in plugging up holes, in filling empty spaces, in realizing and symbolically establishing a plenitude." He actually hilariously (though not intentionally so) applies this to sexual intercourse and eating in two of the more entertaining passages, with the mouth and the you-know-what being the holes literally and symbolically filled.
Brilliant
Sartre takes atheism to its logical conclusions. He starts with the assumption that there is no God and deduces a proper philosophy based on that one starting assumption. From that point of view, this book is a wonderful argument for theism via reductio ad absurdum. Sartre argue that existence precedes essence, and hence man is totally in charge of his own destiny. There is no human nature, there is no pre-set things that we must conform to, we decide our own fate. There is also no objective moral values. Sartre laments the fact that some say there is no God but still hold to objective moral values and don't act any differently or believe any differently about other things. This book is very, very easy to read and can certainly be read in only one sitting. This is the kind of philosophy that theists need to read and internalize to show atheists the logical conclusions of their atheism. There is no better proof for theism than this book.
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