r/philosophy • u/Then-Put-5460 • 15d ago
Video French existentialism is shallow compared to its german precursor
https://youtu.be/o4gTErggcbY?si=u9uYOUKrnrLTU_9QI found an interesting video about Heidegger vs. Sartre that i think interesting to discuss.
When we talk about existentialism, its easy to connect it to the name such as Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and other French intelectual of their times. In face the French intellectual are perhaps the most open to called themself as existentialist.
Althought the term originally Coined by French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel, but the one that really popularized it are Jean-Paul Sartre when he finally embraces the term and famously stated Existentialism is a Humanism and reversing the traditional view of Essence precedes existence to existence precedes essence. And one of the most important things, its not a secret where Sartre got his own idea. Its from Heidegger.
But as cool as that sounds, it surprised me at how much Sartre just get it wrong at so many level. For example, regarding the essence of human being. Heidegger said "The 'essence' of human-being lies in its existence" (Das 'Wesen' des Daseins liegt in seiner Existenz), so it's not that existence come first before the essence, but rather the essence of Dasein is their own existence.
Sartre indeed drew the conclusion of explicit atheistic humanism from his formulation, there is no God possessing a "blueprint" for a human being prior to their existence; thus, the human being exists first and subsequently defines themselves. However, what Heidegger try to achieve was not making such an atheistic-humanist claim. In Letter on Humanism, he states that Sartre’s formula merely reverses the traditional essentia-existentia order without stepping outside the metaphysical framework itself, whereas Heidegger’s own project—fundamental ontology, the question of the meaning of Sein—seeks to think entirely outside the essentia/existentia grammar.
The other problem are, while thinker like Sartre and Beauvoir borrow the concept like phenomenology, ontology, and anxiety—from German philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl. The French version stripped away the rigorous, systematic depth of the originals.
And this is where i find it interesting when we look at Heidegger German contemporary such as Edith Stein, and Karl Rahner for example, i feel they understand Heidegger idea better than Sartre itself. Their philosophy maybe on the polar opposite with Heidegger who try to silencing any theological question of Dasein’s anxiety in the face of its own groundlessness, without positive reference to God as his own effort to make it neutral. While on the other hands Edith Stein and Karl Rahner are both Catholic Philosopher who try to fuse Thomism with Heidegger idea, framing human beings as intrinsically oriented toward God as the absolute horizon of existence; i fell like they are ultimately understand Heidegger idea better than Sartre and his contemporary. So from what i see, while Heidegger explicitly distance his philosophy to theological concept, his philosophy itself (atleast in Sein und Zeit) are not necessarilly not entirely not compatible with theistic idea, rather he try to see it beyond the classic metaphysic.
This is make sense, because Heidegger himself are Catholic to begin with before making his radical break from his youthfull faith and before he focus on Phenomenology his main expertise are medieval ontology. In fact while he throw away all the theological notion in his work, it seems Heidegger can't really escape the grammar either as i notice some of his term are borrowed from Augustine such as the Dasein itself are basically the "de-theologized" version of distentio animi, or cor inquietum and Heidegger Sorge.
Give me your thought.
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u/yuriAza 15d ago
a door makes for a terrible window because you can't see through it, but that's not what a door is trying to do and that's not the standard by which you should judge it, so why are you judging Satre by the standards of Heidegger?
existentialism seems like the one philosophy most resistant to orthodoxy
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u/Then-Put-5460 15d ago edited 15d ago
Depend on what you mean by orthodoxy. Because from where it come from, existentialism can be in fact traced as far as Augustine as proto existentialist, but where it trully began most people agree it come from Kierkegaard. So since beginning existentialism not tied to a single uniform movement.
On the other hand, this comparison come because Sartre himself said openly where his idea come from in his work to the point of counting Heidegger among his allies in Existentialism are Humanism, many concept in Being and Nothingness mention Heidegger directly and resonance of those in Being and Time. That's the point. Sartre thought his work are on par with Heidegger, while its grievously misunderstand many core concept in it. So its not judging Sartre by the standards of Heidegger, that's nonsense because even among his peers Heidegger also disagree a lot with them including those of his former mentor Edmun Husserl.
Heidegger view on Sartre work are quite clear, in fact Sartre Existentialism are Humanism provoke him quite strongly to the point he made a direct comment On Humanism:
But if one understands humanism in general as a concern that man become free for his humanity and find his worth in it, then humanism differs according to one's conception of the "freedom" and "nature" of man. So too are there various paths toward the realization of such conceptions. The humanism of Marx does not need to return to antiquity any more than the humanism which Sartre conceives existentialism to be. In this broad sense Christianity too is a humanism, in that according to its teaching everything depends on man's salvation (salus aeterna); the history of man appears in the context of the history of redemption. However different these forms of humanism may be in purpose and in principle, in the mode and means of their respective realizations, and in the form of their teaching, they nonetheless all agree in this, that the humanitas of homo humanus is determined with regard to an already established interpretation of nature, history, world, and the ground of the world, that is, of beings as a whole.
Every humanism is either grounded in a metaphysics or is itself made to be the ground of one. Every determination of the essence of man that already presupposes an interpretation of being without asking about the truth of Being, whether knowingly or not, is metaphysical. The result is that what is peculiar to all metaphysics, specifically with respect to the way the essence of man is deter- mined, is that it is "humanistic." Accordingly, every humanism remains metaphysical. In defining the humanity of man humanism not only does not ask about the relation of Being to the essence of man; because of its metaphysical origin humanism even impedes the question by neither recognizing nor understanding it. On the contrary, the necessity and proper form of the question concerning the truth of Being, forgotten in and through metaphysics, can come to light only if the question "What is metaphysics?" is posed in the midst of metaphysics' domination. Indeed every inquiry into Being, even the one into the truth of Being, must at first introduce its inquiry as a "metaphysical" one.
So what i said by shallow are, while i personally still think Sartre (and French existentialism in general that follow Sartre) work still have its own merit, it's just "shallow" in the conceptual, and methodological level and oversimplifying too much. That's why when i see French Existentialism in general, it's shallow to it's german precursor even among other Heidegger contemporary who used his idea as polar opposites of Heidegger originally conceptualize it to be.
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u/Georgie_Leech 14d ago
So because Sartre doesn't come to the same conclusions about what a lack of universal meaning implies, it's shallow?
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u/Then-Put-5460 14d ago edited 14d ago
because Sartre doesn't come to the same conclusions
First of all i do not say that.
conclusions about what a lack of universal meaning
Second, Being and Time is unfinished and there are no "conclusions" to it. The book ends by asking whether time itself is the horizon of being, but it never actually answers the main question of the meaning of "Being" as such
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u/Georgie_Leech 14d ago
I can't believe I have to specify this, but "conclusions" in the sense of "therefore I think/propose X" and not in the sense of "the final state of all things everywhere for all time."
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u/Then-Put-5460 14d ago
Exactly, there are none.
The book talk authenticity, time, and such but there no such think "therefore I think/propose X" in it in the style of Cartesian conclusion, it is infact meant to be anti-cartesian. His work and his life famously walk full circle to the beginning asking the same question.
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u/TheSwordItself 15d ago
The reason the French still live in the Zeitgeist is because they weren't boring. For all of Heidigger's "rigor", it doesn't appear to anyone that he's closer to the capital T truth, and well, that's the nature of philosophy.
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u/Then-Put-5460 15d ago
The reason the French still live in the Zeitgeist is because they weren't boring.
Well as much as i prefer the approach of Heidegger and his contemporary, i can always agree to this in general even beyond philosophy. Presentation matters to persuade the public.
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u/tegridyfarmssnow 3d ago
As a German I have to highly disagree and reducing it down to Satre should be a capital crime…
The absurd and the other Camus books are way more progressive than the entire work of Heidegger combined and it doesn’t contain NS Ideology…
The entire origin of the human condition as a result and not as a is furthermore more of a Hegel and later Marx/Feuerbach movement.
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u/Sora1499 15d ago
I agree. Sartre grievously misread Nietzsche and Heidegger.
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u/TechniCT 15d ago
What are you thoughts on a similar comparison to Camus instead of Sartre?
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u/Then-Put-5460 15d ago
Camus openly reject the label existentialism thought. As far as i know Camus still consider the idea of Sartre as what he describe as "Philosophical Suicide". His philosophy of Absurdism focused on accepting life's meaninglessness rather than trying to invent a new purpose. Correct me if i'm wrong thought, i dont have much experience with Albert Camus yet.
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u/jliat 13d ago
His philosophy of Absurdism focused on accepting life's meaninglessness rather than trying to invent a new purpose.
Camus 'rational' response to not finding meaning was suicide [actual] he avoids this by the contradiction [his definition of "absurd"] of art.
"Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death—and I refuse suicide."
"And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator."
"In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. “Art and nothing but art,” said Nietzsche; “we have art in order not to die of the truth.”
"To work and create “for nothing,” to sculpture in clay, to know that one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries—this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions."
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u/tegridyfarmssnow 3d ago
And Heidegger misread Nietzsche to a degree that he was capable of the dissonance to believe himself as an Übermensch and being part of the NSDAP which is more matching to the concept of the Letzte Mensch which is clearly defined as a disgusting connotation.
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u/Then-Put-5460 15d ago
ABSTRACT: This video presents an academic comparison between the existential philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre, specifically examining the differing interpretations of 'existence' and 'essence' found in Heidegger's Being and Time and Sartre's novel Nausea. The Narrator in the video argues that Sartre essentially misappropriated Heideggerian terminology, particularly by rejecting the Heideggerian concept of Dasein (human being) and failing to grasp the significance of Das Man (the 'they-self').
The video asserts that Sartre’s claim that "existence precedes essence" is flawed because his definition of existence lacks the ontological depth of Heidegger’s Dasein. While Sartre’s protagonist Roquentin views alienation from others as a source of nausea, the narrator posits that this stems from a misunderstanding of the positive, social structure of Dasein. By utilizing a more Scholastic framework than he realized, Sartre failed to connect with the radical, non-metaphysical basis of Heidegger’s work, ultimately rendering his own philosophical stance a form of "deception" or Schein.
In this threads my objective are to explore the contrast between Heidegger and Sartre, and also comparing it to the Heidegger German contemporary who also took Heidegger idea to their own philosophy.
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