Introduction to Existentialism

Existentialism was a largely European philosophy, it was a philosophical movement that blossomed in the first half of the 20th century, in many ways is now passe, I’m inclined to look at the activist sixties as marking the end of existentialism, if the pessimistic existentialist was saying life is meaningless and it has no purpose, the sixties had too many meanings and purposes.

Hegel

His Project

Let’s start by the things concerning the German idealists generally. We were going to get a new metaphysic, absolute idealism, in which every individual event and entity is an expression of all-inclusive process. So your self consciousness is just a passing moment of the self consciousness of the divine, the divine which is working out its full freedom and self expression in the course of history. It’s not a mechanistic cause-effect model, it’s a process model, that sees organic interrelatedness of everything within the all-inclusive one. If you talk about Napoleon, Hegel thinks that all history converges on that individual and all history opens up from that point on. He calls Napoleon a world historical figure, one in whom that path is summed up, and the one is loaded with future. That metaphysical monism, absolute idealism or idealistic monism, everything is spirit at work is Hegel.

Overall Structure of Modern Thought

Keep in mind the overall structure of modern thought, we have a tradition of continental rationalism represented by Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz which after Kant leads into the German Idealism tradition, the point of the connection is the emphasis on the self. In the rationalism the emphasis is on the a-priori knowledge, that is to say, the inner intellectual resources of the self, the inner rationality of the self. And then the self is getting even greater importance in the development of German Idealism. We have as well the British Empiricist tradition represented by Locke, Berkeley and Hume which leads into 19th century Positivism and Empiricism which we’ll meet in people like John Stuart Mill and the 20th century with Bertrand Russel. We’ll follow the European trend all the way into 20th century John Paul Sartre and beyond. And then we’ll follow the empiricist trend, from Bentham and Mill way up again into 1950 and since.

Introduction

Project

David Hume became skeptical of any metaphysical knowledge, any knowledge of the nature of reality. All we know is appearances, phenomenon, and beyond that it’s a matter of best beliefs. In the light of Hume’s metaphysical skepticism, Kant defines his project as the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, that is to say, what are the prospects for metaphysics. He is explicit about that orientation, in the introduction in the Prolegomena. Since the Essays from Locke and Leibniz, nothing has ever happened could be more decisive to it’s fate, than the attack made on by David Hume, he threw no light on species of knowledge, but he certainly struck a spark by which the light might have been kindled had it caught some inflammable substance had it’s fire had been carefully nursed and developed. Hume started from a single but important concept, namely that of the connection between cause and effect. He challenged reason to answer him by what right he thinks anything could be constituted that if that thing is positive something else must necessarily be positive. Hume suffers misfortunes of metaphysicians of not being understood. The question is not whether the concept of cause is right or useful, but whether that concept could thought by reason a-priori independent of experience. Metaphysics consists all sorts of concepts a-priori. Metaphysics is properly concerned with synthetic a-priori propositions. All metaphysicians are therefore legally suspended from their occupations until they adequately answered the question how are synthetic a-priori propositions are possible, for the answer contains the only credentials they must show when there are anything to offer in the name of pure reason, but if they do not possess these credentials, they can expect nothing else from reasonable people, who have been deceived so often then to be dismissed from their occupation without future inquiry. He recognizes in light of Hume’s skepticism, the very possibility of doing metaphysics is a serious question.

Introduction

Leibniz find freedom and determinism compatible, because he is thinking of freedom not from mechanical causes, but as freedom to pursue goals and ends. These things arise in Leibniz because he is rejecting mechanistic science as the ultimate explanation. He asks this question, the mechanistic science is telling us that everything is explained as matter and motion, what is there when matter disintegrates and motion ceases? And his answer is not matter but energy. He is conceiving energetic physics in a teleological metaphysic, where everything is end-oriented.