[MD] An inquiry into "be-ing"

[Ham Priday]

Dear Marsha --


> Hello Ham,
>
> I was reacting to the question about technological superiority.
> There is so much I don't know, and I am afraid I never paid much
> attention to Sartre and existentialism, except for Nietzsche who
> I gobbled up compulsively:
>
>               Ecco Homo
>
>     Yes, I know from where I came,
>     Ever hungry like a flame;
>     I consume myself and glow.
>     Light is all that I conceive,
>     Ashes everywhere I leave.
>     Flame I am assuredly.
>                 (Nietzsche, The Gay Science)
>
> Is it one, or many?  All of the above!   Being, it is what it is...
> Or maybe it is easier to discover what it isn't.
>
> Maybe you can suggest a good modern-day primer on existentialism.

Existentialism is pretty much the philosophy of natural evolution as 
investigated by Science and historians (and supported by Pirsig's "Quality 
moving to betterness" theme).  With certain exceptions (mainly Soren 
Kierkegaard and Karl Jaspers whose Christian views borrowed from it), 
existentialism is atheistic and non-spiritual.  What distinguishes 
existentialism  from idealistic philosophies is the principle that the 
"essence" of reality follows from existence, as opposed to the platonic 
concept of a Primary Essence.

Marjorie Grene, who studied with Heidegger and Jaspers in Germany, wrote an 
extended essay titled "Introduction to Existentialism" in 1959 which was 
published as a thin paperback by the University of Chicago Press.  If it's 
still available and "modern" enough for you, I can  recommend it as a 
readable guide that relates this philosophy to psychology, religion, and 
social morality.

Here's a relevant quote from the first chapter to give you a sense of her 
style:

"Existentialism is the philosophy which declares as its first principle that 
existence is prior to essence. This is, presumably, a technically accurate 
principle, yest as simple and intelligible as '2 and 2 are 4.'  Why, then, 
all the bewilderment about the phioosophy that follows from it?  "'Existence 
is prior to essence.' It is as easy as that.  Of course, to understand the 
principle and apply it properly. one must make at least one very important 
qualification. Taking literally the simple assertion, 'Existence is prior to 
essence,' one might find existentialists in very unexpected quarters.  For 
instance, in the thirteenth-century controversy about proofs of the 
existence of God, the Augustiians believed n the priority of exxence to 
existence--in the possibility of moving from the idea of God, the intuitive 
apprehension of His essence (insofar as such apprehension of the infinite is 
possible to finite minds) to the assertion of His existence.  Their 
opponents, the Christian Aristotelians, on the contrary, believed in the 
priority, at least for the genesis of human knowledge, of existence to 
essence--in the necessity of starting with the givens of our sensuous 
experience and proceeding by induction and abstraction to the ultimate 
intuitive awareness of essences and eternal truths.  Yet, if there is anyone 
in the whole of Western philosophy who has never been accused of being an 
existentialist, surely it is St. Thomas!"

Another book you might want to check out is Karl Jaspers' "Reason and 
Existenz" [Noonday Press, 1955].
Reinhold Niebuhr called Jaspers "one of the foremost philosophers of 
existence", and this softback is a collection of six lectures delivered at 
the University of Groningen, translated for the English-speaking world. 
'Existenz' is Jaspers' term for the "acts of thought which formally 
represent the various modes of Being."  He also speaks of 'The 
Encompassing', which is either "our selves in which every mode of Being 
appears to us" or "Being itself, in and through what we are."  Jaspers 
discusses not only existence but freedom, history, death, suffering, and sin 
from the existential perspective. .

Thanks for your interest, Marsha.  I hope you can locate at least one of 
these sources.

Ham