All great thinkers are philosophers. Darwin struggled with how the church, society and his wife would receive his discovery for 20 years.
No one smarter than Nietzsche and Dostovesky. They got it.
Kierkegaard died before Darwin released his origin of species. So I don't see how he could have seen the essense of existentialism. And that is what existentialism is really about. Seeing it. The reason high school kids can't get it. Not enough life experience.
Most university proessors don't get existentialism (correctly)or even Zen for that matter, IMO.
To day the pseudo intellectuals use existentialism as a substitute for the word reality. But that is not what it really is. It is an abstract concept of major importance, as I told my kids. Once understood a person is free.
We need to rewrite the entire definition of phenomonology, IMO. Husserl and Heidegger were brilliant for their time, but science has gone light years beyond them e.g. quantum phenomena, neural sciences, and neural plasticity, as put forth by Steven Pinker and others, decribe what we humans really are better than any of the old timers.
Sartre, Simone Beauvoir and Camus should be taught in all existentialism 101 classes. They put it's essense forth so budding philosophers can understand it.
Just my opinion.
<<Darwin was a scientist, not a philosopher. OK, Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground, just about covers the basic tenets about believing what you experience, but he was a novelist. Nietzsche mostly wrote aphorisms tearing at the conventional thinking. Give me a break with Kierkegaard. Yes, in his actions he was an existentialist. But he was hung up on religious thinking.
Husserl was the father. He started phenomenology. And Heidegger took it from there. Sartre just profited from plagiarizing cause France was on the winning side, while Heidegger got ostracized as a "Nazi." The French are lousy philosophers. Americans are worse. That's why we can't tell truth from propoganda anymore.>> |
