Historical Development of Continental Philosophy’s Existentialism

Historical development of Continental philosophys existentialist philosophy and phenomenology as a response to Hegelian idealism Absolute idealism left distinct marks on many an(prenominal) facets of Western culture. True, science was indifferent to it, and common champion was perhaps stupefied by it, but the great political movement of the 19th and twentieth centuries Marxismwas to a significant degree an outgrowth of Absolute Idealism. (Bertrand Russell remarked someplace that Marx was nothing more than Hegel mixed with British scotch theory. Nineteenth- and twentieth- degree centigrade literature, theology, and even art felt an influence. The Romantic composers of the 19th century, for example, with their fondness for expanded form, vast orchestras, complex rafts and soaring melodies, searched for the all-encompassing musical statement. In doing so, they mirror the efforts of the metaphysicians whose vast and imposing systems were sources of inspiration to many artists a nd composers. As we have said, much of what happened in philosophy later Hegel was in response to Hegel.This response took different forms in English-speaking countries and on the European continentso different that philosophy in the twentieth century was split into two traditions or, as we might think nowadays, two conversations. So-called analytic philosophy and its offshoots became the predominate tradition of philosophy in England and eventually in the unite States. The response to Hegelian idealism on the European continent was quite different unless and is known (at least in English-speaking countries) as Continental philosophy.Mean while, the United States developed its own check off of philosophycalled pragmatismbut ultimately analytic philosophy became firmly entrenched in the United States as hearty. Within Continental philosophy may be found various identifiable schools of philosophic imagination existentialism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, deconstruction, and critical theory. Two influential schools were existentialism and phenomenology, and we will begin this chapter with them.Both existentialism and phenomenology have their root in the nineteenth century, and many of their themes can be traced back to Socrates and even to the pre- Socratics. Each school of thought has influenced the other to such an extent that two of the nearly famous and influential Continental philosophers of this century, Martin Heidegger (18891976) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 1980), are big figures in both movements, although Heidegger is principally a phenomenologist and Sartre primarily an existentialist.Some of the main themes of existentialism are traditional and academician philosophy is sterile and remote from the concerns of real life. school of thought must focus on the individual in her or his confrontation with the world. The world is ill-judged (or, in any event, beyond total comprehending or true conceptualizing through philosophy). The world is absurd, in the sense that no ultimate explanation can be presumption for why it is the way it is. Senselessness, emptiness, triviality, separation, and inability to communicate disseminate human existence.Giving birth to anxiety, dread, self-doubt, and despair as well as the individual confronts as the most beta fact of human existence, the necessity to choose how he or she is to live indoors this absurd and irrational world. Now, many of these themes had already been introduced by those brooding thinkers of the nineteenth century, Arthur Schopenhauer (see previous chapter), Soren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche. All tierce had a good distaste for the optimistic idealism of Hegeland for metaphysical systems in general. Such philosophy, they thought, ignored the human predicament.For all three the universe, including its human inhabitants, is seldom rational, and philosophical systems that seek to recognise everything seem rational are just profitless attempts to overco me pessimism and despair. This impressive-sounding word denotes the philosophy that grew out of the plough of Edmund Husserl (18591938). In brief, phenomenology interests itself in the essential structures found within the stream of conscious experiencethe stream of phenomenaas these structures manifest themselves independently of the assumptions and presuppositions of science.Phenomenology, much more than existentialism, has been a product of philosophers rather than of artists and writers. only if like existentialism, phenomenology has had abundant impact outside philosophical circles. It has been especially influential in theology, the social and political sciences, and psychology and psychoanalysis. Phenomenology is a movement of thinkers who have a variety of interests and points of depend phenomenology itself finds its antecedents in Kant and Hegel (though the movement regarded itself as anything but Hegelian).Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, argued that all objective fellowship is based on phenomena, the data received in sensory experience. In Hegels Phenomenology of Mind, beings are treated as phenomena or objects for a consciousness. The world beyond experience, the real world assumed by inborn science, is a world concerning which much is unknown and doubtful. But the world-in-experience, the world of pure phenomena, can be explored without the very(prenominal) limitations or uncertainties.