Waking Life existentialism

The late Robert Solomon (co-author with Kathleen Higgins of A Passion for Wisdom, the first Intro text I used at MTSU) in Linklater’s film… 

 https://youtube.com/shorts/ZAwl5cz-_jU?si=EYxxynrnR-T1RCL2

"Three Big Things" (and one huge misreading)

Beware formulae. And beware statements like: [Nietzsche said] "that there is no essence to life, so the secret is to have fun and not worry too much about it." !!

Existentialism is (Winterton Curtis's) humanism

 Returned my old landlord’s book to the library, with a couple of inserted post-its to amuse and enlighten some hypothetical future borrower. Dr. C's pithy characterization of “the humanistic philosophy of life” remains the best I’ve seen. 

 

Arthur’s people, and mine

Arthur has come in for some harsh bashing lately, especially in The New Yorker. It’s not all undeserved. But I’m looking forward to his Vandy commencement and residency this year (a dear family friend is graduating) and appreciate his past contributions to happiness scholarship (and popularizing). And I share his positive feeling for ambitious and aspirational students. 

 “I was born to be a college professor and, in fact, have been on campuses since I was a baby: My dad was a professor. His dad, too. For me, academia is the family business, and mine as well since I took my first professorship nearly thirty years ago. The research is interesting and rewarding, but even more, the students are my people—ambitious strivers just starting out on what promise to be terrific careers and lives. They give me energy because they always are so inspired by ideas, so purpose-driven, and so enthusiastic.” — The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness by Arthur C. Brooks

‘the ethical sphere’, or simply ‘the world’

Regina was lucky, to miss all that anger and self-pity. But is sharing negative emotions really what marriage is for? And is ethics really just being judgmental? “Kierkegaard had no wife to talk to at the end of the day, and instead he wrote out his anger and self-pity in lucid, finely detailed prose. This was unusual, but his feelings were not: when we read his journals we recognize his ignoble sentiments because we already know them intimately. In his philosophy Kierkegaard interrogated the human habit of judging, so deeply rooted in our private thinking and collective culture that it is very nearly inevitable, and he called this ‘the ethical sphere’, or simply ‘the world’, because (like Plato’s cave) it surrounds and encloses us. But though the judgements of others are as difficult to avoid as our own, Kierkegaard believed that none of these human judgements is absolute or final. It is always possible, he suggested, to occupy a different place–for each individual belongs to a sphere of infinite depth, which he called ‘inwardness’, ‘the God-relationship’, ‘eternity’, ‘the religious sphere’, or simply ‘silence’. His writing opens up this sphere, right at the heart of life, and beckons the reader into it.” — Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard by Clare Carlisle

Frankl’s Yes, notwithstanding

9 months after his release from the concentration camps, Viktor Frankl delivered a set of staggering lectures about the meaning of life, which remained unknown to the English-speaking world for 70+ years. What a gift to have them now. https://www.themarginalian.org/2020/05/17/yes-to-life-in-spite-of-everything-viktor-frankl/

The dispassion of modernity

“What Kierkegaard sees as missing in the modern age is passion – not mere intensity of feeling, but a single, unifying purpose that gathers and orders a person’s whole life. Without such passion, existence breaks apart into disconnected fragments, each governed by its own narrow concerns.” —Daniel Goodman https://www.threads.com/@ploughmag/post/DXocTiwDcVq?xmt=AQF0rv92avkINQhCBo-xwc56hnnZoK0kPXE8WbkiItEWQighYWdQJ4dR_J06UnWhPcMk5pbE&slof=1

We’re All Existentialists Now | Issue 145 | Philosophy Now

“…phenomenology and its offspring existentialism together provide a stream of philosophy in which various thinkers have emphasised the role our embodiment plays, and it can be argued that the past year has provided ample experiential evidence they’re right. So a comparison between the thinking of prominent practitioners Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, may not only help us understand why we have felt so bereft at having to live our lives through screens, but also provide us with insight into why online life is so different from real life, and even explain some of the more toxic aspects of life lived through the social media lens…”

https://philosophynow.org/issues/145/Were_All_Existentialists_Now

Frankl & Sartre in Search of Meaning | Issue 162 | Philosophy Now

“Both born in 1905, Viktor Frankl and Jean-Paul Sartre were two of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers about the human condition. Frankl was the father of logotherapy and Sartre of atheistic existentialism. While both rooted their thought in existentialist philosophy, sharing several key foundation-stones such as the centrality of human freedom, they had contrasting perspectives on the origins and implications of those shared ideas, and so reached diverging explanations of human existence. The purpose of this article is to summarise their ideas and compare how their thoughts converged and diverged over certain existential questions.

Comparing logotherapy and atheistic existentialism is particularly interesting because these two philosophical currents are the product of two minds which lived in the same historical period yet experienced it in dramatically different ways. This was partly by virtue of them belonging to different ethno-religious groups...”

https://philosophynow.org/issues/162/Frankl_and_Sartre_in_Search_of_Meaning

Was Existentialism a Humanism? | Issue 53 | Philosophy Now

“…So what does Sartre mean by ‘humanism’? Humanism is a term that alludes to a shift in our intellectual and moral focus – from God to human beings. Sartre deplores a certain type of humanism, one that sees all human beings as ‘magnificent’, as people who must be loved no matter what they may have done, simply because they are human. Sartre’s humanism recognises that there is nothing other than ‘the universe of human subjectivity’, that we all have the potential to invent ourselves and change our lives, and that although moral values are created by individuals we still have a responsibility to every other human being.

The accusation laid at Sartre’s feet by those familiar with his novels, short stories and earlier philosophy, is that existentialism is not a humanism: it is a pessimistic and rabidly individualistic philosophy which leads either to a concern only for oneself, or to an abandonment of social action – the ‘quietism of despair’…”

https://philosophynow.org/issues/53/Was_Existentialism_a_Humanism

Existentialism is not a philosophy

Made my flyer for the fall existentialism course yesterday. Should have put this on it. “Existentialism is not a philosophy but a label for several widely different revolts against traditional philosophy. Most of the living “existentialists” have repudiated this label, and a bewildered outsider might well conclude that the only thing they have in common is a marked aversion for each other. To add to the confusion, many writers of the past have frequently been hailed as members of this movement, and it is extremely doubtful whether they would have appreciated the company to which they are consigned. In view of this, it might be argued that the label “existentialism” ought to be abandoned altogether.” — Existentialism From Dostoevsky To Sartre by Walter Kaufmann https://a.co/0hJm9sln

 PHIL 4200 – Existentialism (3 credit hours)-"The nature, significance, and application of the teachings of several outstanding existential thinkers." Tue/Thur 4:20 PM, HONORS BUILDING #117, beginning August 25.

TEXTS

• Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir,Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others
• Mariana Allesandri, Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves through Dark Moods
• Irvin Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept
• Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
• Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism" and other essays
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex & tba

RECOMMENDED (& on library reserve):

• Walter Kaufman, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre
• Todd May, A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe
• Susan Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters... Samuel Scheffler, Death and the Afterlife...
• William James, What Makes a Life Significant; Is Life Worth Living; On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings; & tba
• Soren Kierkegaard, tba...
• More tba

 

For more info: 

phil.oliver@mtsu.edu 

and

https://existjpo.blogspot.com/

The bridge

“No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.” — Friedrich Nietzsche https://substack.com/@philosophors/note/c-241447748?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

The bridge

“No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.” — Friedrich Nietzsche https://substack.com/@philosophors/note/c-241447748?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Sisyphus descending

Claude summarizes our conversation

The Jamesian Thread
Throughout the conversation we kept returning to James — his defense of experience against capital-P Philosophy, his insistence that religious experience has cash value even if its metaphysical claims are doubtful, and his sociable pluralism as a model for taking believers seriously without validating supernaturalism. Your own position as a "Jamesian pragmatic pluralist" — secular, humanist, yet genuinely respectful of others' experience — emerged as a principled and difficult stance that avoids both dismissal and condescension.

Secular Grace
The conversation closed on the idea that the fully inhabited secular life has its own raptures — what we called "secular grace." The Jamesian affirmation of existence differs from Nietzsche's in being constitutively social and democratically available: not heroic solitary amor fati but a shared, relational yes-saying. Sisyphus, in James's version, would compare notes with someone on the way back down. All of which, you noted, nicely foreshadows your fall existentialism course.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

https://claude.ai/share/d8099634-f9a2-4f24-9a28-804b3bc4a745

Claude on Goldstein’s 36 Arguments

https://claude.ai/share/d8099634-f9a2-4f24-9a28-804b3bc4a745

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Sisyphus happy.

https://open.substack.com/pub/celineleboeuf/p/must-one-imagine-sisyphus-happy-for?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

The More You Study Consciousness, the Weirder It Gets

Weirder and more wondrous…

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/opinion/eza-klein-podcast-michael-pollan.html?context=audio&smid=nytcore-ios-share