An extended tradition

“Reflecting on the classics of existentialism from the vantage point of contemporary thought reveals new dimensions in them, which in turn may suggest further perspectives on contemporary problems. By developing existential themes in dialogue with philosophers such as Daniel Dennett, John Searle, and John McDowell, for instance, Haugeland is able to read Heidegger in a way that reveals more to this thinker’s project than he himself might have imagined–or appreciated. The legacy of existentialism is not always identical to the legacy that the canonical authors may have imagined for themselves–a point that they, in turn, often exploited in their own dealings with their historical predecessors. Indeed, the very idea that Kierkegaard and Nietzsche–or Pascal or Augustine or Montaigne or even Socrates–belong to an extended tradition of “existentialism” is something of an artifact of how these figures were interpreted by Heidegger, Sartre, Marcel, Jaspers, and other canonical existentialists. Whatever suspicions this might engender from a purely historical point of view, it is unobjectionable as philosophy–especially existential philosophy, with its insistence that thinking is always a free, creative response to its own history.” — The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy) by Steven Crowell