Tag: History of Philosophy

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“Sartre in 90 Minutes” by Paul Strathern, Ivan R. Dee

“Sartre in 90 Minutes” by Paul Strathern is a introduction to philosophy and thought of French philosopher, novelist and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre.
The main content ‘Sartre’s Life and Works’ describes Sartre’s biography with his thought and philosophy. The biographical description describes from his complex private background, glorious school life, the experience of the World War Ⅰ, the unusual relationship with Simone de Beauvoir, to a great success and vogue of his existentialism after ruin of Europe and the world by the World War Ⅱ, to his sympathy with and commitment to communism and Marxism, and his political actions. (Although he couldn’t desert a particular bourgeois life style and an intellectualism by elitism.)
Sartre’s life was large quantities of drinking, smoking, caffeine, romances and writing. Strathern mentions Sartre’s brutal and excessive life style as the “chemical life”. He led a decadent life from his teenage. On the other hand he had an excellent philosophical insight and genius. In his writings, he emphasized human reason, right and freedom, but his private life was absurd and terrible. In a sense he was a very selfish “humane” person…

Strathern explains Sartre’s philosophy by important works “Being and Nothingness”, “Nausea” and “Existentialism and Humanism”, but commentaries to Sartre’s complicated philosophy in this book is short and brief. Thus Strathern make a excellent quotation below. ‘Another key concept of Sartre’s existentialism is that existence precedes essence. “This means that a human being first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and only defines himself afterwards,” according to Sartre. “There is no such thing as human nature, because there is no all-seeing God to have a conception of it… A human being is nothing else but what he makes of himself; he exists only as much as he realizes himself. He is thus nothing more than the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.”’
Strathern allots much of philosophical commentaries for explanations of Sartre’s philosophical background such as the concept of “contingent” by Immanuel Kant, phenomenology by Edmund Husserl, existentialism by Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger.

This book is only a short interesting biography of Sartre. You can read this as short interesting biography and introduction of Sartre.

Sartre in 90 Minutes (Philosophers in 90 Minutes Series)
Paul Strathern
Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1 June 1998
93 pages $9.95
ISBN: 978-1-56663-192-1
Contents:
Introduction
Sartre’s Life and Works
From Sartre’s Writings
Chronology of Significant Philosophical Dates
Chronology of Sartre’s Life
Recommended Reading
Index

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“Rousseau in 90 Minutes” by Paul Strathern, Ivan R. Dee

“Rousseau in 90 Minutes” by Paul Strathern is a brief introduction to the thought of Rousseau. Main content ‘Rousseau’s Life and Works’ describes brief Rousseau’s biography with his works, thought and theory. Strathern writes Rousseau’s up and down life political and diplomatic affair on Swiss and Europe amusingly. And he comments Rousseau’s thought focusing masterpieces “A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts” and “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality”, and concepts of “general will”, “natural law” and “social contract”. Author directly describe Rousseau’s ambivalent temperaments. One were his abnormal tendency, brutal sexual characteristics and roaming life style. Another were the genius for music and literature, and original novel consideration and view point to human nature, human right, politics and social structure.

On “Social Contract”, considering conflicts wills of individuals in a society, ‘Rousseau attempted to overcome this difficulty by introducing the concept of the “general will.” Human society was itself viewed as a collective individual, which retained its collective liberty because it subscribed to its own general will. The general will applied to all because it derived from all. This ensured both liberty and equality as well as fostering a spirit of fraternity.’
By Rousseau’s discoveries and thinkings of humanity, social inequality “general will” and collective liberty, people became conscious of “humanity”, “liberty” and “society”, and they caused the enlightenment, humanism, social reforms and revolutions. Then Strathern stresses on Rousseau’s thought caused romanticism, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, utopianism, communism, socialism, fascism and the social revolution of the 60’s. It’s a rough notion but it has truth at one aspect. I think they include adoption and misuse of Rousseau’s thought. Humanity is not only nature, it’s artificial thing. Also Straighten describes Rousseau’s humanity is a “typical human being”. Social reforms and revolutions includes communism and fascism were arised to settle “inequality arise from society”, but their excepted humanity were “typical human being”.
And expected freedom by “typical human being” is plain and nasty. I think there are two types of freedom (or liberty), freedom for justice or fairness and liberty for equality.
The important thing is Rousseau’s thought causes not only equality and “humanity”, but also prejudice and arrogance.

Also I think humanity is not only natural. Humanity is artificial, artificiality is a nature of mankind. Humanity corrupted by civilisation and culture, humanity also resist against nature.

Rousseau in 90 Minutes (Philosophers in 90 Minutes Series)
Paul Strathern
Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 9 April 2002
96 pages $7.95
ISBN: 978-1-56663-436-6
Contents:
Introduction
Rousseau’s Life and Works
From Rousseau’s Writings
Chronology of Significant Philosophical Dates
Chronology of Rousseau’s Life and Times
Recommended Reading
Index

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“Heidegger in 90 Minutes” by Paul Strathern, Ivan R. Dee

“Heidegger in 90 Minutes” by Paul Strathern is a brief introduction to philosophy of Heidegger. Main content ‘Heidegger’s Life and Works’ comments Heidegger’s life with and his philosophy from mainly his masterpiece “Being and Time”. First, this content describes Heidegger’s catholic background, and his abandon of theology and conversion to philosophy. Next it explains phenomenology and psychologism of his master Edmund Husserl, and Heidegger’s rebellion to Husserl’s philosophy. And he writes experiments of the World War Ⅰ and the great depression as political chaos and cultural chaos. This political cultural chaos and miserable condition made Heidegger criticized to traditional philosophy from Athens (Plato and Asistotle) to the Neo Kantian or the Hegelian, reevaluated the fundamental concept of being by pre-Socratic philosophers equal to Nietzche.
Then Strathern comments Heidegger’s chief work “Being and Time” by explanation of its principal concepts “Being (Sein)”, “being-in-the-world (In-Der-Welt-Sein)”, “Dasein”, “disclosedness”, “aletheia”, “essence of man” and the anticipation of death.
Heidegger thought philosophy focus on study of “being” itself. The central conception is “Dasein” which means the entirely “human existence”. Understanding Dasein is understanding own being, and it understands the being of beings at the same time. The core of Dasein is be in the actual world, it’s called “being-in-the-world” which is “specificity of our being” where “we ourselves are”. Being is not a mysterious thing, it’s everyday thing as “being-in-the-world”. So we understand it by “discloseness” of it. Heidegger’s an ancient Greek word “aletheia (truth)” means unconcealment. The unconcealment disclose our being and its possibilities, yet simultaneously we conceal all other possibilities. To choose one disclosure, beings cut away the other possible disclosure. Thus Heidegger arrived at the concept “essence of man”. “This could be done only by elimination the accidental and the trivial as we concentrate on the core of human being. Only by the anticipation of death is every accidental and ‘provisional’ possibility driven out. By grasping the ‘finitude of one’s existence,’ one frees oneself from the shallow ‘multiplicity of possibilities’ that life presents us.”

The commentary of this book on Heidegger, Strathern take notice of only main theories of Being on Heidegger’s major work “Being and Time” and background of the book. Strathern use German history, atmosphere and situation of the era, history of philosophy and biological description of Heidegger as for solely explain theories of “Being and Time”. The commentary on “Being and Time” is plain and short but essential, excellent and to the point. But it’s regrettable Strathern disregard Heidegger’s later philosophy, I think the thought has possibilities to beyond humanism, nihilism, problems of modern civilization (such as excessive advanced culture, technology and science), metaphysics and philosophy and human thought themselves.
This book is a only introduction to Heidegger’s complicated and tough philosophy. Its essence and overall characteristics in this small book. So I recommend this book to complete beginners to Heidegger.

“Comments and Criticisms” contains Heidegger’s writings and comments to Heidegger’s philosophy.

Heidegger in 90 Minutes (Philosophers in 90 Minutes Series)
Paul Strathern
Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 9 April 2002
96 pages $7.95
ISBN: 978-1-56663-438-0
Contents:
Introduction
Heidegger’s Life and Works
Comments and Criticisms
Chronology of Significant Philosophical Dates
Chronology of Heidegger’s Life and Times
Recommended Reading
Index