Rick Moen wrote: .........snip
Life is a dangerous business, various ethical ends and consistent ethical injunctions are proposed; the one Sartre proposes is that we accept full responsibility for our choices, or we will be found guilty of bad-faith !. Somewhat academic I would argue since regardless of whether one's current situation, is the consequence of one's choices or not; the problem is uniquely one's own. Perhaps I should have said ' the problem is uniquely,. necessarily and urgently one's own' Ah, a pleasure to meet another unfashionable existentialist.
Formally Existentialism is a category of Continental philosophy and certainly most of the speakers at the Existentialist Society;( which should really be called a forum since it has no membership); come from that tradition.The frequent attendee's probably tend more to that persuasion; but they are extremely diverse; self described as : Llibertarian anarchists, defrocked Christian fundamentalists, Buddhists, Progressive Atheists, Humanists, Rationalists, proponents of Islam , Judaism ... As someone from the scientific/ technological tradition with an interest in ontology, and the epistemology of science; I would have to say the scholasticism and semantic obscurity of Continental philosophy make it far from a natural 'fit'. So my existentialism is mostly to do with 'non-contingent choice'; of late I am starting to see a place for phenomenology but the significance of 'existence over essence' utterly eludes me ! I suppose my position relative to Analytical and Continental Philosophy; could be described as ' the former is language without content and the latter content without language'; as for the currently fashionable Post-modernism /begin rant/ 1/ Not post to anything, but in both it's aesthetic and intellectual aspects, a reactionary conservatism masquerading as a conceptual innovation 2/ It's defining notion of modernity, the self-serving construct, of a group of intellectuals unhappy with various aspects of the 20th century 3/ It's attendant notions of truth, critique,'deconstruction' and 'subversion' ; puerile sophistries because:. -Truth in the form of falsifiable-statements not only exists; but exists in a variety of ontologically different forms eg. objective, subjective, hypothetical and mathematical; perhaps even metaphysical -Critique is unnecessary when it is totally transcended (included and gone beyond) by 'enquiry'. -Deconstruction is unnecessary when it is totally transcended (included and gone beyond) by 'analysis'. -Subversion in the context of the process of science is simply false; science proceeds by transcendence (inclusion and going beyond); it is a tautological necessity that subsequent theories include previous as special cases 4/ It's notion of differing narratives implying different realities; seeming to confuse a single reality, described from different standpoints and values 5/ and finally language so obscure as to suggest little interest in communicating it's standpoint and theories beyond a small group of specialist converts /end rant/ regards Rohan McLeod