Peace, love, creativity: Hope of mankind; Existential man, part one

From the Great Hall of the Cooper Union in New York City. National Educational radio presents the Cooper Union forum series on peace love and creativity the hope of mankind. These programs were recorded by station WNYC our speaker on this program is Dr. William Barrett Professor of Philosophy at New York University. Dr. Barrett subject is existential man. Here now is Dr. William Barrett. I always find it hard to come back you know when you in fact tonight you put me in a rather retreat back that would reflect the mood I think maybe I remember correctly that many of you know when I first came here to talk about I love my subject that you know man that nevertheless is related to the subject of act of vandalism generally or that I remember that leave the issue of fact that it was a model in the background of what I said. And that I was making that now with all this talk

yet day and day. Could Now think of the situation then situation now. On my part of the pendulum. The lamb and I salute the man and I think it might be to the point that by indicating what that difference is what we like what I have at that time I don't mean that but it was a period when Americans were very becoming aware of them and had a very plain look down at the bank. You're kind of foreign products particularly particularly love the kind of movement at the moment perhaps the middle and happy in the end only happening and the caught up with the movement at

that time with friends from the league they call. Now I can live like a bird book with me in the mail. Call and then a lot of things edited by I think verified. But as I read it I couldn't help thinking about home of our own here. It was quite evident from the way and with the various Or rather it happened the collection of various aspects and various kinds of thinking in the end I couldn't like being amended by the fact that you wrote for the fan that and then you let them win now securely in it within the last month.

In fact sometimes if we are about to take over the establishment now you know in philosophy one has to look after dabbling with as one of them in other areas of life and I think that it will be in the establishment. But I definitely will indicate that held different and then shall I say in public in the public position now and I was tempted to go and that I don't know by the framework of my remarks tonight. I don't speak and act. Thanks all ma'am and let me come up for a little while oh exactly how I would find that creature and then it struck me that perhaps. And then you know ma'am one would have a big bad man I mean would you consider that man to be God.

God and man the Christian severity of self interrogation helped and then eventually that one type of man and a far cry from some of the other gentleman or would you mean for example the a man preached all about involving her more love wrestling with him and at least in the early and they were usually in terms of some very kind of Galaad psychology. Finding their hiding Gary n Matt and then a few groups like that man. There are at least two Heideggerian man early and late. Do you mean the man of Martin who put the game a

religious creature sat up and happened to be an every living creature. But hey we live in this cave in that thing and kind of dialogue with the God of the Old Testament. Well instead of acting then to man we could have a whole ballet effect the pencil man. And man we can organize in the current field. Well instead of instead of trying to single out anyone. And back or any one incarnation of existential man. I would like to venture something different and talk about what I believe will ought to be the next phase of actors then short man but the relief of thinking about the subject of a pencil of them will develop I'm sure corridor in the United States. I'm

led to do that by the fact that you see him when I recollect the kind of active sensualism one talked about say three years ago when I first bugged because this form and that there is a different orientation which has the power now in the late development of acts that are dying then to paid I think this least part of the development of existential man. Or perhaps I should say the fan of actors and shop man in the later writings about Back to move the French writer and the way the writings of Martin Heidegger German philosopher there are. But take a lap top of the list thinking but I'm going to highlight it to pinpoint my remark about. If I mention the fandom back then for man it sounds like I can have all the

movies sequin as some of you may remember the old movies way back in the 30s. They caught on with my many unexpected popularity and thought I would have to have one movie after another. Varying that. Well finally they haven't come up with a movie called son of heart that. That's what I want to talk about the Mac. But right let me. Come back to the old actor sensualism existentialism. I've been commonly understood what has been commonly understood by the American audience. And I am or sum up. The main point of impact it made on the intellectual sea. And I think the very thing that has been damaged is that by this time 15 or 20 years later

that it was not a happening movement in the sense of a passing fad or a passing breath or conversation. Or a passing particularly Geoffrion for those who way that they could share against those who are out. It has a family that has really being within the mainstream of the philosophical tradition of the West and in fact going back as far as you were on the plane that particular made me give you an example of what I mean by that. Recently Ive been reading Sartre pretty monumental book Being and Nothingness. Which in essence is a description of how human life. Vibrates. Continuously patchouli between the power of the being and man being. Inescapably south.

And I was reading and I thought this is really you know theme where have I heard this before and then I thought back by that who are actually the kind of questions which you find in one of the early for lack of a manatee back and here are quite 500 years before Christ. At that to do indicate the names of actors tend to listen very briefly. One could could do it in this way by saying there are. There are too many choices from which a lot of pain and philosophic reflection have originated. The first effect by Ara. Why me has this remark he says and in ancient times men look that the heavens and the O.R. and mama told them what they saw and they began to wonder

and to ask questions. Now this beginning and all and one which and questions about 90 year leave the bench relate to the physical sciences. It interrogate nature as a realm of objects whose truth of things to disclose. Now in this sense we might say the path of a laugh and they came to me hysterically that I began to eat all of the natural science. That would function. You will remember that as late as mid 19th century and the various professorships and in physics and chemistry with apprenticeships and in natural philosophy because the originally specialized natural sciences had come out of a certain branch of philosophy. I betted want him help which leads to the creation of philosophy I would call it the object defying impulse that end up with things to object

defied nature they as a realm of entities that can be scientifically and theoretically explored. But there was another and even all that statement of where he begins where in the human situation. Genuine philosophical punishment can be kind of self punishment. Begin we find a very good example expressed in the Greek amenity a more than 150 years before our stuff and what we find there and looking around at random people going about their particular design. People living in in effect now gotten darkness. Up hearing for themselves whatever truth they might possibly realize

living their waking life as if they were really a flea. This he says is the way of the ME and on the other hand there is the way of the philosopher who struggled to break through this particular my add up you write him into some sort of blend of being and truth in other words with some kind of freedom and lucidity in life this is why MBA. And philosophy here you theorize that from one experience of the human rather than from the cabinet. And I'm very big on the human being as one watches the people around one of one the perpetual being and me with seeming appears to be being hit by the really not being. Now as I was reading that I thought this is the same age old

saying in his book Being and Nothingness. He's showing how people can do themselves. They feed themselves how they are caught in their own negative crap. How their sincerity turns into the fall and so on. Again maybe perpetual conflict of being and seeming in the human situation and I would say this if you want to say where is the main stream of existential thinking I would go back to the very Arjun's of life in philosophy among the Greek philosophers before Plato and Aristotle. We fought back pretty who were caught as they watched the man in the marketplace the RAM in this particular vision of how human beings can pursue their life in a kind of blindness and the philosophic effort because the effort now matter what that most natural science but the breakthrough but somehow Televisa of human truth.

All right that was the first achievement that existentialism as a cure for itself I think. I'm talking now about the American for the American audience within the last 20 years. It doesn't belong in the mainstream of less than philosophy and in fact in many ways it changes the way we look eventually at the history of Western philosophy. But coming out that I think it's made an impact as a critique of the modern period. I'm hearing you now I'm jumping map and 600 B.C. to about well to the 19th century modern period who now would emerge from a period in Europe known as the Enlightenment. Joe this is how I met the talisman particularly notions of recent progress and of course the word Lightman was on the

main Enlightenment brought up by the light of a torch of reason now. The protests existentialism at the show were that but they have not been so easily re re allied. Or bad that they have not been realized at all. In this sense we might say we found the next essential ism in the 19th century Danish for law but here is a protest that in the name of the individual the individual mind you again have another a law to include the individual Imam absolutely totalitarian right and all that. So we may say that. A second impact that existentialism has registered in the contemporary scene is to make it much more aware of the fact that the

claims of certain types of rationalizing systems can be destructive of the individual. And of course you can translate that into social protest. But in the here and we're not talking simply about abstract philosophical rational systems but I'll set them to get translated slowly into the computer. Data Bank and so on so that pretty soon everyone every one of us in the nation will be enclosed completely in a log into some massive data buried somewhere now and around Washington again the protests of what we might call contemporary civilization. One of the main goal of the back and some of them was to attack what I call the vapid tooth paid by our civilization. That is

mild bias. Will indicate life is easy if only a by product. Life is only you go along in the American way of self. In the sense that my pavan existentialism was to revolve again but I could call the gigantic Harris the modern civilization and if we the other founding forces that nation had perpetually don't want or wanted that life wasn't a bed of roses. Life didn't resemble at all the pictures of it that we find in a newspaper advertisement that only the young and the beautiful well-dressed than the affluent really semi affluent really represented. It was important back then to lead them to point out the realities of such things as anxiety.

The fact that man is a time bound creature the imminence of death. The fact that the individual is capable of the radical liberty with the Liberty is not an easy thing and it may be terrifying. Because that raises the question how you want to use your levitating and people in that situation. Sometimes power from the choices they might make in a word at his pendulum again due to superficial promises that the enlightenment of the 18th and early 19th century had made about man marching into the New Jerusalem of a perfectly rational and possibly happy exit. Existentialism pointed out that the man is still bound by his human family and the sand repeating in philosophical terms that they can be found back in you know in the Bible that man is born and to travel as a

light up but now I think I think I haven't known that this general message of active centralism. And in fact in some way the pirate thing come down. And I'm out taking to be in the development side in the hackneyed fashion and the fashion which burlesque that in fact you know one of the unfortunate things about a society which has an immense reprehended information disposal which can in which people become rapidly not knowledgeable about anything is that we very don't reach the position about something that is very urgent where we have heard it all before and that we say oh yeah that back that up and I want about certain dangers in that location and then we tell you what we know what then. As if the

problem didn't exist at pressing length and I'm very good laying there even though we hadn't read all about it in Time magazine.