Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

by William Barrett

Widely recognized as the finest definition of existentialist philosophy ever written, this book introduced existentialism to America in 1958. Barrett speaks eloquently and directly to concerns of the 1990 a period when the irrational and the absurd are no better integrated than before and when humankind is in even greater danger of destroying its existence without ever understanding the meaning of its existence.

Irrational Man  begins by discussing the roots of existentialism in the art and thinking of Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Baudelaire, Blake, Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Picasso, Joyce, and Beckett. The heart of the book explains the views of the foremost existentialists—Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. The result is a marvelously lucid definition of existentialism and a brilliant interpretation of its impact.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychology, History, Classics, 20th Century, Art

314 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

William Christopher Barrett (1913 – 1992) was a professor of philosophy at New York University from 1950 to 1979. Precociously, he began post-secondary studies at the City College of New York when 15 years old. He received his PhD at Columbia University. He was an editor of Partisan Review and later the literary critic of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. He was well-known for writing philosophical works for nonexperts. Perhaps the best known among these were Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy and The Illusion of Technique , which remain in print.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

WE ARE STARLIGHT
WE ARE GOLDEN -
AND WE’VE GOTTA GET OURSELVES
BACK TO THE GARDEN!
-Woodstock

MAN IS A HOPELESS PASSION.
-Jean-Paul Sartre

“The story is told by Kierkegaard of the absent-minded man so abstracted from his own life that he hardly knows he exists until, one fine morning, he wakes up to find himself dead.”
-William Barrett

We ARE starlight. We ARE golden.

But WHERE in Heaven's name has our Garden gone?

You know, Christian Coming of Age is Tough. And I can't - unfortunately -
Tell You it's Gonna Get EASIER.

The great Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan writes that we are born Innocent. Guess what? That innocence is now BURIED, resulting in Existential Anxiety.

When I was reading this book during the very welcome Spring Thaw of March, 1968, I couldn’t fathom the title. Barrett called existential man irrational, but I felt that reading it was making me Rational - for the FIRST TIME in my life.

It was bringing all my random insights into sharp focus.

It was the beginning of many, many long hours of dry modernist Drought in my Soul! It was the book that introduced ANXIETY into my life.

Writing my SAT’s that Spring, at around the same time, didn’t help!

It’s good book on its subject, though. And I aced my SATs anyway. If I were to read it now at my far less impressionable age, I’d find much to interest me. It’s a real classic, and the one book on the subject I always recommend to young readers.

I had a very big impasse with absorbing its wisdom, though, in 1968. For not only was I impressionable, but my leanings were too affective. And the smoke of affectivity Stings.

And it’s notoriously difficult, if not impossible as Pessoa’s life proves, to assimilate the fact - once apprehended - of Nothingness into our postmodern consciousness.

When in May, at the end of my high school senior year, I studied the music of Bach for the first time, I was knocked for a loop, too. I was used to soothing tunes. More in keeping with the expertly conditioned, modern, unsuspecting teen I was.

For like John Bayley, the writer of the two close-up and personal Iris Murdoch tributes, I had studiously avoided getting knocked around in life. But when you open your eyes, the knocks are automatic.

And that was the year I started to open my eyes! But the hard knocks rolled into me continuously till 1970. Then the loose ends of my newly acquired postmodernism frayed fatally! I entered the Labyrinth.

It took me till my retirement to finally shake that deadly inner Minotaur, Dread - and my postmodernism - with Faith.

For I had seen that the ONLY way to defeat the Dragon of Anxiety was through a stark Christian acceptance and assimilation of the FACT OF MY OWN DEATH.

And in that dark night I found God.

Not a churchy God, but a God of austere common sense.

For the only Faith that lasts is a Faith of a Broken Survivor.

And by facing the face of our Conviction, in the face of the unalterable Divine alterity, we learn Acceptance of His Law.

Where does our anxiety come from?

It comes from SEEING OURSELVES THROUGH THE EYES OF OTHERS.

If you keep doing that, your Garden of Eden will become a Wasteland. Always keep your Door in the Wall OPEN - as in that great Edwardian short story by H.G. Wells... for it’s the door that leads back to Wonder.

Keep your Faith Green.

April is the cruellest month
Breeding lilacs out of the Dead Land

Don’t kill your innocence only to victoriously stomp over it... and do not go GENTLE into that ‘foul’ night.

Youth can be laid waste by the young too easily!

When I read Barrett, I somehow concentrated on Sartre - he seemed so cool. And the Land of my Soul suddenly became Dead. And all my lilacs were stillborn for years afterwards!

Sartre, you see, always SAW HIMSELF THE WAY “HE THOUGHT” OTHERS SAW HIM ... hence his Cool Image, to Win More Fans. Sound like social media?

And so - thenceforth - did I See mySELF. And thus my Self almost Died. Yikes!

Yes - almost.

If I hadn’t experienced a kind of drastic spiritual renewal 2 years later, I’d still be Dead.

It is a terrible thing to fall into the Hand of God, like I did, but it’s Fatal not to have the Faith that such an unpleasant experience gives birth to.

We ALL have our Gardens taken away somehow.

And the journey through the wilderness that finds our Promised Land, the journey that is our life, is long and hard.

Therefore Faith is a necessity - and, if we’re one of the lucky ones, it will be given to us in abundance when the time is right. But there are no such sure answers in these Modern Times.

For being kicked out of the Garden can really put the boots to you, fast. The important thing is to keep your hopes alive.

Keep that Door in the Wall ajar!

And don’t worry about the bullies - just keep following your Star.

You’ll make it, kid, don’t worry!

Because,

You are Starlight and you are Golden
And you’ve GOT to get back to the Garden!

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read William Barrett's Irrational Man back in college and was inspired to spend the next several years reading Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Kafka,, Berdyaev and Shestov. Quite a rewarding experience.

Having also participated in the arts and music and the study of aesthetics for many years, I revisited Barrett's book with an eye to what he has to say about existentialism's connection to modern art. Again, a most rewarding experience.

So, with this in mind, and also recognizing many others have posted reviews here, I will focus on The Testimony of Modern Art, offering three Barrett quotes coupled with my comments.

"The ordinary man is uncomfortable, angry, or derisive before the dislocation of forms in modern art, before its bold distortions, or arbitrary manipulations of objects." Barrett is pointing out the heart of the issue with modern art: it doesn't matter if the art is created by Picasso, Mondrian, Pollack, Dali or Rothko - non-realistic, abstract art is anti-middle class mindset, anti-Walt Disney, and counter to a routine, regimented, unexamined, on-the-surface way of living.

"Modern art thus begins, and sometimes ends, as a confession of spiritual poverty. That is its greatness and its triumph, but also the needle it jabs into the Philistine's sore spot, for the last thing he wants to be reminded of is his spiritual poverty." Again, if people in modern mass society today spend their lives in TV stupor, listening to muzak, preoccupied with the size of their houses and their cars and fretting over their pensions, this is spiritual poverty plain and simple. Barrett sees modern art as needle number one and existentialism as needle number two sticking and jabbing and pricking and poking people to wake up to the depths of their own human experience. Recall how Kierkegaard said he wanted to be the Socratic gadfly of Copenhagen.

"This century in art, André Malraux has said, will go down in history not as the period of abstract art but as the period in which all the art of the past, and from every quarter of the glove, became available to the painter and sculptor, and through them became part of our modern taste." This infusion of the world's non-Western traditions continues today. For example, if an American artist tomorrow combines realistic portraiture with Japanese brush strokes, any gallery-goer wouldn't think twice. Our modern day culture is truly a world-culture. Would you be at all surprised if your new next door neighbors were from India, China or Brazil; or, if another neighbor explores African dance or Kung Fu or Tibetan Buddhist meditation? The point Barrett is highlighting here is that the old, conventional, self-contained, exclusively Western categories that served Western societies for centuries are blown open by global future-shock. Thus, more fertile ground for modern artists, philosophers and writers.

One last comments, this one from the section The Rational Ordering of Society, where Barrett says, "In a society that requires of man only that he perform competently his own particular social function, man becomes identified with this function, and the rest of his being is allowed to subsist as best it can - usually to be dropped below the surface of consciousness and forgotten." If anything, with the advent of cell-phones, blackberries, I-pads and the internet, people are spending more waking hours fulfilling their role and function within society today then back in 1958 when Barrett wrote these words.

No doubt about it - reflecting and living one's life from one's spiritual and artistic depth is a great challenge in our brave new computerized world. Challenging but not impossible. Reading and reflecting on the existential philosophers is a way to reclaim our full humanness. I offer the following recommendations:

For anybody wanting to pursue a study of Existentialism, I would recommend reading the following literary works. All are short and each one can be read in a day:

Notes from Underground - Dostoyevsky
Metamorphosis - Kafka
The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Tolstoy
The Wall - Sartre
The Stranger - Camus

For those wishing to study Existentialism more as a philosophy, here are my recommendations (note: none are by Heidegger or Sartre, since the philosophic writing of these two authors tends to be dense and turgid):

The Meaning of the Creative Act - Berdyaev
Slavery and Freedom - Berdyaev
Attack Upon Christendom - Kierkegaard
The Dawn of Day - Nietzsche
I and Thou - Buber


William Barrett, long time philosophy professor at NYC and interpreter of existentialism, 1913-1992

[Szplug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, fuck it. I've tried several times now, and I simply do not seem to be (cap)able to put together what I wanted to say about Irrational Man—and nor do I feel right leaving as testament to Professor Barrett a mere one line encomium stating that I'd read him again, dude! Sure would! Hence, I'm reinstating the following unfinished and astray review that was rather sourly wiped-away the week past, with the recognition that I've depleted myself of the will and energy to pen anything further about Barrett's brilliant book.

I know that I am unusual in how I come to assess the merits of a work of philosophy, especially one such as Irrational Man, which puts a modern philosophical configuration under the expository microscope in order to both assess and critique the contributory intellections of its dominant exponents as well as trace its lineage through the long diachronic chain of Western thought, all towards determining how it evolved into its existent form and what, in particular, were the primary influences involved in nurturing its philosophical roots such that the entirety could bloom so fruitfully when historical conditions were propitious. I am incapable of—perhaps because uninterested in—calculating how accurately the author has interpreted the nuances and structure of a particular philosopher's theoretical output, whether he has correctly gauged the impact of an earlier school's thought upon its modern variant; my admittedly little experience being that, while a general consensus upon the core tenets of a select philosopher's thought has, in most cases, been reached and adhered to, when the details are dug into it can be difficult to find two experts who will find accordance in their interpretation. My peculiar and rather lazy stance is hardly one that's commendable, but there it is; I cannot bring myself to treat such material with the rigor required by academics or professionals—or even diligent Goodreads reviewers. Indeed, I am content to allow such brilliant exegetes as William Barrett proves himself to be to provide the navigational directions for wending one's way through a potentially disorienting maze—in the case of Irrational Man, that of providing the reader with an introduction to Existentialism as that loosely structured, modern outgrowth of Western Philosophy was configured a decade after the conclusion of the Second World War.

I loved this book. I don't necessarily love Existentialism—for that matter, even after soaking myself in the erudite bliss of each and every page of this perfectly constructed tome, I am uncertain if I could state what, precisely, Existentialism is. I do find myself moved to agreement with the author herein, who admits upfront that Existentialism had, at least at that point, fared rather poorly in establishing its credentials amongst academic philosophers, particularly those of the Anglo-American Analytic bent. While Barrett notes that Existentialism is possessed of a metaphysical-poetic bent, is drawn towards the murky depths of subjective exploration wherein perceived truth lies veiled beneath the inky and troubled waters of inner consciousness, in its attempts to root concrete, individual human beings in the existence from which they have been progressively and debilitatingly sundered it is acting in opposition to the very rational and systemic schools of thought which deem it to be of little worth in the pursuit of meaningful knowledge. To this the author bristles and suggests that such a limiting philosophical purview, one purged of the irrational, is indeed an expected result of our modern era's enclosure within the strictures of a dry rationalism polished to an arid perfection in the removed halls of academia; that Existentialism's very origin in the spiritual malaise of actually living individuals, its sustained attempt to address a profoundly felt irruption of unease in our destructive century of logical and technological gigantism, is what makes it a pertinent and valuable avenue of excavation of our still little-understood inner selves.

To establish his case, Barrett initially guides the reader through a measured observation of currents at play in twentieth century society, the angst and tremors of a raw finitude whose traces could be found in art, music, literature, and cinema—cultural trends acting as precursors to a study of the cause of their occurrence, canaries held aloft and in the vanguard of an uneven pacing through the Stygian tunnels of a conflict-permeated, uprooted, and fractured Western world. After stating that he will focus his attention upon four Existentialist progenitors and purveyors—Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre—Barrett makes links and connections between these four and a disparate collection of thinkers, spread across time and the breadth of Europe, who influenced, or were influenced by, the tetrad and/or each other. How far does Barrett intend to bring the reader back in order to establish his perceived chain of causality that led to our modern situation? All the way back, to the Garden of Eden.

For this is of great importance to Professor Barrett, indeed a familiar starting point for a number of those from our time who would seek clues towards how we lost our collective understanding of Being. With his focus, at all times, upon the Western lineage, the author ruminates upon the origins of our philosophical heritage, our quest for knowledge. Noting importantly that the Presocratics explored understanding with the demoniacal depths of our consciousnesses, the tempestuous gales of primal myth and a poetic attuning to our extent selves at play in the searching, the road to our modern condition began with the uneasy intermingling of Hebraic Faith and Hellenic Reason, the Theological wedded to the Rational. In Barrett's estimation, the former held the upper hand over the latter up until the rediscovery of the works of Aristotle, of which Saint Thomas Aquinas was the great systematizer; and the author positions Aquinas' espousal of Existence being prior to Essence—as against Duns Scotus' Neoplatonic championing of the reverse ontological ordering and the point at which unbounded Reason professed itself capable of illuminating every corner of God's universe in the delineating fulgency of man's focussed intellect—as the sowing of the seeds for an Existentialist philosophy to grow from. An exploratory expedition into these troubled waters charted by Reason thus transpired, begun with avid, confident enthusiasm that quickly shaded itself with the darkened hues of disquiet and doubt. A flag was raised by Descartes, who championed his mental processes as the proving ground of his own existence while sundering the realm of the mind from that of material phenomena, even as this scientific augmentation began to draw a slew of questions towards and about itself until, by the time we reach Kant, Reason had to be reigned in from the extent of its previous boasted prowess even as the inevitable effect it produced upon believers—who, augmented by its concentrated, questioning light, had begun to notice ever more cracks appearing in the base of their Christian faith—continued to be expressed in the terms of tortuous inner turmoil initiated by St. Augustine, burnished by Blaise Pascal and brought to a head under the barrage of subjectifying surmising carried out by the author's first choice for a more in-depth exploration, Søren Kierkegaard.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is about the book by William Barrett, not the 2015 movie by Woody Allen.

Wiki:

Irrational Man: A Study In Existential Philosophy is a 1958 book by philosopher William Barrett, in which Barrett explains the philosophical background of existentialism and provides a discussion of several major existentialist thinkers, including Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Irrational Man helped to introduce existentialism to the English speaking world and has been identified as one of the most useful books that discuss the subject, but Barrett has also been criticized for endorsing irrationality and for giving a distorted and misleading account of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Well I know I read a good part of this book, there's a fair amount of underlining in it. The underlining was done ~45 years ago. And the cover is very cool (Giacometti's Tall Walking Figure).

I've also used the index to help me put books on my "existentialism-wide" shelf.

So it rates four stars on those facts alone I think.

Perhaps someday I'll read it again, I know I'd like to.

And perhaps then I'll write a real review.

Or perhaps I'll write a real review without reading it again?

No No No ... I won't do that.

Because of the strikeouts I now give it five stars.

Listen, the book is a great read if you can get hold of it. Forget that this review tells you little about it. (If Woody Allen made a movie with the same name, you know the book is great. Witness "War and Peace" ... well, actually called "Love and Death", but close enough no?)

[Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not adequate to the task. I look at this . . . monument to Existential philosophy, and I face a void of thought yawning wide in the dark depths beneath my skull. How could I ever capture the thoughts and feelings I experienced while immersed in this sea of emotional and intellectual self-realization? This book is a startling revelation, and I am no prophet. Still, I will try to relate the unrelatable.

Barrett starts with a section entitled "The Present Age," relating the present-history of the Existential movement as it existed in the late 1950s to early 1960s. I have little to say about that, except to point you to an excellent treatment of Chapter 3, on "The Testimony of Modern Art," by the sagacious Glenn Russell. It was, in fact, Glenn's review that pointed me to this profound book.

Section 2, "The Sources of Existentialism in the Western Tradition" is where things really started coming together for me. Here is where one finds the clearest statement about how existentialism differs from all the philosophy (grounded in Plato, more or less) before it:

Plato's is the classic and indeed archetypal expression of a philosophy which we may now call essentialism, which holds that essence is prior in reality to existence. Existentialism, by contrast, is the philosophy that holds existence to be prior to essence.

In other words, we are not dealing here with metaphysics. That doesn't mean that existentialism and belief in a higher being are incompatible - Kierkegaard belies this - but regardless of belief system, the existentialist sees that there is an inevitable end to existence as we know it. In Pascal's words:

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frighted, and am astonished being here rather than there, why now rather than then.

But please be clear that this is not nihilism we are talking about here. Utter hopelessness is not necessarily the end result of existentialism (though Nietzsche's philosophy prophesied future nihilism, as will be noted later). In fact, it is the realization of the inevitable end that provides us with an appreciation for life. In describing a scene from Dostoevski's The Idiot, Barrett notes that the feelings expressed by Myshkin likely reflect those of Dostoevski himself:

In this story, which describes Dostoevski's own reprieve after he had been condemned to be executed by a firing squad, is the ultimate affirmation: in the face of death life has an absolute value. The meaning of death is precisely its revelation of this value.

In section three, Barrett provides an overview of the four pillar-figures of existentialism: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartres. Besides having the most difficult set of philosophic last names to pronounce, these four thinkers put forth complex, nuanced views on being (or, in the case of Heidegger, "Being") that comprise the canon of existentialist thought. Having no desire to rewrite Barrett's book in the for of a book review, I will just note a few items that I found thought-provoking and/or essential to the understanding of what existentialism is or what it is composed of, a 30,000 foot thought map, blurred by the high speed at which I pass overhead.

I was struck, again and again, by the simplicity of argument put forward by everyone except Sartres. Kierkegaard seems to be very much "of the earth" and balks between the lines at the academics, particularly the academic philosophers, who had gone before him. I don't have time to outline all the reasons for his feeling this way, but suffice it to say that his upbringing had much to do with it, as well as the broken heart he suffered when he gave up the opportunity of marriage to a woman named Regina. This choice that he had made comprised his existential crisis. He had given up love . . . for what? Philosophy?

Philosophers before Kierkegaard had speculated about the proposition "I exist," but it was he who observed the crucial fact they had forgotten: namely, that my own existence is not at all a matter of speculation to me, but a reality in which I am personally and passionately involved. I do not find this existence reflected in the mirror of the mind, I encounter it in life; it is my life, a current flowing invisibly around all my mental mirrors. But if existence is not mirrored as a concept in the mind, where then do we really come to grips with it? For Kierkegaard this decisive encounter with the Self lies in the Either/Or choice. When he gave up Regina, thus forever giving up the solaces of ordinary life for which he longed, Kierkegaard was encountering his own existence as a reality more potent and drastic than any concept. And so any man who chooses or is forced to choose decisively - for a lifetime, and therefore for eternity since only one life is given us - experiences his own existence as something beyond the mirror of thought. He encounters the Self that he is not in the detachment of thought, but in the involvement and pathos of choice.

Now, where Kierkegaard was a lover, Nietzsche was a fighter. Perhaps it was the progressive madness that slowly took hold of his mind toward the end of his life, but Nietzsche's thought was not simply that life should be examined through the existentialist lens, but that power, as expressed in his work Will to Power was something to be pursued in the face of the loss of God and the values reinforced by institutions that claim to worship God. In this way, Nietzsche becomes a prophet, in a way, for our day, predicting that future history (that which would come after Nietzsche) would be an ongoing struggle for the new value: Power. The end result of this struggle must inevitably end in hopelessness, which we can term "nihilism":

Power as the pursuit of more power inevitably founders in the void that lies beyond itself. The Will to Power begets the problem of nihilism. Here again Nietzsche stands as the philosopher of the period, for he prophesied remarkably that nihilism would be the shadow, in many guises and forms, that would haunt the twentieth century. Supposing man does not blow himself and his earth to bits, and that he really becomes the master of this planet. What then? He pushes off into interstellar space. And then? Power for power's sake, no matter how far the power is extended, leaves always the dread of the void beyond. The attempt to stand face to face with that void is the problem of nihilism.

Heidegger's existentialism proves to be much less fatalistic. In fact, one might propose that there is such a thing as existential optimism and, if so, Heidegger is its champion. At the least, one must view Heidegger as having a less-stark view of Being than Nietzsche. Rather than viewing the self as a "thing," Heidegger focuses on what it is to "be". This can be a difficult concept, but it is central to Heidegger's philosophy: We must not view our isolated ego as a thing that is within us, which is set up in contrast to the rest of the things in the world. Rather, we should think of ourselves as Being (I am using the verb-as-noun here, not simply the verb and not simply the noun) "spread over a field or region, which is the world of its care or concern." This Being, however, does not negate the self. In fact, Being our actual, true Self is the ultimate goal of anyone faced with the limits of their own mortality. Unfortunately, most of society chooses to bury itself in television, surrogate celebrity life, thrill-seeking, substance abuse, and any other sort of distraction that will numb the Self to the fear of facing its own inevitable annihilation:

Because it is less fearful to be "the One" than to be a Self, the modern world has wonderfully multiplied all the devices of self-evasion.

But, paradoxically, to gain one's Self, one must lose oneself. In this way, the true Self can become connected with Being:

To lose oneself in walking down a country lane is, literally, to lose the self that is split off from nature: to enter the region of Being where subject and object no longer confront each other in murderous division.

This is not to say that the experience of Being an existential person is something that comes on soft clouds on a comfortable spring day. No, it is quite the opposite. It is the prospect of death, the most stark and intimate of ends for each and every person, that opens the door to Being:

Only by taking my death into myself, according to Heidegger, does an authentic existence become possible for me. Touched by this interior angel of death, I cease to be the impersonal and social. One among many, as Ivan Ilyich was, and I am free to become myself. Though terrifying, the taking of death into ourselves is also liberating: it frees us from servitude to the petty cares that threaten to engulf our daily life and thereby opens us to the essential projects by which we can make our lives personally and significantly our own. Heidegger calls this the condition of "freedom-toward-death" or "resoluteness".

Now while the name "Sartres" is that which is most closely associated with existentialism in the eyes of popular culture, I would argue that Sartres was the great pretender. Read his work carefully, and you will see that most of it, at its root, is mimetic: an echo of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and even Heidegger. I say "even" because, while Sartres does echo the notion of self posited by Heidegger, he pulls the concept of Being back into the camp of Cartesian dualism from which Heidegger hoped to banish it. Sartres divides being into two kinds: Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself. Being-in-itself re-introduces "thingness" (my own, inadequate term) to the existentialist discussion. Barrett uses the example of a stone: "A stone is a stone; it is what it is; and in being just what it is, no more and no less, the being of the thing always coincides with itself." Being-for-itself is conceptualized as consciousness of being beyond oneself, spatially, temporally, and in the realm of possibilities and potentials.

This notion of the For-itself may seem obscure, but we encounter it on the most ordinary occasions. I have been to a party; I come away, and with a momentary pang of sadness I say, "I am not myself." It is necessary to take this proposition quite literally as something that only man can have the feeling of coming to myself after having lost or estranged me from myself. This is the first and immediate level on which the term yields its meaning. But the next and deeper level of meaning occurs when the feeling of sadness leads me to think in a spirit of self-reproach that I am not myself in a still more fundamental sense: I have not realized so many of the plans or projects that make up my being; I am not myself because I do not measure up to myself. Beneath this level too there is still another and deeper meaning, rooted in the very nature of my being: I am not myself, and I can never be myself, because y being stretching out beyond itself at any given moment exceeds itself. I am always simultaneously more and less than I am.

This passage shows the way in which Barrett has taken some complex ideas and boiled them down to their simple essence existence (!) and made them more easily digestible to the untrained armchair philosopher (I am looking at myself my Self). Barrett's synthesis of the preceding work takes place in his essay "The Place of the Furies," which, outside of some less-accessible appendices, wraps up the book. He notes that while some balk at the idea of irrationality as a viable philosophy, putting the idea of rationality up on an indestructible pedestal to be worshiped as some kind of god, that "despite the increase in the rational ordering of life in modern times, men have not become the least bit more reasonable in the human sense of the word. A perfect rationality might not even be incompatible with psychosis; it might in fact, even lead to the latter." But he does not negate the need for rationality, only that it should be put in its proper place alongside the irrational, both of them acknowledged as necessary to life. But he does warn that, without the irrational, as symbolized by the Greek Furies, humanity will lose the edge necessary to achieve full satisfaction of being.

The Furies are really to be revered and not simply bought off; in fact, they cannot be bought off (not even by our modern tranquilizers and sleeping pills) but are to be placated only through being given their just and due respect. They are the darker side of life, but in their own way as holy as the rest. Indeed, without the there would be no experience of the holy at all. Without the shudder of fear or the trembling of dread man would never be brought to stand face to face with himself or his life; he would only drift aimlessly off into the insubstantial realm of Laputa.

And, in order to remind myself of what I have learned here, I will return to this book again, perhaps many times. This one, while not a life changer per se (thought it would have been, had I read and understood it as a teenager), it is definitely a life informer. I can't fully express the rush of synaptical connections and emotional response that I felt while reading, no, studying this book.

Again, I am totally inadequate to the task.

I am Me!

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE PROEM:

Woody Allen's "Irrational Man"

I can't wait to see Woody Allen's 2015 film, which could almost be based on a fictitious novelisation of this work.

Joaquin Phoenix plays a philosophy professor called Abe (originally Martin in the novel), who overcomes an existential crisis by having a relationship with his student (Emma Stone)(Hannah in the novel).

I don't know where they get these names! Talk about crazy stupid love!





THE WAY OF TRUTH:

All That Is, Is One, Here and Now, Retrospectively

William Barrett was Professor of Philosophy at New York University from 1950 to 1979.

Barrett published this book in 1958. In it, he sought to focus public attention on the Existentialist philosophy that had emerged mainly in Europe since the Second World War. Not only did he summarise key works and concepts, he identified the sources of Existentialism in the Western philosophical tradition in a highly readable fashion.

While the book is largely a philosophical primer, it also reveals a broad knowledge of literature and cultural history. Barrett was an erudite literary critic and had been an Editor of the influential magazine, "Partisan Review", from 1945 to 1955.

The book was notable for being one of the first attempts to publicise the philosophy of Martin Heidegger in the United States. Although "Being and Time" was written in 1927, it wasn't translated into English until 1962.

The introduction and conclusion of "Irrational Man" set a context of broad cultural malaise in the twentieth century. The horror of the Second World War had given way to the prolonged uncertainty of the Cold War and the constant threat of nuclear destruction. Despite all the new appliances and white picket fences, there was much talk of alienation, nihilism and nothingness.

While at times this context seems a little dated now, the body of the book is still highly relevant to the cultural and philosophical underpinnings of this century.

To Be or Not to Be, That is Existence

The book made me think a lot about the word "Being".

I was going to have to get my head around it soon, anyway, when I read some Heidegger and Sartre, both of whom are discussed in the book.

The word "Being" in English is obviously derived from the verb "to be."

For a verb that is almost the building block of our entire language, it has some weird characteristics.

For example, when you conjugate it in the present tense, the word "be" doesn't appear at all. The conjugations consist of "I am, you are, he/she is".

On the other hand, when I think of the word "Being", at least outside the context of philosophy, I would really only ever use it in the expression "Human Being".

It's arguable that "Being" doesn't add much to "Human" in this context. Therefore, I've never really had much reason to think about its connotations.

However, when it is used in works of philosophy like "Being and Time" and "Being and Nothingness", suddenly it acquires a Germanic (or Gallic) gravity that makes you question whether ordinary English meaning or usage will be much help to you.

You'd think you'd be standing on solid ground when using this word. However, equally, you might not (be).

That That Is Is That That Is Not Is Not Is That It It Is

"That that is, is. That that is not, is not. Is that it? It is."

Compared with that, Aristotle is easy:

"To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true."


I wondered whether it might make more sense to use the word "is" to explain some of these philosophical concepts.

One connotation of the word "is" involves a linkage between two words or concepts: "The sky is blue." The word "sky" is the subject, and the word "blue" is the predicate. The word "is" is a copular word that links the two. It conveys the meaning that blue is a characteristic or quality of the sky.

A second, but different, connotation is that the first word or subject exists: "It is" or "I am" or "She is."

You can look at this connotation as a succession of increasingly abstract concepts: it is, it exists, it is real, it is a fact, it is true.

Thus, the word implies both existence and truth:

"What is, is real. What is, is true."

Without God's Ground of Being

Which reminds me of Hegel's statement to the effect that what is real is rational, and what is rational is real.

He also believed that what is rational and true is part of the Absolute Truth, and that Absolute Truth is divine, a part of the Spirit or God.

Working backwards, existence and reality and rationality and truth are grounded in God.

What, then, happens when God is dead? What happens when the ground beneath our feet (not to mention Heaven above) is removed?

Existence and Essence

There's another dimension at work here: the relationship between Existence and Essence.

Philosophy has always been plagued by arguments about whether Existence precedes Essence (or vice versa).

Barrett paraphrases Plato: to exist is to be a copy or likeness of an Idea or Essence. A particular thing or object exists to the degree it fulfils or satisfies the archetypal pattern of the Idea. Existence is understood as derivative from Essence. Essence therefore precedes Existence.

Barrett suggests that, for Plato, the derivation of Existence from Essence represented "the human project of an escape from the temporal into the timeless."

The problem for Barrett is that, "so far as he logicises, Man tends to forget Existence. It happens, however, that he must first exist in order to logicise." To this extent, Barrett seems to agree with Sartre, who asserted that "Existence precedes Essence."

Barrett sets his book within the framework of the relative precedence of Existence and Essence. At times, he refers to Existentialism and Essentialism. I wasn't previously aware that this connotation might have been the origin of the word "Existentialism". I had just received it as holy writ. I hadn't thought too much about what it meant.

Barrett therefore helped me to both understand and contextualise Existentialism in terms of the historical development of philosophy.

The Gang of Four

Barrett devotes about 30 pages to each of four philosophers to whom he loosely refers as "The Existentialists": Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre.

He recognises Heidegger's denial that he was an Existentialist. However, he also notes that Kant denied he was an Idealist! Whatever, he includes Heidegger, because of his definitive contributions to an understanding of Being and Existence.

I'll eventually write elsewhere about Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Here, I'll focus on Heidegger and a little on Sartre, pending further reading of both.

Let It Be

I'm conscious that this is only a secondary work, and that I've yet to read a primary work by Heidegger. However, Barrett has mitigated some of my apprehension about reading Heidegger, even if what I say here misconstrues either Barrett or Heidegger.

Heidegger's analysis of Being proceeds on an etymological basis. I've always been fascinated by etymology and what you can learn about meaning from it, as might be evident from my comments on "Being".

Heidegger considered that the noun "Being" caused people to think in terms of things or objects. This contributed to the ongoing philosophical dualism or differentiation of Subject (Mind or Consciousness) and Object (the External World).

Heidegger's response was to use the framework of Phenomenology created by Husserl. The Greek word, "phenomenon", means "that which reveals itself".

Barrett argues that, for Heidegger, Phenomenology represents "the attempt to let the thing speak for itself".

The Subject doesn't process the Object according to Platonic Ideas. By the same token, the relationship between Subject and Object changes.

Nietzsche had tended to see things as the object of our Will to Power, as objects over which we sought mastery. There is a power relationship between Subject and Object.

In contrast, "according to Heidegger, we do not know the object by conquering and subduing it, but rather by letting it be, allowing it to reveal itself as what it is...It will reveal itself, if we do not coerce it into one of our ready-made conceptual straightjackets."

For the rest of the book, Barrett reinforces, and adopts as his own, Heidegger's mantra, "let it be" or "let truth happen".

Existence in the Truth

Heidegger also analysed the etymology of the Greek word for "truth", "a-letheia":

"[It means] un-hiddenness, revelation. Truth occurs when what has been hidden is no longer so."

Man doesn't discover truth by throwing light on the external world. Instead, "Man is illuminated by letting Being reveal itself, and not vice versa."

Man must stand open, ready for experience:

"Without this open-ness, he could not exist, for to exist means to stand beyond himself in a world that opens before him. In this world that lies before him, open beneath the light, things lie unconcealed (also concealed); but unconcealedness, or un-hiddenness, for Heidegger, is truth; and therefore so far as Man exists, he exists 'in the truth'."

This open-ness occurs within a field or region of Being that Heidegger calls "Dasein" ("Being-there").

The Finitude of Man

At the same time, the flipside of "is" (or "being") is "is not" (or "not being"). Man is confronted by limitations. There are some things he cannot do. He is finite:

"Man, Heidegger says, is a creature of distance: he is perpetually beyond himself, his existence at every moment opening out toward the future. The future is the not-yet, and the past is the no-longer; and these two negatives...penetrate his existence. They are his finitude in its temporal manifestation."

As a result, Barrett adds to the above quote about Man living "in the truth", that "at the same time, because he is finite, he must always exist 'in untruth'" as well.

Barrett concludes:

"Truth and Being are thus inseparable, given always together, in the simple sense that a world with things in it opens up around Man the moment he exists."

Heidegger locates Man in the world. He tries not to differentiate Subject and Object, Self and Other, as profoundly as his predecessors. It's almost as if Self is with Others, rather than against them. "You and I are together in the same world."

In a way, the world is no longer threatening or predatory. Even if God is dead, Man is still grounded in the world.

It is only when Man alienates himself from the world that he suffers the anxiety and angst that has started to prevail in the modern world. It's Man's misunderstanding of Being that is the problem. Man's reason has led him away from Being and Truth.

The Whole or Integral Man

Barrett doesn't really explain his title, "Irrational Man". Has Man become irrational in his fear of Nothingness? Or does he need to embrace the non-rational, in order to cure his alienation?

The book doesn't so much encourage us to embrace Irrationalism.

Instead, it seems to argue that the distinction between Reason and Non-Reason is false or illusory, or that, if it is legitimate, Non-Reason is not necessarily inferior to Reason. We need both Reason and Non-Reason to exist in Truth.

Barrett believes that Man can become whole or integrated again, if he understands the nature of Being:

"Human finitude is the presence of the 'not' in the Being of Man. That mode of thought which cannot understand negative existence cannot fully understand human finitude. Finitude is a matter of human limitations, and limitations involve what we cannot do or cannot be. Our finitude, however, is not the mere sum of our limitations; rather, the fact of human finitude brings us to the centre of Man, where positive and negative existence coincide and interpenetrate to such an extent that a man's strength coincides with his pathos, his vision with his blindness, his truth with his un-truth, his being with his non-being. And if human finitude is not understood, neither is the nature of Man."

Lest Enterprises of Great Pitch and Moment Lose the Name of Action

Barrett argues that the advances made by Heidegger in understanding Being were not taken up by Sartre, who in his opinion remained strictly Cartesian in the duality of Subject and Object.

Whatever pessimism might be found in Sartre, Man's escape from Nothingness is to be found in his freedom to choose, which manifests itself in a Will to Action (as opposed to Nietzsche's Will to Power).

What appeals to me about Sartre is that he was what Barrett calls "an atheist engagé". Whether or not you agree with his views, he was engaged in political action.

Barrett is critical of the fact that Sartre sought to realise human freedom in revolutionary activity and Marxism (in addition to literature, which he also saw as a mode of action).

I'll explore this issue and others relating to all four philosophers in subsequent readings.



THE WAY OF OPINION:

THE FOLLOWING UNCREDITED VERSE IS PUBLISHED WITH THE KIND PERMISSION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WOOLLOOMOOLOO RESEARCH SCHOOL OF ODES AND DRINKING SONGS
["Australians, all, let us read verse.
It's here online for free."]

Existentialist Philosophy Down Under

Listen, this here's the rub:
To beat the dread abyss,
Head straight down to the pub.
We need to sink more piss.


I Think I Drink (Neither Too Much Nor to Err)

Philosophes! What rot!
There's not a lot'll
Work as well as what
Comes in a bottle!


On the Relative Finitude* of Irish Philosphers

If there's aught that
Beats nothingness
And being,
It's consuming
Pints of Guinness
And peeing.

* Finnitude?



MUCH ADO ABOUT "NOTHINGNESS":

Sergeant Schultz: "I know nothing."

Socrates/Plato: "I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."

Me: "I know nothing when I see it."

Lee Mckenzie: "I know nothing when I see it, and this isn't it."

Samuel Beckett: "Nothing is more real than nothing."

Me: "Nothing is more unreal than nothing."

Nathaniel Hawthorne: “To do nothing is the way to be nothing.”

Helen Keller: "Nothing can be done without hope and confidence."

Me: "Nothing is something that can be done without hope and confidence."

Samuel Beckett (Nell): "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness."

Woody Allen: "Eternal nothingness is O.K. if you're dressed for it."

Woody Allen [Female Character]: " [This Jackson Pollock] restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless, bleak straitjacket in a black, absurd cosmos."

Shakespeare: "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Me: "This is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Nikos Kazantzakis: "I fear nothing."

Jean-Paul Sartre: "Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm."

Me: "A worm lies coiled - like nothingness - in a bottle of tequila."

Jean-Paul Sartre: "Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself...Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose."

Jean-Paul Sartre: "Nothing can save Man from himself."

Me: "Nothing is perfect, unless if you're content with nothing."

F.M. Sushi (my wife): "You have nothing to worry about."

Me: "But...nothing is worth worrying about!"



SOUNDTRACK:

William Barrett on Existentialism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvfgA...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp2KW...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIkqK...

"You came to Heidegger through Carnap's attacks on Heidegger!"

https://luchte.wordpress.com/martin-h...

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Irrational Man in many ways is a book of its times. The fact that it speaks so acutely to us today shows how far--or as near (as the case may be)--we have moved since its publication. Professor Barrett has perhaps written the quintessential American book on existentialism. Many others have been penned since, but this remains one good place to start.

The movement and this work, I would argue, remain as relevant as ever. The existential threats may have changed--as we have swapped the threat of annihilation by nuclear war for the slow moving train wreck of climate change. And the state of technology may have advanced--all the better to remain affixed within various bureaucracies and to remain captivated within the aesthetic stage of consciousness. But the question of Being, the issue of the grounding of man's existence which is at the heart of this book, that remains the same since the time of publication and has not been definitively answered since then. It was certainly covered over very nicely. And we as a society have fled it like Professor Barrett's successful businessman has avoided Being during his fancy vacation. Nevertheless, the issue is there for us when we come home again.

There are a couple notable limitations. Where it was mentioned, Barrett's treatment of women's psychology comes across as dated. In this sense, his treatment was a product of the time and the limitations of America in the late 50s. In addition, Barrett's gifts, while endowed with the descriptive and interpretive arts as befitting an American professor, are modest in deed compared to the preeminent philosophers whose works he describes and interprets. Barrett has succeeded at the task he set out for himself; but we should remain mindful that the task is considerably more modest than that assumed by the movement's originators.

As credited in the book, existentialism was a total European creation and was the next to last philosophic legacy of Europe imported to America. Unlike the better known European originators--Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre and the like--Barrett was not providing an original theoretic elaboration of existential philosophy. Rather, Barrett was setting the movement in its context, detailing its precursors, and providing an exegesis and interpretation of the major theorists behind the movement; this work is a contribution in facilitating its import. In this sense, this is a quintessential American treatment on existential philosophy.

Most importantly, this book was fun. Well as fun as a book can get that deals with life and death. Literature and philosophy can and should be fun. Life is too short for boring and dry books that reek of monasteries, psychiatry wards, and hermitages of various vintages. Reading Irrational Man feels like the NYU lecture hall where the first drafts of its pages were undoubtedly originally produced as lectures. A romp through it has the sober and vital energy of meeting with a late 50s NYU professor at a Greenwich Village coffee house. Grabbing a cup of coffee and a read through this book will take you there too.

[M. Sarki · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most enjoyable and rewarding books on philosophy I have ever read. Next to Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia a most important book still for our time.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was assigned reading for Howard Burkle's Philosophy 215 class, "Existentialism", at Grinnell College. It was also the first class I ever took with him and a reason I switched majors from History to Religious Studies, the new department he chaired.

Although I had read a good deal of Camus, both fiction and non-fiction; of Nietzsche and of Sartre, I really didn't know much about existentialism approached philosophically. Indeed, I had only taken a miserable Introduction to Philosophy and a dubious Aesthetics course from the department previously. My high school hadn't offered anything in the field whatsoever except as mentioned in history classes and such little background as I'd obtained on my own was primarily political philosophy or, as in the case of Nietzsche, philosophy which I'd read from the perspective of psychology. This book was helpful as regards Nietzsche and inspired me to read Kierkegaard. Sartre and Heidegger were, as he presented them, of less interest. Primarily, however, Barrett provided me with the historical and intellectual contexts within which to understand the issues raised by and of concern to existentialists. Indeed, I started calling myself an existentialist and in some sense still do.

[B. P. Rinehart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though a little intermediately dated this is still a good book to introduce you to Existentialism or at least what it looked like in 1958 when Sartre and Camus...and de Beauvoir were active. This is the book that introduced much of the english-speaking world (not just the academy) to Existentialism in detail.

It is 11 Chapters divided into four parts, one on the present (1958) state of existentialism, the sources of existentialism in the "western tradition", 4 Existentialist that William Barrett feel are the most significant, and an epilogue juxtaposing the significance of the philosophy in response to the Cold War. I will be focusing the majority of the review on The Existentialist part but I do want to give a brief summary about the book before it.

One is very much reminded that this was written by a man who spoke well in the language of the "New York intellectual" and really the beginning of this book, while it does a decent job, is stuffy and as hell but necessary to read through and one feels that Barrett himself was anxious to get at least past chapter 4 after which he starts to come alive. This book felt like a burden until chapter five when he got to Blaise Pascal-from then on it felt like the actual book began (Part 1 is like a prologue in disguise).

Before I get on with the book I did want to bring up something that did bewilder me a lot. Although he only discusses 4 Existentialist in detail he gives some [brief] summary to a lot of others that are rarely if ever mentioned now like Miguel de Unamuno, Karl Jaspers, and Martin Buber for example; one person who is brought up only for a brief mention and never mentioned again is ALBERT CAMUS! I still don't understand why. It was known that Camus had long split from Sartre over communism (which Camus opposed) and always refused the label Existentialism for his work despite it being just that. But oddly enough Martin Heidegger, is one of the 4 detailed philosophers also rejected the label just as much as Camus if not more. What makes it even more absurd is that just the year before this book got published Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature so he was not unknown to the public and in fact Barrett himself names him as on of the leaders of the movement so I don't understand why he could not feature him more. But now to the main topic of this review...

First of the four biographies/examinations of philosophy (I should have pointed out that these aren't as much on the person's life as on their philosophical views and how there lives influenced it) is on Søren Kierkegaard. I was paying very close attention since this is my favorite philosopher period and I was around the same time reading The Sickness unto Death which figured prominently in part of this biography. He did a good job. Not a great job as he was very safe but I couldn't ask for a more balanced and thoughtful review and this being some one I was well acquainted with the chances are low he could have impressed me or tell me something new.

Next was Nietzsche. Now I knew a fair bit about Nietzsche before this though i was not as familiar with his work-mainly because he is so overexposed without ever being read or truly took seriously (every time someone mentions his name I begin to role my eyes, it is because I know they are about to misquote or half-ass the man and/or his work and he deserves a little more respect than that. I like that he remains so fair and objective (as one can possibly be on Nietzsche) as he goes through his life and philosophy. He doesn't let a single catchphrase stop him from seriously analyzing the man.

Now of all of the bios, the one that he was most exuberant and generally most detailed was Martin Heidegger. You start to see that he nearly fanboys at Heidegger yet is still able to give a very well and easy to understand breakdown of his philosophy and I was very impress. It seemed to Barrett that Heidegger was the most developed of all the Existential philosophers while also referring to his work as a "temple without a shrine" waiting to be filled by someone. It has at least made me more curious about Heidegger's magnum opus: Being and Time. One thing that he does fail all together mention is Heidegger's membership to the Nazi's which he never publicly apologized for though he did call it the stupidest mistake of his life in private. This membership caused Heidegger's work to be unofficially blacklisted by universities around the world until the late 1990s.

The last philosopher profiled is Jean-Paul Sartre. Barrett has a very mixed relationship with Sartre. On the one hand he deeply admires Sartre for his boldness, his involvement in the French Resistance, and the fact that his name-at that point-was almost synonymous with Existentialism. But on other hand he feels that his philosophy falls short, that it is 2/3 were it should be and he gives reasons for it. Barrett says that while Sartre realized that Existence proceeds Essence he failed to realize that Being proceeds Existence. He says, as I quoted in an update, "Sartre...is the one existential philosopher who does not deal with the prime question of...nearly all the Existentialists-the question namely, of a truth for man that is more than a truth of the intellect." He blames this lack of development on two things. One, that Sartre is highly reliant on the philosophy of René Descartes to unhelpful limits. Two, that his struggles with the intellectuals of Communism distracted him from developing his philosophy more. Now Sartre was in love with the Communists but could not reconcile their philosophy with his and he struggled for the latter part of his life fruitlessly trying. Barrett argues that Sartre's philosophy was already miles ahead of the best Communist intellectual and that his struggles, while producing some amazing work, ultimately stymied him in the end.

I liked this book overall and will recommend it to those wanting to introduce themselves to existential philosophy. I will still recommend reading actual philosophers and it seems I will be on my own for learning about Camus but please check this book out learn how to become an Irrational Man.


Bonus: Here is part 1 of an interview with Professor William Barrett on Heidegger which mentions this book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvfgAv...

[Morgan Blackledge · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to Barrett, existentialism emerged in the interstitial zone between the age of monoculture, faith and religion, and the age of secular humanism, science, democracy, industrial capitalism and multicultural awareness.

Barrett asserts that the devils bargain embedded in the western enlightenment was intractable pervasive, groundless, generalized uneasiness, fear and dissatisfaction i.e. anxiety.

Barrett posits that the works of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre and Heidegger (what we now refer to as existentialism) were all in one way or another, attempting to stabilize and orient in the afore mentioned anxiogenic conditions of modernism.

Today, it’s safe to say, that most people from western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) cultures are fairly comfortable, or at least familiar with the notions that (1) there is no god, at least no anthropomorphic deity in the literal sense, (2) subjective truth is largely socially constructed, and what we refer to as objective truth is inextricably founded in the subjective (3) other cultures have equally valid perspectives and practices that differ from western culture, (4) we’re all going to die, and (5) there is no consciousness after brain death.

I’m not claiming that all WEIRDo’s firmly agree on all that stuff.

Clearly not.

Only that most WEIRDo’s are familiar with these notions, and have very likely smoked a joint and talked about it in college at the very least.

But at the time of the emergence of existentialism.

All of that 1-5 stuff was sill pretty novel.

And it made people feel a certain kind of awful that many of us here in 2021 take as a basic fact of life.

Barrett asserts that much of the reason we are all fairly comfortable with this particular form of discomfort, is because many of the cutting edge findings of existentialism are now thoroughly assimilated in our culture and essentially appear to us as common sense.

WARNING:

This is an older text (1958).

And as such, contains a whole bunch of language and ideas that many of us would consider super-duper problematic today.

In fact, Barrett would be canceled by Gen Z in about two fucking seconds if this text were dropped in 2021 without a serious ‘wokeness’ edit.

That being said, there is real value in this text, if you can possibly get over your hypersensitive, virtue signaling for tic toc self for half a fucking second.

Barrett is a fantastic example of the erudite (in the best sense) modernist scholer.

Barrett makes it abundantly clear that existentialism was as much a literary and art movement as it was a stream of (non academic) philosophy.

In fact: Barrett will make you feel downright illiterate unless you’ve read the complete works of Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky, seen the complete works of Brecht and Beckett, and are completely fluent in modernist paining and sculpture.

Passages from this text are beyond beautiful, and absolutely drenched in layers of poetic image and meaning.

The sprawling, wild nature of this writing seems both antique and fresh.

The age of this type of scholarship is TOTALLY over.

Because progress.

But man alive.

It is still absolutely edifying and humbling to experience.

More to say.

Only, I’m not even smart enough to review this book.

5 (banal, tiny, insignificant little) stars ✨

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book blew me away as I read it all in hour after hour one hot June night in Boston. I underlined the Heidegger chapter so thick, the friend I borrowed it from wouldn't hear of me giving it back.

A special moment in my personal reading history.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book did somewhat gloss over the phenomenological roots for existentialism and tells the story teleologically with Sartre as the inevitable end point of the beginning of a new way for dealing with modernity without stumbling in the dark or for allowing a burning flicker of rationality hence his title Irrational Man: A study in Existentialism. That’s fine. Kierkegaard to Nietzsche to Heidegger with a little Husserl, Hegel and Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus is a reasonable way of telling the story. The author filters the story all through a lens of his 1958 reality with its hopes, fears, desires, and wants and paranoia of his time period slipping through including an ad mixture of psychoanalysis mumbo jumbo and Marxist scare mongering after all it is the 1950s and Sputnik just happened and Freud and Jaspers are still relevant.

I would say that if I had read this book in 1958 I would have embraced it as a great introduction to that new French philosophy that us 1958 Americans were hearing so much about and would think to myself what a wonderful book and would say please tell me more, today, not so much.

There’s a reason why existentialism is completely passé today and it should have been obvious then. MAGA hat wearing brain dead cretins today would embrace existentialism if they knew how to read beyond 144 characters because it justifies their stupidity because we can always blame the individual by appealing to ‘will to action’ from their own choices that they made, and, for example, as Pierre is not a waiter, he’s just playing at being a waiter, and within the convoluted existentialism paradigm we know that homosexuals are not really homosexuals because there is no such thing as homosexuals there is only homosexual acts after all ‘existence precedes essence’.

Even within the author’s flattering exposition on Sartre’s existentialism, some of Sartre’s bizarreness on masculinity paradigmatic nonsense and its incoherence seeps through within this book and Sartre’s equally bizarre existentialist psychoanalysis absurdity get mentioned and that should have acted as a warning sign for the astute reader of 1958. There’s a reason why existentialism is just a footnote today. Not to beat a dead horse, but existentialism has freedom as an end in itself for its own sake and when freedom is the end all be all that means there is no place for equality since with perfect freedom of the individual there is no equality. Once again, that leads to MAGA hat wearing brain dead fascist because at the heart of fascism there is anti-equality except for the self selected in-group as ordained by the cult’s leader where that selected in-group gets to be more equal than all others and are entitled to the special brand of freedom, all other groups not so much.

Appendix two of this book brings up Kant’s formulation that ‘existence is not a predicate’. That discussion had reminded me why I get bothered by Sartre as a philosopher and I see him as a lightweight. Heidegger wrote Basic Problems of Phenomenology and Sartre wrote The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness both covering similar material and both speaking about ‘existence is not a predicate’. The difference between the two discussions shows Heidegger as a superior philosopher. BTW, I would say this author’s discussion on Heidegger was fairly succinct and worthwhile.

There’s a more recent book that I would recommend over this book that covers Existentialism by putting it into a more relevant context At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Blackwell. Barrett muddles his story telling by losing some of the context and skipping some of the more relevant history in particular the earlier phenomenology influences. There are two books that I’ve recently read that would go contra with what Barrett is saying, the first, Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered would squarely put Kierkegaard within his environment of Denmark and mostly reacting to his fellow Danes and not reacting to the German Idealists as this author paints him and moreover it puts Kierkegaard into the camp of a non-philosopher and more of a theologian if anything, and the other book A Thing of this World by Braver would tie these thinkers mentioned in this book under a more appropriate banner of anti-realism as started by Kant as a reaction to all of philosophy that came before him.

If I suspend my dislike for what Sartre wrote in his 500 page incoherent book Being and Nothingness and just ignore how it would mostly appeal to high school students or fan boys of Ayn Rand, I can say this book is worthwhile today as a window into how 1958 thought about itself and how Existentialism was introduced to this country. BTW, there is one nice thing I can say about B&N, it introduced me to Hegel and for that I will always be grateful. Also, I would highly recommend the play available on Youtube called ‘No Exit’ with Harold Pinter, you’ll start to see why Sartre’s system is flawed and doesn’t work today while at the same time how it could affect me at a visceral level when I was 12 years old.

[Tavan T · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great exploration of Existentialism and its proponents (some of which are not commonly thought of as existentialists but are nonetheless). It also effectively conveyed the idea that there is a bit of absurdity in reason as there is in all human endeavors. It also subtly argued for the acceptance of theism. There were a few tangents but I would definitely recommend it. I will be reading it again in the future

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Irrational Man, published in 1958, provides a survey of existential philosophy, its roots, and its place history. As cover proudly claims, it does indeed handle these topics in a "lucid" way. William Barrett comes off as the kind of guy you would like to have as your introductory philosophy professor, able to explain elusive concepts in a clear (yet not condescending) manner, summarizing such massive works of thought as Aquinas's Summa Theologica, Kierkegaard's Either/Or, Heidegger's Being and Time, and Sartre's Being and Nothingness.

While his historical survey is impressive, his treatment of the four major existentialist figures that he presents - Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre - is biased. Barrett clearly favors Kierkegaard and Heidegger, calling Nietzsche mad and Sartre, essentially, a squanderer of enormous talent.

Barrett is also clearly a product of his time, for better or for worse. One the one hand, it's refreshing to read a book about philosophy without an intrusion from good ol' Postmodernism. One the other hand, Barrett's thought bears the influence of psychoanalysis and the vestiges of a much stronger patriarchy. He occasionally throws in the classic stereotypes about gender, such as seeing the male as active and the female as passive. For example, he derides Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir with the following sentence:

"...consider the pathology of an ordinary woman. Not of the women one meets in Sartre's novels or plays; nor of that woman, who wrote a book of feminine protest, The Second Sex, which is in reality the protest against being feminine."

However, I don't want to deride Barrett too much. The task he set before him was immense, and he synthesizes all the relevant knowledge very well. Also, I know the gender criticisms brought against him are serious, but, in a way, I feel that it is judging him ex post facto. Irrational Man was a gift I received from a friend, and I'm glad to have engaged with it.

[bennett · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book contains—and I do not say this lightly—the most shallow (and misleading) reading of Nietzsche that I’ve encountered. Yes, it’s ****** ******** level scholarship.

I’m somewhat thankful for Barrett’s apparent love of Kierkegaard after suffering through the inane disparagement of Scruton and the baffling omission in Russel’s history. Still, his bias for Kierkegaard & Heidegger over Nietzsche & Sartre is appallingly obvious; it doesn’t do much to damage his understanding of the former, but effects a distortion nearly too removed for caricature in his distillation of the latter. Some fun facts I learned about Barrett’s Nietzsche:

- the “ego-inflation” supposedly marring his later writings is evidence of a form of neurosis beyond normal neurosis
- his whole life (!) displays evidence of precarious mental stability and intelligence
- his “poetic” content is so great because it breaks the restraints of reason and therefore provides the reader with more profound thoughts than his more systematic philosophical work
- man in his present form is a deficient monstrosity (only the life of the Übermensch holds any value, of course), so this eternal reoccurrence business doesn’t sound too nice
-Nihilism is a perennial issue begotten by the will to power, but can’t flesh out why that could be!
- out with the old values, because we have a better one to replace them: power
- the Übermensch is actually a utopian ideal, just like Marxism. Seems a commune of Übermenschen just can’t be😔

It’s really not surprising that an attempt at pathologizing a philosopher to understand his thought ends so poorly.

[Simon Brass · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very basic introduction to existential thought which does not provide much apart from a general summary of the works of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Sartre. The summary of Nietzsche is not particularly thorough or informative, and Barrett's dislike of Nietzsche comes through in the writing, rather than providing a balanced account of his work. He also seems to have an affinity for Kierkegaard and particular 'issues' with Sartre, which again detracts from the idea of an 'objective' reading. Perhaps my bias against these sort of 'summary works' is showing and I should mention that I have read quite a lot of the author's works themselves, which may be the reason I found Barrett's writing rather dull and vacant.

[Kilburn Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is good and bad. Good because it explains lots of things. Bad becuase it mentions a ludicrous amount of books, that I want to read. Maybe that's what makes it good. Was going to read Being and Time. But now I will read something completely different.

[Bunbury · Rating 5 out of 5]

In an engaging crispy fresh style, William Barrett freely associates all kinds of topics concerning life and Existentialism.

[Simo Ibourki · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction and analysis of existential philosophy and the continuing war between the rational and the irrational man.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great overview of the existentialist philosophers. However, like most academic writings of this nature, the author tends to be most effective in the earliest half of the book and diminishes somewhat thereafter. Instead of the conclusive crescendo I expected, Barrett ends with two relatively boring appendices that are not at all indicative of the wonderful writing and organization that characterizes the earlier parts of his book.

American Anti-intellectualism

Barrett gives exhaustive and well related explanations for the rise of existentialism; and from time-to-time laments the general anti-intellectualism of most of the U.S. population, whom he characterizes as inheritors of Platonian, Aristotelian, and Enlightenment indoctrinations. Barrett sees existentialism in the West as the inchoate attempt to see beyond these traditional points of view; he writes: “The desire for meaning still slumbers, though submerged, beneath the extroversion of American life.”

And indeed, life in the United States is, for the most part, and for the greatest majority, extroverted. Outside of academia, it is not at all easy to find others willing and capable of discussing philosophy, sociology, or even religion. Our mothers have told us that we should avoid speaking of religion or politics in polite society, for fear of offending another. Our goal of being a “good fellow” overrides the more profound goal of dialect and synthesis.

Few Americans have honed the art of listening. We seem to feel most comfortable with conversations characterized by incessant banter and meaningless chit-chat that centers around nothing very substantiative. For most Americans, the introspective Existentialist would be looked upon as an oddball, loner, or weirdo. And that which Americans categorize as “social skills”, the existentialist would most likely find quite frivolous.

Learning to See the Dark Side

Existentialism has been rejected by many Americans as merely psychology or nihilism because they prefer to ignore matters such as anxiety, death and conflict, as too sensitive for discussion. Regardless, these are factual themes of life. People do indeed die. So many times, I’ve heard the dying who wish to discuss what will happen when they die told by their consolers: “Oh, don’t speak of it, you’re not going to die!”. We’re all caught up in a giant conspiracy of denying or ignoring the things that are most difficult.

Barrett speaks a lot about the problems of Positivism in American life, something we have obviously seen with the Progressive party; and Barrett defines “Positivist Man” as one: “who dwells in the tiny island of light composed of what he finds scientifically meaningful, while the whole surrounding area in which ordinary men live from day to day, and have their dealings with other men, is consigned to the outer darkness of meaningless.” Here, one can’t help but think of the Progressive, FBI agent, Peter Strzok, who recently vented his disgust of ordinary men in his texts to Lisa Page about the occupants of a Southern Virginia Walmart. This kind of personal disengagement from the broader population segregates an elite class, which sees the masses as mere objects, no different from crops or trees, from which they simply exploit the resources they need. Existential philosophy is a revolt against such oversimplification and attempts to grasp the image of the whole man, even where this involves bringing into consciousness all that is dark and questionable, including the blubberous and unbathed visitors to the local Walmart.

Peeking Out From Behind Religion

Historically, we have cloaked the dark side of existence with ostentatious religion, which we tend to return to anytime the ugly specter of darkness rears before us. But, since medieval times, this cloak has been slowly dissipating amidst the progress of intellect and science. Protestantism has assisted in this endeavor by stripping away many of the images and symbols from medieval Christianity. The advent of Protestantism initiated a long struggle toward existentialism.

Protestantism succeeded in raising the religious consciousness to a higher level of individual sincerity, personal soul-searching, and generally more strenuous inwardness. But, once stripped of the mediating rites and dogmas, the Protestant man confronted the abyss face-to-face, without the security-blanket of the sacraments. Eventually, Protestant man acquiesced that he can do nothing of himself, but function only as a result of God working within him. This resulted in a squelching of the conscious mind as a mere instrument of a much greater unconscious force that possessed it.

With the sacraments now discarded, like the fig leaf, man can no longer hide his nakedness by the old disguises. Existentialism emerges from this alienation and estrangement, this sense of humanity’s basic fragility, and, in particular, the impotence of reason when it confronts the depths of existence and death. We attempt to muster some sort of valid resistance against the throes of time by creating cultural artifacts such as writing, art, or other evidence of our being, as some sort of testament to our lives. And yet, the more we accomplish, the more data we compile, the more our ignorance looms out at us from the darkness.

Information overload confirms our finiteness, because we can only know certain things at the cost of not-knowing something else; and we are acutely aware that we cannot choose to know everything at once. We cannot escape our essential finitude. Uncertainty invariably attaches to every endeavor we undertake. Barrett quotes Hermann Weyl in saying: “We have tried to storm Heaven, and we have only succeeded in piling up the tower of Babel.”

Where to From Here?

We are perhaps now coming to the point in time where humanity can cast away ready-made presuppositions and begin to study existence in the same way that we study other things scientifically. Like Job, in existentialism, we come face-to-face with our finiteness. By seeking our justifications without mythology, we gain a clarified essence of ourselves, and one that accrues without creeds, systems, or superstitions.

Hebraic religion no longer retains unconditional validity for the mass of mankind. We must embrace change, learning, conversion, exploration, and, quite simply, evolution itself. We must focus our studies on things yet undiscovered. Historically, we must ask ourselves, where have myth, religion and ritual taken us? Into the crusades, the inquisitions, the holocaust, the burnings, the World Wars, nuclear proliferation, even destruction of the earthly environment! What historically valid evidence can we offer that any one religion ever proliferated on the face of this earth is exclusively sacrosanct?

If we take a moment to realize that consciousness itself is something that has evolved through long centuries and that even today it is still evolving, then we must cast aside those things which are clearly false, so that our awareness can grow unimpeded by anachronistic concepts. Our faith has traditionally manifested beyond our reason; but also, too often, against our reason! Let us explore more deeply the sense of love that overtakes people and causes them to reach beyond themselves, not the rigors of dogma, ritual, and archaic theology.

St. Thomas Aquinas asserts that the speculative, theoretical, intellect is the highest function of man, through which he is subordinated to the supernatural through intellectual vision. St. Augustine saw faith and reason – the vital and the rational – as coming together in eventual harmony. When dogma contradicts reason, this harmony is broken.

Our journey must ultimately involve the primacy of the thinker over his thoughts, i.e. the ability to purposefully turn from thoughts that violate reason. This is the process of becoming aware and ascending to the responsibility associated with the gift of freewill. This is the process of grasping the reins of oneself so as to become a factor in the evolutionary struggle confronting all humanity.

Facing the abyss, instead of hiding from it is key. Just ask Job.

-End-

[Asa Waters · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid, if at times meandering, overview of existentialist philosophy and the societal movement which followed suit. Barrett’s writing and analysis is clearly rooted in the 1960s, for better or worse. Aside from the philosophical analyses, I honestly found the most compelling passages of Irrational Man to be the ones which directly addressed the climate in which it was written. Barrett talks extensively about where society is heading and, for the most part, he was exactly right. Increasing automation and technological advancements have made us more efficient, connected, and miserable than ever before.

However, I would be remiss to not mention Barrett’s complete negligence towards two major details within the history of existentialism. Firstly, the only reference to Simone De Beauvoir is in relation to Sartre, in which she is referred to as “the woman he was with.” This is an egregious removal of one of the most prominent figures within the existentialist movement. Secondly, there is also no mention of Heidegger’s Nazi sympathies and how that may impact our view of his ideology. However, Barrett may have not been privy to such information at the time he wrote this book.

[Kaleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this book, it was a great introduction to existentialist thought and history, and had plenty of recommendations for further reading. Some sections (like the chapter on Heidegger) were pretty difficult, but I don't mind, Barrett explained it the best he could, and I'm excited to return to this book when I have more knowledge. It was also very well written, lots of passion.

Quotes:
"More than thinkers, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were witnesses-- witnesses who suffered for their time what the time itself would not acknowledge as its own secret wound. No concept or system of concepts lies at the center of either of their philosophies, but rather the individual human personality itself struggling for self-realization."

"A good deal of modern art has been concerned, in any case, simply with the destruction of the traditional image of man. Man is laid bare; more than that, he is flayed, cut up into bits, and his members strewn everywhere, like those of Osiris, with the reassembling of these scattered parts not even promised but only dumbly waited for."

[Willem-Laurens Cloet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stevig, 9/10

[Brother Gregory Rice, SOLT · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a dull or uninformative moment in it. A tour of continental philosophy through existentialism given by its foremost scholar in America during its boom. Gives a subliminally Catholic-friendly and erudite introduction to the major thinkers of existentialism and their philosophical/cultural influences, from Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky to Heidegger and Sartre.

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 1958 this remains an excellent and lively read. In order to make the case for Existentialism, Barrett finds it necessary to establish the limitations and the false leads of alternatives, and he looks both to the rational and the religious for the roots of the problem to which Existentialism is a proposed solution. As a result, his book contributes to many debates that remain topical and significant.

In selecting quotes, however, I have arrived at a position described in a short story by Borges, in which a character aspires to write Don Quixote, in exactly the same words (no more and no less and with nothing different) as those used by Cervantes to write his novel of that name and with that content. I am prevented from doing this with Irrational Man by the maximum permitted word count for reviews. Yet, had I done that, I would not be writing the same book because I would be writing in a different context (2015 instead of 1958) and in the face of new problems, to which, all the same, I think my new book, identical in every punctuation mark to the original, would remain relevant and useful. Sadly, I do not suppose I am up to this challenge. Simply by selecting and typing out some quotes, I find myself entering into a debate that threatens to expand or refine or otherwise alter something that is (or maybe it is) already fine just as it is.

No believer, no matter how sincere, could possibly write the Divine Comedy today, even if he possessed a talent equal to Dante’s. Visions and symbols do not have the immediate and overwhelming reality for us that they had for the mediaeval poet. In the Divine Comedy the whole of nature is merely a canvas upon which the religious symbol and image are painted. Western man has spent more than five hundred years .. in stripping nature of these projections and turning it into a realm of neutral objects which his science may control. … A great work of art can never be repeated - the history of art shows us time and again that literal imitation leads to pastiche - because it springs from the human soul, which evolves like everything else in nature. This point must be insisted upon, contrary to the view of some of our more enthusiastic medievalists who picture the psychic containment of mediaeval man as a situation of human completeness to which we must return. History has never allowed man to return to the past in any total sense. And our psychological problems cannot be solved by a regression to a past state in which they had not yet been brought into being. (p.26)

August 1914 is the axial date in modern Western history and once past it, we are directly confronted with the present day world. The sense of power over the material universe with which modern man emerged .. from the Middle Ages changed on that date into its opposite: a sense of weakness and dereliction before the whirlwind that man is able to unleash but not control. (p.32)

No other people - not the Chinese, not the Hindus - produced theoretical science, and its discovery or invention by the Greeks has been what distinguished Western civilization from the other civilizations of the globe. In the same way, the uniqueness of Western religion is due to its Hebraic source, and the religious history of the West is the long story of the varying fortunes and mutations of the spirit of Hebraism. (p.72)

We have to see Plato’s rationalism, not as a cool scientific project such as a later century of the European Enlightenment might set for itself, but as a kind of passionately religious doctrine - a theory that promised man salvation from all the things he had feared from the earliest days, from death and time. The extraordinary emphasis Plato put upon reason is itself a religious impulse. (p.84)

For man to enter history as the rational animal, it was necessary for him to be convinced that the objects of his reasoning, the Ideas, were more real than his own intellectual person or the particular objects that made up the world. The great step forward into rationalism required its own mythology - such perhaps is always the ambiguity of human evolution. (p.85)

Heidegger ”Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.” (p.206)

[Mbogo J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barett committed the criminally unforgivable act of not including my two favs, Camus and Simone and am still salty about that. This was not for lack of space, enough of that was wasted on Heidegger but somehow Camus [the greatest of them all imo] didn't not get a single mention and Simone made a cameo as "Satre's friend"... high crimes and misdemeanors I tell you, plain criminal. Aside from that, this was a great book, a timeless classic really.

Existentialism is.... a lot of things which I am not going to say, I mostly dabble in it as a private intellectual venture, never to write an essay or article about it and my sentiments on it are working ideas that make sense mostly to me and I hope to others in their private recesses of thought. It is the only field I approach never looking for who is right or wrong but just to marvel at the journey towards knowing thyself. It has been a very rewarding experience, I would hazard my "working religion."

I liked this book a lot. There are so many good things to say about this book and having wasted the first two paragraphs of this review talking about this and that I am only going to highlight the two keystone ones. The first was accessibility. Barrett writes in prose that you can easily follow through and for such a topic he somehow got away with not being too pedantic. This seemingly simple trait should never be underestimated. One day you'll happen upon an author enamored by definitions, who will tie themselves in a thousand knots trying to define this and that and by the time they get to the crux of the matter they've only succeeded in bamboozling themselves and the reader. This did not happen here and as a person who has sat through boring pedantic tomes I stand in awe of Barrett.

The second good thing about this was that Barrett got nuance right. It's normally grating [at least for me] to hear statements such as "Sartre said hell is other people." This is patently false. What he aimed to convey in No Exit was that hell is the fact that you can't change other people's perception of you and for such a state to remain static it burns the psyche of those who have exchanged being for itself, for being in itself. I could also make a similar impassioned case for Nietzsche's God is dead but...sometimes you have to let things go. Having judged Barrett to be a truth teller in things I could verify, it was easy to trust him or adopt his view point in matters I could not verify. I also liked that he gave respectable weight to religious existentialism, the fact that Saint Paul finds his existence in Christ or a Jew finds it in Law should not be laughable, it should also stand to be counted as Heidegger tries to grapple to define Being.

This is a great book. Timeless and alive, beckoning each reader to take the journey and find countless lulus spread all over its pages. I hope you find them all.

[Aaron · Rating 1 out of 5]

I originally read this book in college and was very impressed with it at time. I think I was more impressed with what it promised than what it delivered. I don't know why this is still taught because it's just not very good. It's historical significance is that in the 1950s it was the flagship text that introduced mainstream Americans to the curious European philosophy "Existentialism." This book probably did more to perpetuate "Existentialism's" status as something mysterious, novel and inaccessible than it did to make it sensible and accessible to American audiences.

Barrett's writing is opaque, confusing, and a deeper look would probably reveal it to be inconsistent. He tries to explain Existentialism in terms of broader traditions and forces in Western Civilization (most importantly Hellenic Greece and Hebraic Judeo-Christianity). I think he implicitly makes an argument about just what Existentialism is (or what qualifies as Existential philosophy) in doing this, but that's not my real problem. What really bothers me is that I couldn't really pin anything down with him. It's never really clear what he's saying, what he means by his terms, or where he's going with his arguments. At no point does it become clear or sensible, and there don't seem to be any clear arguments to oppose to agree with.

I have this lingering feeling that if Barrett was asked to clarify or explain himself, he'd either repeat the same argument or change the subject, insisting we just don't understand and we can't follow. A much better introduction to Existential is Walter Kaufman's translation of notable texts Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre.

[Doug · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't know what Barrett's editor was on when he/she let this book be published as is, but this book was borderline incoherent for me. His style of obscurity is two-part: First, Barrett makes references to several epistemologies, pieces of art, historical authors, cultural beliefs, and pretty much "ideas" in general without so much as a footnote or preface. The plus side of this is that I did not realize how worldly and quick-thinking I've become until I read this book and was able to say, "Oh, he's talking about ____;" although I was still annoyed as it utterly destoryed the flow of the book. Second in obscurity is style, Barrett himself seems displaced as he writes without a thesis or often an introduction. The book hits the ground running and jumping to the different philosophers who have (though they did not try and though they could very well be offended by the thought if they were alive) approached existentialism, and it's not until about halfway through that you may give up looking for Barrett's point and accept that this is the closest thing in the book you'll receive to a review.

I would say only read this book if you have a paracollege comprehension of modern and post-modern art, philosophy, American and European history--because he will not hold your hand for you, and he will not be kind to you as a reader. Also, only read this if you want to learn about existentialism from one guy's point of view, because this thing's nearly pure anecdote/opinion.

[Arjun Ravichandran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent introduction to existential philosophy. The prose is conversational and friendly, without the usual sour academic quality one associates with philosophy books. The first half of the book is a lead-up to the actual discussion of the 4 main existentialist thinkers (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre), and was illuminating. The author dissects the roots of existential thought in early Christianity, in Eastern religions and systems of thought, and shows how existential pathos/angst has displayed itself in modern science and art.
The treatment of the 4 philosophers, which make up the meat of the book, is uneven. The author is profoundly fascinated by Kierkegaard and Heidegger, and less enthused with Nietzsche and Sartre. This lack of objectivity isn't welcome in an introduction, that too one aimed at a beginner. But I wasn't all that surprised, since the engaging and personalized prose of the author must come with a price. Nietzsche in particular, I felt, was unfairly given the short shift. The chapter on Heidegger was brilliant, and stoked my appetite to read more of his works.
Overall, a decent introduction, but ultimately unfulfilling. The book is shallow in its treatment, a little dumbed down, and essentially reads like what it is ; an introduction to a foreign, 'exotic' European philosophy for a mid-century (but still stupid) American audience.