Name: Irrational Man
Rating: 4.5 (6 reviews)
ISBN: 9780385031387

William Barrett

William Edmund Barrett

William Spencer Barrett

William Barrett, Sir

William Christopher Barrett

Widely recognized as the finest definition of existentialist Philosophy, this book introduced existentialism to America in 1958. Barrett discusses the views of 19th and 20th century existentialists Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre and interprets the impact of their thinking on literature, art, and philosophy.

A Study in Existential Philosophy

Irrational Man

Greg Talbot

“Nothing is more real than nothing” - Samuel Beckett “I present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke Following the footsteps back to Plato, we find the ultimate idealist. The exultation of the rational minds. The Hellenic seeds, that along with the Hebrew mythology would form Western civilization. Every philosopher from his student Aristotle, to the enlightenment philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Locke, Roosseau, contended with the framework of Plato. The outward expansion of science, Christian faith, technology, medicine, and goverance, lead from reason. “The mind of the West has always been hierarchical: the cosmos has been understand as a great chain of Being, from highest to lowest, which has the same time operated as scale of values, from lowest to highest” (p.57). There is something vaguely “embarassing” Barrett argues when looking at the lofty claims of the ancient greeks with modernity (1950s). And such begin the cracks. Romantic literary movements sweep the grandeur of the interior space. Romantic writers, poets, post-war modernists, start to deliver a portrait of “man” as he is, not his ideal. Barrett details this society level meeting with nothingingness. The dogmatic truths lost authority to the natural law of science. Technologies..continue to upheave the way we interact with our world, through farming, computing, transport, and change our connection to each other. And the natural ordering of society just alienates us. Thus the counter movement to enlightment. “The finitude of man, says Heidegger, is perhaps the death blow to the ideology of the Enlightenment, for to recognize this finitude is to acknowledge that man will always exist in untruth as well as truth” (p.257). Existentalism more than an attitude, or a set of ideas, becomes an approach toward regaining authenticity with the world. Barrett weaves this story across the eons, and across the spaces. The first half the story looks at this divide between ancient and modern. And then there’s the exploration of art. And how the marbeled statues of antiquity have been replaced by artists that value flatness, non-representation, and ordered design. He also looks at the impact of literary works from the stark 20th century Russian literature to Johnathan Swift’s fantastical world. The second half explores four of the primary thinkers responsible for the cracking. The modern Socrates, Kierkegaard, who brought the contemplative life, with a febrile fantaticism to the the center of himself. Ideas about faith, authenticity, and living a meaningful life dropped into his gosepl. Similarly the ideas of Nietzche’s, esoteric and meandering, became a brilliant attack supported by pre-socratic thinkers on a western world peverted from an authenticity. And the great twentieth century thinkers Sartre and Heidigger finding meaning meaning despite he brutal truths from a collapsed Europe Overall a decent read.. More academic than I would have thought...and sometimes there is this really ridiculous snobbishness, and personalization of these thinkers that feels a little awkward. I strongly recommend reading or listening to Robert Solomon’s brilliant late 90s courses “No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life”, To Borrow a line from Solomon, existentialism, often condisdered a philosophy of despair is really just the opposite. Barrett writes “human truth..shining against an enveloping darkness..has the virtue of restoring man to his sense of primal mystery surrounding all things, a sense of mystery from which the glittering world of his technology estranges him, but without which he is not truly human”.

Chris Dailey

Excellent primer on one of the essential philosophical movements of the 20th century. Covering the intellectual background leading up to and coming out of the work of the Existentialist philosophers with deep dives into four of the defining minds. The theme are fundamental to the human experience: identity, morality, value, and existence. It has approachable prose despite the density of the ideas, the work is a welcoming door into the thoughts and theories of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre.

Irrational Man A Study in Existential Philosophy

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