[QUOTE=Sara Isaac]
In 1919, when she turned 22, Ventadour left her art studies at Tulane University in New Orleans and went to France. She ended up staying half her life.
Since then, Ventadour has traveled throughout the world, learning to speak French, Spanish and German. But it was her home base in the Parisian community of existentialists - including philosophers Jean Paul Sartre and her first husband, Jacque Ventadour - that shaped her beliefs and values.
Existentialism led her to the concept of one world: that there is a global unity of mankind, and that basic human nature is not changed by skin color, nationality, or other artificial barriers.
Her philosophical studies also led her to the belief that ‘‘one is what one makes of oneself,’’ and she has since set out to make herself a positive asset to the world.
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italics are mine
So, around 1919 in Paris, an existentialist community did exist, for at least half of a lifetime. Enough to instill its beliefs/values into its new community members. What impossible things/interactions happened in that community?
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Danish intellectuals, I suppose, and the international community of existentialists, will be gathering in smoke-filled rooms to commemorate the 200th birthdayof Sören Kierkegaard, founding father of their movement
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Also, it appears that there are enough adherents to existentialism that there is an international community of them that did join up in Turkey in 2013 to commemorate it’s founding philosopher’s birthday. What is so impossible about such a massing/meeting of existentialists and their interacting with each other?
Existentialism doesn’t state that humans are one kind, and human nature is changed in a sense based on skin color and other barriers (in fact much of what we call “nature” is actually learned). Also one is a product of environment and genetics, so she is also incorrect there. Also the human nature is a flexible concept that only gets pulled up when a shift in behavior around the world takes place, it’s meant to resist change.
I call it impossible but it would require them to ignore many facts of psychology.
Uh, yeah; so you* point that out* to an existentialist, and he acts accordingly, right?
I mean, here we all are – living in a society and stuff – and somehow the existentialists among us decide to carry on as though they’re willing to give up total freedom, and we all manage to have basic freedoms! Amazing, isn’t it? It’s almost as if, in some weird way, an existentialist can reason about his situation to reach a sensible conclusion!
How do you explain that away? I can’t wait to hear!
How is that acting in bad faith? Can’t an existentialist choose – in good faith – to so live in society? Didn’t they do that back when, while writing at length about bad faith and authenticity and thus and such? Don’t they likewise do that now?
Sure, you can do that with a dose of self-deception; you can do it while falsely claiming you have no choice, you can do it while pretending someone else has the authority to make the decision for you. But you can, instead, do it in good faith; you can do it with authenticity, you can do it with clarity and sincerity; you can do it by constantly and consciously taking responsibility for your actions and refusing to take refuge in easy excuses: no “I do this because my father told me it’s right,” and no * “I do this because my pastor told me it’s right”* – but still doing it, while never passing the buck to anyone else, is all.
Again, this doesn’t make any sense. If an individual’s assignment of meaning is worthless, then a group’s assignment of meaning would also have to be worthless, as a group is nothing more than a collection of inidividuals. As I already stated, 0 + 0 = 0.
Sorry, what? Do you have “existentialist” confused with “antisocial” now?
Since you’ve already shown you have no idea what existentialism actually is, I don’t think you get to decide for us what is and isn’t authentic with our beliefs.
The first person subjective is like religious witnessing at this point, no? There’s no expectation of an objective third person accounting of it anytime soon. So we’re p-zombies until science says otherwise.
