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Available
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Publication
Doubleday Anchor Books (1962), Mass Market Paperback, 314 pages
Description
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 1990s: 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.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member heinous-eli
Interesting overview of Existentialist thinkers, but some of what he claims seems to be questionable.
LibraryThing member DerrickLang
This book has dated terrible. My copy (1962 Doubleday) doesn't even have an Index/Bibliography or anything. This is on top of his questionable assertions. This book is historically a must read for those looking for an introductory text.
LibraryThing member ragwaine
Mostly good, not as dry as "Basic Techniques".
LibraryThing member poetontheone
Barrett has given us a colorful and provocative overview of Existential philosophy, and it is so because is it not a dry survey of what Existentialism is, but what it means to us. Barrett, writing in the nineteen sixties, applies this to the man of a nuclear and technological age, an age we are
This work is more relevant than ever today, as the common folk lose themselves in the distractions of mass media or fill their days with work and deed, and professional philosophers lose themselves in the machinations of privileged academic masturbation, all with eventual have to grapple with the big Nothing swirling around in their depths. If not; knowing that the core of their masochistic dinner table fixation on terrorism, warfare, and apocalypse might one day greet them in seriousness; Nothingness will confront them. It'd be best for the mass of humanity to plow their inner depths prior to such a scenario, but there meditations on that very scenario are perhaps hope of an escape from this inevitable confrontation with Self.
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immersed in even more today. We are given a wide overview of the currents of Existential thought, all the way back to the Hebrews and Hellenistic sources, to the present. This work is more relevant than ever today, as the common folk lose themselves in the distractions of mass media or fill their days with work and deed, and professional philosophers lose themselves in the machinations of privileged academic masturbation, all with eventual have to grapple with the big Nothing swirling around in their depths. If not; knowing that the core of their masochistic dinner table fixation on terrorism, warfare, and apocalypse might one day greet them in seriousness; Nothingness will confront them. It'd be best for the mass of humanity to plow their inner depths prior to such a scenario, but there meditations on that very scenario are perhaps hope of an escape from this inevitable confrontation with Self.
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LibraryThing member dbsovereign
Read this book before you decide to call yourself an existentialist. Barrett will broaden your understanding of both the philosophy and its historical foundations.
LibraryThing member madepercy
This book provides an overview of existentialism. Originally written in 1958, Barrett was bringing the tradition of existentialism (leading to Sartre) to the United States. That the book is set in the midst of the Cold War is obvious, and when released again in the 1990s, the book's setting had not
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yet (albeit imminently) changed. But there were many lessons to be learnt and the book achieved for me what I really needed: an overview of existentialism and the works of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre all in one place. I needed this to make sense of other works I am still engrossed in, and this book fulfilled the role admirably. I will get to the works of these aforementioned existentialists, plus Wittgenstein, but not yet. When I read John Stuart Mill in detail I couldn't help but recognise fragments of my education materialising almost as if I had written them when reading On Liberty. Elements of Stoicism remind me of things I had discovered (apparently) independently but more likely acquired through osmosis through my education. Thinking of myself as a frustrated post-modernist who can only really comprehend empiricism and positivism, I welcomed the familiarity of Heidegger's work, again, as if I had heard it before. But what really struck me was the eloquence of Barrett in saying what I was just saying to my students in my lecture today: you have to understand ideology and philosophy to understand politics. Barrett says it thus: ...anyone who wishes to meddle in politics today had better come to some prior conclusions as to what man [sic] is and what, in the end, human life is all about. I say "in the end" deliberately because the neglect of first and of last things does not - as so-called "practical" people hope - go unpunished, but has a disastrous way of coming in the back door and upsetting everything. Barrett also highlights a problem for Americans that any typical group of Australian political science lecturers will tell you could easily still apply to Australians:The [Australian] insisted that all international problems could all be solved if men [sic] would just get together and be rational; Sartre disagreed and after a while discussion between them became impossible. "I believe in the existence of evil," says Sartre, "and he does not." What the [Australian] has not yet become aware of is the shadow that surrounds all human Enlightenment.The final words indicate the extent of this darkness surrounding the light, and in these words I see my frustration in the background of my positivist and empiricist viewpoint: put simply "he [sic] must first exist in order to logicize". While I doubt I can ever change my habitual viewpoint, particularly this late in the game, I have just purchased a copy of Walter Kaufmann's edited collection,Existentialism: From Dostoevsky to Sartre, which recaps a number of works I have read previously (such as Notes from Underground and Camus' Myth of Sisyphus, but it also includes numerous works by Heidegger, Nietzsche, Jaspers, et al. which are essential reading. It is as if I have just stepped off the MTR at East Tsim Sha Tsui station in Hong Kong. I must walk now to Tsim Sha Tsui station (proper) to get back on the main line, but I know I will have to walk to East TST to venture back into existentialism again sometime soon. The branches of my literary journey do get tangled at times, but at least now the basics are starting to reveal themselves more clearly, even if I am noticing the darkness in the background. Show Less
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Language
Original publication date
1958
ISBN
none