Jan 25 2013

Jean-Paul Sartre has a blog

Categories:

Humor

by PZ Myers

I despair.

(via Lawyers, Guns & Money.)

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34 comments

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1

azportsider

25 January 2013 at 8:16 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’m nauseated.
2

David Wilford

25 January 2013 at 8:21 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

My dog had a blog for a while, but he decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking.
3

Rodney Nelson

25 January 2013 at 8:24 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

To blog or not to blog is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, which does not exist. How is one to blog if blogging becomes bloggy. What is bloggy but a meaningless noise uttered by meaningless people. But if people are meaningless then why blog to them? They are but sheeple, to use the uncouth vernacular of the bloggist.
4

tomfrog

25 January 2013 at 8:27 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Blogging for oneself is redundant and somewhat mastubatory (no, that’s not a room where you… well, it’s not).
Therefore: le blog c’est les autres (reading it)
5

jamessweet

25 January 2013 at 8:32 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

aportsider wins the internet.
6

kevinalexander

25 January 2013 at 8:41 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

He never mentioned his black and white cat.
7

McC2lhu doesn't want to know what you did there.

25 January 2013 at 8:42 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

It was worth it just for the ‘rue-ful’ line. Not bad for such a grump.
8

ChasCPeterson

25 January 2013 at 8:48 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

how utterly, terrifyingly pointless.

(plus, he’s a communist.)
9

consciousness razor

25 January 2013 at 9:13 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

how utterly, terrifyingly pointless.

Of course it is. He’s dead, so he’s utterly free to have no point whatsoever. We’re all oppressed with being alive.
10

a_ray_in_dilbert_space

25 January 2013 at 9:30 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

In fairness, the blog by a dead Sartre would probably be just about as interesting as what he had to say when he was alive.
11

aggressivePerfector

25 January 2013 at 10:30 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Years ago, for the sake of conversation, I asked a philosophy student who he thought was the most important philosopher of the 20th century. His reply was Jean-Paul Sartre. That’s when I knew for sure that a philosopher’s definition of philosophy is incompatible with a rational person’s definition of the same.

Since then, I’ve felt that the real philosophers, us, the scientists mostly, should stage a coup, and steal back what was once ours.
12

dysomniak, darwinian socialist

25 January 2013 at 11:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

10 & 11 read this, then apologize for talking out your asses.
13

adamkamp

25 January 2013 at 12:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Hell… hell is other bloggers.
14

aggressivePerfector

25 January 2013 at 2:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

If I’m talking out of my ass, then what do you call this:

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

So glad that was cleared up.

Just like this:

Thus, the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders. And, when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.
15

dexitroboper

25 January 2013 at 2:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

But Chaucer doth tweet is hilarious.
16

dysomniak, darwinian socialist

25 January 2013 at 3:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

If I’m talking out of my ass, then what do you call this:

I’d call it pretty fucking self evident. Are you really so dense that you can’t grasp even such a basic concept as existence preceding essence?
17

aggressivePerfector

25 January 2013 at 3:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

It doesn’t really matter what I can or can’t grasp. What matters is whether there is any content to the man’s philosophy. Since what he writes is clearly meaningless, I vote ‘no.’
18

dysomniak, darwinian socialist

25 January 2013 at 3:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

“Clearly” meaningless? Just because you can’t grasp the meaning doesn’t mean there is none. The fact that you can provide no specific critique shows that you don’t even comprehend what you so glibly dismiss.
19

strange gods before me ॐ

25 January 2013 at 3:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

there is no human nature

There is a meaning to that statement; it is the negation of the statement that “there exists such a thing as human nature”.

It does not matter whether you consider this profound. He was responding to philosophical and political currents at the time of his writing — there was a historical cause for him to say what he said.

And for the purposes of determining whether there is content to his philosophy, it does not matter whether any particular chunk of content is correct. The content exists.
20

Jadehawk

25 January 2013 at 3:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

And for the purposes of determining whether there is content to his philosophy, it does not matter whether any particular chunk of content is correct. The content exists.

in fact, if there were no content, it couldn’t be wrong. :-p
21

strange gods before me ॐ

25 January 2013 at 3:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Anyway, for the most interesting piece written by Sartre, I suggest Anti-Semite and Jew.
22

zb24601

25 January 2013 at 4:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

His blog must be ghost written.
23

SallyStrange: Elite Femi-Fascist Genius

25 January 2013 at 4:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

My high school boyfriend’s parents (who were college professors, natch) actually had the following message on their answering machine for a while:

Hello. You have reached the winter of our discontent. We are not here. You are not here. Do not leave a message. There is no beep. *BEEP*
24

Rob Grigjanis

25 January 2013 at 5:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

aP @17: “Since what he writes is clearly meaningless, I vote ‘no.’”

I’d love to hear your explanation of why he is so well known.
25

SC (Salty Current), OM

25 January 2013 at 6:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Anyway, for the most interesting piece written by Sartre, I suggest Anti-Semite and Jew.

I’ve long had a weak spot for Search for a Method. Too bad it wasn’t a more biological age…
26

Michael Handy

25 January 2013 at 6:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

“Clearly” meaningless? Just because you can’t grasp the meaning doesn’t mean there is none. The fact that you can provide no specific critique shows that you don’t even comprehend what you so glibly dismiss.

That’s a little unfair, if they lean intuitively towards anti-metaphysics based philosophies like Logical Positivism, essence is indeed a meaningless concept.
27

dysomniak, darwinian socialist

25 January 2013 at 7:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

[...] essence is indeed a meaningless concept

Yeah, that would be basically the existentialist position as well, since “essence” and “meaning” can only come from (or be defined by) oneself.
28

meursalt

25 January 2013 at 8:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

This made my day. I especially liked the dream-cameo by Camus. Well, to the extent that I like anything.

“Too slow! Psych!” Yep, classic Camus.
29

rorschach

25 January 2013 at 10:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

The part about the Look terrified me when I first read it as a teenager. Poor JP seems to be reduced to a few choice quotes in philosophy search engines these days.
That blog is hilarious.
30

Michael Handy

25 January 2013 at 11:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Dysomniak @27 Yeah, that would be basically the existentialist position as well, since “essence” and “meaning” can only come from (or be defined by) oneself.

Ah, but therein lies the difference. The hard-line mid-century LP position is essentially that meaningful statements of any kind can only be made about 2 things, sensory data, and mathematical tautologies. To attempt to define any meaning outside of this is misguided at best and magical thinking at worst. (of course, the analytic school has softened its views a tad since then).

In this, they’re probably closer to Camus (though they’d never admit it), in that your existential angst is just a bunch of stuff happening in your brain, and your attempt to define even a subjective meaning to it is laughably absurd, even if it is an inevitible part of being human.
31

dysomniak, darwinian socialist

25 January 2013 at 11:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Of course it’s absurd. Everything is.
32

consciousness razor

25 January 2013 at 11:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Yeah, that would be basically the existentialist position as well, since “essence” and “meaning” can only come from (or be defined by) oneself.

Ah, but therein lies the difference. The hard-line mid-century LP position is essentially that meaningful statements of any kind can only be made about 2 things, sensory data, and mathematical tautologies.

But I don’t think Sartre would’ve said that there is any fixed “essence” of being human or “meaning” for humans at all, not in the sense that the positivists thought (incorrectly) they could corral it into their little corner. Meaning is instead something created by people, so it’s changeable and derived from us, not some fundamental thing itself which is in the world independently (which we would’t have access to anyway, just phenomena). So I don’t their disagreement was/would’ve been quite the one you put together, although what little I’ve read of Sartre is not really much to go on.
33

consciousness razor

26 January 2013 at 12:01 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

So I don’t [think] their disagreement

But as I said, I could be wrong.
34

consciousness razor

26 January 2013 at 12:02 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Except “freedom.” That’s pretty much supposed to be an absolute for everyone.