Monday, August 17, 2015

Last week we looked at the terms "Postmodern" and "Pre-postemodern" and I made the claim that both Pragmatism and Existentialism are Pre-postmodern philosophies.
Pre-Postmodernism & Process Epistemology
Part II
From Phenomenology to Existentialsm

       Existentialism begins with the premise that Existence precedes Essence. It is more of a philosophical attitude than a philosophy, per se, which is why guys like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the Russian author, Dostoevsky can be counted among the Existentialist thinkers, retroactively. They didn't have that term in their day but modern Existentialists refer to their ideas as being in their tradition.
      To say that Existence precedes Essence is to say that there is no inherent meaning to life, but we, as conscious and active Beings, have the power to create meaning. Some students may accuse Existentialists of being Atheists, but, as the song goes, "It ain't necessarily so." There are Christian and Jewish Existentialist as well as Atheists and Agnostics.
      Phenomenology is also a relatively recent term but is also applied to older philosophers. What sets those modern philosophers who call themselves Existentialists apart from the older ones who didn't use the term, is the addition of phenomenology to the prerequisites of Existentialism. Phenomenology, like Existentialism, is not so much a philosophy, as a philosophical method used by philosophers. In future posts I will show that it is also another link between Pragmatism and Existentialism, in that some Pragmatists also use the phenomenological method for their starting points.
       Tomorrow: Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer
Alert all your friends who won't give up their racial identities and/or who make money from owning private property, that this blog challenges their personal and social constructs.
For those of you who have only recently joined us, my rants began on January 1, 2011. Scroll down to that date to begin.

My rants on racial identity began on July 9, 2015
My rants on private property began on July 14, 2015
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