Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015
- The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Analytic Philosophy
- Part II Continental Philosophy
- Section Five Central Movements and Issues
- 26 Existentialism
- 27 Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on Freedom
- 28 Heidegger, Critical Theory, and the Critique of Technology
- 29 Authenticity and Social Critique
- 30 Hermeneutics in Post-War Continental European Philosophy
- 31 Feminist Philosophy since 1945
- 32 Philosophies of Difference
- Section Six Continental Moral, Social, and Political Philosophy
- Section Seven Continental Aesthetics and Philosophy of Religion
- Part III Bridge Builders, Border Crossers, Synthesizers, and Comparative Philosophy
- Part IV Epilogue: On the Philosophy of the History of Philosophy
- References
- Index
29 - Authenticity and Social Critique
from Section Five - Central Movements and Issues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2019
- The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015
- The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Analytic Philosophy
- Part II Continental Philosophy
- Section Five Central Movements and Issues
- 26 Existentialism
- 27 Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on Freedom
- 28 Heidegger, Critical Theory, and the Critique of Technology
- 29 Authenticity and Social Critique
- 30 Hermeneutics in Post-War Continental European Philosophy
- 31 Feminist Philosophy since 1945
- 32 Philosophies of Difference
- Section Six Continental Moral, Social, and Political Philosophy
- Section Seven Continental Aesthetics and Philosophy of Religion
- Part III Bridge Builders, Border Crossers, Synthesizers, and Comparative Philosophy
- Part IV Epilogue: On the Philosophy of the History of Philosophy
- References
- Index
Summary
If there ever were a time in twentieth-century Europe that could be called “the existentialist moment” (Baert 2015), it would undoubtedly be October 29, 1945. On that day, at the Club Maintenant in Paris, Jean-Paul Sartre gave his legendary lecture, “Existentialism is a humanism.” The Nazi Occupation of Paris had ended just a few weeks earlier and the unprecedented horrors of the Second World War were becoming ever more evident. The atomic bomb’s devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the revelation of the death camps of Auschwitz and Dachau, the complicity of France’s own collaborators – these all forced an entire generation as never before to face the existential givens of death and freedom. The old ideologies and long-established “-isms” that previously seemed to carry a promise for the post-Enlightenment West – capitalism, communism, fascism, anarcho-syndicalism – were all thrown into question. Sartre seemed to be saying in 1945 that all that is real is the existing individual standing on his or her own, with no fundamental relationship to anyone or anything else. Needless to say, the public reception of the lecture was extraordinary. The auditorium was packed; Sartre’s voice was barely audible beneath the buzz; chairs were broken; people fainted (Bernasconi 2006: 53). A new world seemed to be opening.
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- The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015 , pp. 389 - 398Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019