European Existentialism.

Fleming, Ed ; GUNN, ALBERT E.

LANGUILLI, Nino, ed. European Existentialism. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1997. 468 pp. Paper, $24.95--Now that there is more distance from Existentialism as a movement in philosophy, after its influence has passed to other forms, this collection of writings by its founding members can help raise the question about just what existentialism is. Langiulli writes an interesting and fleer new introduction to this 25-year-old collection. He makes a good case for looking back to the philosophical sources to see again what existentialism had and still has a hold of. He implies that "post-modernism, deconstructionism, antifoundationalism, historicism, multiculturalism, and diversityism," while stemming from existentialism, also forget what existentialism was onto (p. xviii).

In the early selections, we see Kierkegaard and Nietzsche living within and pushing to the breaking point the philosophical framework of their day. These two philosophers struggled to articulate themselves; they were, in a sense, foreign to themselves, out ahead of themselves, using language and concepts stretched from the place toward which they were driven. It is a characteristic of every selection in the book that the language adequate to the matter must be invented and uncovered. The reader must be willing and able to cast the net of this new language over experience to see what the language is saying; our reflective seeing must facilitate the sense of the concepts.

We read the words differently now than when they were first set down. Many of the words, including "existentialism" itself have entered into everyday usage. We talk about the "relativity of truth," angst, the public, commitment, choice. Maybe these ideas become coins passed along from hand to hand but never held up to the light and thought out. These excellent selections provide us with the opportunity to touch something of the original struggling sources from which they came.

Despite the many disagreements between these fifteen thinkers, what direction do they share, what unifies them? Sartre, in his essay "Existentialism is a Humanism," says that "man is all the time outside of himself" (p. 415). The experience of being outside of ourselves to be who we are defines existentialism. There are different articulations of this insight. For example, Scheler talks about man as "co-creator," Jaspers talks about man as Existenz open to Transcendence, Heidegger says Da-sein, Gasset says "life"--the fundamental given certainty and place from which we are, Buber says I-it and I-Thou, Marcel says incarnate being and situation, Merleau-Ponty says language and "wild being," Abbagnano articulates the insight as "possibility." These amount to the recognition that we as human need to enter into our ground--ground here not as something reified, but as something engaging and requiring our participation. Existentialism then is the question "what is existentialism?" that is, the listening that is ready to give and receive the answer to the question. The necessary reflexivity of this posture draws philosophy into participation and creation of life. That toward which we stand out (existence) will not show itself without our courage to echo the steps we hear with our own steps. Hence the affinity of existentialism to art, literature, and political commitment.

Rather than essentially new philosophy this is just genuine philosophy. Maybe what is new is the degree and extent that humans find themselves pressed on all sides to be inhuman. When humanity itself becomes threatened with an easy faith, when we give a wink to all genuine value, when we lose the thread of "the umbilical bond that binds it (us) always to Being" (p. 424), we get lost. As Heidegger says, it is precisely if we do not destroy ourselves that the danger will then intensify. Oppressed and pressed to enter explicitly into that toward which we stand, the existentialist enters into the ground. The language and demands of this "place" perhaps provide more than enough work for generations of philosophers. No wonder that Langiulli sees that contemporary philosophy has backed away from what existentialism glimpses. It is difficult (decentering) to await the new language when there are so many other things that need to be done. Yet what guide is there for valuing? More essentially our finitude opens up and guides our valuing lives, and this question of finitude is the same as that characteristic that defines existentialism. Not with despair but with a trembling joy, existentialism looks to the saving power that is near, even in our destitute age.

This collection is a challenging introduction or a refreshing reminder of what existentialism is onto. Like all philosophy, it waits for those who can put themselves into the work. "One always finds one's burden again" (p. 456).

Ed Fleming, Westmoreland County Community College.