I already thought that twentieth-century Western philosophy was a vast wasteland, before I ever listened to this audiobook. But I listened to this audiobook with an open mind, because I wanted to better understand the history of philosophy. After listening to this audiobook, my worst fears seemed to be confirmed therein. It is hard for me to imagine a greater disaster area than the philosophies of the twentieth century.
But despite all of this, this audiobook was interesting enough – even though it was clearly written by someone whose sympathy for these philosophers far exceeded my own. Specifically, this audiobook focuses on seven major figures in twentieth-century European philosophy – or “Continental” philosophy, as they call it here. In the same order as this audiobook’s coverage, these seven figures are as follows. They are Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Emmanuel Levinas. Emmanuel Levinas was a Lithuanian-born Jewish-descended Frenchman. Incidentally, I found him the most sympathetic of the philosophers covered here. Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger were both Germans, with Martin Heidegger having a Nazi past that included some pro-Nazi speeches. By contrast, Husserl was of German Jewish extraction. The other four men are all native-born Frenchmen.
Edmund Husserl
Martin Heidegger
Edmund Husserl is sometimes known as the founder of phenomenology. Martin Heidegger was influenced by prior existential philosophers, such as Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Since Heidegger was also influenced by Husserl’s phenomenology, he founded a system called “existential phenomenology.” Jean-Paul Sartre was a literary writer, but he also wrote philosophical works such as “Being and Nothingness.” I will save my commentary on him for a later blog post. Suffice it to say here that Sartre, along with Husserl and Heidegger, was a major influence on Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This audiobook briefly mentions the related ideas of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. This allows them to develop the responses to him from Jacques Derrida. Derrida is one of the major figures of post-structuralism and postmodernism, even though he later disavowed both of these terms. Jacques Derrida also influenced Michel Foucault, another major figure in both of these movements. Like Derrida, Foucault disavowed both of these terms, even though they fit both of these men so well. Emmanuel Levinas was focused on the relationship of ethics to other philosophical fields, such as metaphysics and ontology.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
You might feel that the terms above do very little to describe the ideas of these men. That’s because these terms provide almost as little insight into these ideas as do the words used to develop them in detail. Some of the ideas presented here actually made sense – “the self-evident made horrifying, the obvious in terms of the staggering” (to paraphrase some comments by H. L. Mencken). But many of the other ideas developed in this audiobook … struck me as so much flatulence. Some of these comments were “a cent’s worth of information wrapped in a bale of polysyllables” (to paraphrase these same comments by H. L. Mencken). In other words, it was a lot of fancy terms used to express an ounce of philosophical fluff. In so many ways, “flatulence” is a good description for the quoted passages.
Jacques Derrida
Michel Foucault
Emmanuel Levinas
I’m all right with hearing these ideas from someone who actually agrees with them. Indeed, that is often the best way to hear strange ideas – from those who believe them. Rather, my main complaint about this audiobook is that it almost completely omits any biographical information about these seven men. This omission is understandable, given that there were seven of these guys to cover here, and only three hours in which to cover them. Thus, I am still glad that I listened to this audiobook, which is packed with a lot of dense philosophical quotations. But again, this audiobook’s sympathy for these seven philosophers far exceeded my own, and seemed to confirm my worst fears about the sorry state of contemporary philosophy.
If you liked this post, you might also like:
20th Century European Philosophy
Others to be covered later
Part of an audiobook series
The Giants of Philosophy
Others to be covered later
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