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Como Ser Existencialista – Ou Caia Na Real, Vá à Luta E Pare De Arrumar Desculpas (2009)

by Gary Cox(Favorite Author)

3.94 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Alaúde

review 1: It might be strange to find this book in my collection on the Sense of History. And I wasn't really thrilled by it after reading, I must confess. But it contains a few pages on the philosopy of Time that really are of interest to my focus of attention.Cox elaborates on how existentialist philosophers pay a lot of attention to the concept of consciousness, as being the relation between us and reality. What struck me was that he writes: "what we are is the endless march forward in time", past and future are interconnected, in both ways, and the present is no fixed moment, because the future constantly becomes the past. Cox goes further (Always citing existentialists): "there is no such thing as time apart from consciousness; It is consciousness that brings time into the worl... mored, consciousness that temporalizes the world (...). Without consciousness, there are no processes of becoming, growth, decay and destruction”.Of course this raises the classic problem of solipsism: is it true that there is no reality at all or no time or space, beyond myself? Since it has been raised (I believe in the 18th century) this question has been proven false, of course. But what we really must understand is that it is consciousness that is responsible for the relational existence of time and space and reality. We can not know reality without this instrument. And thus, I would add, our view on the past always is a construction (by our consciousness), and that is a lesson to reckon with in the viewing of history!Finally, Cox elaborates on temporality and freedom: "we are free precisely because we are not fixed in the present. Only a temporal being can be free because to be free is to have possibilities and genuine alternatives in the future. We are our future possibilities and our freedom consists in being free towards the future.” Now that statement opens up a whole scala of ways to look at the past, and how men have chosen their options.
review 2: A great little book which outlines the very basics of existentialism without falling into a wormhole of philoso-speak that leaves you feeling like a total idiot. I think it serves as a good entry point into this domain and does a good job of highlighting the points where existentialist philosophers disagree. The authour wrote his PHD and several books on Sartre, so he uses a lot of examples from Sartre's works, but still does an ok job of introducing other key existentialist thinkers. less

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