Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Phenomenolgy and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism

Titel: Phenomenolgy and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism

Stichwort: Existentialismus (allgemeine Bestimmung); Beziehung zu Positivismus und Idealismus

Kurzinhalt: They are separated, then, on the one hand from the positivistic scientific attitude, and on the other hand from the idealist position that to a great extent has dominated the philosophic schools of Europe.

Textausschnitt: 4 Relation to Positivism and Idealism
222b That question is, in the first place, anti-positivist. 'Being a man' is not any set of outer data to be observed. It is not any set of properties to be inferred from the outer data. It is not any course of action that can be predicted from the properties. With that simple negation, you cut off entirely any scientific definition within the contemporary secular notion of science. If the external data are not relevant, then the properties you can infer from the data are not relevant, and any prediction you can make on the basis of the outer data or the inferred properties is not relevant. 'Being a man' springs from an inner and free determination that is not scientifically observable. And, in general, the existentialists emphasize this point. They cut off from human science any positivistic interpretation and any secularistic interpretation of the term. (Fs)
222c In the second place, the question is anti-idealist. The various transcendental egos are neither Greek nor barbarian, bond nor free, male nor female. They do not suffer and they do not die. We do. And again, the existentialists grasp the point. They cut themselves off entirely from the idealists. They are separated, then, on the one hand from the positivistic scientific attitude, and on the other hand from the idealist position that to a great extent has dominated the philosophic schools of Europe. (Fs)
222d Now positivism and idealism have been major determinants in producing the contemporary world. From the Renaissance on, man has been deliberately making man. An ideal of man was born at the Renaissance. The Renaissance discovery of the ancients was really the formulation of a human ideal, and it was popularized and has spread over Western civilization from its source in the Renaissance into the cultured classes in the period of the Enlightenment, and in the present century throughout the whole of the population. It is connected with the breakdown of Christianity and the domination of a humanly inspired way of life. Insofar as positivism and idealism have been major determinants in producing the contemporary world, and in the measure that the contemporary world is found unsatisfactory or even disastrous - a common attitude on the continent of Europe after the last World War and the domination of the Nazis - existentialism has a profound resonance. It stands for something that is utterly different from the types of thinking that produced the mess we are in, and so it has a great appeal on that account. (Fs)
223a That fact would seem to be connected with the success of the existentialist writers. Sein und Zeit was published in 1927 in Husserl's periodical, Jahrbuch fur Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Forschung, an annual for philosophy and phenomenological research. Within four or five years it had run through five or six separate editions. I have already mentioned Jaspers's Die geistige Situation der Zeit, which ran through six editions in German in a few years and has been translated into various languages. Sartre became popular particularly after the war, but his L'étre et le néant dates from 1942.1 He was a cafe hero in Paris. Gabriel Marcel is the hero of European seminarians and of people interested in bringing Christianity back to the masses; he can put Christian doctrine across with amazing skill and effectiveness. (Fs)