[lit-ideas] Re: Mailer on Sartre (was: Faith)
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 21 May 2005 12:07:15 -0400
Mailer is saying philosophy is irrelevant except for those in search of a
hereafter, i.e., a God, and existentialism needs a "God who, no matter His
or Her > cosmic dimensions, (whether larger or smaller than we assume),
embodies > nonetheless some of our faults, our ambitions, our talents and
our gloom." He's saying Satre failed because he couldn't find a man-god
to worship, otherwise known as theological relativism. Mailer isn't making
a huge amount of sense here.
Andy Amago
> [Original Message]
> From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 5/20/2005 10:29:20 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Mailer on Sartre (was: Faith)
>
>
> On Sartre's God Problem
>
> Norman Mailer
>
> This year marks the centenary of the birth of Jean-Paul Sartre, the great
> philosopher of existentialism and a definitive model of the intellectual
> engagé. The Paris-based daily Libération asked a group of writers to
> comment on the philosopher's legacy. Norman Mailer was among the
> contributors. His remarks are reprinted below. --Adam Shatz
>
>
> I would say that Sartre, despite his incontestable strengths of mind,
> talent and character, is still the man who derailed existentialism, sent
it
> right off the track. In part, this may have been because he gave too wide
a
> berth to Heidegger's thought. Heidegger spent his working life laboring
> mightily in the crack of philosophy's buttocks, right there in the cleft
> between Being and Becoming. I would go so far as to suggest Heidegger was
> searching for a viable connection between the human and the divine that
> would not inflame too irreparably the reigning post-Hitler German
mandarins
> who were in no rush to forgive his past and would hardly encourage his
> tropism toward the nonrational.
>
> Sartre, however, was comfortable as an atheist even if he had no
fundament
> on which to plant his philosophical feet. To hell with that, he didn't
need
> it. He was ready to survive in mid-air. We are French, he was ready to
say.
> We have minds, we can live with the absurd and ask for no reward. That is
> because we are noble enough to live with emptiness, and strong enough to
> choose a course which we are even ready to die for. And we will do this
in
> whole defiance of the fact that, indeed, we have no footing. We do not
look
> to a Hereafter.
>
> It was an attitude; it was a proud stance; it was equal to living with
> one's mind in formless space, but it deprived existentialism of more
> interesting explorations. For atheism is a cropless undertaking when it
> comes to philosophy. (We need only think of Logical Positivism!) Atheism
> can contend with ethics (as Sartre did on occasion most brilliantly), but
> when it comes to metaphysics, atheism ends in a locked cell. It is, after
> all, near to impossible for a philosopher to explore how we are here
> without entertaining some notion of what the prior force might have been.
> Cosmic speculation is asphyxiated if existence came into being ex nihilo.
> In Sartre's case--worse. Existence came into being without a clue to
> suggest whether we are here for good purpose, or there is no reason
> whatsoever for us.
>
>
> All the same, Sartre's philosophical talents were damnably virtuoso. He
was
> able to function with precision in the upper echelons of every logical
> structure he set up. If only he had not been an existentialist! For an
> existentialist who does not believe in some kind of Other is equal to an
> engineer who designs an automobile that requires no driver and accepts no
> passengers. If existentialism is to flourish (that is, develop through a
> series of new philosophers building on earlier premises), it needs a God
> who is no more confident of the end than we are; a God who is an artist,
> not a law-giver; a God who suffers the uncertainties of existence; a God
> who lives without any of the pre-arranged guarantees that sit like an
> incubus upon formal theology with its flatulent, self-serving assumption
of
> a Being who is All-Good and All-Powerful. What a gargantuan
> oxymoron--All-Good and All-Powerful. It is certain to maroon any and all
> formal theologians who would like to explain an earthquake. Before the
> wrath of a tsunami, they can only break wind. The notion of an
existential
> God, a Creator who may have been doing His or Her artistic best, but
could
> still have been remiss in designing the tectonic plates, is not within
> their scope.
>
> Sartre was alien to the possibility that existentialism might thrive if
it
> would just assume that indeed we do have a God who, no matter His or Her
> cosmic dimensions, (whether larger or smaller than we assume), embodies
> nonetheless some of our faults, our ambitions, our talents and our gloom.
> For the end is not written. If it is, there is no place for
existentialism.
> Base our beliefs, however, on the fact of our existence, and it takes no
> great step for us to assume that we are not only individuals but may well
> be a vital part of a larger phenomenon that searches for some finer
vision
> of life that could conceivably emerge from our present human condition.
> There is no reason, one can argue, why this assumption is not nearer to
the
> real being of our lives than anything the oxymoronic theologians would
> offer us. It is certainly more reasonable than Sartre's ongoing
> assumption--despite his passionate desire for a better society--that we
are
> here willy-nilly and must manage to do the best we can with endemic
> nothingness installed upon eternal floorlessness. Sartre was indeed a
> writer of major dimension, but he was also a philosophical executioner.
He
> guillotined existentialism just when we needed most to hear its howl, its
> barbaric yawp that there is something in common between God and all of
us.
> We, like God, are imperfect artists doing the best we can. We may succeed
> or fail--God as well as us. That is the implicit if undeveloped air of
> existentialism. We would do well to live again with the Greeks, live
again
> with the expectation that the end remains open but human tragedy may well
> be our end.
>
> Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the
doom
> that may also be on the way. Those are the poles of our existence--as
they
> have been from the first instant of the Big Bang. Something immense may
now
> be stirring, but to meet it we will do better to expect that life will
not
> provide the answers we need so much as it will offer the privilege of
> improving our questions. It is not moral absolutism but theological
> relativism we would do well to explore if our real need is for a God with
> whom we can engage our lives.
>
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