TAIL END OF THE SARTRE FAD
WACKER, JEANNE
Tail End of the Sartre Fad ENCOUNTER WITH NOTHINGNESS. By Helmut Kuhn. Henry Regnery Company. 168 pp. $3.00. A SHORT HISTORY OF EXISTENTIALISM. By Jean Wahl. The Philosophical Library. 55 pp....
...from the gentle humanitarian who places such central value upon the freedom and dignity of the individual, why not a cry ringing to the heavens in protest against the inhuman treatment of the millions in the slave camps...
...Kuhn occa fiionally assumes may be unintentional but is probably unavoidable for one so firmly convinced that the Existentialist surd can be fully digested by the subtle jukes of Chiistian (Catholic...
...2.00...
...The present work can be unqualifiedly recommended as an extremely skillful and lucid presentation in non-technical language of the succession of main events which culminated in Einstein's formulanon of his Theory of Relativity the difficulties which the Newtonian push-and-p\ill mechanical synthesis couldn't surmount in the field of optics and electrical phenomena...
...Kuhn's occasional references to sociological and cultural factors in his examination of Existentialism, his book is too short to allow them to sound anything but haphazard or dogmatic...
...from the outstanding symbol of the cretive worth of free enquiry, why not a bombshell thrown at those seeking to quench that life-giving and knowledge-producing spirit...
...so, space-bodies in space, for space has no absolute significance apart from things and their mutual relationships...
...JEAN WAHL'S BOOK — actually a lecture delivered in 1946—is necessarily slight and will for that reason be less valuable to the interested public than Kuhn's...
...Kuhn's negative motivation, he manages to make unusually plausible certain Existentialist concepts such as anguish, crisis, choice, leap, even though it is by the philosophically suspect but imaginatively powerful means of treating them as stages in a psychological development...
...The patronizing tone of Mr...
...2.75...
...the broadening out of new generalizations in his later theory (general) to include the basic problems of gravitation, and the subsequent empiric verifications of Einstein's abstract assertions which set the Relativity Theory upon an impregnable foundation (the bending of the light rays as they passed close to the sun, the change in the wave length emitted by a star in a heavy gravitational field and the correction in the previously-noted discrepancy in the planet Mercury's orbital motion uround the sun...
...Moreover, since the arvthropocentric bias of some current philosophizing has been developed elsewhere so much more thoroughly, for example, in the American school of Instrumentalism whieki derived its original inspiration frOW Hegel and Darwin, it seems a bit like special pleading to attribute the impetus of this trend to the philosophies of existence...
...Moreover, the most telling criticisms at Mr...
...near-Existentialists and critics of Existentialism—throws more light upon the attitudes of the participants than it does upon the subject...
...Also, although Wahl has been personally very close to the French Existentialist movement and has himself written a two-volume work on Kierkegaard, he succeeds far less than Kuhn in bringing home the immediate impact of those concepts which characterize Existentialist writers...
...For one thing, the seemingly dual nature of light (acting as a stream of particles in photoelectric and chemical phenomena, and as a wave in phenomena of interference and diffraction was a substantial obstacle to achieved complacence on the part of modern physicists...
...space-time, instead of space and time...
...The discussion at the end of Mr...
...1.12 pp...
...He clearly establishes the theory as a triumph of objectivity and invariance, for its essential point is that for all measuring observers and reference systems there is a measure which has an absolute value independent of any action, will or desire of ,the human being...
...In his extra-scientific opinions and activities, however, he can be as fumbling and as vulnerable as the rest of poor mankind, Our warrant in enquiring into this side of him is provided by the fact that Infeld's book ends with a consideration of Einstein as an individual and of some of his extra-scientific attitudes, a section which, in sharp contrast to the concrete and searching quality of the scientific exposition, contents itself with a few pleasant generalities...
...The author, Leopold Infelrl, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Toronto University, has collaborated with F-instein in empiric scientific wor*t at the InstiJim Cork contribuiss to The AmerInn Mrrcury and Pnmiiiriitaru...
...In this sense, we are witnessing and participating in the beginning of a new mode of philosophizing...
...It is good to see the author reject so vigorously the subjectivistic, idealistic philosphical conclusions which have been fallaciously drawn from the theory (for relativity seemed to place the observer in a directive and decisive position) as also the superficial ideas re the relativity of knowledge and morals which have been just as hastily drawn by prejudiced observers (from Moscow to Rome and beyond) anxious to attack Einstein...
...Kuhn's technique, then, is to agree: to state the Existentialists' views with truly remarkable verve, imagination and sympathy...
...so profound, so uncompromising, so consequential, so integritous in his scientific arguments, has not hit out hard at the chief source of the violation of all those great ideals which have so obviously ordered his own existence...
...Reviewed by JIM CORK BEFORE ITS DEMONSTRATED INADEQUACY at the end of the nineteenth century, the world of Newtonian classical physics was a more comfortable and logically-related whole than is the present unintegrated and theoretically-split edifice...
...the Quantum Theory—dealing with the microcosm and shaping all our concepts of the universe of the atom-and the Relativity Theory—dealing with the macrocosm and shaping all our concepts of space, time and gravitation—have never quite jelled and to this day rest on different and, as yet, unintegrated foundations...
...so, the equivalence of mass and energy, instead of their formerly-held distinctness, concretized in the famous equation E = mc2...
...Reviewed by JEANNE WACKEk DESPITE the admirable intention behind Mr...
...By Leopold Infeld...
...For example, commenting on the notions of authenticity and commitment, he says: "The mechanism of freedom, anguish and leap may catapult the individual to almost any position offered by the circumstances...
...In spite of its magnificent record of empiric achievements, so-called modern physics was in crisis practically from the beginning...
...Whatever truth there is in the statement that we are witnessing the birth of a new mode of philosophizing is surely a result far more of the analyses of the concepts of Substance and Essence made by twentieth-century logicians and philosophers of science than it is, of the anguished, protests of the Existentialists...
...The Mind of Albert Einstein ALBERT EINSTEIN...
...His book, however, may not have quite the digestive powers he intended, for affirmations of rational faith, spiritual ascent, loving submission to God, etc., sound somewhat hollow coming hard upon affirmations of irrational leaps, values sustained by man forsaken in an unheimlichfcett universe, and the other fireworks in the Existentialist display...
...the "astounding" and unlooked for result of the Michelson-Morley light experiment (devised as the last desperate attempt to "save" the mechanical explanation of light phenomena...
...EINSTEIN'S RELATIVITY THEORY represents one of the supreme intellectual achievements of all time...
...It was dissatisfaction with this "unnatural" state that has driven Einstein in his long and laborious search for a Unified Field Theory that would correlate and integrate these two distinct theoretical structures by supplying a universal set of laws that could encompass both...
...Philosophy—so goes the new affirmation—must cease to be philosophy of essence and must become philosophy of existence...
...But that was perhaps to be expected at a time when Existentialism was still something of a burning issue in Paris...
...Jeanne Wackar has taught philosophy mt New York University...
...Kuhn's command are ethical ones which, as he seems to realize, are perfectly tenable on naturalistic grounds...
...His Work and Its Influence oti Our World...
...The author is to be complimented on the degree of clarity he attains in expounding the famous Einsteinian "paradoxes" (the changes in clocks, yardsticks and mass as they approach the velocity of light) and Einstein's new- conceptions of mutual functional relationships between entities formerly conceived as separate and independent of each other (so...
...from the gifted amateur musician and music lover, why not a satiric barb directed at the obscene subordination of composers to the political perequisites of a totalitarian burocracy...
...The paradox is, why this man...
...We are observing a whole philosophical movement whkh dislodges previous philosophical concepts, and which tends to make more acute our subjective understanding at the same time as it makes us feel more strongly than ever our union with the world...
...theology...
...It seems, too, that Wahl's book suffers from a slight myopia attendant upon his nearness to the Existentialists...
...Nevertheless, in spite of Mr...
...More fundamental still, the two chief cornerstones of modern physics whose revolutionary conceptions and findings necessitated refining and amending Newtonian mechanics, viz...
...But there is a regrettable ambivalence to Einstein's thoughts in the political and social fields which constitutes a profound paradox that, if it is beyond my powers to resolve, at least deserves to be posed...
...THI8 BOOK was evidently written before the Unified Field Theory was given to the world...
...Statements like "Modern Existentialism is the quintessence of the nihilistic poison exuded by the ailing mind of Europe" (which concludes chapter one) woilld certainly seem to require more documentation than could be enenmposed in 23 introductory pages...
...which first let the world know of its portentous possibilities at Hiroshima...
...Existentialists, he says—to quote only one version of his oft-repeated formula —"do have some understanding of the great words, yet by means of a slight but fatal omission they turn wholesome ideas into instruments of destruction...
...Mr...
...He says, for example: "It is clear that one of the consequences of the existentialist movement and the philosophies of existence is that we have to destroy the majority of the ideas of so-called 'philosophical common-sense,' and of what has often been called 'the eternal philosophy.' In particular, we have to destroy the ideas of Essence and Substance...
...Oddly enough, he tends to approach them from the outside, as it were, by a listing of the concepts—especially those with a forbidding ring of German profundity—upon which they all "insist...
...In it he has wrought for the ages...
...From the greatest scientist of this century, perhaps of all centuries, to whom science is his very life, why not a sharp condemnation of the practices which have put science itself in chains...
...the bold conclusions Einstein drew from these developments in his first (special) relativity theory to drop the idea of the ether, to announce the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light and to deny Newtonian absolute motion in favor of the idea that motion can be described significantly only relative to a given frame of reference...
...tute for Advanced Study at Princeton as well as in the writing of that excellent popularization of modern physics, The Eyolutio?i of Physics...
...It is a formal criterion of human excellence and leaves open the question as to whether there might not be an authentic tyrant or an authentic criminal...
...and then to suggest that something is lacking, that as a Christian, a believer in the philosophic] peremiis, one can have all this and heaven too...
...Charles Schribner's Sons...
...Wahl's book—including Existentialists...
Vol. 33 • April 1950 • No. 16
