From Socrates to Sartre EP29 ⟩ “In Search: The Contemporary Scene in Philosophy”
Details
These, the best overview lectures of all time, provide a complete college course in philosophy. Beginners will get clarity and adepts will be revitalized.
Thelma Zeno Lavine’s From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest (1978) is the most riveting (her painstaking contortionist elocution), endearing (the eerie, theremin-laced Moog soundtrack, straight from the golden age of PBS), and confrontational (her radical politics and censorship-defying critiques) philosophy lecture series ever produced.
In Search: The Contemporary Scene in Philosophy
[Here is a dry temporary overview for now:
Analysis of Critique of Dialectical Reason: Sartre’s conversion to Marxism to provide “an ethics of deliverance and salvation.” “Marxism is the inescapable philosophy of our time.” Relation of existentialism to Marxism. The passionate longing for a foundation, to be both being-for-itself and also to be being-in-itself: But there can be no such being. Hence, God does not exist and “man is a useless passion.” Aside from Marxism as foundation, Sartre had no exit from absurd, dreadful freedom. Sartre’s relation to the Communist Party of France. Relation to Stalin, labor camps, colonial violence, Cuba, China. Break with Communists May, 1968. At death an ultra-leftist.
Present philosophic scene outside the Marxist world. The philosophical descendants of Hume and Hegel in polar opposition. Principles and themes of phenomenology; Husserl and focus on quest for certainty: Sartre and Heidegger: focus on issues and modes of conscious being in alien world. Linguistic philosophy. Logical positivism. Return to Hume. Theory of meaning. Verifiability principle of Vienna Circle. Attack upon metaphysics. Philosophy as an activity. Ludwig Wittgenstein: from logical positivism to analytic philosophy. First stage: logical positivism. The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the picture theory of language; the meaninglessness of philosophic “problems” and their “answers.” Second stage: analytic philosophy. Philosophical Investigations and the theory of language games. The appeal of analytic philosophy; philosophy as the activity of analyzing language games to dissolve philosophic problems. Criticism of Phenomenology and of logical positivism and of analytic philosophy. The death of philosophy? The search for a new philosophic vision. The promise of American philosophy, a synthesis of Hume and Hegel; the promise of history of philosophy; and of renewed research relating philosophy to the sciences and the arts—all of these having been buried under the avalanche of analytic philosophy.]
METHOD
Please watch the tiny 27-minute episode before the event. We will then replay a few short clips during the event for debate and discussion. A version with vastly improved audio can be found here:
Summaries, notes, event chatlogs, episode transcripts, timelines, tables, observations, and downloadable PDFs (seek the FSTS Book Vault) of the episodes we cover can be found here:
ABOUT PROFESSOR LAVINE
Dr. Lavine was professor of philosophy and psychology as Wells College, Brooklyn College, the University of Maryland (10 years), George Washington University (20), and George Mason University (13). She received the Outstanding Faculty Member award while at the University of Maryland and the Outstanding Professor award during her time at George Washington University.
She was not only a Dewey scholar, but a committed evangelist for American pragmatism.
View all of our coming episodes here.