TWO TYPES OF EXISTENTIALISM

by Nick Gier, presented at the Northwest Conference on Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University, November 20, 1976.

January 11th, 1788. This day fifty years ago I was born. From solitude in the womb, we emerge into solitude among our fellows, and return again to solitude within the grave. We pass our lives in the attempt to mitigate that solitude. But propinquity is never fusion. The most populous city is but an agglomeration of wildernesses. We exchange words, but exchange them from prison to prison, and without hope that they will signify to others what they mean to ourselves.

We marry, and there are two solitudes in the house instead of one; we beget children, and there are many solitudes. We reiterate the act of love; but again propinquity is never fusion. The most intimate contact is only of surfaces and we couple, as I have seen the condemned prisoners at Newgate coupling with their trulls, between the bars of our cages.

Pleasure cannot be shared; like pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give pleasure to our lovers or bestow charity upon the needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our benevolence, but only ourselves. For the truth is that we are kind for the same reason as we are cruel, in order that we may enhance the sense of our own power; and this we are for ever trying to do, despite the fact that by doing it we cause ourselves to feel more solitary than ever.

The reality of solitude is the same in all men, there being no mitigation of it, except in forgetfulness, stupidity, or illusion; but a man's sense of solitude is proportionate to the sense and fact of his power. In any set of circumstances, the more power we have, the more intensely do we feel our solitude. I have enjoyed much power in my life.

—Aldous Huxley After Many A Summer Dies The Swan, p. 174-175.

Love consists in this: that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

—Rainer Marie Rilke

There is no I taken in itself, but only the I of the primary word I-Thou...

—Martin Buber

    In a revealing statement about Camus in The Fabric of Existentialism, Gill and Sherman manifest an obvious flaw in the common understanding of that fabric. Commenting on Camus' The Plague, they observe that the swimming scene with Dr. Rieux and Tarrou "provides a rare dramatization of what Martin Buber terms 'community' in his exposition of the I-Thou relationship."(1) If we find in Camus only rarely what we find in Buber, then there must be some fundamental difference between them as existentialists. When thinkers as diverse as Kierkegaard and Buber are habitually excerpted, with little or no qualification, in anthologies of existentialist writers, then I believe that existentialist philosophy rightly deserves all the aspersions cast upon it by its critics.

    The standard typology that has long been used by commentators is the distinction between the atheistic and theistic existentialists. The traditional roll call for each of these types has been Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, and Merleau-Ponty as the atheists; and Kierkegaard, Marcel, Jaspers, and Buber as the theists. This typology is inadequate and misleading for a number of reasons. The theists differ substantially among themselves— not only on God but on other fundamental matters. While Jaspers and Marcel have clearly revived a more traditional concept of God, Kierkegaard and Buber's theism is definitely unconventional. Although the former were influenced by Kierkegaard, they did not accept his view that the relationship with God is paradoxical or that the object of faith is absurd. The status of God in Buber is problematic—with some emphasis on a traditional God but even more emphasis on the humanization of God as Mitmenschlichkeit ("with- peopleness"). Furthermore, I contend that Buber and Kierkegaard differ so greatly on the nature of the self that this easily outweighs any affinity they might have as unconventional theists.

    There are also substantial differences among the atheists. The non-Cartesian approach of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty stands in stark contrast to the radical subjectivism of Nietzsche, the early Sartre, and Camus. On this matter Marcel and Jaspers share the same concerns as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, but this sympathy is obscured by the traditional characterization of them as theistic existentialists. I therefore propose a new typology that will help us sort out the various existentialist writers according to sounder criteria. I suggest that the literature divides itself between two types: "strict" or "monological" existentialism on the one hand and "dialogical" existentialism on the other. I prefer to use the adjective "strict" here, because the themes of this material are most closely associated with common perceptions of existentialism as a philosophy.

    The term "dialogical" is of course taken from Buber's "dialogue" philosophy, which I find to be the antithesis of the "monological" emphasis that is embodied in the classical literature, especially Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and some of Dostoevsky's heroes. The proposed typology would then classify these 19th Century figures plus the early Sartre (until 1947)Although the status of the later Sartre is still a controversial issue, I am convinced, from the evidence of recent interviews and actions, that Sartre has passed from an existentialism of the strict variety (epitomized in Existentialism is a Humanism), through a middle stage of The Critique of Dialectical Reason, to be a doctrinaire Marxism with a strong Maoist bent. and Camus as strict existentialists; and Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Buber, Marcel, and Jaspers as "dialogical" existentialists.

The Cartesian Starting Point

    The fundamental difference between strict and dialogical existentialism is based on a distinction between a Cartesian versus a non-Cartesian starting point. Strict existentialism is still under the influence of a general Cartesian approach to consciousness and reality that dominated three centuries of western thought and culture. The strong and explicit anti-Cartesian thrust of such philosophers as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Buber is a definite and significant divergence from this strict existentialist line. Sartre, in a tribute to Camus after his untimely death, called Camus a "Cartesian of the absurd," a phrase that aptly describes all the strict existentialists.

    To avoid misunderstanding, it must be made clear that I am using the term "Cartesian" in a broad sense, broad enough to include thinkers after Descartes who did not necessarily accept his rationalism nor his dualism. The most significant aspect of Descartes' Meditations is the discovery of subjectivity and the phenomenology of consciousness which is used as a starting point. The method of systematic doubt leads to the isolated ego cogito and then to the problem of this ego's relationship to the world. Descartes solves this problem positively with a confident flourish of arguments for the existence of God and the external world.

    The strict existentialists, on the other hand, leave us at the nadir of doubt with at best a paradoxical ideal of God (Kierkegaard) or at worst a thorough going atheism and perspectivism (Nietzsche). Using the advantages of the literary medium, these thinkers are only dramatically expressing what many academic philosophers have thought for a long time: the inevitable result of the Cartesian method is solipsism and skepticism. In the classical existentialist literature of the 19th Century, Descartes is rarely mentioned, and if so, only indirectly in the context of a polemic against the effects of Cartesian rationalism. But exercises in unsystematic doubt and celebrations of isolated consciousness abound in this material. Kierkegaard and many of Dostoevsky's heroes (e.g. the "underground man" or Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment) are poignant expressions of a radical Cartesianism.

    The following passage from Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript is typical: "While objective thought is indifferent to the thinking subject and this existence, the subjective thinker is an existing individual essentially interested in his own thinking, existing as he does in his thought....In [objective] thinking, he thinks the universal; but as existing in this thought and as assimilating it in his inwardness, he becomes more and more subjectively isolated."(2) Sartre's Cartesian starting point is perfectly clear in his brief, but significant, manifesto Existentialism is a Humanism. He states confidently: "Subjectivity...is indeed our point of departure, and this for strictly philosophic reasons....There can be no other truth to take off from than this: I think; therefore, I exist. There we have the absolute truth of consciousness becoming aware of itself." (3) Camus follows suit in this passage from The Myth of Sisyphus: "For everything begins with consciousness and nothing is worth anything except through it."(4) This philosophical axiom appears in the context of a reflective detachment from life's routines—again reminiscent of Descartes' setting. But instead of building a constructive metaphysics on the certainty of the ego cogito, Camus, like Sartre, finds in it "the origins of the absurd."

    In the beginning of The Myth of Sisyphus Camus reaffirms the Cartesian dualism of consciousness radically separated from things. His description of things remind one of the dualism of the pour-soi (for-itself) and en-soi (in-itself) in Sartre. In fact, he refers directly to Sartre's novel Nausea, which is a literary hyperbole on the dominance of being as en-soi. Camus' things are like en-soi: they are "dense ...foreign and irreducible to us."(5) Sartre's Nausea immediately comes to mind with this statement: "The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millenia."Ibid. There is no possibility of scientific knowledge let alone I-Thou relationships in such a world. As Sartre states: "Conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others,"(6) or as Garcin puts it in No Exit, "Hell is other people." Huxley's protagonist in our first epigram is the strict existentialist par excellence.

The Rejection of the Cartesian View

    In distinct contrast to the sentiments above are the words of Buber in I and Thou: "There is no I as such but only the I of the basic word I-You and the I of the basic word I-It."(7) The principal thrust of Buber's "dialogue" philosophy is the implicit premise that Descartes' method is a false method. The isolation of the ego cogito is an artificial separation. The "I" is never separate from things or persons; indeed, it is defined in terms if its interrelationship with the so-called "external" world. As Buber states: "I require a You to become; becoming I, I say You." (8) While the strict existentialists are involved in a monologue with an alien reality, the dialogical existentialists are always in dialogue with a world in which they are inextricably bound up.

    One of the most notable aspects of Heidegger's Being and Time is his critique of Descartes' res cogitans as a thinking substance ontologically distinct from res extensa. Concentrating solely on a derivative mode of Being—"constant presence-to-hand"—Descartes was forced, Heidegger claims, to posit an ontology "based upon a radical separation of the God, the I, and the world...."(9) Such a separation of self and world is a falsification of human experience and leads the philosopher to ponder dilemmas which are entirely self-imposed. Heidegger further analyzes this mistake: "By marking out and isolating the I...one must then seek some way of getting over to the Others from this isolated subject."(10) In contrast, Heidegger takes the ego cogito as only a "formal indicator" and builds his ontology on the existentialist categories of Sorge (care) and Mitsein (Being-with). As Heidegger states: "Being with Others belongs to the Being of Dasein...Dasein is essentially for the sake of Others...this means that because Dasein's Being is Being-with (Mitsein), Being is Being-with (Mitsein), its understanding of Being already implies the understanding of Others."(11) Such an emphasis on intersubjectivity and a primordial understanding of persons is absent from the strict existentialists, who definitely celebrate the intrasubjectivity of the isolated ego.

    There are some significant comments in the literature which indicate Heidegger's basic incompatibility with the strict existentialists, an incompatibility which Heidegger himself did not publicly point out until his celebrated Letter on Humanism in 1947. Merleau-Ponty observes that "what Heidegger lacks is not historicity but, on the contrary, an affirmation of the individual: he does not mention that struggle of consciousnesses and opposition of freedoms...."(12) For this same reason Simone de Beauvoir prefers Hegel over Heidegger: "These phenomena would be incomprehensible if in fact human society were simply a Mitsein or fellowship based on solidarity and friendliness. Things become clear, on the contrary, if, following Hegel, we find in consciousness itself a fundamental hostility toward every other consciousness...."(13) De Beauvoir hereby shows her support for Sartrean existentialism.

    The dialogical character of Jasper's existentialism is clearly evident in the second volume of Philosophy. In an indirect critique of strict existentialism, he warns us of the dangers of the seclusion of the isolated ego. "To be unsatisfied is a condition inadequate to existence, and when this condition has opposed me to the world, it is my freedom that conquers all disenchantment and returns me to the world, to my fellow man with whom I ascertain the origin."(14) We find none of the strict existentialists claiming that one's true origin is in our fellow human being. Jaspers directly criticizes the concept of the "single one" of Kierkegaard and stresses the need for direct com munication—not the indirect discourse of the isolated Kierkegaardian self. As Jaspers states: "In communication I am revealed to myself, along with the other....This process...does not occur in isolated Existenz. It occurs only with another."(15)

    Very few French philosophers have been able to break completely with the Cartesian spirit. As I have pointed out earlier, residual Cartesianism is found in both Sartre and Camus. But Merleau-Ponty achieved maximum distance from Descartes when he attempted to bring the disembodied ego cogito back to the body and the world. In Phenomenolgy of Perception Merleau-Ponty concludes that the "I" is "a field, an experience...a possibility of situations—not a separate thinking thing." (16) Descartes was obviously misled, because the perceptual object is never separate from its subject. Only in thought and reflection is the division made and then erroneously ontologized. Such conclusions definitely give Merleau-Ponty's existentialism its dialogical basis.

    The dialogical character of Gabriel Marcel's philosophy is clearly evident in Being and Having. Directly criticizing Descartes, Marcel charges that "Cartesianism implies a severance...between intellect and life; its result is a depreciation of the one, and an exaltation of the other, both arbitrary."(17) He answers Descartes by contending that the self "exists in so far as it treats itself as being for another, with reference to another."(18) Marcel speaks of the "circle" of the Cartesian "I," a hermetically sealed arena of subjectivity that leads to the "banishment of the Thou." Marcel states: "From this point of view, I have no power of making contact with them; the very idea of communication is impossible. I cannot help regarding this intra-subjective reality of the others as the emerging of an absolutely mysterious and forever impalpable X."(19) For Marcel, as it was for Jaspers, the best disproof of Descartes is the immediate intersubjectivity found in love. As we are open to others in love, we "cease to form a circle with myself."(20) and the Cartesian illusion vanishes immediately. In Camus humans had indirect cognizance of their solidarity in rebellion; for Jaspers and Marcel, this solidarity is revealed directly in love.

Merleau-Ponty's Definition of Existentialism

    We now have one type of existentialism which is a form of radical Cartesianism, emphasizing disengagement, the absurd, and rebellion. The other type is dialogical, explicitly rejecting the Cartesian starting point, emphasizing engagement, dialogue, and intersubjectivity. This latter type is summed up beautifully in Merleau-Ponty's definition of existentialism: "A more complete definition of what is called existentialism than we get from talking of anxiety and the contradictions of the human condition might be found in the idea of a universality which men affirm or imply by the mere fact of their being and at the very moment of their opposition to each other, in the idea of a reason immanent in unreason, of a freedom which comes into being in the act of accepting limits...."(21)

    Let us unpack this definition and lay out several more implications of strict versus dialogical existentialism. The most striking aspect of this passage is that fact that it is the conclusion of an article entitled "Hegel's Existentialism." Knowing as we do the origins of 19th Century existentialism in Kierkegaard's open revolt against Hegel, this title is most unusual. But in the development of existentialist philosophy and phenomenology, there has been a return to an appreciation of Hegel's formulation of these central problems: the limitations of formal logic and the problems of freedom, individuality, and community. And it is Merleau-Ponty, perhaps more than any other modern philosopher, that has made us aware of Hegel's relevance on these issues.

    The way in which the dialogical existentialists view reason is definitely contrary to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, or Sartre. Nietzsche led an open revolt against reason in his declaration that "life is not argument," and Kierkegaard passionately embraced the absurd. Sartre explicitly rejects the law of contradiction: understanding bad faith requires us to use contradictory terms and reality itself is both being and non-being at the same time. Nietzsche is especially severe on the structures of formal reason: "Reason-virtue-happiness, that means merely that one must imitate Socrates and counter the dark appetites with a permanent daylight—the daylight of reason. One must be clever, clear, bright at any price: any concession to the instincts, to the unconscious, leads downward."(22)

    All of the dialogical philosophers reject the irrationalism of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Japsers uses what he calls a "dynamic" reason to support his contentions about God. Heidegger seeks a logos beyond formal logic, but does not openly embrace the irrationalism of the strict existentialists. Merleau-Ponty proposes to find "reason immanent in unreason" and attempts an "enlargement" of reason rather than its destruction. In this project he appeals to Hegel, who "started the attempt to explore reason which remains the task of our century. He is the inventor of that reason, broader than [Kantian] understanding, which can respect the variety and singularity of individual consciousnesses...."(23) This broad concept of reason is basically descriptive and phenomenological rather than the normative forms of traditional logic. For Merleau-Ponty it is the logic of immediate perception, not of cognitive reflection, that is important. The logic of perception is derived from a phenomenological description of how humans put their world together and how they conform to a life-world (Lebenswelt). As Merleau-Ponty states: "The world is not what I think, but what I live through."(24)  Click here For more on broad reason.

    A more comprehensive approach to human experience goes beyond the prescriptive methods of logic and science to a "new hermeneutic," a phenomenology of interpretation based on the works of Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Heidegger, and his brightest disciple, Hans-Georg Gadamer. Human existence is not absurd; rather, its "logic" transcends the traditional limits of formal reasoning. Merleau-Ponty replaces Sartre's motto "humans are condemned to freedom" with one more appropriate to the concerns of dialogical existentialists: "humans are condemned to meaning." The full essence of human experience will forever escape cognitive reflection, but it is nonetheless meaning-laden and meaning-giving.

    Merleau-Ponty's comment on freedom—that is "comes into being in the act of accepting limits"—points to another definitive divergence from strict existentialism. In the latter view freedom is held to be absolute and unabridgeable. They would never accept the proposition that freedom is found in accepting limits of any sort. Nietzsche's Overman maintains his freedom even the face of the most unbearable thought of all: Eternal Recurrence. The strict existentialists appear to believe that even if determinism is true, humans still must have free-will. Facing his own form of Eternal Recurrence, Camus' Sisyphus believes that "there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn."(25) Also similar is Sartre's conclusion in Existentialism is a Humanism that even if there is a God, we would still have to defy him. Such a Stoic affirmation of the inviolability of human liberty, ironically similar in many ways to Epictetus or St. Ambrose, is tempered considerably in the writings of the dialogical existentialists.

    In Man Against Mass Society Marcel argues that the Stoic view of a noumenal self, immune from the effects of the phenomenal world, is no longer tenable. In the past one was always able to scorn one's torturers and a slave like Epictetus was always able to feel morally superior to his master. But all of this has changed with the development of new techniques of psychological manipulation and brainwashing. Marcel essentially agrees with Merleau-Ponty that human freedom is not absolute but limited and relative to the exigencies of any given situation.

    The dialogical existentialists, therefore, support a relational freedom in which the situation dictates the general framework of human action, and personal agents then have limited freedom within that framework. In Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty contends that the concept of absolute liberty has no meaning; freedom is intelligible only in a situation. Merleau-Ponty speaks figuratively of the "centrifugal" forces of the human self meeting the "centripetal" forces of the environment. As Merleau-Ponty states: "We choose our world and the world chooses us."(26) In a similar way Heidegger finds the limits of human freedom in being thrown (Geworfenheit) into a factual situation (Faktizität) and thereby being constrained in important ways.

    Perhaps the most Hegelian sounding phrase in Merleau-Ponty's definition of existentialism is "the idea of a universality which men affirm or imply by the mere fact of their being and at the very moment of their opposition." Placed in the general context of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, this "universality" is not rational consciousness but pre-reflective, embodied consciousness. This pre-cognitive knowledge of "operative intentionality" is what all of us share as perceiving beings. Such a theory of perception comes principally as a result of Merleau-Ponty's non-Cartesian starting point, which allows him and other dialogical existentialists to speak unhesitantly about our knowledge of the world and our relationship with other persons. It is a theory of perception which directly and unequivocally supports a theory of intersubjectivity. As Merleau-Ponty says: "`I live...not for myself alone but with other people."(27)

    The social and political implications are clear: there is now a philosophical foundation for community and a justification for the authority of the state. (This even leads to a humanistic form of Marxism in Merleau-Ponty.) In contrast, the only socio-political position that can be drawn from strict existentialism is at least the apoliticism of a reclusive Kierkegaard or at most the militant anarchism of a Nietzschean Overman. Kierkegaard states that the "crowd is untruth," and Nietzsche gives us hint of community or political obedience in the following statement from The Genealogy of Morals: "...We discover that the ripest fruit is the sovereign individual, like only to himself, liberated again from morality of custom, autonomous and supramoral (for autonomous and moral are mutually exclusive), in short, the man who has his own independent, protracted will...."(28) The truly autonomous person of strict existentialism is of necessity an anarchist.

Problems, Summary, Conclusions

    If the foregoing analysis is correct, one might legitimately ask, "If these two types of thinkers are as different as you claim, is it advisable to call both of them 'existentialist'?" One can answer Yes or No to this question. The fact is that most people understand existentialism as monological in form—viz., as a philosophy based on radical individualism, alienation, and despair. With this point in mind, it would be advisable to limit the term "existentialist" to the monological writers. On the other hand, there are several basic tenets which both views share despite their differences. First, there is the firm belief that the cosmos always reduces to a human world. This means that it would be baseless to talk of an existentialist philosophy of nature or an existentialist cosmology. Even when Merleau-Ponty does engage in cosmology—e.g., his reflections about the human, the vital, and physical orders in The Structure of Behavior—he is establishing a framework for understanding human behavior. Sartre sums it up well: "There is no non-human situation."(29)

    Second, both existentialist positions hold that there is no final solution to the present human predicament. Therefore all religious or secular solutions (phrased in finalistic or doctrinaire terms) to humankind's present ills would be excluded from existentialism. Third, by placing will prior to reason, both the dialogical and strict existentialists are thoroughgoing voluntarists. This is why both types shy away from any moral rationalism. Dostoevsky's "Underground Man" phrases this voluntarism well: "...Reason is only reason and can only satisfy man's rational faculty, while will is a manifestation of all life, of all human life including reason as well as all impulses."(30)

    Obviously some exceptions can be found in the literature which seems to vitiate the typology. For example, it is Heidegger who gives us the first formal existentialist analysis of death, Angst, and the experience of nothingness (das Nichts). It might also be argued that Heidegger's Mitsein is not a successful theoretical construct; and even if successful, it is not fully dialogical— certainly not as much as Buber's Mitmenschlichkeit. On the other side, it is clear that Kierkegaard believes that there is one possibility for genuine human dialogue and that is the Christian fellowship of the Works of Love. Even Camus moves to more interhuman themes in the later works, but it is significant that Gill and Sherman find only one unequivocal break in the underlying alienation: the swimming scene in The Plague.

    In response to these problems the principal methodological difference must be reemphasized: the fundamental distinction between a Cartesian and a non-Cartesian starting point. A Cartesian may talk of love, of dialogue, of freedom, and even God; but as long as there is an ontology (either implicit or explicit) of subjects radically different from objects, these themes cannot be successfully grounded in theory.

Endnotes

1. Richard Gill and Ernest Sherman, eds., The Fabric of Existentialism (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1973), p. 537.

2. Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), pp. 67-8.

3. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism. Included in Existentialism and Human Emotions (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), p. 36.

4. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O'rien (New York: Vintage, 1955), p. 10.

5. Ibid., p. 11.

6. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 364.

7. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Scribner's, 1970), p. 54.

8. Ibid., p. 62.

9. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), p. 128.

10. Ibid., p. 154.

11. Ibid., pp. 160-1.

12. Merleau-Ponty, "Hegel's Existentialism," in Sense and Non-Sense, trans. H. L. and P. A. Dreyfus (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 69.

13. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York: Knopf, 1952), p. xvii.

14. Karl Jaspers, Philosophy, trans. E. B. Ashton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), Volume Two, p. 7.

15. Ibid., pp. 58-9.

16. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), pp. 406-7.

17. Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having, excerpted in Gill and Sherman, op. cit., p. 626.

18. Ibid., p. 619.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., p. 620.

21. Merleau-Ponty, "Hegel's Existentialism," p. 70.

22. The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1954), p. 478.

23. Merleau-Ponty, "Hegel's Existentialism," p. 63.

24. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. xvi.

25. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 90.

26. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, p. 454.

27. Merleau-Ponty, "Hegel's Existentialism," p. 70.

28. Nietzsche, The Geneaology of Morals, trans. H. B. Samuel in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (New York: Russell & Russell, 1964), pp. 63-4.

29. Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, p. 53.

30. F. Dostoevsky, "Notes from the Underground," excerpted in R. C. Solomon, ed., Existentialism (New York: Random House, 1974), p. 39.