Jul 28, · On average, in the United States, on measures of basic political knowledge, whites know more than blacks, people in the Northeast know more than people in the South, men know more than women, middle-aged people know more than the young or old, and high-income people know more than the poor (Delli Carpini and Keeter –) Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (Latin: [kᶣiːntɪliˈaːnʊs]; c. 35 – c. AD) was a Roman educator and rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing. In English translation, he is usually referred to as Quintilian (/ k w ɪ n ˈ t ɪ l i ən /), although the alternate spellings of Quintillian and Quinctilian are occasionally seen Jun 12, · A look at the rise of BitClout, a burgeoning crypto service monetizing social influence, valued at more than $1B in April, but operating in a legal gray zone — BitClout collapses everything—art, humor, personhood—into money, laying bare just who, and what, we are willing to pay for
Quintilian - Wikipedia
Existentialism is a catch-all term for those philosophers who consider the nature of the human condition as a key philosophical problem and who share the view that this problem is best addressed through ontology. This very broad definition will be clarified by discussing seven key themes that existentialist thinkers address. Those philosophers considered existentialists are mostly from the continent of Europe, and date from the 19 th and 20 th centuries. Outside philosophy, the existentialist movement is probably the most well-known philosophical movement, and at least two of its members are among the most famous philosophical personalities and widely read philosophical authors.
It has certainly had considerable influence outside philosophy, for example on psychological theory and on the arts. Within philosophy, though, it is safe to say that this loose movement considered as a whole has not had a great impact, although individuals or ideas counted within it remain important.
In this article, however, it is assumed that something sensible can be said about existentialism as a loosely defined movement. The article has three sections. First, we outline a set of themes that define, albeit very broadly, existentialist concerns. This is influence of the internet: more harm than good with reference to the historical context of existentialism, which will help us to understand why certain philosophical problems and methods were considered so important.
Second, we discuss individually six philosophers who are arguably its central figures, stressing in these discussions the ways in which these philosophers approached existentialist themes in distinctive ways. These figures, and many of the others we mention, have full length articles of their own within the Encyclopedia. Finally, we look very briefly at the influence of existentialism, especially outside philosophy.
Although a highly diverse tradition of thought, seven themes can be identified that provide some sense of overall unity. Here, these themes will be briefly introduced; they can then provide us with an intellectual framework within which to discuss exemplary figures within the history of existentialism. Philosophy should not be thought of primarily either as an attempt to investigate and understand the self or the world, or as a special occupation that concerns only a few.
Rather, philosophy must be thought of as fully integrated within life. To be sure, there may need to be professional philosophers, who develop an elaborate influence of the internet: more harm than good of methods and concepts Sartre makes this point frequently but life can be lived philosophically without a technical knowledge of philosophy. Existentialist thinkers tended to identify two historical antecedents for this notion.
First, the ancient Greeks, and particularly the figure of Socrates but also the Stoics and Epicureans. In this, the existentialists were hardly unusual. In the 19 th and 20 th centuries, the rapid expansion of industrialisation and advance in technology were often seen in terms of an alienation of the human from nature or from a properly natural way of living for example, thinkers of German and English romanticism. The second influence on thinking of philosophy as a way of life was German Idealism after Kant.
Partly as a response to the 18 th century Enlightenment, and under the influence of the Neoplatonists, Schelling and Hegel both thought of philosophy as an activity that is an integral part of the history of human beings, influence of the internet: more harm than good, rather than outside of life and the world, looking on. Later in the 19 th century, Marx famously criticised previous philosophy by saying that the point of philosophy is not to know things — even to know things about activity — but to change them.
The concept of philosophy as a way of life manifests itself in existentialist thought in a number of ways. Let us give several examples, to which we will return in the sections that follow. First, the existentialists often undertook a critique of modern life in terms of the specialisation of both manual and intellectual labour.
Specialisation included philosophy. One consequence of this is that many existentialist thinkers experimented with different styles or genres of writing in order to escape the effects of this specialisation, influence of the internet: more harm than good.
For Kierkegaard, for example, the fundamental truths of my existence are not representations — not, that is, ideas, propositions or symbols the meaning of which can be separated from their origin.
Rather, the truths of existence are immediately lived, felt and acted. Likewise, for Nietzsche and Heidegger, it is essential to recognise that the philosopher investigating human existence is, him or herself, an existing human.
Third, the nature of life itself is a perennial existentialist concern and, more famously in Heidegger and in Camusalso the significance of death. Anxiety here has two important implications. Second, anxiety also stands for a form of existence that is recognition of being on its own. Alternatively, it might be a more specifically theological claim: the existence of a transcendent deity is not relevant to or is positively detrimental to such decisions a view broadly shared by Nietzsche and Sartre.
Finally, being on its own might signify the uniqueness of human existence, and thus the influence of the internet: more harm than good that it cannot understand itself in terms of other kinds of existence Heidegger and Sartre. As we shall see, the authentic being would be able to recognise and affirm the nature of existence we shall shortly specify some of the aspects of this, such as absurdity and freedom.
Not, though, recognise the nature of existence as an intellectual fact, disengaged from life; but rather, the authentic being lives in accordance with this nature. The notion of authenticity is sometimes seen as connected to individualism. However, many existentialists see individualism as a historical and cultural trend for example Nietzscheor dubious political value Camusrather than a necessary component of authentic existence, influence of the internet: more harm than good.
Individualism tends to obscure the particular types of collectivity that various existentialists deem important. For many existentialists, the conditions of the modern world make authenticity especially difficult. For example, many existentialists would join other philosophers such as the Frankfurt School in condemning an instrumentalist conception of reason and value.
The utilitarianism of Mill measured moral value and justice also in terms of the consequences of actions. Later liberalism would seek to absorb nearly all functions of political and social life under the heading of economic performance. Evaluating solely in terms of the measurable outcomes of production was seen as reinforcing the secularisation of the influence of the internet: more harm than good of political, social or economic life; and reinforcing also the abandonment of any broader sense of the spiritual dimension such an idea is found acutely in Emerson, and is akin to the concerns of Kierkegaard.
Existentialists such as Martin Heidegger, influence of the internet: more harm than good, Hanna Arendt or Gabriel Marcel viewed these social movements in terms of a narrowing of the possibilities of human thought to the instrumental or technological. The next key theme is freedom. Freedom can usefully be linked to the concept of anguish, because my freedom is in part defined by the isolation of my decisions from any determination by a deity, or by previously existent values or knowledge.
Many existentialists identified the 19 th and 20 th centuries as experiencing a crisis of values. This might be traced back to familiar reasons such as an increasingly secular society, or the rise of scientific or philosophical movements that questioned traditional accounts of value for example Marxism or Darwinisminfluence of the internet: more harm than good, or the shattering experience of two world wars and the phenomenon of mass genocide.
It is important to note, however, that for existentialism these historical conditions do not create the problem of anguish in the face of freedom, but merely cast it into higher relief. Likewise, freedom entails something like responsibility, for myself and for my actions. Given that my situation is one of being on its own — recognised in anxiety — then both my freedom and my responsibility are absolute.
The isolation that we discussed above means that there is nothing else that acts through me, or that shoulders my responsibility. Likewise, unless human existence is to be understood as arbitrarily changing moment to moment, this freedom and responsibility must stretch across time.
We should note here that many of the existentialists take on a broadly Kantian notion of freedom: freedom as autonomy.
This means that freedom, rather than being randomness or arbitrariness, consists in the binding of oneself to a law, but a law that is given by the self in recognition of its responsibilities. This borrowing from Kant, influence of the internet: more harm than good, however, is heavily qualified by the next theme. Although my freedom is absolute, it always takes place in a particular context.
My body and its characteristics, my circumstances in a historical world, and my past, all weigh upon freedom. This is what makes freedom meaningful. Suppose I tried to exist as free, while pretending to be in abstraction from the situation.
In that case I will have no idea what possibilities are open to me and what choices need to be made, here and now. In such a case, my freedom will be naïve or illusory. This concrete notion of freedom has its philosophical genesis in Hegel, and is generally contrasted to the pure rational freedom described by Kant. For example, many 19 th century intellectuals were interested in ancient Greece, Rome, the Medieval period, or the orient, as alternative models of a less spoiled, more integrated form of life.
Nietzsche, to be sure, shared these interests, but he did so not uncritically: because the human condition is characterised by being historically situated, it cannot simply turn back the clock or decide all at once to be other than it is Sartre especially shares this view.
Heidegger expresses a related point in this way: human existence cannot be abstracted from its world because being-in-the-world is part of the ontological structure of that existence. Many existentialists take my concretely individual body, and the specific type of life that my body lives, as a primary fact about me for example, Nietzsche, Scheler or Merleau-Ponty.
I must also be situated socially: each of my acts says something about how I view others but, reciprocally, each of their acts is a view about what I am. My freedom is always situated with respect to the judgements of others. Situatedness in general also has an important philosophical antecedent in Marx: economic and political conditions are not contingent features with respect to universal human nature, but condition that nature from the ground up. One point on which there is agreement, though, is that the existence with which we should be concerned here is not just any existent thing, but human existence.
There is thus an important difference between distinctively human existence and anything else, and human existence is not to be understood on the model of thingsthat is, as objects of knowledge. But these distinctions appear to be just differences between two types of things.
Whether the existentialist characterisation of Plato or Descartes is accurate is a different question. The existentialists thus countered the Platonic or Cartesian conception with a model that resembles more the Aristotelian as developed in the Nichomachean Ethics, influence of the internet: more harm than good.
The latter idea arrives in existentialist thought filtered through Leibniz and Spinoza and the notion of a striving for existence. Equally important is the elevation of the practical above influence of the internet: more harm than good theoretical in German Idealists, influence of the internet: more harm than good. Accordingly, in Nietzsche and Sartre we find the notion that the human being is all and only what that being does.
My existence consists of forever bringing myself into being — and, correlatively, fleeing from the dead, inert thing that is the totality of my past actions. For many existentialists, authentic existence involves a certain tension be recognised and lived through, but not resolved: this tension might be between the animal and the rational important in Nietzsche or between facticity and transcendence Sartre and de Beauvoir.
In the 19 th and 20 th centuries, the human sciences such as psychology, sociology or economics were coming to be recognised as powerful and legitimate sciences. To some extend at least their assumptions and methods seemed to be borrowed from the natural sciences. While philosophers such as Dilthey and later Gadamer were concerned to show that the human sciences had to have a distinctive method, the existentialists were inclined to go further.
The free, situated human being is not an object of knowledge in the sense the human always exists as the possibility of transcending any knowledge of it. First, many existentialists argued that nature as a whole has no design, no reason for existing.
Thus, the achievements of the natural sciences also empty nature of value and meaning. Unlike a created cosmos, for example, we cannot expect the scientifically described cosmos to answer our questions concerning value or meaning. Human beings can and should become profoundly aware of this lack of reason and the impossibility of an immanent understanding of it.
Camus, for example, argues that the basic scene influence of the internet: more harm than good human existence is its confrontation with this mute irrationality, influence of the internet: more harm than good. A second meaning of the absurd is this: my freedom will not only be undetermined by knowledge influence of the internet: more harm than good reason, but from the point of view of the latter my freedom will even appear absurd.
Even if I choose to follow a law that I have given myself, my choice of law will appear absurd, and likewise will my continuously reaffirmed choice to follow it. Third, human existence as action is doomed to always destroy itself. A free action, once done, is no longer free; it has become an aspect of the world, a thing. The absurdity of human existence then seems to lie in the fact that in becoming myself a free existence I must be what I am not a thing.
The Internet Brings More Harm Than Good
, time: 4:22Americans' Views on Religion in Society, Politics | Pew Research Center
Jun 12, · A look at the rise of BitClout, a burgeoning crypto service monetizing social influence, valued at more than $1B in April, but operating in a legal gray zone — BitClout collapses everything—art, humor, personhood—into money, laying bare just who, and what, we are willing to pay for Oct 22, · The researchers defined heavy use as two or more hours each and every day. Moderate use involved less than two hours a day on five to seven days a week. Light users accessed the internet for less than two hours a day and on no more than four days a week. Four out of 10 teens used the Internet more than two hours every day Jul 28, · On average, in the United States, on measures of basic political knowledge, whites know more than blacks, people in the Northeast know more than people in the South, men know more than women, middle-aged people know more than the young or old, and high-income people know more than the poor (Delli Carpini and Keeter –)
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