Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

Nothing is more exhausting than the search for meaning. Every question has a thousand answers, each claiming to be correct. And each can be challenged by a thousand objections. Evermore we come out the same door as in we went, and return to -- ourselves. We alone are unavoidably the final arbiters of our personal beliefs and values. Occasionally we have the good fortune to find a guide through the jungle of perplexing philosophical questions who can explain issues clearly, distinctly, and quietly, without forcing his personal conclusions on us. But how do we know the guide is reliable? Before we have heard what he has to say, we don't. And if we chose to believe that he is reliable, that is our choice.I agree with the many readers of _Irrational Man_ that Barrett is a remarkably persuasive guide. Not that I agree with him completely -- nobody's beliefs can totally correspond with those of another. No matter. Barrett has his feet on the ground, and one gets the feeling when reading him that however convoluted the explanation -- and some (but not all) explanations are necessarily convoluted -- Barrett is not playing with smoke and mirrors. My recommendation is to read a few pages of what he has to say as critically as you please, and then decide for yourself.William Barrett (1913-1992) grew up in the generation just before and after WWII. His memoir _The Truants: Adventures among the Intellectuals_ (1982), recounts his early days at _Partisan Review_ and his associations with such figures as Delmore Schwartz, Mary McCarthy, Edmund Wilson, and Philip Rahv. Very interesting as biography; no philosophy. The book is out of print but can be found for a ridiculously low price. [This author's middle name was Christopher, I think, although he uses neither the name nor initial to identify his writings. He is not to be confused with William E. (Edmund) Barrett (1900-1986), the novelist, and at least one other William Barrett, who appears to be a psychoanalyst.]_Irrational Man: A study in Existential Philosophy_ (1958) is credited with being largely responsible for introducing existentialism to America. Two years earlier Barrett edited and published a work that might be described as the first attempt to provide a serious philosophical rationale for the post-war "Zen Boom": _Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki_(Doubleday Anchor, 1956). Both books are still selling well, a half century later. But Barrett, like many others, was put off by the pretentious antics of the Beat Generation: `Twenty years ago, . . . I played a small part in introducing Zen to this country, and I have not always been happy with the results. American youth acquired another vocabulary to throw around. The "mindlessness" that Zen recommended was pursued by the young in the haze of marijuana and drugs. They forgot, if they had ever learned, the prosaic and magnificent saying of the sage Hui-Neng: "The Tao [the truth] is your ordinary mind." In recent years I have let myself forget all about Zen, and probably have been nearer to its spirit. Stick to your ordinary mind, reader, and forget the tabs. Find your own rocks and trees.' (_The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization_ , 1978, , p. 371)Judging from Amazon's book listings, Barrett's later works do not sell as well as his early ones -- which is not to say that they are not worth our attention. Philosophical popularity is rarely a measure of worth. The rather substantial (392 pp.) _Illusion of Technique_ was followed by _Death of the Soul: From Descartes to the Computer_ (1986), a rather slight volume summing up his conclusions.Barrett taught philosophy at New York University, 1950-1979, but was no "ivory tower" intellectual. He was well aware of what may be called the gap between phenomenalism and scientific materialism. He lucidly explores the issues, but offers no easy answers. If you are interested in ideas, see what an involved thinker has to say.Readers may be interested to know that in 1962, four years after _Irrational Man_, Barrett teamed up with Henry D. Aiken to produce a 4-volume set called _Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: An Anthology_. (Random House) -- an anthology of extracts with extensive introductions. Vol. Three, Part Four (Phenomenology and Existentialism), pp. 123-450 !!, returns to the topic, this time with the inclusion of Camus and Bergson. As of this writing, Amazon lists the set under two numbers, but ASIN: B000AQLUMQ (which can be typed in as a title) has an extensive list of dealers with sets and individual copies at good prices. I highly recommend checking them out.

Great book. My favorite of all Barrett's work. He clearly sees the underlying irrationality of mankind's nature (although he seems to believe man no longer possess "instincts.) This is the reason, I believe, he misses CG Jung's importance.Barrett was a cultural anthropologist-- studying collective behavior. But it was his fine mind that developed a skill in weaving material from many disciplines into his work, including psychology. Psychology is a study of individual behaviors and motivations. And so he relied upon Fruedian psychology, which was a systematic effort to develop generalized theories of human psychology. Although he recognized Carl Jung's contributions, Barrett did not make much use of Jung's "theories" in this work. Jung experienced much the same breakdown of egoic control as Freud himself did during his earliest work and spent most of the rest of his life working through the dynamics of the personal transformation stemming from his inner experiences. As a result, he found the sexual dysfunction explanations of Freud insufficient to explain his expeirences. This took him into a broader search into the metaphysical sources of dysfunction than did Freud. As a result, Jung discarded "any goal for a generalized theory to explain psychological illness", arguing for an understanding of the irrational, which he called the "unconscious" and a requirement to work within on the symbols that come with dreams, visions, and synchroniticies. He developed inner work to cooperate with the inner dynamics while warning of the dangerous energies that come with an influx of energies from the depths of the mind. Thus, there is no generalized method for all people. One must work with the experiences of a patient to aid him or her through his personal confusion and transformational experiences to find meaning and a relationship to the Infinite. In this way, he might sustain himself in life and ground himself on this earth. Thus, the analyst should not try to use any standard general theory of psychology to direct the patient to return to society where he was previously situated. The patient must be helped to stand alone in his life and endure the pain, disappointments, and insecurities of life. Jung thought that only spirituality might sustain him or contain him in that way.. Jung's ideas were not for everybody, but they were very important to understand the devastating effects of cultural order and culture's existential effects on the psyche. Order itself destabilizes the psyche. And rationality itself is the mechanism by which it does so.Mankind is not rational by nature. We have an animal nature which we increasingly ignore to our peril. When rationality, order and the straitjacket of our cultural morality, rules of behavior, and ideals become too stressful for the individual in culture, there occurs these catastrophic breakdowns of ego which can devastate lives. It is therefore the rigidities of culture itself which instigates mental illness by creating "existential stress" due to a conflict between mankind's animal foundations and his more mental capacity to handle stress. The problem for Jung as an analyst was to restore the harmony between the psyche and the human animal aspect of the individual and to restore his awareness of his connection to God through a religious experience. Such experiences could be found in a patient's dreams during his illness.Ego is a complex and therefore functions as a means to escape the pain of life through attempting to evade the essential unreasonability and painfulness of life. It is a form of neurotic distortion of our full consciousness.. But it has been idealized as a kind of separate consciousness that is "who we are." It is not who we are, but it is a stabilizing influence in culture because culture is man's attempt to generalize agreement on what reality must be for us to "advance and control" our lives. We create therefore a rigid environment which becomes a disease. The result is mental illness for many because order becomes too dominating a factor in people's lives. We cannot ignore man's fundamental irrational nature by overlaying our cultiural image of ourselves with too many ideals of reason, order and morality upon all mankind. Nor can we project ideals upon man that are not in his instinctive nature. These rigidities in our manufactured environments create stress, separation, and existential life. These projections may be of the light to one person but dark to another. We ordinarily view these ideals or projections as "good" all the time, of course, and are outraged when man disappoints us by not rising to "goodness".. That does not make man evil or rational when he is not rational. Rationality, I would argue, was a trick we began playing on ourselves and others to avoid pain and failure in life. It instead creaed its own form of pain by separating us from our irrational nature. It organized and discriminated among "things" for us mentally or emotionally. It did not, among mankind, avoid pain or failure. It only was a way of thinking in which we could create an illusion of process and control. Nature lacks process. Plants and animal life lack control. There is no thinker, no will, and no reasoner. among such life forms in nature. Neither is there among man at the level of the animal in Mankind.. We are in illusion about what we are and what we are actually doing when we attempt to "reason." Underneath, we remain mostly irrational animals who expanded "reason" and learning and group effort into our method of adaptation. . And it is this layer of ourselves--irrationality-- which rules our "conscious" behavior, regardless of our using logic to justify why we do what we do.First and foremost we need to get to know this part of ourselves (whether we call this layer of our selves "nature" or instinct, Will or archetype).

One of the best book on existentialism I've read.

Even though this book was written in the late 50s or early 60s, it is probably one of the best book I have read about Exixtentialism. William Barret has this rare gift of explaining things using the simplest words when dealing with the most complicated elements of Existential philosophy. Combined with «Existentialism :A Biginner's Guide» byThomas E. Wartenberg, they represent the evolution of existential philosophy for the last 50 years. Rationalism and Idealism have been replaced by scientific rationalism during the last 100 years but they have not answered the most important of questions: Who am I? thus placing the accent on the individual rather than than on mass society where Man is considered an object of observation rather than the Being responsible for his own salvation.

Fantastique! je conseille de lire ce livre à tout le monde, excellent livre très enrichissant, philosophie pour population de l'Ouest!

insightful. how humanity,in 2022, has arrived at economic crisis,wars,dislocations,political upheavals, and man's homelessness and alienation.

The author traces the origins of existentialism to its roots contrasting it to the origins of western rational Platonic thinking. Coming forward in western history, those roots can be seen in mediaeval religion, then Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Sound daunting? Well it’s not... due to the clear quality of the author’s writing, the book’s relevance to life today is exceptionally clear. His personal insights are such that, if you could describe a book on philosophies as a real page-turner, this one is it. Highly recommended for its insights into today’s global nihilistic rationalist culture.