Existentialism Introduction Package

In the 12 April blog, I had said that college gave me much freer time than a job. That was before a plethora of tasks was heaped upon me, and everything was essentially a take-home job. My mouth (writing) ran much quicker than reality. My free time to blog was obviously taken away from me. 

But that does not mean I abandoned this blog. I was just overwhelmed as the quota of writing I do turned into assignments. In the downtime from all of that, I read. Most of the books were non-fiction, which gave me quite a difficulty in reviewing them. I know what makes a fiction good or meaningful and how to express it; non-fiction? The only merit I can set as an assessment is whether I learned something from it. That's it. 

So let me tell you about the books I've been reading, simplified.

Psikologi-Kita & Eksistensialisme : Pengantar Filsafat Barat, Berkenalan dengan Eksistensialisme, Kita dan Kami (We-Psychology & Existentialism: Western Philosophy Introduction, Introduction to Existentialism, We and Us)

This book is a three-in-one deal, authored by Fuad Hassan. He's a pretty renowned figure in Indonesian psychology subjects, but at the same time, he might be the trailblazer of introducing existentialism. I have little knowledge on the matter of philosophy teachings in Indonesia, though, so those were just my thoughts. After all, works on introducing existentialism specifically for the general population and available to access in the public library by an Indonesian author are only his, so far. 

My interest in existentialism matters had a long history with its own twists and turns. I will skip that. What I will talk about is the first book or first section:

Pengantar Filsafat Barat (Western Philosophy Introduction)

True to his interest (I presume), the introduction to philosophy penned by Prof Hassan mostly centred around the meaning, thoughts, or methods of existence in this short history lesson. A lot of other philosophy subjects are either glossed over in favour of anything related to existence. Though, as I am interested in this subject, the focus on existentialism and/or ethics is welcome. 

Besides learning about philosophy, the book/section also explains the history of how thoughts and ideas develop. The writing style is easy to digest and would not be too hard for anyone to understand, unless it gets to the part of explaining certain ideas and the philosophy of a philosopher. In short, the first section is very informative and a good opener before we get to the following order.

Berkenalan dengan Eksistensialisme (Introduction to Existentialism)

The second section explored the thoughts and writings of existentialist philosophers along with their biographies. The philosophers'  writings are quoted both in English and with Indonesian translation. This section features five philosophers: Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nicholas Alexandrovitch Berdyaev, Karl Jaspers, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Among all of the five, the two philosophers that stood out to me (and maybe a familiar household name) are Kierkegaard and Sartre.

Kierkegaard is dubbed as the 'Father of Existentialism' before the subsidiary of existentialism even existed. Sartre might be one of those names that are so famous that you may have heard of him anywhere, even if you don't really know his exact importance. The striking thing between them is that Kierkegaard is a theist existentialist while Sartre is an atheist. As someone with a religious belief, Kierkegaard's writings resonate spiritually. But as someone living in the modern world, Sartre's thoughts (which were written indeed in the early modern era) fit more in this era. 

Finding meanings in existence as a theist would align perfectly with Kierkegaard's ideas. But to be recognisant and responsible about it, to completely own your existence, you would need to look at the world with Sartre's eyes. Although Sartre could be considered a radical existentialist whom many people might not truly agree with, as he (as far as I remember) detests the presence of other people's freedom infringing upon our own freedom. To quote, “hell is other people”.

That, unfortunately, works for me. I agree with you there, Sartre. 

Kita dan Kami (We and Us)

Came the last section that I DNF. This took the technical terms into impossibly high level, to nobody's surprise, as this was Prof Hassan's dissertation turned into a book. I DNF'ed because my reading skills were severely lacking, I believe. 

The content talks about existential psychology and how neurosis is the state of existential crisis (I think?). I took two to three re-reads to understand the premise of the preliminary pages. Prof Hassan gave his version of the 'ego, id, superego' concept, which I could not really recall. One thing that sticks with me was that Prof Hassan disagreed with René Descartes “cogito, ergo sum” [I think, therefore I am]. He wrote that the existence of consciousness in humans does not begin with 'thinking' but with being with other humans, as we could see from how babies grow into their human-consciousness-existence-ish by mimicking the adults around them. Or so I understood it.  

While it was hard to read and comprehend, the idea proposed in this third section is refreshing to say the least. Prof Hassan mentioned that the reason why babies could not remember their days as a baby or from the womb is that they were in an animalistic state, without the type of consciousness and intelligence that distinguishes humans from animals. And only when babies grow and hone their brains to think do they complete their existence as humans. 

That might be the lousiest explanation I gave out out of everything I had written in the blog, as suddenly it makes Prof Hassan's disagreement with cogito, ergo sum moot. I do not know how to explain it better. I already forgot the portion where he explained his own thinking over this, and I have returned this whole book to the library. But I promise you the general idea was as I explained above. 

Final Thoughts

I intended to make this post a bit longer, but re-explaining Prof Hassan's work has drained my brain juices. There were plenty of other non-fiction books that I read in the May-July period, but I will stop here. This one physical book already consisted of three books, after all. 

Now, if you are interested in reading about existentialism or just the general history of thoughts, especially centring humans' experience and existence, I completely recommend this book to you. It's an Indonesian book, though, and I have no idea if there are translated English copies outside. But Indonesian-wise, the writing style is easy to digest (besides the last section) and very compact with information, so you should take your reading slow with this one book. 

And so I will end this here. 

See you next time!