Remembering Sir Herbert Read’s little book

Recently I came across in an American journal, a reference to the late Herbert Read, an anarchist, poet, literary critic and art historian. Read, who was subsequently knighted, was one of the earliest English writers to have taken notice of the philosophy of existentialism. In fact, he had written a jolly good 56-page booklet in 1950 entitled Existentialism, Marxism and Anarchism, which explained in simple language, the motivation behind the three different approaches. This is an introduction not just to the differences between the three disciplines but also to the metaphysics of Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre — three leading existentialists who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking began with the human subject and not the thinking subject. Sartre put it rather well when he wrote: Man first is then he is this or that. And existence precedes essence.

I have mentioned this treatise not just because it made me think but because I genuinely believe that almost every man on the globe, irrespective of the religion or philosophy he observes, goes through at some time of his life what is referred to as The Existentialist Experience. This is an acute attack of inwardness. He becomes suddenly aware of his separate, lonely individuality. There he is, a finite and insignificant speck of protoplasm pitched against the infinite universe. And if the universe is finite, as the scientists have pointed out, it shrinks against the even more mysterious concept of Nothingness. So there we have the Little Man gaping into the abyss and feeling not only small but also a little terrified. The Germans call this sensation Angst, which in English can be translated into dread or anguish.




There are two fundamental reactions to Angst. Life is absurd. The realisation of man’s insignificance in the universe can be met by a kind of despondent defiance. I may be insignificant and my life useless but I can at least cock a snook at the whole show and prove the independence of my mind. Life obviously has no meaning but let us pretend it has. This pretence will give me a sense of responsibility. I can prove that I am a law unto myself and can even enter into agreement with others about rules of conduct. “The possibility of detaching oneself from a situation in order to take a point of view concerning it is what we call freedom.” There is a danger inherent in detachment, the threat of idealism. In detachment, we elaborate a social utopia which has no relevance to the conditions we are living through. The existentialist, having experienced a sense of detachment or freedom, must throw himself back into the social context with the intention of changing those conditions. Hence the doctrine of engagement. This, in a very simplified form, is the doctrine of Sartre. In so far as Sartre’s existentialism is opposed to idealism, which binds him to rights and values and materialism that deprive him of his freedom, it is an advance in philosophical rectitude.

The religious approach adopted by Kierkegaard goes something like this. Man is confronted by the same abyss of nothingness. Why am I here? Why is there such a complex structure of which I am a small, insignificant part? It is complete nonsense. However, a simple hypothesis will make sense of it all — the prior existence of God: a transcendent creator responsible for the whole phantasmagoria of existence. This is not the point of view of the average theist, as some believe in revelation, ancient scriptures or divine illumination. But it is enough to stimulate the mind.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 1^st, 2015.