-:- an Existential Reading List by Katharena -:-

the Realm of Existentialism | What is Existentialism? | Basic Themes of Existentialism | Existential-Speak | Existential Themed Books and Reviews | Magnetar, an Existential Think Tank | Existentialism and the Human Situation | Existentialism and the American Consciousness | Existentialism and Moral Individualism | Subjectivity and Existentialism | Existentialism, Choice and Commitment | Irrational Man : A Study in Existential Philosophy | Existentialism's Dread and Anxiety | Existentialism : Man and Human Relationships | Existentialism and the Significance of Being | World, Limits, Existence -- Existentialism | Problems of Existentialist Theology | Modern Existentialist and Phenomenological Studies | What is Phenomenology?

It has been said that a coherent Existentialism should avoid the constant mortal leap between Being And Nothingness; should not confuse the problematic character of existence with the fall into factuality; should not confuse the finitude of possibilities with resignation to the situation, choice with determinism; freedom conditioned by the limits of the situation with the acknowledgment of the omnipresent necessity of the Whole. In this inquiry, it is held, Existentialism could well benefit from a more attentive consideration of science, which it has viewed until now only as a preparatory, imperfect, and objectifying knowledge in comparison with the authentic understanding of Being, which it considers to be a more fundamental mode of the being of man in the world. Science, it is submitted, offers today the example of an extensive and coherent use of the concept of the possible in the key notions that it employs, especially in those branches that are interdisciplinary--among them such notions as indeterminacy, chance, probability, field, model, project, structure, and conditionality.

Some steps in this direction have been taken by Abbagnano and by Merleau-Ponty. According to the latter, considerations of probability are rooted in the being of man, inasmuch as he is situated in the world and invested with the ambiguity of his events. Merleau-Ponty has written in his Phénoménologie de la perception (1945):

Our freedom does not destroy our situation, but is engaged with it. The situation in which we live is open. This implies both that it appeals to modes of privileged resolution and that it is of itself powerless to obtain one of them.

From this point of view, there is always a certain freedom in situations, although its degree varies from situation to situation. (from Encyclopedia Britannica)