| Existential Comics | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Corey Mohler |
| Website | existentialcomics |
| Current status/schedule | Active |
| Launch date | December 2013 |
| Genre(s) | Philosophy |
Existential Comics is a webcomic about philosophy created by Corey Mohler, a software engineer in Portland, Oregon. [1] Mohler created the comic in December 2013 [2] in an attempt to help popularize philosophy through comedy. [3] The comic tends to depict philosophers of different backgrounds and often has them interacting and arguing with each other. [4] It also gives textual descriptions of the jokes and associated philosophy to help educate readers. [5]
In May 2018 Mohler once called Elon Musk "the villain from Atlas Shrugged ". Musk responded during SpaceX's launch of a Falcon 9 rocket. [6] [7] Mohler later published a comic about the incident. [8]
As of April 2023, the comic has covered over 200 philosophers, [14] examining a wide variety of thought from Pre-Socratic philosophy to contemporary philosophy. [4] Mohler has described both Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir as his favorite philosophers. [5] Alongside existentialism, Mohler has also written extensively about Stoicism [15] and communism.
Existentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence. Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. Common concepts in existentialist thought include existential crisis, dread, and anxiety in the face of an absurd world and free will, as well as authenticity, courage, and virtue.
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism. His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to do so. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.
Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of analytic philosophy. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Prior to the twentieth century, the term "continental" was used broadly to refer to philosophy from continental Europe. A different use of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and traditions outside the analytic movement. Continental philosophy includes German idealism, phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, French feminism, psychoanalytic theory, and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School as well as branches of Freudian, Hegelian and Western Marxist views. There is widespread influence and debate between the analytic and continental traditions; some philosophers see the differences between the two traditions as being based on institutions, relationships, and ideology rather than anything of significant philosophical substance.
Bad faith is a sustained form of deception which consists of entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings while acting as if influenced by another. It is associated with hypocrisy, breach of contract, affectation, and lip service. It may involve intentional deceit of others, or self-deception.
Existential phenomenology encompasses a wide range of thinkers who take up the view that philosophy must begin from experience like phenomenology, but argues for the temporality of personal existence as the framework for analysis of the human condition.
Nausea is a philosophical novel by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, published in 1938. It is Sartre's first novel.
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. Existentialism is a philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the individual and the experiences of the individual, that moral thinking and scientific thinking together are not sufficient for understanding all of human existence, and, therefore, that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to understand human existence. This philosophy analyzes relationships between the individual and things, or other human beings, and how they limit or condition choice.
In existentialism, bad faith is the psychological phenomenon whereby individuals act inauthentically, by yielding to the external pressures of society to adopt false values and disown their innate freedom as sentient human beings. Bad faith also derives from the related concepts of self-deception and ressentiment.
French philosophy, here taken to mean philosophy in the French language, has been extremely diverse and has influenced Western philosophy as a whole for centuries, from the medieval scholasticism of Peter Abelard, through the founding of modern philosophy by René Descartes, to 20th century philosophy of science, existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, and postmodernism.
In philosophy, facticity has multiple meanings — from "factuality" and "contingency" to the intractable conditions of human existence.
The proposition that existence precedes essence is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence. To existentialists, human beings—through their consciousness—create their own values and determine a meaning for their life because the human being does not possess any inherent identity or value. That identity or value must be created by the individual. By posing the acts that constitute them, they make their existence more significant.
Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy is a 1958 book by the philosopher William Barrett, in which the author explains the philosophical background of existentialism and provides a discussion of several major existentialist thinkers, including Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Irrational Man helped to introduce existentialism to the English-speaking world and has been identified as one of the most useful books that discuss the subject, but Barrett has also been criticized for endorsing irrationality and for giving a distorted and misleading account of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
20th-century French philosophy is a strand of contemporary philosophy generally associated with post-World War II French thinkers, although it is directly influenced by previous philosophical movements.
Black existentialism or Africana critical theory is a school of thought that "critiques domination and affirms the empowerment of Black people in the world". Although it shares a word with existentialism and that philosophy's concerns with existence and meaning in life, Black existentialism is "is predicated on the liberation of all Black people in the world from oppression". Black existentialism may also be seen as method, which allows one to read works by African-American writers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison in an existentialist frame. As well as the work of Civil Rights Activists such as Malcolm X and Cornel West. Lewis Gordon argues that Black existentialism is not only existential philosophy produced by Black philosophers but is also thought that addresses the intersection of problems of existence in black contexts.
For the Canadian writer and editor, see Nancy Bauer.
Yvanka B. Raynova is a Bulgarian philosopher, feminist, editor, translator, and publisher. She is full professor of contemporary philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and director of the Institute for Axiological Research in Vienna. She elaborated a post-personalist hermeneutic phenomenology based on some gnostic ideas. Her works include studies on continental philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, axiology, feminist philosophy, intercultural philosophy, religious studies, and translation studies.
Sartre: Romantic Rationalist is a book by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1953 by Bowes & Bowes of Cambridge, it was Murdoch's first book and the first book about Jean-Paul Sartre's work to be published in English.
At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails is a 2016 book written by Sarah Bakewell that covers the philosophy and history of the 20th century movement existentialism. The book provides an account of the modern day existentialists who came into their own before and during the Second World War. The book discusses the ideas of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, and how his teaching influenced the rise of existentialism through the likes of Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir, who are the main protagonists of the book. The title refers to an incident in which Sartre's close friend and fellow philosopher Raymond Aron startled him when they were in a cafe, by pointing to the glass in front of him and stating, "You can make a philosophy out of this cocktail."
Tove Pettersen is a Norwegian feminist philosopher. She is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo (UiO), Norway. Pettersen specializes in feminist ethics, the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir, and feminist history of philosophy. She has contributed to the development of care ethics with her theory on mature care. Her work on forgotten women philosophers and on Beauvoir's ethics and humanism have received attention both in Norway and abroad.