In the lecture, the existentialist view that all moral weight falls on the individual's act of choosing, foreshadowed by Bergson. In political theory the word usually refers to Carl Schmitt, for whom the sovereign's decision, not a norm, founds law.
A children's book about a hippopotamus who must decide for herself whether to join the other animals' jog, or stay behind.
The image Shore uses for it, in our paraphrase.
In lecture order, as Marci Shore presents each view. The time opens that minute of the lecture on YouTube.
For Bergson life is choice, continual choice: a newborn child is already a whole, indivisible self, yet which of countless directions that self will take cannot be predicted, and should not be.
The heart of French existentialism, in Shore's one-line summary, is decisionism: like Boynton's hippopotamus, the individual has to decide for herself whether she stays or goes.
Put simply Shore's one-line summary of French existentialism: each person must decide for herself, which she calls "decisionism." Her picture is a children's book by Sandra Boynton, whose hippopotamus must choose whether to join the other animals or not.
Interwar polarization is the backdrop to Sartre's preoccupation with choice: with liberalism collapsed and movements claiming every corner of life, nothing moderate seemed left and nobody could sit it out.
Put simply Shore: the years between the World Wars are the backdrop to Sartre's obsession with choice. Liberal democracy had collapsed, mass movements aimed to control every part of life, no middle ground seemed left, and nobody could stand aside.
Sartre's moral imperative is about choosing, not about what gets chosen: no code says which option is right, and declining to decide is itself a decision one answers for.
In Heidegger's call for decision in everything and responsibility in every action, Shore hears existentialist motifs, decisionism and answerability, surfacing in his 1933 address as rector.
Put simply Shore hears existentialist themes in Heidegger's 1933 rector's speech. His call for decision in everything and responsibility in every act echoes the existentialist stress on choosing and answering for one's choices.
Links from these claims to others in the course. Each shows the earlier claim, then the later one that answers it. “Our inference” marks a link Shore does not state outright.
SartreSartre's moral imperative is about choosing, not about what gets chosen: no code says which option is right, and declining to decide is itself a decision one answers for. L13 · 39:11
SartreIn its commonest form, bad faith shelters behind determinism: pleading fate, natural law or an unchangeable character denies one's freedom and recasts oneself as a mere object. L13 · 40:55
Bad faith is the evasion of the responsibility that the imperative to choose imposes.
SartreSartre's moral imperative is about choosing, not about what gets chosen: no code says which option is right, and declining to decide is itself a decision one answers for. L13 · 39:11
SartreAnguish is the price of responsibility: whoever commits to anything settles not only who they will be but, in effect, legislates for all humanity. Absolute freedom means absolute responsibility. L13 · 44:48
Total freedom to choose becomes total responsibility, which is experienced as anguish.
SartreSartre's moral imperative is about choosing, not about what gets chosen: no code says which option is right, and declining to decide is itself a decision one answers for. L13 · 39:11
GombrowiczGombrowicz presses the point: on Sartre's terms, someone who chooses frivolity over authenticity or falsehood over truth faces no hell and no penalty, except lacking a true existence. L13 · 46:05
If only the act of choosing matters, choosing frivolity or falseness carries no penalty beyond an emptier existence.
BergsonFor Bergson life is choice, continual choice: a newborn child is already a whole, indivisible self, yet which of countless directions that self will take cannot be predicted, and should not be. L7 · 32:23
ArendtNatality: every new being who enters the world injects radical contingency into it, able to head in many directions along courses no one can foresee. L7 · 49:55
Shore sets Bergson's radical contingency entering the world with each living being beside what Arendt called natality.
HeideggerConfronting one's own death alone, shaken by Angst, can produce resoluteness: taking hold of oneself and owning one's choices. That is authenticity's slightly empowering side, which Heidegger wants felt. L12 · 44:18
ShoreIn Heidegger's call for decision in everything and responsibility in every action, Shore hears existentialist motifs, decisionism and answerability, surfacing in his 1933 address as rector. L24 · 25:14
Shore hears existentialist motifs of decisionism and responsibility in Heidegger's words as rector; she does not explicitly tie them to Being and Time's resoluteness.
Throughlines that pass through one of these claims.
Terms that appear in the same claims.