January 21, 2025 • 8 mins
This is a preview of an episode on Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism. Find it at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills. Please join us to support the show and get all our episodes!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What makes freedom interesting is I do feel like it's
a totem that's invoked by seemingly every political side. Right, Like,
I would say that it gets invoked by pretty much,
you know, you know, even even even people on the
far right definitely still invoke freedom. And then I would
say Marxist to some extent still invoke that, you know.
(00:20):
So it's I think it's an interesting thing to investigate
just because it does get thrown around so widely. It's
kind of and I think that was one of the
things we said on that Dirkhim episode is it seems
to be like though universally agreed upon totem in a
sense that like, you know, you can identify things that
are limited to one subculture or sub political group. But
I feel like freedom is something that's invoked, and sure
(00:42):
maybe each side means different things by it, but I
think it is interesting in its universality.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, don't forget about it's cognates too, like emancipation, liberty.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yeah other words, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I agree. It has a lot of recent and current
geopolitical important because like at the moment, at least in America,
and I will say to a larger extent Europe as well,
the notion of freedom is what differentiates a lot of
social political ideologies, like what we see, for example, growing
in Latin America. Is this tendency towards neo liberalism or
(01:17):
either idea of libertarian economical policies. So the igree of
liberty and freedom is very central to the current political
notion of things.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah, and I don't know, there's an interesting question here
of like what is the relationship between sovereignty and freedom? Right,
Like what's sovereignty good for? I mean for me? That's
actually kind of the question that's interesting to me is like, yeah,
there's sort of the philosophical puzzle of what does it
mean to have free will or you know, which is
something that started in what we read does engage with directly.
But then I think there is the broader political question,
(01:48):
which I think is ultimately where I think getting this
maybe more philosophical grounding of freedom, what the existentials mean,
maybe what other people mean. Can then we can kind
of see, Okay, well, how does that connect or does
it connect? Does it help inform how we think about
political freedom?
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Well, I wanted to start with what he says, I'll
just read it. How about that? Yeah, this is this
is uh, I don't know if we call him an
edge lord.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
So it was.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
He's pretty funny, and he's also like just stereotypically French
in every way. But I wanted to say this before
I read his like edgy paragraph. He was in like
a prisoner of war camp for a year of World
War two in in Germany, I'm pretty sure in Nazi Germany.
So he's not doing it for clicks. I know Diego
(02:36):
called this clickbait, but he knows he knows a little
bit more of more about imprisonment than the rest of us.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
He also famously rejected a Nobel prize. I think, didn't
he he like, he turned it down.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
Yeah, was it because of Palestine?
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Or it might have been because of Palestine or Algeria?
Speaker 4 (02:52):
It was he didn't. Didn't that produce more cliques than
actually accepting Yeah? Maybe, ah that's true.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
No, you're right, it definitely did create more clicks. I mean,
it was probably huge news when it happened. It was
like a giant I'm a I have to admit I'm
a great admirer of Sart. I think somehow, like dispositionally,
I feel most connected at a human level to existentialism
and and start and phenomenology. Like when it comes to
sort of thinking about my everyday life, it feels like
(03:19):
it was such an exciting time in France. I don't
know if anybody else feels that way, but like to me,
it's like when I read about them, I'm just like God,
it would have been so exciting to be around these
people when they were sort of thinking through this different
way of thinking about philosophy.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, you might not have known that it was am at.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
They were heavy drinkers, and they were libertines and they
like to fuck.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
As you said, it's a retrospective title too, though existentialism
what the term itself came after the Second World War. Yeah,
and some of these thinkers that are classed as existentialists
have rejected but Heidegger famously, I think, rejects it. And
they all don't don't agree with each other. But anyway,
(04:02):
Pills was going to read something.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I'm sorry, and it was an interesting The way they.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Described Sart in this Atlantic Monthly article is that he
was a French dramatist and poet who distinguished himself as
one of the military leaders of the FFI through the
long years of German domination and the FFI is the
French Forces of the Interior, which were the resistance fighters
(04:26):
who emerged in the later stages of the.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Second World War.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So he was apparently a general or some important guy
resistance fighter, a poet.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Dramatist general, he was a writer. He was also like
forty forty something at the time, so he wouldn't have
been a run around.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Isn't there some isn't there? Yeah? Wasn't he like a
weather a weather balloon?
Speaker 5 (04:52):
He was a meteorologist? And then this is confusing to me.
I'm not going to look it up, but someone can't.
He he got captured as a meteorologist, was imprisoned in
a Vschy prison camp, then sent to Germany, I believe
in Trier, and then somehow it was released in order
for him to be a resistance fighter. He's writing this
(05:14):
in nineteen forty four while the war is still going on,
but France has been liberated.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Wow, meteorologist, as.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
You know, who also was a meteorologist in World War One?
I believe is Heidiger.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
I think I gotta say David Lynch Heideger was a meteorologist.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I believe so in World War One, I believe.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
What is going on? What are these weather people up to?
Speaker 5 (05:38):
They're discovering the opening of being in the clouds?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yes, yes, I think he was. Yes, maybe I need
to fact check this better fact checked that. Or maybe
maybe they were both meteorologists in World War two. So like,
maybe that's the mistake I'm making.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
I know that's not true because Heidegger was rector at
Freiburg during World War two and so it was probably
like ten years old in World War One. So if
they were there are both weather guys, it had to
be in different wars. Sart left Heidiger, though, and Heidiger
said he wrote like dog shit, So we have a
bit of a one way weatherman infatuation here.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
A ha ha. Oh that's funny. He's a good writer.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
Let me read the paragraph at long last or halfway
through the episode. Never were we freer than under the
German occupation. We had lost all of our rights, and
first of all our right to speak. Wow, this sounds
like conservatives today. Hey. They insulted our faces every day,
and we had to hold our tongues. They deported us
on mass as workers, as Jews, as political prisoners. Everywhere
(06:40):
upon the walls and the press on the screen. We
found that filthy and insipid image of ourselves which the
oppressor wished to present to us. And because of all
of this, we were free oppression.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, it's striking that he starts out saying we've never
been freer and then proceeds to describe the horrific conditions
that they are living under under a German domination.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
So there's some slight of hand there going on.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
You know, we're never freer than when our freedoms are
taken away.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, because it sounds, it sounds provocative.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
And it's the first line.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
So clearly that's like what do they tell you in
journalism school?
Speaker 3 (07:19):
That's the hook?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
All right, He's definitely this hook.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
He's put this hook.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Line we're free in here in France in nineteen forty four,
and clearly he sort of means the opposite. But it
does have a strange connection to his to yeah, to
his existentialist ethics.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
I think there's a line that could really connect to
what he's trying to say here at the beginning, that is,
knowing about our freedom makes us more free, but to
be more free does not make us know or understand
more about our freedom.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Is like we are, but we.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Don't choose to be. And in that sense, I think
that puts the main anthological antagonism and the notion of
freedom in sortry, like the difference between existence and essence,
What makes freedom interesting is I do feel like it's
a totem that's invoked by seemingly every political side. Right, Like,
I would say that it gets invoked by pretty much,
you know, you know, even even even people on the
far right definitely still invoke freedom. And then I would
say Marxist to some extent still invoke that, you know.
(00:20):
So it's I think it's an interesting thing to investigate
just because it does get thrown around so widely. It's
kind of and I think that was one of the
things we said on that Dirkhim episode is it seems
to be like though universally agreed upon totem in a
sense that like, you know, you can identify things that
are limited to one subculture or sub political group. But
I feel like freedom is something that's invoked, and sure
(00:42):
maybe each side means different things by it, but I
think it is interesting in its universality.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, don't forget about it's cognates too, like emancipation, liberty.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yeah other words, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I agree. It has a lot of recent and current
geopolitical important because like at the moment, at least in America,
and I will say to a larger extent Europe as well,
the notion of freedom is what differentiates a lot of
social political ideologies, like what we see, for example, growing
in Latin America. Is this tendency towards neo liberalism or
(01:17):
either idea of libertarian economical policies. So the igree of
liberty and freedom is very central to the current political
notion of things.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah, and I don't know, there's an interesting question here
of like what is the relationship between sovereignty and freedom? Right,
Like what's sovereignty good for? I mean for me? That's
actually kind of the question that's interesting to me is like, yeah,
there's sort of the philosophical puzzle of what does it
mean to have free will or you know, which is
something that started in what we read does engage with directly.
But then I think there is the broader political question,
(01:48):
which I think is ultimately where I think getting this
maybe more philosophical grounding of freedom, what the existentials mean,
maybe what other people mean. Can then we can kind
of see, Okay, well, how does that connect or does
it connect? Does it help inform how we think about
political freedom?
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Well, I wanted to start with what he says, I'll
just read it. How about that? Yeah, this is this
is uh, I don't know if we call him an
edge lord.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
So it was.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
He's pretty funny, and he's also like just stereotypically French
in every way. But I wanted to say this before
I read his like edgy paragraph. He was in like
a prisoner of war camp for a year of World
War two in in Germany, I'm pretty sure in Nazi Germany.
So he's not doing it for clicks. I know Diego
(02:36):
called this clickbait, but he knows he knows a little
bit more of more about imprisonment than the rest of us.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
He also famously rejected a Nobel prize. I think, didn't
he he like, he turned it down.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
Yeah, was it because of Palestine?
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Or it might have been because of Palestine or Algeria?
Speaker 4 (02:52):
It was he didn't. Didn't that produce more cliques than
actually accepting Yeah? Maybe, ah that's true.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
No, you're right, it definitely did create more clicks. I mean,
it was probably huge news when it happened. It was
like a giant I'm a I have to admit I'm
a great admirer of Sart. I think somehow, like dispositionally,
I feel most connected at a human level to existentialism
and and start and phenomenology. Like when it comes to
sort of thinking about my everyday life, it feels like
(03:19):
it was such an exciting time in France. I don't
know if anybody else feels that way, but like to me,
it's like when I read about them, I'm just like God,
it would have been so exciting to be around these
people when they were sort of thinking through this different
way of thinking about philosophy.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, you might not have known that it was am at.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
They were heavy drinkers, and they were libertines and they
like to fuck.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
As you said, it's a retrospective title too, though existentialism
what the term itself came after the Second World War. Yeah,
and some of these thinkers that are classed as existentialists
have rejected but Heidegger famously, I think, rejects it. And
they all don't don't agree with each other. But anyway,
(04:02):
Pills was going to read something.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I'm sorry, and it was an interesting The way they.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Described Sart in this Atlantic Monthly article is that he
was a French dramatist and poet who distinguished himself as
one of the military leaders of the FFI through the
long years of German domination and the FFI is the
French Forces of the Interior, which were the resistance fighters
(04:26):
who emerged in the later stages of the.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Second World War.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So he was apparently a general or some important guy
resistance fighter, a poet.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Dramatist general, he was a writer. He was also like
forty forty something at the time, so he wouldn't have
been a run around.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Isn't there some isn't there? Yeah? Wasn't he like a
weather a weather balloon?
Speaker 5 (04:52):
He was a meteorologist? And then this is confusing to me.
I'm not going to look it up, but someone can't.
He he got captured as a meteorologist, was imprisoned in
a Vschy prison camp, then sent to Germany, I believe
in Trier, and then somehow it was released in order
for him to be a resistance fighter. He's writing this
(05:14):
in nineteen forty four while the war is still going on,
but France has been liberated.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Wow, meteorologist, as.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
You know, who also was a meteorologist in World War One?
I believe is Heidiger.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
I think I gotta say David Lynch Heideger was a meteorologist.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I believe so in World War One, I believe.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
What is going on? What are these weather people up to?
Speaker 5 (05:38):
They're discovering the opening of being in the clouds?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yes, yes, I think he was. Yes, maybe I need
to fact check this better fact checked that. Or maybe
maybe they were both meteorologists in World War two. So like,
maybe that's the mistake I'm making.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
I know that's not true because Heidegger was rector at
Freiburg during World War two and so it was probably
like ten years old in World War One. So if
they were there are both weather guys, it had to
be in different wars. Sart left Heidiger, though, and Heidiger
said he wrote like dog shit, So we have a
bit of a one way weatherman infatuation here.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
A ha ha. Oh that's funny. He's a good writer.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
Let me read the paragraph at long last or halfway
through the episode. Never were we freer than under the
German occupation. We had lost all of our rights, and
first of all our right to speak. Wow, this sounds
like conservatives today. Hey. They insulted our faces every day,
and we had to hold our tongues. They deported us
on mass as workers, as Jews, as political prisoners. Everywhere
(06:40):
upon the walls and the press on the screen. We
found that filthy and insipid image of ourselves which the
oppressor wished to present to us. And because of all
of this, we were free oppression.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, it's striking that he starts out saying we've never
been freer and then proceeds to describe the horrific conditions
that they are living under under a German domination.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
So there's some slight of hand there going on.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
You know, we're never freer than when our freedoms are
taken away.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, because it sounds, it sounds provocative.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
And it's the first line.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
So clearly that's like what do they tell you in
journalism school?
Speaker 3 (07:19):
That's the hook?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
All right, He's definitely this hook.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
He's put this hook.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Line we're free in here in France in nineteen forty four,
and clearly he sort of means the opposite. But it
does have a strange connection to his to yeah, to
his existentialist ethics.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
I think there's a line that could really connect to
what he's trying to say here at the beginning, that is,
knowing about our freedom makes us more free, but to
be more free does not make us know or understand
more about our freedom.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Is like we are, but we.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Don't choose to be. And in that sense, I think
that puts the main anthological antagonism and the notion of
freedom in sortry, like the difference between existence and essence,
Popular Podcasts
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.