Word: existentialists
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...chained, humiliated, sick with fear; we are at our lowest ebb." With these words, France's existentialist philosopher and left-wing propagandist, Jean-Paul Sartre, donned the mantle of doom for his countrymen.* Describing the much-discussed crisis of conscience confronting France as a result of the Algerian war, Sartre coined a new expression, "involution" -a tragic process by which the former colonizers adopt the savagery of the native lands they once colonized...
There were other casualties. The war's savagery, and especially the revelation of French torture of F.L.N. prisoners, caused a painful crisis of conscience among the French, from Roman Catholic François Mauriac to left-wing Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. The war's seeming insolubility brought down the Fourth Republic and enabled Charles de Gaulle to come to power as the one man with sufficient stature to end it. Last week peace seemed closer than ever, as the F.L.N. announced its willingness to settle on the basis of an Algerian plebiscite, agreed to a "transition" period...
Much more relevant to this century is the antinomian facet of Gordon's thought, which Leifer rejects as being alien to the Jewish tradition. Maybe that's why I like it (some of my best friends work for Mosaic, don't forget.) The antinomian (existentialist is the current word, I suppose) bias of thinkers like Gordon and Buber clearly do clash with law-centered traditional Judaism. But the absence of an absolute ground for morality in these two writers is not, as Leifer says, evidence that Judaism today lacks vigor. Rather, it is a token that Gordon and Buber...
...these modern near-tragedies could easily have been stretched into novels and good ones. Author Cicellis has chosen to contract her drama to excellent effect. What saves her from the existentialist, fatalist-futile school is largeness of heart and a glowing style. If her people are the losers of the world, they are dressed in a human dignity of her making. They may be involved in sordid little incidents, but they are also touched by tragedy, as when the modern Antigone reflects on her father: ''The guilty mess would be burnt clean, cleared of pity. She would spare...
Breathless (in French). Formless, flashing cinematic cubism, based on the existentialist tenet that life is just one damn thing after another...