Robert Harries says that playing this game is a Sisyphean task, and represents the human spirit up against a meaningless fate. In 1984 in the former Soviet Union, a computer engineer by the name of Alexey Pajitnov created the mega-selling computer game, Tetris. Its format, known to everyone who has ever played a games consol, …
Richard Oxenberg gives a poetic introduction to Heidegger’s Being and Time. so much depends upona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the white chickens William Carlos Williams In order to appreciate Heidegger’s thought it is necessary to see it in relation to the Western metaphysical tradition from which it has emerged. This would be true, of course, …
Philip Villamor rethinks Albert Camus’ famous rock’n’roll parable. The gods condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain. It is an unending sequence of events: he arduously pushes the rock up the mountain, the rock rolls back down, Sisyphus follows it back down and then begins the task again. Yet …
Dan Sinykin says that Kierkegaard is worried about you. Preface: For the love of God, consider this a primer, a warm-up, a teaser, but certainly not a substitute for the work analyzed within. One is a ragtag attempt at accessible jottings about the other, which is a timeless masterpiece on the human condition. You can …
We Have Spirit, Yes We Do! We Have Spirit, How ‘Bout You? Read More »
Stephen Small on defining other people and ourselves. We live our lives in the shadow of other people. Others fill and to a significant degree constitute our world. After many centuries of history we remain social animals, but our identity and its origins remain an issue for us. Although we easily imagine ourselves alone on …
Ion Georgiou explains the literary theories of a man who loved words. “A writer writes to a great extent to be read (as for those who say they don’t, let us admire them but not believe them).” Albert Camus It has been said of Monsieur Sartre – and it remains undoubtedly true – that the …
Michael Rockler scrutinizes the private investigator’s existentialist credentials. Perhaps the most popular existential work of the 20th century was written by a man who has not usually been identified as a philosopher, but whose work clearly embodies existential themes. Dashiell Hammett, creator of the hard-boiled detective novel, applied an existential viewpoint to his writing. His …
Jonathan Rée on Søren Kierkegaard and the struggle to become a real thinker. I am not a Christian, but in some ways I wish I was. Of course Christianity can be tiresome (as all Christians would agree) but it can also be fresh and crisply intelligent. And I find it hard to resist Christianity as …
Understanding the imagination was central to Sartre’s attempts to understand what it is to be human, and how we should live. Maria Antonietta Perna thinks he had important insights which are still worth considering. What is imagination? The word itself seems to be used in at least two different ways, and as this ambiguity is …
Matthew Coniam on Colin Wilson. Colin Wilson, who is seventy this year, is a name familiar to many as a popular writer on a bewildering variety of topics: crime and deviancy, paranormalism, archaeology and alien abduction to name just a few that have commanded his attention most recently. Older readers may remember him as the …