Existential America

I've recently come across a book, Existential America (2005) by George Cotkin, a professor of history at CalPoly. A book note here may be a fitting wrap-up for the July 4th weekend.

The focus of the book is the big splash that the existentialist movement made as a high-prestige European import right after the war, in the middle of the last century. The people exporting that product were rather disdainful of what they saw as American superficiality and probably thought they were just a fad here -- though a fad they were happy enough to ride in terms of book sales etc.

In 1950, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that Americans don't have a concept of evil. "There is no pessimism in America regarding human nature and social organization," -- which was bad news for us.

Simone de Beauvoir, similarly, said Americans have no "feeling for sin and for remorse."

But, Cotkin thinks, they misunderstood us and misunderstood their own reception.

You can read in the book here.

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